ABSTRACT
New interface technologies such as haptics and gesture control are promised to provide more embodied and direct modes of input than the heavily visual interfaces that have been dominant so far. However, this chapter argues that even heavily visual interfaces are in fact highly embodied and direct. While virtual reality and video games are commonly understood to operate through convincing visual illusions that ‘trick’ the perception of the human user into registering a real, three-dimensional space, in fact they are reliant on a human capacity to synthesise and reconcile fragmentary and inconsistent visual stimuli to produce a coherent simulated space ‘inside’ the body of the user. Virtual reality’s claims to greater realism depend on technologies that tighten integration with the enactive perception of the user rather than improve visual quality, while the widespread use of a third-person perspective in video games illustrates the degree to which straightforward representational realism or the simulation of existing ways of seeing the world are not only unnecessary but perhaps undesirable in games’ visual representations of space. In the third-person game, the player sees on-screen the body that serves as her avatar in the game space rather than being presented with a simulation of that avatar’s viewpoint, creating a relationship between space, vision and action that is unlike any everyday experience of these things. The fact that players can smoothly engage with this representational regime, effortlessly understanding its spatial relationships and performing skilled actions within it, demonstrates the degree to which visual interfaces do not depend on simply reproducing natural modes of perception and action, but rather arise in a dynamic and adaptive way through our engagement with particular technological systems. Through a discussion of the historical development of techniques for simulating space and the nature of human proprioception, this chapter provides an account of this process and its significance for attempts to develop new modes of human-machine interaction.
