ABSTRACT
This chapter explores why people often try to touch each other and objects around them in virtual and telematic environments, where touch in any physical form is obviously impossible. It draws upon understandings of the body through proprioception, somatics and movement memory to explain how the act of reaching out to touch enables us to experience presence in telematic and virtual reality environments. The chapter considers the importance of dance and embodied knowledge to the future design and analysis of virtual worlds. Telematic Dreaming, Escape Velocity and Unheimlich all draw upon the deep proprioceptive knowledge and embodied memories of the body. The field of virtual reality was burgeoning in the 1990s, but it lost much of its momentum in the early part of the new millennium. The fresh emergence of contemporary, commercially viable, lightweight headsets is likely to lead to a revival of interest and growth in virtual reality products for the home entertainments and other markets.
