VR Webinar: 170 Years of Embodied Transportation
Miriam Ross delivers the 6th installment of our webinar series, Seeing Double: The Multiple Worlds of Virtual Reality, presented in partnership with the Digital Studio on 1 July 2020. REGISTRATIONS CLOSED.
Date and time: Wednesday 1 July 2020, 1:00-2:00PM AEST
Registration: Closed
Title: Virtual Reality: 170 Years of Embodied Transportation
Description: In this webinar, Dr Miriam Ross will present on the complex history of Virtual Reality. Taking the lenticular stereoscope’s 1851 public debut as the first eye apparatus to provide the illusion of transportation to a virtual world, we have had over a century and a half of technological devices that expand optical data and our potential for knowing through visual means. Yet for all that virtual reality devices are premised upon the optical illusion, multisensory and synesthetic modes have meant that we experience deeply embodied, subjective, interactions. These take place at the material and the imaginative level as fully realised and experimental technologies inspire and are inspired by creative arts (literature, theatre, film, television, gaming).
This webinar charts a trajectory connecting VR’s embodiment with early 3D cinema experiments, science fiction literature and Star Trek’s Holodeck. This seminar touches on three significant historical moments: the 1930s, late 1980s/early 1990s, and our present moment.
Presenter: Dr Miriam Ross is Senior Lecturer in the Film Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She works with new technologies to combine practice-based methods and traditional academic analysis. Her publications include South American Cinematic Culture: Policy, Production, Distribution and Exhibition (2010) and 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences (2015) as well as journal articles on film industries, new cinema technologies, stereoscopic media, virtual reality and film festivals. Her short films and virtual reality works have been screened internationally and her video essays have been published in online journals. She is also co-founder and administrator of Stereoscopic media.
Image credit: Embodied (2019) Director Miriam Ross
This webinar is part of the ERCC's 2020 Webinar Series, 'Seeing Double: The Multiple Worlds of Virtual Reality', which is presented in partnership with The University of Melbourne Digital Studio.