Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
About Eva
PhD candidate at the Visual and Digital Cultures Research Center (ViDi) Antwerp
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
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“Becoming Blind” in Virtual Reality
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth post in the series on Disabling Technologies Can technology convey experiences that are not our own, ones we can at the most imagine experiencing from a first person perspective? Furthermore, can technology help us understand the multisensory and deeply emotional qualities of such experiences? Central to this post is the consideration of how the Virtual Reality (VR) documentary Notes on Blindness may enable us to experience a ‘world without images’. I explore these questions through touching upon the problem of individual experience contra the universal. Indeed, if there is no such thing as a “universal” experience of blindness (Cupitt 2017; Hull 1990; Sacks 2005), and if VR experiences are also highly individualized (Aardema et al 2010), is there still value to be found in the personal experience? In an auto-ethnographic description of my experience with Notes on Blindness, I will focus mostly on my bodily (read more...)