Labels matter. Naming is both, taming and creating. In turn, the way we talk about virtual and augmented reality is important because it shapes the ways in which we think about these technological experiences, research them, and even experience them. This simple yet profound idea underpinning critical and constructivist approaches to communication studies is at…
This review was originally published in the International Journal of Communication, Volume 18 (2024), and is republished on CAVRN with the permission of the author, Maxwell Foxman. You can find the original review here. Despite virtual reality’s (VR) widespread availability (and lower price) since 2016, much literature surrounding it remains relatively speculative; there is no…
If you’ve just lost ability to differentiate between simulated reality and the authentic one, you’ve attained hyperreality, as defined by Jean Baudrillard, and described more recently in Curtis Hickman’s Hyper-Reality: The Art of Designing Impossible Experiences. Hickman, a renowned experience designer and co-founder of The Void, introduces a design framework for the creation of immersive…
Last year, I wrote reviews of Reality Media: Augmented and Virtual Reality by Jay David Bolter, Maria Engberg, and Blair MacIntyre (2021), and The Aesthetics of Virtual Reality by Grant Tavinor (2021). While the books aim to do different things, a shared feature is that they each dedicate a chapter to media genealogy. Both delve…
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) celebrated its 70th year of operation this year. In recent years, the festival has been expanding to include extended reality (XR) content. This year marked MIFF’s most ambitious XR offering to date, with twelve XR pieces presented both in-person and in a digital recreation of Melbourne’s iconic art-deco Capitol…