Jonathan Harth

The digitally generated worlds of the virtual are not antagonistic to the usual reality, but increasingly develop into homologous alternatives within ordinary reality. The use of technopractices such as virtual reality and communication with algorithm-based virtual entities, which are more and more turning into a (proto-)social element of our society, not only makes the contingency of our world apparent, but also allows us to observe the reflexivity of our own observation of this contingency. Hence, acting and experiencing in virtual worlds and with virtual communication partners does not necessarily imply a loss of reality, but on the contrary, it may bring us multifarious enrichments of reality. However, the cultural process of digitalization also brings in its wake a new narcissistic insult to mankind: Reflected by self-learning machines that reproduce human intelligence to an unimagined degree, we painfully learn that the human self is always merely socially formatted and can operate only within the confnes, and by the standards, of habituation and socialization

This article explores what the method of phenomenological reduction and description can contribute to the analysis of users’ experiences in virtual reality (VR). While other philosophical accounts explain the virtual as either an extension or a replacement of the real, a phenomenological description of experiences in virtual environments reveals them as open horizons for exploring this new reality. In contrast to common epistemological approaches in VR research, phenomenology understands the lived body (Leib) as constitutive of VR experiences. Using two prototypical VR experiments, we analyze how a phenomenological account differs from other accounts and what it can contribute to understanding and advancing VR applications in art, gaming, learning, and virtual communities.

Die von Thiemo Breyer, Inga Römer und Michela Summa herausgegebenen »Phänomenologischen Forschungen« sind ein international offenes Forum für die Publikation aller im weitesten Sinne phänome [...]

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