Where to begin? I”ll start with where I’m at, because that’s what most excites me. I’m making a video which explores the age old question of “what is reality?” through the relatively fresh lens of Milgram’s Virtuality Continuum. I’m retooling the model a tad to include ideology, especially as it is created through media; Milgram really only intended it to serve as a way of conceptualizing the spectrum of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies. This however is part of the point I want to make: depending on where we draw the definitive line between reality and virtuality, there surface interesting implications surrounding what we consider pure reality. Obviously a first person trans-continental conversation with someone in a virtual space as supported by Oculus Rift exhibits a large degree of virtuality, but what about our perception of that person based on their Facebook page? What about patriarchal, Judeo-Christian, capitalism? A stretch, I know, but I think it’s interesting to push the boundaries of the word virtuality -especially into the realm of ideology- when technological innovation has gifted us a new model for understanding how our environment shapes and “is” our reality. The negotiation of where the line is between reality and virtuality is an interesting point of discussion within the burgeoning field of virtual reality technology, and one which is in constant need of reevaluation in this age of hyper-connectivity and mass media. In my next post I’ll explain how it took me 6 months to arrive at the trembling structure you just read.