Slides presented at POPCAANZ17, Wellington, July 2017. It's an exploration of the representation of virtual reality and dream in popular culture (mainly cinema and TV), but also the implications of these similarities. Here are my notes for the reading: Welcome to the infinite screen: virtual reality interfaces and dream My name is Bruno Rodriguez, and I work with the department of media and communications at University of Sydney teaching new media audiences Currently applying for a PhD Thanks to Ryszard Dabek and POPCAANZ To the question, everybody is asking themselves: Spanish. If at some point my accent gets too thick you’re more than welcome to raise your hand and ask me. If you don’t feel like that, you can also use Twitter to criticise this presentation, remember we’re using the hashtag #popcaanz2017. THIS PRESENTATION WILL ADDRESS 2 MAIN THEMES I’ll start with a story During Google’s I/O 2016 conference, presented a new set of tools for VR They called it daydream -Set of tools for developers -Specific hardware (controller + headsets) -Daydream-ready smartphones -Daydream-ready experiences ---SW for smartphones ---Through Google Play ---Still they don’t call them apps ---Full of terms like Dreamscape, dreamlike, etc. By using the term Daydream, Google seems to draw a parallelism between the experience of virtual reality and the experience of dreaming. But this is part of a bigger phenomenon. Dream Vision is the company responsible for Dream360, a VR device that streams content directly from your phone and that also digged the oneiric branding reference. Kortex, a project that was recently crowdfunded on Kickstarter receiving close to $117,000 is a project that delivers a low dose alternating current shocks to the back of your skull for reducing stress and helping sleep while using VR. Relaxation, meditation and sleep apps are one of the most popular categories in VR media. -Guided meditation VR -Lumen - dev by Walter Greenleaf (Stanford) as a simulator for relaxation -MindZenze Sleep - enter a dreamier state of mind -Relax VR Including an overwhelming support from the ASMR community, for those of you interested in this phenomenon. And because this is 2017, there’s even an anime waifu sleep simulator, where you can sleep next to or over the lap of Rem, the famous character from RE: Zero - Starting Life in Another World The selection of the name “Daydream” to invoke virtual reality can be interpreted as an intentional association between VR and dream, or an example of Google’s executives instinctively drawing the comparison between the two. Either way, it highlights the historical connection between dream and visual media, and how it’s been stressed with each new iteration of visual media facilitated through technology. They aren’t the first drawing this analogy between moving image and subconscious.

1. The Infinite Screen:
Virtual Reality Interfaces and
Dream
By Bruno Rodriguez
@bruroar

2. 1. In film, dream and virtual reality are
represented in exactly the same way.

3. 2. Psychoanalytical theories of film can
be adapted to explain virtual reality.

4. It will take me exactly 71 slides
to get there.

5. (I’m sorry)

6. During Google’s 2016 I/O conference, the company introduced
their new virtual reality toolset.

8. Daydream hardware: headsets, controller.

9. Daydream-ready smartphones

10. Daydream-ready experiences

11. Virtual Reality = Dream?

12. Branding and naming

13. Sleep & street-relief devices

14. Sleep & relaxation apps...

15. ...including a large contribution from ASMR content creators.

16. Lap sleeping simulator: “Life with Rem in VR”

17. The Infinite Screen:
Virtual Reality Interfaces and Dream
Daydream’s ecosystem exemplifies
the multiple touch points between
VR and dream.

18. Daydream highlights the historical
connection between dream and
visual media, and the role that
technology plays in shaping that
connection.
Daydream highlights the historical
connection between dream and
visual media, and the role that
technology plays in shaping that
connection.

19. The connection between visual media and
dream is not new

20. “One of cinema’s exclusive domains will be the immaterial, or more precisely, the
unconscious”
- Ricciotto Canudo
“The cinema resembles the dream, with its colourless images like those of a film, (...) which in
a sense escape the rules of the word of dreams”
- Jean Do Luca
“The essential is still the basically dreamlike quality of cinema, of the moving image”
- André Bazin

21. Variable realities
and the representation
of VR and dream.

22. Variable realities:
Elements of the narration that are
supposedly “real” and then
revealed “virtual”, or vice versa.
- Jean Ricardou

23. Variable realities are a common narrative device
in cinema, TV, literature and videogames.
Variable realities are a narrative resource
as old as cinema.

24. Variable realities are a common narrative device
in cinema, TV, literature and videogames.
They are often presented as hypodiegetic universes
embedded in the diegetic world of the text,
as in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

25. Variable realities are a common narrative device
in cinema, TV, literature and videogames.
As in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’,
these variable realities usually are presented as
hypodiegetic universes embedded in the diegetic world
of the text.
In both examples, the device is used to represent a dream.
Historically, this has been its main function.

26. By defining these early hypo-diegetic
elements as ‘virtual’, Jean Ricardou
catalogues these oneiric experiences as
virtual realities.

27. Variable realities have become
increasingly common devices for
communicating contemporary narratives

28. But they have become increasingly
popular recently.
Their uses have cha
from the representation of d
to the depiction of other pheno
such as virtual reality simula

29. Total Recall (1990 & 2012)

30. Ghost in the Shell (1995-present)

31. The Matrix (1999)

32. ExistenZ (1999)

33. 13th Floor (1999)

34. Black mirror (2011 - present)

35. Strange Beasts (2017)

36. - Summer Wars
- Brainscan
- Brainstorm
- Accel World
- Virtuosity
- Overlord
- Shelter
- The Zero Theorem
- Sleep Dealer
- Etc.
ETC.
- Ender’s Game
- Disclosure
- The Lawnmower man
- Gamers
- Arcade
- Long Horizon
- Dreamscape
- The Cell
- Inception
- Paprika
- Strange Days
- World on a wire
- Abre los Ojos
- Vanilla Sky
- Dark City
- Tron
- Sword Art Online
- hack.//Sign
- Johny Mnemonic
- Cloak & Dagger

37. 13th Floor (1999)
What do these text share with
‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Alice in
Wonderland?

38. Both dream and virtual reality can
share the same narrative structure.

39. Variable realities in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Tron’.
Alice in Wonderland
Tron
Diegetic level
Hypodiegetic level
Diegetic level
Hypodiegetic level
Alice falls asleep Alice wakes up
Alice goes in a strange journey
Flynn enters ENCOM Flynn saves the day
Flynn goes in a strange journey

40. Even when variable realities about VR have
evolved into complex puzzle narratives...

41. Variable realities as puzzle narratives in The ‘13th Floor’.
The 13th Floor
Diegetic level
Hypodiegetic level
Hall transcends the simulation
1st level
2nd level
Hannon delivers letter

42. ...narratives about dream have remediated them.

43. Variable realities as puzzle narratives in ‘Inception’.
Inception
Diegetic level
Hypodiegetic level
Cobb plans inception Cobb wakes up
1st level
2nd level
3rd level
4th level

44. The remediation includes the diegetic elements
shared by both dream and VR.

45. Dream as VR: devices

46. Dream is accessible through technology
Dream as Virtual.

47. VR as dream: sleep, dream, shake.

48. The body using VR is sleeping.
Virtual as Dream

49. The superposition of how stories about dream
and VR are told makes it difficult to distinguish
both categories.

50. Dream and virtual become equivalents
through the remediation of narratives and
aesthetic devices.

51. One last example:

52. OPEN YOUR EYES
(Abre los Ojos)

53. Using the same narrative and aesthetic
resources, the movie can be interpreted as a
dream (normal or coma-induced) or a virtual
reality simulation.

54. Cinematographers are constantly drawn towards
dream and virtual reality.
Meanwhile, they seem to be intuitively drawing
a relationship of equivalence between them.

55. Jean-Louis Baudry’s cinematic apparatus:
the animating force behind cinema is the
desire for, and regression to, primitive
narcissism. In psychoanalysis, this is the act
of dreaming.

56. Characteristics of the cinematic apparatus according to Baudry
Inhibition of movement
Lack of reality testing
Imagistic medium
Dark room
Projection
Screen
More-than real impression of reality
Efface distinction between medium and representation

57. Nah...

58. Focus of Noel Carroll’s criticism
Inhibition of movement
Lack of reality testing
Imagistic medium
Dark room
Projection
Screen
More-than real impression of reality
Efface distinction between medium and representation

59. Focus of Noel Carroll’s criticism
Inhibition of movement
Lack of reality testing
Imagistic medium
Dark room
Projection

60. Noel Carroll’s criticism
Inhibition of movement
The act of sleep, on the other hand, does not necessarily inhibit movement
and people in a dream may speak, move and even sleepwalk. In the same
argument, Carroll defines the “phenomenological register of dream” as
“feeling motion when there is not”.

61. Noel Carroll’s criticism
Films can be replayed, are publicly accessible, can be viewed by more than
one person. They allow for interpersonal verification.
Lack of reality testing

62. Noel Carroll’s criticism
Darkness isn’t necessary for dream, but the viewer’s lack of awareness of
their physical condition.
Dark Room

63. Is Carroll’s critique applicable to VR?

64. Is the cinematic apparatus theory
applicable to VR?

65. Lack of reality testing

66. Phenomenological register of VR

67. Lack of awareness of viewer’s physical condition

68. For Baudry, cinema is a form of regression to
primitive narcissistic state. His theory of the
cinematic apparatus was revolutionary but
flawed.

69. In VR, it finds an even more dreamlike medium
to which it can be applied.

70. Wrapping Up
Summary & Next Steps

71. 1. VR is the last iteration of the moving image as a dreamlike medium.
2. The representation of VR and dream in film remediate each other, creating
equivalent phenomena.
3. Psychoanalysis is a valid framework for the analysis of VR and film theories
like the cinematic apparatus can be adapted to understand the new medium.
4. Understanding VR as a oneiric medium is an opportunity for VR developers.
5. Defying initial frameworks for understanding VR, the ultimate goal of the
medium is not the remediation of reality, but dream.

72. Thanks