THEATRICAL POST-CORPOREITY. DIGITIZING THE BODY IN A NEW CULTURE OF SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

The article deals with such a cultural phenomenon as the post-corporeity, that is, what has replaced the traditional practice of bodily interactions and sensations, as a result of the temporary total creative drift of culture into cyberspace. Virtual theater experiments represent a complete subtraction, the exclusion of the actor’s and audience’s body from the dramatic text, the demarcation of the sensory and tactile base of the performance itself. The post-drama emphasis on visualization has been replaced by a new round of verbalization, where the story is forced to shorten in favor of the brevity of the virtual genre due to technological difficulties. Digital theater offers to discover the erogenous zones of the virtual body in order to freely respond to the cyber-desires of the viewer.

Exploring Enjoyment of Cinematic Narratives in Virtual Reality: A Comparison Study

This study compares watching a film in a traditional theater setting to watching the same film in a virtual theater using a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD). The study seeks to determine whether watching a film in a virtual theater is a comfortable experience that viewers can tolerate; and whether watching in VR produces similar feelings of identification, transportation, and enjoyment for the films as watching in a traditional theater. Using the Oculus Rift DK2 HMD and the Riftmax virtual theater software, participants watched either Signs or Ferris Bueller's Day Off in a virtual theater. Other participants watched the same films in a traditional theater setting, and independent comparisons were made. Results indicate that over 90% of the VR participants were able to watch the entire movie in the virtual theater, and feelings of identification, transportation, and enjoyment were quite similar between conditions. Differences found were attributable to the films' content, with an interaction between VR and theater conditions. Implications and future research are discussed.

Web-Based Interactive Visualization of Virtual Reality

The integration of Internet and Multimedia Computer Technology provides new opportunities for e-commerce such as B2B/B2C. Web3D is emerging from the development of Internet and virtual reality. In this paper, we will use the specialty engine Unity3D as a development platform and JSP as a tool, to achieve the Web display system of virtual theater model, provided with accurate data, strong performance, virtual exhibition, interactive application. The platform across time and space limitations achieves a visual, vivid, more convenient information exchange to meet the demand for high-speed and efficient e-commerce information age for artistic performance enterprise publicity and marketing.

Connecting Art and Science for Education: Learning through an Advanced Virtual Theater with “Talking Heads”

The authors present an innovative virtual theater in which the language of performance joins advanced technologies for educational goals. On the stage of this pioneering theatrical environment human actors interact with 3D faces (“talking heads”) on a wide screen. These synthetic characters are endowed with emotional expressions and voices and resemble famous personalities such as Pythagoras and Einstein. The performance aims at the exposition of difficult subjects in various fields and making learning enjoyable and entertaining.