IMMERSIVE AND INTEGRAL VIRTUALITY AS MODES OF NAVIGATING THE

INTERPRETIVE FIELD OF SENSORY AND IDEATIONAL POSSIBILITIES

CONSTITUTED BY LANDSCAPE

OLUWATOYIN VINCENT ADEPOJU

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE PROGRAMME
DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
tokem3000@ yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
This paper explores questions and suggests strategies in relation to developing an interactive

mode of engaging with cultural heritage in order to develop a response to the remit of the

UbiComp heritage workshop to develop ideas "beyond current demonstrators",in the

understanding that the philosophical and practical questions that underlie such proposals are

vital to the development of emergent applications,as Weiser's initial ideas have provided a

fund for the development of applications in ubiquitous computing. It consists fundamentally

of a comparative exploration of the philosophical implications of, and an examination of the

concrete forms assumed by two major forms of interface between humans and intelligent

instruments and the virtual worlds realized through these forms. The paper relates these to

strategies of engagement with heritage as an experiential space which foregrounds questions

of perception as constituted by, and as formative of human identity.

Categories and Subject Descriptors:Hermeneutics of landscape,Virtual

Computing,Sentient Computing

General Terms:Interfaces between Human,Synthetic and Natural Modes of Awareness

Key Words:Landscape,Perception,Interfaces

1.FORMS OF VIRTUALITY

The paper frames the questions it examines and the technological strategies it envisions

through an exploration of various expressions of the relationship between virtuality and

human consciousness,beginning from natural virtuality,or virtuality as inherent in human

psycho-physical existence in terms of memory,dream and imagination, to forms of virtuality

created by the interface between the system that constitutes the human person and

technological developments. This overarching diachronic and comparative examination

prepares the ground for the paper's central theoretical question as to whether the manner in

which knowledge is encoded and engaged with is central to the configuration in terms of

which knowledge are eventually integrated into consciousness.

1.1 IMMERSIVE AND INTEGRAL VIRTUALITY

In relation to this question of the relationship between knowledge archiving and its

integration in the consciousness of the responsive subject,we develop a framework for, and

a technical conception of a mode of presenting interactions with landscape that would

develop an intrinsic relationship between the subject matter and the mode through which it

is presented. We develop a conception involving what we describe as immersive virtual

environments as well as integral virtual environments.

1.2. IMMERSIVE VIRTUALITY

The immersive virtual environment involves a mode of presenting landscapes and the

interpretive possibilities they represent,as envisioned by the programmer who encodes the
virtual environment,as possibilities for navigation in space as well as in relation to a field of

associated ideational and sensory responses. The navigator in the virtual world would be

enabled to explore not only a virtual reproduction of landscape but simultaneously

experience various possibilities of ideational interpretation of this landscape as a

complement to the virtual exploration of the landscape from various spatial perspectives.

The entire experience would represent a form of lucid dreaming,in which various

impresions, ideational and sensory, would impinge upon consciousness but with the

perceiving mind able to engage consciously with these and observe the outcomes generated

by the choices of spatial, ideational and imagistic navigation that are deployed.

The entire spectrum of choices is designed to provide an opportunity to correlate the totality

of interpretive possibilities in terms of an integrative perception,in which the universe of

interpretive possibilities is understood as a microverse,in which all interpretive and sensory

possibilities in relation to this perceptual experience are integrated to constitute a cognitive

tapestry. This conception represents an effort to adapt the ideas of the environmental artist

Susanne Wenger,who correlates landscape with the expression of archetypal energies,forms

which in themselves constitute expressions of the possibilities of human awareness, and the

ideas of the Ifa divinatory system, which was developed by the Yoruba of Southern Nigeria

as a means of mapping interpretive possibilities,in which the framework represented by the

geomantic forms of the system constitute diverse but interrelated interpretive pathways.

The paper also explores ideas related to the hermeneutics of space, developed by

Christopher Tilley in terms of the strategies of spatial navigation realized by the English

megalithic builders.
1.3 INTEGRAL VIRTUALITY

The paper also contrasts the immersive model of virtuality as a mode of engaging with

landscape with another described as a mode of integral virtuality, which is an effort to

develop a similar conception of opening to a range of interpretive possibilities realized

through programming, to one that makes this possibility available but in a manner that

privileges the immediate critical response of individual consciousness that emerges from

the nonimmersive character of the encounter. This approach develops Mark Weiser's

conception of ubiquitous computing,in which the interface between the computer and the

subject are progressively thinned down to the point where the electronic device becomes

integral to the mode of human being in the world,to adapt Heidegger's expression. I propose

a model of wearable computing,composed fundamentally of context aware devices such as a

GPS system, through which, as the individual encounters and navigates a

landscape,information,composed of a synaesthetic visual, ideational and imagistic

framework, would correlate that particular landscape with associated landscapes across the

globe, along with interpretive possibilities in relation to this landscape. This would

represent an option that the individual could choose to keep on or switch off so as to

engage the landscape in a manner less immediately mediated than if these cues were being

projected.

2. CONCLUSION

We examine the relative significance of both forms of virtuality, particularly in relation to

questions of interpretive freedom,communication overload and the challenge of engaging

with possibilities of knowing in a manner that facilitates integration,at conscious and

subconscious levels,of the knowledge that one develops.