Ontological implications of Being in immersive virtual environments Jacquelyn Ford Morie University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies 13274 Fiji Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292 ABSTRACT The idea of Virtual Reality once conjured up visions of new territories to explore, and expectations of awaiting worlds of wonder. VR has matured to become a practical tool for therapy, medicine and commercial interests, yet artists, in particular, continue to expand the possibilities for the medium. Artistic virtual environments created over the past two decades probe the phenomenological nature of these virtual environments. When we inhabit a fully immersive virtual environment, we have entered into a new form of Being. Not only does our body continue to exist in the real, physical world, we are also embodied within the virtual by means of technology that translates our bodied actions into interactions with the virtual environment. Very few states in human existence allow this bifurcation of our Being, where we can exist simultaneously in two spaces at once, with the possible exception of meta-physical states such as shamanistic trance and out-of-body experiences. This paper discusses the nature of this simultaneous Being, how we enter the virtual space, what forms of persona we can don there, what forms of spaces we can inhabit, and what type of wondrous experiences we can both hope for and expect. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Virtual Environment, embodiment, ontology, Being, emplacement, immersion, presence The project described herein has been sponsored by the US Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM). Statements and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the US Government; no official endorsement should be inferred. 1. INTRODUCTION Philosophers throughout the ages have sought to understand and explain our everyday state of Being in the world. In ancient Greece Aristotle believed that man was a philosophical animal — the only one capable of asking questions about the nature of his being. He himself defined Being through the lens of logic, which laid the foundations for modern knowledge, including that upon which today’s computers are built. His thinking also precipitated a long period in which the mind dominated the body as the locus of Being. In the 17th century (the Western world's Age of Reason) Rene Descartes argued that we can only really know that which is in our minds (cogito as the predicate of Being), believing the information from our sensory channels to be unreliable. The Western Age of Enlightenment that followed saw continued focus on the intellectual pursuits of man, with the body being relegated to a debased role. These intellectual pursuits led directly to the modern world of reason, logic, and machines in which we now live. The twentieth century as the Age of Information (from the telephone to computers), obviates the body even more. These paths influenced thinking on the nature of our Being culminating, in the late 20th century, with technologists who advocated downloading the mind into a computer, where it could live forever. 1 This state of Being in the world, one presumes, would still allow continued development of the cerebral entity, via sensors that input to the sequestered brain/mind (as well as a steady supply of electricity!). This would be necessary, because as modern neuroscience has shown, the brain/mind is formed by the patterns and actions of our body, and, without the physical form, there is no input into the mind. In other words, Descartes was wrong, states Antonio Damasio in his book, Descartes' Error. 2 We cannot exist solely as a disembodied mind. … the body as represented in the brain, may constitute the indispensable frame of reference for the neural processes that we experience as the mind; that our very organism rather than some absolute experiential reality is used as the ground reference for the constructions we make of the world around us and for the construction of the ever-present sense of subjectivity that is part and parcel of our