RESEARCH ARTICLE The old media in the new media: a comparative study of the kinetoscope and the virtual reality headset Vladimir Rosas Independent Researcher ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to trace back specific features from the kinetoscope that can be found in the virtual reality headset. I will propose a critical comparison between these two devices using Francois Albera and Maria Tortajada’s framework on moving image artifacts, which categorizes them as: Machinery, Spectator and Representation. KEYWORDS Virtual reality; kinetoscope; old media; new media; apparatus; representation It was in 2012 when Palmer Luckey, a 19-year-old, launched a crowdfunding campaign to persuade people to invest in his new invention, a device capable of displaying a 360° image with stereoscopic vision and two fish-eye lenses. In exchange for financial support, he pledged to send a prototype unit to those who invested in it. After raising ten times more than the required amount, Luckey went on to send the Oculus Rift to his numerous sponsors. It was from this moment that interest in his innovation began to snowball. Although there had already been a high degree of sophistication in portrayals of how individuals experience virtual worlds, such as in futuristic movies like Tron: Legacy 1 , it fell upon the Oculus Rift to give people the opportunity to actually immerse themselves in virtual reality (VR). Since then, virtual reality has burgeoned, with an array of new hard- ware: from very affordable plastic headsets such as the Google Cardboard and Google Street View’s simple 360° still images, to more complex developments such as the Touch VR bundles and virtual reality theme parks. Although the principal uses of the virtual reality headset have thus far been predomi- nantly related to entertainment (especially video games), other applications have been introduced in the past few years. These include a wide range of practices, of which I will name a select few here. These include the adoption of virtual reality for pedagogical purposes, for instance, in the use of the VR headset for the perusal of museum collections (such as the British Museum 2 or the Smithsonian 3 ); uses related to the tourism industry and the promotion of certain holiday destinations 4 ; humanitarian projects aiming to involve members of the public in charitable campaigns (such as “Clouds Over Sidra” 5 ,a VR experience in a refugee camp in Jordan, or “Women on the Move”, which illustrates the plight of female entrepreneurs in the Third World 6 ); and also applications within the sphere of health studies, such as schemes that use virtual reality to improve the layper- son’s understanding of and empathy for people suffering from dementia (Wijma et al. 2017,1–9). © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Vladimir Rosas vladorosas@gmail.com INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ARTS AND DIGITAL MEDIA 2019, VOL. 15, NO. 1, 23–34 https://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2018.1558986