The Body as a Vehicle of Telepresence

June 25th, 2006 Fred McVittie

It has been demonstrated that the sense of being present within a virtually simulated environment, a phenomena usually referred to as telepresence, correlates with the ability to effectively carry out a task in that environment. That is, the more one feels present the better one performs.(1) Given this, it may be useful to consider the unaugmented human body not as integrated with psyche but rather as a vehicle for the psyche to occupy. In this understanding, the psyche becomes ‘telepresent’ through its immersion in the environment and sensorium of the body. A performer working with this conception of the relationship between mind and body should be able to better understand the need for presence, as well as being able to interpret exercises and information for the enhancement of that presence (a term which is often shrouded in mysticism) in terms of an immersive somatosensory experience. The radical Cartesian dualism that this implies is distinctly unfashionable (although it is an axiom of ‘human science’ and apparently a ‘human universal’) but may prove useful in explaining and potentially enhancing the sense of presence which, in theatrical performance contexts, correlates with the carrying out of tasks which increase charisma and the ability to attract attention.

1. Welch, Robert B. - How Can We Determine if the Sense of Presence Affects Task Performance? Presence, October 1999, Vol. 8, No. 5, Pages 574-577

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Presence and ‘Presence’

July 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Presence (in the sense of ‘telepresence’) is the cognitive immersion by a human operator in an environment which is not the ‘actual’ environment occupied by their physical body. A prototypical example is the virtual presence one can experience within a VR setup, although partial immersion is common in a range of new and traditional media; the novel, the play, the movie etc. More generally, presence is the immersion of oneself in the reality of lived experience. Immersion, or even absorption or dissolution, can be seen as the unproblematic lowering of the boundaries between the individual and the environment, such that the person and the environment are seamlessly connected. For virtual immersion, and correspondingly a feeling of ‘being present’ to occur in non-actual environments, the experience should be as veridical as possible, which means it should produce an integrated embodied experience. Non-immersion, in novels, VR, or in lived experience, gives one the disorienting (or just plain boring) experience that life is elsewhere.

The experience of ‘presence’ within the context of theatre is also a function of a boundary, but in this case it is a boundary produced by the fact that performance is almost always ontologically separate from lived experience, and the performer themselves are almost always ontologically (and physically) also separate. This separation conveys the very strong message that the entities and events are beyond a boundary corresponding to the boundary separating the non-immersed individual audience member and their environment. In this sense, the logic of theatrical performance automatically mitigates against the audience having an immersive experience, or of seeing the ‘presence’ of the performer. Not only is the stage activity fictional, it is also ‘unreal’. The various compositional and scenographic conventions which theatre history represents can be seen as solutions to the first problem, that of the anti-immersive nature of theatre. The extent to which a performer may be said to ‘have presence’ is a function of how well they are able to also cross this ontological barrier between the unreal and the real.

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Performance and Mind-Reading

September 2nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

A significant aspect of being human is the ability to ascribe agency to other humans (and occasionally non-humans); a faculty sometimes referred to as ‘mind reading’. This consists of the ascription of various abilities to the agent, including intentions, beliefs, desires etc. These abilities are not part of a mechanistic paradigm and do not figure in most of the nuts and bolts psychology literature. This ability to ‘mind read’ is one element which makes up what Philip Auslander refers to as ‘liveness’, the ontologically distinct (although problematised) phenomena of live performance which distinguishes it from recorded or ‘mediatised’ phenomena. To attribute liveness to an entity requires an attribution of agency (even if the entity is dead, as opposed to simply inert. A corpse possesses more ‘liveness’ than an inert object). Other elements which vary the extent to which an event or entity displays ‘liveness’ include mediation (being present, being telepresent), empathy (the simulated sharing of a biological narrative) etc. The binary that Auslander set up erases the distinction between the various elements which make up liveness.

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Subjective and Objective Presences

January 6th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Being subjectively ‘present’, i.e. to experience ‘presence’, indicates a phenomenological feeling of locatedness, of being at a particular place and time, and is a feature of virtual reality and teleconferencing applications. In such applications, while one’s actual self (and one’s actual body) may be in one place the technology gives a compelling feeling that one’s self and body are in another place. A successful virtual reality experience is one in which one is ‘immersed’ in the illusion such that it becomes transparent and one can forget that one self is elsewhere.

Being objectively ‘present’ on the other hand is an attribute assigned to a person by someone else. To say a person has ‘presence’ is not only to indicate that their body is in the same room at ourselves, it also suggests that they are present in a way which is variable, and which may confer some power or attractiveness on the person. We also call this phenomena ‘charisma’.

Both these understandings of ‘presence’ ultimately depend on the intuitive dualism that we bring to any experience involving human being. To be subjectively (virtually) present we have to acknowledge a distinction between our body, which may be passive and sensorily deprived, and the consciousness of our sensory experience, which may be active. Successful immersive telepresence allows us to temporarily forget the body and place our consciousness at the centre of a sensory experience which is remote from that body. Similarly, when we say, objectively, that a person has ‘presence’ we are suggesting that not only their body is here but also some aspect of their being or self.

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Telepresence is Bad

January 17th, 2007 Fred McVittie

To be objectively present one should not be subjectively telepresent. Even without augmentation by telematic media we are routinely moving (parts of) ourselves to other locations and times, imagining futures and replaying the past, seeing the viewpoint of others, dreaming of subjunctive worlds different to this one. The extent to which we engage in these acts of virtual telepresence is the extent to which we are no longer present in the moment of our actual experience

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