Perspective and the Past: Modeling Historical Representation from Camera Obscura to Virtual Reality

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Rūta Kazlauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Camera Obscura ◽  
Historical Representation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Embodied Metaphor

Abstract This article examines the concept of “perspective” as an embodied metaphor with ontological and epistemological implications for the modeling of historical understanding of contested pasts. The metaphors employed in modeling past reality shape how we make sense of the controversial past. In particular, I explore how perspectival metaphorical models conjure the notions of presence/proximity/engagement and absence/distance/detachment. To open this up, the paper juxtaposes two distinct models of seeing and knowing as sources of embodied metaphor: 1) static and distancing optical metaphors of cognition, and 2) a “post-cognitive” (i.e., enactive, embodied and dynamic) process of interaction. I argue that the shift towards the affective, experiential and immersive forms of engagement in historical representation is indicative of the growing importance of dynamic, embodied and interactive features in mediated models of the past. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of virtual reality as an emergent medium that offers a new way of modeling the past. Despite its novelty, however, virtual reality raises age-old questions about the dynamics of engagement and detachment in historical understanding.

scholarly journals Time Travel to the Past of Bosnia and Herzegovina through Virtual and Augmented Reality

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 3711
Author(s):  
Selma Rizvić ◽  
Dušanka Bošković ◽  
Vensada Okanović ◽  
Ivona Ivković Kihić ◽  
Irfan Prazina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
The Past ◽  
Intangible Heritage ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
Virtual And Augmented Reality ◽  
Cultural Monuments

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) has a very picturesque past. Founded in 11th century, it has always been a crossroads of faiths and civilizations. Extended Reality (XR) technologies can finally take us to time travel into this history, enable us to experience past events and meet historical characters. In this paper, we overview the latest applications we developed that use Virtual Reality (VR) video, Virtual and Augmented Reality (AR) for interactive digital storytelling about BH history. “Nine dissidents” is the first BH VR documentary, tackling a still tricky subject of dissidents in the Socialist Yugoslavia, artists and writers falsely accused, persecuted and still forbidden. “Virtual Museum of Old Crafts” aims to present and preserve crafts intangible heritage through Virtual Reality. “Battle on Neretva VR” is recreating a famous WWII battle offering the users to experience it and meet comrade Tito, the commander of the Yugoslav Liberation Army. “Sarajevo 5D” shows the cultural monuments from Sarajevo that do not exist anymore in physical form using Augmented Reality. Through user experience studies, we measure the user immersion and edutainment of these applications and show the potential of XR for the presentation and preservation of cultural heritage.

scholarly journals The Clinical Utility of Virtual Reality in Neurorehabilitation: A Systematic Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 117957351881354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thais Massetti ◽  
Talita Dias da Silva ◽  
Tânia Brusque Crocetta ◽  
Regiani Guarnieri ◽  
Bruna Leal de Freitas ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Neurological Disorders ◽  
Clinical Utility ◽  
Spinal Cord Injuries ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
The Impact

Background: Virtual reality (VR) experiences (through games and virtual environments) are increasingly being used in physical, cognitive, and psychological interventions. However, the impact of VR as an approach to rehabilitation is not fully understood, and its advantages over traditional rehabilitation techniques are yet to be established. Method: We present a systematic review which was conducted according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). During February and March of 2018, we conducted searches on PubMed (Medline), Virtual Health Library Search Portal databases (BVS), Web of Science (WOS), and Embase for all VR-related publications in the past 4 years (2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018). The keywords used in the search were “neurorehabilitation” AND “Virtual Reality” AND “devices.” Results: We summarize the literature which highlights that a range of effective VR approaches are available. Studies identified were conducted with poststroke patients, patients with cerebral palsy, spinal cord injuries, and other pathologies. Healthy populations have been used in the development and testing of VR approaches meant to be used in the future by people with neurological disorders. A range of benefits were associated with VR interventions, including improvement in motor functions, greater community participation, and improved psychological and cognitive function. Conclusions: The results from this review provide support for the use of VR as part of a neurorehabilitation program in maximizing recovery.

The Ethical Presupposition of Historical Understanding

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-241
Author(s):  
Natan Elgabsi
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Ethical Attitudes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Annales School ◽  
Ways Of Life

Abstract Discussions on Marc Bloch usually focus on The Annales School, his comparative method, or his defence of a distinct historical science. In contrast, I emphasise his seldom-investigated ideas of what historical understanding should involve. I contend that Bloch distinguishes between three different ethical attitudes in studying people and ways of life from the past: scientific passivity; critical judgements; understanding. The task of the historian amounts to understanding other worlds in their own terms. This essay is an exploration of Bloch’s methodology and what historical understanding is needed to do justice to cultures that belong to the past, both conceptually and practically.

How to View the Parthenon through the Camera Obscura of the Tortoise

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-220
Author(s):  
Wendy Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Open Space ◽  
Camera Obscura ◽  
Classical Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Brain

Visiting ruins, I enjoy the texture of the weathered stones. The wide space, colored in spring by wildflowers. Open space and vistas, the heady smell of grasses drying in the hot sun. Birds sing as they have since Plato's cicadas. Once, alone near the ruins, I heard a strange rhythmic clicking in the grass: two tortoises making love. The ruins that I visit remind me of antiquity not because I picture Socrates walking through the Stoa, but because I picture him walking along the still undeveloped riverbank, smelling these grasses, listening to these birds. The simplicity that I long for, however, is not millennia away, but only centuries. It is almost at arms’ length, but just out of view. What I find there is nature in a frame of culture. Like most tourists, I cannot transform the stones into the imaginary film of antiquity that the European brain of the nineteenth century, steeped in a classical education, projected onto them. Yet their vision was no more authentic than mine: in order to project the past onto stones, they had to erase the present.

scholarly journals Virtually Real or Really Virtual: Towards a Heritage Metaverse

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Jeremy Huggett
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Pivotal Point ◽  
New Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
Virtual Heritage

The hype surrounding the impending mainstreaming of Virtual Reality can seem to prioritize the digital above the critical. With the development of VR said to be at a pivotal point, there is an important opportunity to consider the emergence of virtual heritage and its potential futures. This paper argues that there is a disjunction between the present reality of virtual heritage and virtual reality, and discusses the twin challenges of presence and realism within virtual reality. In particular, it highlights a paradox inherent in virtual heritage and virtual reality and proposes the use of ‘loose-realism’ as a solution. Ultimately, the challenge is to address the claims that virtual reality represents a new class of information system, or metaverse, in order that virtual heritage fully engages with enquiry about the past.

scholarly journals MOVING AWAY FROM TRADITION: PORTRAYAL OF MODERN WEREWOLVES AND VAMPIRES IN THE TWILIGHT SAGA

1970 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nassima Kaid
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Fantasy Fiction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Actual Environment ◽  
The Fantastic ◽  
Twilight Saga ◽  
Psychosexual Dysfunction

Many writers have shown their preoccupation with and interest in the representation of the fantastic body over the past centuries. The figure of the vampire, werewolves, and zombies keep coming back in those works although today’s monsters are humanized. In Contemporary Young Adult fantasy, readers are presented with characters that usually adapt to the real world. The fantastic body does no more refer to psychosexual dysfunction but generates mainly from socioeconomic and cultural malaise (Badley, 17-18). In other words, the fantastic becomes a virtual reality that symbolizes the changing ‘self’ within the postmodern era though contemporary literature has transcended the actual environment as it copes with technological advancement. Unlike other fantasy fiction, Meyer has focused on traditional fantastic creatures originating in folklores and myths; they are an integral part of the fantastic as they cross lines between natural and supernatural elements. The present paper aims at addressing the representation of body transformations into vampires and werewolves in Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight Saga. It will evaluate body metamorphosis into vampires and werewolves discovering new dimensions of one’s own identity and personality. It will further demonstrate how Meyer has succeeded in creating her own monsters without untying some of the mythical substratum.

Virtual Reality from the Standpoint of Complexity Science

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-260
Author(s):  
Helena Knyazeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Extended Approach ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The Future ◽  
Latent Potential ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

An extended approach to the comprehension of virtual reality is developed in the article. Virtual reality is understood not only as a logically possible or cybernetically constructed reality but also as continuous turbulence of potencies of the complex natural and social world we live in, the wandering of complex systems and organizations over a field of possibilities, such a realization of forms and structures in which many formations remain in latent, potential forms, and are in the permanent process of making and multiplying a spectrum of possibilities, lead to the growth of the evolutionary tree of paths of development. It is shown that such an understanding of virtual reality corresponds to concepts and notions developed in the modern science of complexity. The most significant concepts are considered, such as the nonlinearity of time, the relationship of space and time, the uncertainty of the past and the openness of the future, the choice and construction of the future at the moments of passing the bifurcation points. Some cultural and historical prototypes of these modern ideas of virtual reality are given. It is substantiated that the vision of virtual reality being developed today can play the role of a heuristic tool for understanding the functioning and stimulation of human creativity.

scholarly journals Looking beyond the idyllic representations of the rural: The Konkan Railway controversy and middle-class environmentalism in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Sreeja Jaiswal
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Environmental Values ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Environmental Preservation ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Environmental Controversy ◽  
Environmental Discourses

Post-independence India has had its share of controversies around mega-infrastructure projects that have pitted environmental preservation against development concerns. This article studies the environmental controversy around one such megaproject, the Konkan Railway, employing a framework that integrates the environmental values, beliefs and behaviour of individuals and groups with a historical understanding of political economy and ecology (science). Essentialist and over-simplified environmental discourses, without scientific credibility and not based on historical facts, are often influential in policy making, especially when channelled by the middle classes.  Better understanding our present concerns and guiding decisions and policies to deal with the problems we currently face, requires unmasking the romanticization of the countryside. We must replace the idyllic version of the past with a nuanced historical understanding of the interaction between nature and culture. This article also locates the controversy over the Konkan Railway within the frames used to study Indian environmentalism. The aim is to improve our understanding of the regional, ideological and cultural pluralities in environmental values, beliefs and behaviour of the middle class in India.

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