Immediacy and Virtual Reality

Immediacy is a quality that enables the user of a medium to feel as if they are participating and controlling the story or the actions even though they are not actually involved; instead they are involved in a "virtual reality".

Bolter and Grusin argue that the aim of New Media is to create interactive technologies that remove their presence from the viewer, creating a virtual reality that is indistinguishable from the reality.

This virtual reality feels extremely realistic due to the "transparent interface" which Bolter claims attempts to "erase itself" causing the user to deny his confrontation to the medium and consequently, the user feels involved. (Bolter: 2000: pg. 24) Another sense of virtual reality could be the emotions that one encounters while watching a movie that engages greatly with its audience, allowing them to experience the same emotions as the characters on screen where the viewer may cry.

In other words, the psychological state that is generated by immediacy is that the viewer is under the impression that the medium no longer exists, and that he/she is participating in the event. The viewer is authentically experiencing the matter, in his beliefs, as reality. Hodges states that "the viewer should forget that she is in fact wearing a computer interface and accept the graphic image that it offers as her own visual world." ( Hodges: 1994: pg. 22)

Bolter claims that "virtual reality is immersive, which means that it is a medium whose purpose is to disappear". (Bolter: 2000: pg. 22) We enter virtual reality as we interact with technology, for example video games. Through this interactivity, we can experience things beyond our imagination, for example, like Jaron Lanier suggests, one can "visit the world of the dinosaur, then become a Tyrannosaurus. Not only can you see DNA, you can experience what it's like to be a molecule". (Bricken: 1991: 372) 

REFERENCE:

Bolter, J,  2000,  Remediation: Understanding New Media pg. 20-50