Virtual Reality and Mediated Immersion

Abstract

Virtual Reality could be conceived as an extension or an alternative to our reality, akin to leaving Plato’s cave in order to more fully know the world. Mediated immersion has been the means by which such an extension is made possible. But instead of opening the horizons to alternative realities, such immersion—in the arts, gaming, and pedagogy—teaches us to appreciate how we experience the world we already know, where simulacra dominate, as understood by semiotic theory.