VR a blast from the past? – Bangalore Mirror

Bengalurean PhD student, his professor present a study that link virtual reality to developments in the Victorian EraWhat can the Victorian era (1820-1914) seances, postmortem photography, spiritualism have to do with the development of modern virtual reality? A lot if you go by a study condcted by a Bengalurean Ph.D student based in the US and his professor at the Rutgers, State University of New Jersey. The duo explores the developments during the Victorian Era and has proposed that the origins of Virtual Reality can be directly traced to this period.

Shravan Regret Iyer and Professor John V. Pavlik argue that understanding how modern VR began in the 19th century is important as it explains how experiential media in the 21st century came to be.

Pavlik says while some of these technologies the Victorians developed were used to create illusions to entertain or deceive the public, others employed the capacity, as 19th century new media, to generate illusions that had a heretofore unprecedented ability to convey reality, and potentially fuel social change.

Pavlik and Iyer presented their findings in the paper Of Media and Mediums: Illusion and the Roots of Virtual Reality in Victorian Era Science, Social Change and Spiritualism, at the New York State Communication Association Conference.

Stereo photographyAccording to Pavilik, they looked at historical records with regard to early precursors to virtual reality. The Victorians invented stereo photography or stereography. Earlier research has shown the connection between stereography and VR. We looked at archival collections of stereographs in the US Library of Congress to help advance understanding of the content of stereography. We also looked at a collection at the University of Michigan which housed intriguing stereography produced at an African-American photography studio in Saginaw, Michigan at the turn of the century, he says.

Pavlik says they used a qualitative approach to examine the rise of spiritualism during the Victorian Era as it intersected with the invention of mediated illusion in the form of staged fake seances. Victorian scientist Sir W. Crooks invented the cathode ray tube (CRT) and it played a role in the most spectacular staged fake sances. As it turns out, the first VR headset designed in 1962, which was based on the binocular vision in the stereoscope, used a CRT.

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The medium

Some illusionists of the time used the publics interest in postmortem photography as an opportunity to make a profit, and as a result, Pavlik said, they developed sophisticated, technologically-enabled methods of conducting stage seances... that are precursors of modern VR.

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VR a blast from the past? - Bangalore Mirror