2022 April 13 (Wed)
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
| Online Event: Zoom
Placing Virtual Reality: Japan's Alternative VR History
Speaker: PAUL ROQUET, Associate Professor of Media Studies and Japan Studies, MIT
This talk tracks the emergence of virtual reality during the “VR boom” of the early 1990s, exploring how the cultural understanding of VR transformed as it crossed the Pacific and was taken up in Japan. Japan's embrace of VR shifted it away from both its early military contexts and American-style techno-utopianism, reimagining the technology instead as a more personal medium for accessing imaginary worlds. Through an exploration of this alternative VR trajectory, this presentation provides a missing but vital context for understanding the global VR revival of recent years.