Title - Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Spatiality of the Lived Body and Motility.

Keywords - Spatiality. Body image. Allochiera. Bodily space vs. external space. Association. Position. On, under, beside. Orientation. Movement. Motility. Thought. Recognition. Perception. Representation. Concrete Vs abstract movement.

Thoughts -
Body Image - was at first understood to mean a compendium(summary) of our bodily experiences, capable of giving a commentary and meaning to the internal impressions and the impression of possessing a body at any moment. In his discussion of the spatiality of one's own body and its relation to motility Merleau-Ponty introduces a new notion of "body image". This "body image" is the means by which we 'locate' our body and its different parts in the world. As his analysis is phenomenological or a reflecting back on one's lived experience of embodiment he finds that we do not experience ourselves as a collection of bodily parts and organs (arms, nose, ears, tongue, eyes, etc.) located somewhere in objective space or some sort of global awareness of these parts, but rather we experience our body within the implied context of a 'bodily project' or purpose.
The body image was supposed to gradually arise in the course of childhood in proportion as the tactile, kinaesthetic, visual and articular contents were associated among themselves.
Body image can explain Allochiera.

Allochiera - Imagine being touched on the left arm, but feeling it on the right arm. It is a condition in which a sensation in an area of a limb (arm or leg) is perceived on the limb on the opposite side of the body. The key point here is that the sensation is not perceived where the stimulus was originally presented. Allochiera is a form of a technical sounding condition called Allesthesia, in which sensations are referred to another part of the body.
Allocheiria is also known as, allesthesia, allochiria, alloesthesia, and Bamberger sign. Allesthesia comes from the Greek word "allos" meaning "other," and the Greek word "asisthesis" meaning "sensation." Put the two words together and you get "sensation in the other (limb)."
We can try and understand the concept of Allochiera by relating it to the body image in terms of cerebral tracks and recurrent sensations, only if the body image becomes law instead of being a residue of habits.

Bodily space Vs. External space - bodily space can be distinguished from external space by enveloping its ‘parts’ instead of spreading them out. The body image is thus a way of stating that my body is in the world.

I am a 'lived body' who experiences space not in terms of its objective 'position' within it but rather I experience space in terms of a particular 'situation' I am in. I experience the spatiality of my body not by associating a multitude of discrete sensations into some sort of perceptual unity and locating 'it' in the 'objective' world, but as a 'lived body' engaged in a situation in a particular way, as the 'incarnate intentionality' of motility.
Top and bottom, right and left, on, under, beside – for the person who has their being in space, do these suggest we should look beneath the explicit meaning of definitions for the latent meaning of experiences?

My body no more than a fragment of space, there would be no space at all if I had no body.

The body in Movement - we can see how the body inhabits space (and time) because movement is not limited to submitting passively to basic significance which is obscured in the commonplaces of established situations.

Kant - envisaging my body or surroundings as objects in the Kantian sense, i.e as systems of qualities linked by some intelligible law, as transparent entities, free form any attachment, to a specific place or time, ready to be named and pointed out.

A normal person can, in the absence of movements, distinguish a stimulus applied to his head from one applied to his body.

Concrete Vs Abstract Movement - Abstract movements are deendent on the powere of visual representation, whereas concrete movements, which are preserved as are imitative movement. The distinction between concrete and abstract movement is reducible to the traditional distinction between tactile and visual, and the function of projection, to perception and visual representation.

Science - waits upon explanation, which means looking beneath phenomena for the circumstances upon which they depend, in accordance with the tried methods of induction.

Motile – Biology : Moving or having the power to move spontaneously: motile spores.
Psychology : Of or relating to mental imagery that arises primarily from sensations of bodily movement and position rather than from visual or auditory sensations.

Movement - is not thought-about movement, and bodily space is not thought of or represented. Each voluntary movement takes place in a setting, against a background which is determined by the movement itself

My awareness of my body is inseparable from the world of my perception. The things which I perceive, I perceive always in reference to my body, and this is so only because I have an immediate awareness of my body itself as it exists 'towards them'. The body image thus involves a primordial, pre-reflective orientation and motility insofar as I am immediately aware of where my limbs are as my body projects itself towards the world of its tasks. I am always already situated in the world and it is my manner of engaging in particular projects which reveals most clearly the nature of my bodily spatiality

It is in and through our bodyhood that we experience all aspects of our existence whether it be what is traditionally defined as "subjective" i.e. our personal intentions and inner experience, or "objective" i.e. what we encounter "out there in the world". Our bodyhood is what allows for our experience of spatiality, temporality, the intersubjective human world, and the things of the natural world. Stated differently our bodyhood is the basis of all perceptual consciousness.

Read more about merleau-Ponty @ #1 or #2

Title – Andrew Murphie. Putting the Virtual Back into VR.

Keywords - Representation. And expression of reality. Objectile. Machinic Phylum. Technology. Transformation. Real Vs. Virtual. Perception. Metaphisics
Different/ciation. Body. Soul. Interactions. Complexity.

Thoughts -
VR - a particular series of technologies. By and large, these occur in a form of a computer mediated space which combines various perceptual mechanisms and systems with operation systems (flight, weapon control, movement through VR space). Technologies include the helmet-and glove, flight simulators, computerised flight control systems, video guided missiles. All these express a certain relation to the real, even if its representation is fuzzy or inaccurate. Often the fuzziness or inaccuracy is part of its expression of its reality.
VR is always a machine and the product of a machine before it is a technology.

Deleuze and VR - ”representation of an action”, its qualities of modulation; its realisation of the ‘objectile’, where an object is transformed into an event of ‘continuous variation’.

Machinic Phylum - VR as a more emergent series of cultural phenomena. Ex. Technological hypertext such as hypertext, the internet, and the www an be seen as the first sprouts of the virtual age. Deleuze-Guttarian ‘machinic’, where machines are considered separate from technologies and operate autopoietically, as a series of diagrams through virtual tendencies and shifts in actual states of affairs

Transformation - VR allows us to modulate our transformations of objects into obectiles, to alter our ideas of perception, operation, and expression.

Virtual Vs. Real - the line between the virtual and the real is generally blurred within communication systems. VR technology involves, at least, a form of communication between body and machine. More broadly, meta-media includes VR technology, the internet, or cyberspace as a whole.
Virtual and reality are not oxymoronic terms. ‘The blocking out of the physical world cannot be experienced if the user remains aware of the physical generator of the data, namely the computer’. The question isn't whether the created world is as real as the physical world, but whether the created world is real enough for you to suspend your disbelief.
Just as in real life, the VR environment, in it's reactions to users' actions, should be somewhat predictable; after all, we do have "intent-driven" actions. Pragmatic considerations must be present in VR just as they are in real life.

Stable? - the threshold of perception, previously the unseen frame for a perceived ‘stable’ world, now frames itself, draws attention to itself as unstable and therefore as something that can be operated through like any other machine.

Metaphysical - VR brings to an end sensations of ‘stable’ bodies and fixed states of affairs, denies interactive reality.

VR extends subjectivites, used to tell stories, or to imitate an action. VR extends human subjectification through the imitation of an action into areas like home shopping and banking. It produces changes in relations, and is therefore a tool or weapon used to gain control.

Everything is real, so is VR. Or real enough. VR creates a totality which both overwhelms present perceptive thresholds and creates, rather than represents a total world within the world(s).

Technology - the innovation/technology in VR merely actualises, in a new formal series, an older virtual machine, which could be called the world.

Perception - the degree of perception, provided by the threshold between the clear and the fuzzy, is the power extracted from the virtual world. Simply, the perceptive extraction of the world is a matter of practices, of ethics, also art – predicated upon the creation of percepts and affects.

Different/ciation - for an understanding perception, of different/ciation is crucial. It allows for a notion of perception based upon difference and change rather than upon identity and stasis.

Body and Soul - VR’s contribution to the threshold of perception is that it expresses the obvious way in which the body and soul need each other in order to express the world

Interactions - VR, as with all interaction, is a question of a series of interactions between that registers, with each affect regarded as its own micro-ecosystem.
In comparing immersion and interactivity, attempts by contemporary literature to emulate the interactivity of VR involves a sacrifice of the special pleasure derived from immersion. In literature for example, the more interactive, the less immersive the text. On the other hand, in the VR world, immersion and interactivity do not stand in conflict.... The more interactive a virtual world, the more immersive the experience.

Complexity in VR - at the deep levels of both virtual and actual, this indicates that we are increasingly aware of relations of difference, of the way which everything is interconnected and interactive, while simultaneously endlessly individuated because everything is a complex multiplicity.

VR configures the relations between micro and macro-perceptions, bringing to light the possibility that these relations are subject to change, and that different social machines, different conceptual apparatus may make it possible to have different bodies, different souls, or different zones of clear expression without always having to submit to major reterritorialisation.