“Exploring issues of embodiment in VR through the scope of Cave Art” – Elissavet Kardami

Nicolas Salazar’s seminar on cave art, created a strange feeling of anachronism. In a period characterized by a “digital turn”, and in a period the where the “virtual” poses new ontological questions about issues of embodiment and human experience, how can cave art offer new insights on art, experience and culture? The easy answer would be that there is not really any connection between contemporary art and cave art. Cave art cannot reach the level of sophistication and mastery of contemporary art and digital media both on an aesthetic and technological level. And, yet, this seminar hinted at some aspects of cave art that resemble qualities of virtual reality as well as presented new ways in which physical movement and inorganic materials can be understood as a transmission medium.

Salazar’s analysis showed that palaeolithic art cannot be separated from the spatial and material characteristics of the cave.  The experience of cave art has multisensory dimensions. A cave is a saturated sensory space where hearing and touch become as important as vision. For example, the uniqueness of a cave’s acoustics transforms the way space is experienced, distorting the linearity of human perception. Therefore, touch can become an important navigational tool, but it can also become a medium through which energy is transmitted and different textures are experienced.

Moreover, the experience of cave art is highly dependent on physical movement bodily awareness. In contrast to seeing a painting or watching a film, where attention is placed on a focal point, cave art is situated within a three-dimensional space; and the way it is experienced is highly dependent on how one is moving within that space. Of course, both paintings and screens are part of the physical world, but the experience of the space is of less importance compared to the “other world(s)” they are offering to the viewer. The caves offer a feeling of an “otherworldliness” that happens at that moment and in that space.

All these aspects of experiencing cave art are suggesting a sense of immersion that shares many characteristics with the immersiveness of virtual reality. Virtual reality transforms the two-dimensional space of the screen into a three-dimensional experience. Immersiveness was always one of cinema’s primary objectives and virtual reality could be understood as a “natural” progression in cinema’s attempts to become more engaging and allow the audience to really move inside the other world they are presenting. Although the viewers are not physically present in the world that the screen presents, they experience the ability to “move” inside that space. Hearing is equally important. The fact that the viewer has headphones creates a personalized experience and it helps the viewer to perceive and construct space based on audial stimuli. Of course, there are many ontological and practical differences between experiencing cave art and virtual reality. Nevertheless, virtual reality creates the illusion of an “otherworldliness” that happens here and now by creating a multisensory experience which could be parallelized with cave art.