Fear of Virtual Reality: Theoretical Case Study onPhotographyQianhui Bian, Nanjing Arts Institute, ChinaKinWai Michael Siu, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon,Hong Kong

Abstract: Virtual Reality (VR) has absorbed a great deal of attention in new media research. However,it is not always welcomed, especially with respect to the odd experience of dealing with the virtualworld it provides. This paper is an attempt to understand the fear of VR by taking photography as aparameter. By discussing the importance of materiality in visual communications, photography’staking process and VR’s making process, and two types of realities (i.e. the indexical and the simulacral)provided by photography and VR respectively, this paper analyzes the reason for the fear that VR hasaroused, and suggests a critical though tolerant attitude towards VR and photography.

Keywords: Virtual Reality (VR), Photography, Fear, Image, Media

Introduction

‘[T]HE APPARITION OF VR is ghost-like indeed. Even the words themselves havea certain phantom quality’, says Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Virtual Reality—a reality which isapparently true but not truly True, a reality which is apparently real but not really Real’(Batchen, 2002, p. 237). Virtual Reality (VR) attracts so many attentions not just because

it is a new form of technology which opens a newworld to people’s senses, but more import-ant, because it has great impacts on cultural levels and has aroused unsettling yet inspirationalcontroversies.The practical application of VR is undoubtedly flourishing; however, people who are fully

aware of its importance often take prudent attitudes towards VR. For example, ‘panic,’ isthe word Michael Heim uses to describe the first experience of facing the sudden freedomof navigating through virtual worlds in which things never thought possible come true. It isthe possibility of integrating all prior media and information digitally, allowing people toshuttle back and forth between the solid physical world and the imagined virtual space thatgive the users an odd feeling which in his words is ‘a feeling of “everything all at once”[that] suddenly grabs us’ (1998, p. 158).The current definitions of VR are inclined to define it as a medium or a technology which

offers computer-generated simulated 3D visual environments and physical interactions;however, the cultural implications of VR are complex andmulti-layered.When ‘the ‘virtual’is frequently cited as a feature of postmodern cultures and technologically advanced societiesin which so many aspects of everyday experience are technologically simulated’ (Lister,Dovey, Giddings, Grant & Kelly, 2009, p. 36), the implications of VR are unsettling. Theyare sometimes coloured by negative feelings towards being fooled by a fabricated worldsupported by communication and imaging technologies. This is also the nightmare scenario

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of the ‘perfect crime’ posited by Baudrillard, to whom the real is not just dead but has disap-peared. ‘In our virtual world, the question of the Real, of the referent, of the subject and itsobject, can no longer even be posed.’ (Baudrillard, 2000, pp. 61-62)Put such extreme views aside, it is important to realize that VR is not a technological im-

position but an active and inevitable choice made by contemporary society. However, it isalso true that the suspicions and disputes over its cultural implications and future potentialscontinue unabated. Consequently, what has happened to people’s negative attitude towardsVR that they describe it as ‘ghost-like’, or blame it as ‘the murder of the real’? This papertakes an ‘old’ but still common and omnipresent media today—photography—as a frameworkin which to understand this seemingly new emerging question, which actually has a closerelationship with the cultural implications of photography. The history of photographymakesclear that photography and today’s VR have a distinct kinship: Louis Daguerre, the pioneerof photography, was fascinated by creating three-dimensional theatre effects and panoramasbefore he shifted interest to photography. Photorealistic effects and fantasy panoramas havea history long before VR; moreover, the relationships between photography and VR are notsimply connected at the level of the visual. The negative attitude towards VR today has closeties with cultural implications and anticipations about photography, which subtly functionbeneath the surface. This paper aims at understanding the fear of VR by taking a theoreticalinvestigation of the aspects of photography that contribute to negative feelings.Photography has already been declared dead by some scholars (e.g. William J. Mitchell

in his work The Reconfigured Eye), but in the mean time, photographic images are every-where. Photographic images are integrated into almost every media production, not only atthe level of visual phenomena, but also with respect to cultural implications that exist,whether we are conscious of them or not. These cultural attitudes towards VR that exist inthe shadow of photography are of particular importance to our understanding of the realworld – an understanding which has been deeply influenced by photography.

Being Visual is not EnoughBeing visual, in the sense of the ability to visualise what we have seen and observed, is im-portant in the meaning-making process. However, it is not enough.In 1967 Guy Debord wrote: ‘The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions

of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that oncewas directly lived has become mere representation’ (1967/2002, p. 142). This was the timewhen the visual media were not as advanced and powerful as they are now, when the newmedia technologies of VR were still in the laboratories. However, one distinctive characterthat Debord points out is that the socio-culture concentration on visuality had already cometo the surface. Baudrillard (1968/1988) took a similar point of view in The System of Objects.He argued that consumption and relationship in our contemporary society have moved frommateriality (i.e. the objects) to the recognition and exchange of signs. By developing variousvalues in visual signs, contemporary society creates new ‘objects’ which only have visualforms while lacking of material forms, and new relations accordingly.Up to present, one distinct feature of VR is its immateriality. What ‘immateriality’ means

here is that while VR invites people to interact with, to feel, to touch, to develop, it does notallow them to ‘hold’. By ‘hold’, this paper refers to our need to sense and preserve meaningby relating it to the experience of a material form. This is inherent in human nature. A major

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source of the negative attitude towards VR comes directly from the fact that it gives usnothing to ‘hold’. We perceive VR mainly through our eyes and body movements. Thevalidity of the information VR conveys is captured on a screen, which implies that meaningsare taken at face value. Moreover (and disconcertingly), they can immediately disappearsimply by turning off the power supply. This is unlike photography in that the photographitself remains a physical object that can be held. Photography is not purely visual, eventhough it is mainly a visual medium. Visuality is just one part of its meaning-making process,another important part which is its materiality – that it can be held. In other words, traditionalphotography, from the very beginning, involves making a photograph, which is an objectthat can preserve meanings in a material form. Though photographs are becoming more andmore screen-like today, their cultural implications as objects having a material form pro-foundly influence the way people anticipate, experience and deal with them. Photography’scultural implications as ‘souvenir’ and ‘footprint’ (which Sontag describes), or ‘monument’(to which Barthes compares), or ‘the mummy complex’ (which Bazin points out) all stemfrom its materiality, which contributes to making its meanings more certain and reliable ona psychological level.Unlike photography, VR images lack material form from their beginning (described as

‘ghost-like’ by Batchen). By various kinds of simulations (such as body movements andvisual effects) VR formulates and conveys meanings. Photorealistic effects contribute greatlyto creating the vividly immersive experience that is the aim of virtual tours, 3D movies,games and many other activities related to VR. For example, a quotation from IMAX.comsays:

IMAX 3D delivers the most immersive 3D movie experience ever created, enablingimages to leap off the screen and into the laps of the audience, further enhancing thefeeling of being IN the movie’ (IMAX, 2009; emphasis in original).

What this advertising emphasises is the immersive visual experience, which is mainly dueto 3D photorealistic effects. This visually immersive quality provides the strategy and char-acter of VR in its meaning-makings. However, visually immersive—no matter how vividlyrepresented—does not contribute enough to themeaning-making process, even though imagesand interactions with images are major ways that VR conveys its meanings.Both photography and VR are visual and rely heavily on their images in the meaning-

making process, but photographs are objects with a lifespan, the cultural implication of whichSontag describes as ‘talismanic’ (Sontag, 1990, p. 16). In this sense, photography is moreassociated with ‘souvenirs’ and ‘footprints’. This also implies that the meanings of a photo-graph can be touched, held and imbued with fetish value. In contrast, one reason VR is de-scribed as ‘ghost-like’, and which may give rise to negative feelings, is that VR shares pho-tographic visual effects while lacking of material forms. Some people hold that the VR ex-periencemay transform the old fetishistic addiction from the object to the fetishised simulationprocess (see Bill Nichols 2003[1988] ‘TheWork of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems’).However, in the case of negative feelings towards the VR experience, it might be too optim-istic to claim that materiality has lost its aura in the meaning-making process, even whenthe process is mainly visual.Considering the uses to which photography is put: while digital photographs are often

used in visual presentations that exist in a state of flux, traditional hand-made photographs

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are now gaining ‘artistic’ value. This nostalgic attitude towards the hand-made is not becausethe process is time-consuming or the product unique; rather, the underlying reason, is theinherent human desire to physically touch and materially hold, which along with seeingconstitutes the full meaning of ‘presence’ together.Some people, especially photographers who have an attachment to traditional photographic

techniques, argue that photography is losing its material form by becoming dependent onits visual effects. Lying behind this argument is the importance of materiality in the meaning-making process. ‘Everything I see is in principle within my reach, at least within reach ofmy sight, marked on the map of I can.’ In The Vision Machine, Virilio (1994, p. 7) arguesthat the ideal representation mode which leads to the original human happiness is the actu-alness of seeing (i.e. touch and hold) which has a close connection with the confidence ofwhat has been seen (i.e. images).Similarly, the fear of ‘ghost-like’ VR can be understood as a tension between visuality

and materiality, between the visual process and the visual objects. The desire for the mater-ially existent objects still exerts profound influence at the psychological level throughoutthe meaning-making process, even though the medium itself mainly functions in the visualrealm (Tupper, 2008; Turkle, 2007; 2008). And stabilizing the visual meaning in a materialform is of significant importance in how the visual meaning is perceived.

Different Implications on Take and MakePhotographs are ‘taken’, even though they are actually ‘made’, while VR is not ‘taken’ but‘made’ from the very start. The different cultural implications of ‘take’ and ‘make’ contributeto different attitudes towards photography and VR, including the uneasy feelings arousedby the latter.Take and make are the verbs which not only describe the activities of photography and

VR, but are two kinds of experience—the irreversible moment of take and the reversibleprocess of make—which have divergent cultural implications. Strictly speaking, all photo-graphs are made (not to mention photographic images generated out of nothing by software).However, by ‘taking’ pictures, photography is an activity which is irreversible and once-for-all—even though this is actually a form of wishful thinking that has been discussed by manyscholars. The disputes between ‘take’ and ‘make’ have always haunted photography in termsof its cultural applications and metaphors.On the one hand, for example:

Batchen (2001) questioned photography’s taking process by asking when a photographwas made. For him, and many scholars who share similar views, a photograph has in-finite range of possible meanings and the interpretation of such meanings depends onits external context. In such views, a photograph can never be completed, since theproliferation of meaning is endless, and does not depend on the photograph itself butis externally dependent on its audience’s ability to understand it differently. Therefore,a photograph is always in the status of endless making, even though its taking processhas long been completed.

On the other hand, even if we accept endless interpretation of its meaning, photography isstill widely recognized as the art of the moment that can only be ‘taken’. The famous photo-

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grapher Cartier-Bresson once romantically concluded that the taking process of photographywas the ‘decisive moment’ that ‘once you miss it, it is gone forever’ (Cartier-Bresson, 1957;as cited in Bernstein, 2004). From this point of view, what ‘take’ means to photography isthe irreversible process involved in its making. It is ‘take’ that endows photography a senseof value, for the precious ‘decisive moment’ (or the Kodak Moment) can only happen in thecontext of ‘take’, the significance of which was well defined by Bresson in his essay TheDecisive Moment , which still exerts a profound influence on the cultural roles photographyis playing today. It is the cultural implications of ‘take’ that endow photography with theaura of authority and the photographic activity with a psychological satisfaction in that we‘point and shoot’, thereby capturing the moment like a hunter.Contrarily, VR is, without dispute, ‘made’ from the very start. Unlike photography’s ‘ir-

reversible taking process’ (at least in its general sense), VR is programmable and interactive,thereby anticipating physical feedback and allowing the audience or consumer an elementof power or control. Unlike photography’s taking process which is unidirectional freezingthe moment with a click of the shutter, in the VR world, simultaneous interactions and con-centrations are intensely demanding -- ‘more so than we might imagine from our experiencewith texts, even powerfully engaging ones’ (Nichols, 2002, p. 631). VR puts (limited) controlin the audience’s hands by inviting them into a flow of ongoing and developing process,even though during such interactions, people are following the mental trajectory of the de-signers (Manovich, 2001). VR does not have a decisive moment of taking, on the contrary,it is an ever-evolving process of making.Therefore, although photography is limited by its taking process, it also gains a permanence

much like a literature. Once ‘taken’, a photograph is ‘closed’, sealing off all ambiguous in-formation in its frozen image. This is the reason why Barthes in Camera Lucida says pho-tography is inextricable, because the feelings triggered by photographs are so personal andintimate that they can hardly be shared. By the same token, because a photograph is rathertaken than made, developing a trained sharp eye that knows how to seize the moment is thegoal of many photographers, while knowing how to ‘read’ a photograph as a silent text iscrucial to the viewers.Unlike the relatively intimate and private attitude towards photography, VR offers a shared

experience with other participants while focusing on sensory experiences. People are nolonger hunters or observers of the real world as they are in photographic activity, but ratherare actors and players within a virtual world. Exciting as they are, however, the interactivemaking process of VR, with its sense of immersion in a virtual reality, might also have side-effects. These experiences are intensely demanding, calling for physical responses, whichmay shallow the imagination on a more emotional level. There is a clue to the essential dif-ference between VR and photography in Barthes’s statement about how photographs touchhim: ‘Absolute subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting youreyes is to make the image speak in silence)’. (1982, p. 55)However, one argues in the ‘take’ vs. ‘make’ debate, it is the irreversible taking process

that is highly valued and the frozen moment of silence that is deeply cherished. This widelyaccepted view of the cultural implications of photography as ‘the art of the moment’ or‘images that speak in silence’ comes from the limitations of photography. VR, on the otherhand, is always in the present continuous tense of making, which requires physical involve-ment and concentration through its meaning-making process (experience), and which iscontinuously developing and unfinishing. On the other hand, photography is the past perfect

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tense (‘taken’), which is often linked to relics, artefacts and literature. Because it is ‘taken’,photography refuses interaction and defers its meanings, which need to be ‘read’ with a ra-tional distance rather than felt.It is irrelevant to make good/bad moral or quasi-moral distinctions between ‘take’ and

‘make’ as the words relate to what is in essence a making process in both photography andVR. However, the different cultural implications of ‘take’ and ‘make’ result in different at-titudes towards photography and VR. The irreversible taking process freezes the fleetingmoment, giving photography a literature-like quality at the cost of closing the process,whereas VR’s interactive making process is more technologically interesting, allowingaudiences to semi-physically explore and experience. Consequently, VR offers an opennessat the cost of losing the literature-like quality of a completed artefact.

Two Types of Realities: The Indexical and the SimulacralPeople encounter VR simulacra that assert themselves as reality while refusing to be locatedother than in the ‘screen’ world they inhabit. Though the definition of ‘reality’ is alwaysproblematic and unsettled, both photography and VR claim to reflect or represent certainkind of realities. Yet the divergent realities provided by photography and VR respectively(i.e. an ‘out there’ reality which is indexical and an ‘in here’ reality which is virtual) lead tothe negative feelings towards the latter.Unlike photography, which is generally regarded as a visual proof of ‘that-which-has-

been’, representing an external reality, VR claims to create its own internal reality by computersimulation which suggests only a ‘being here’, the validity of which rests on modern techno-logies, and more specifically, on the computer(s) having access to the necessary power andtransmission systems. The state of virtual existence provided by VR is defined as ‘notphysically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so’ in The Concise OxfordEnglish Dictionary ,while it is called a ‘simulacrum’ in its literature sense, which representnothing but itself as a sign. A simulacrum reality is both the subject and the object of itself.Like the word ‘reality’, the term ‘simulacrum’ is hard to define, because its complicated

philosophical backgrounds are not the main subject of this paper, and just like discussionsof ‘reality’, the meaning of ‘simulacrum’ is heavily dependent on one’s beliefs. However,since technology simulation of VR is charged by some postmodernists as ‘the murder of thereal’, which is obviously hostile, it is necessary to understand why the simulacral realityprovided by VR is unpleasant. There are mainly two reasons: one comes from itsphotorealistic effects, the other comes from the self-reflective relationship of VR simulacra.First, as relating to VR’s photorealistic effects, which are seen as having the potential to

mislead, let’s take a 3D computer game as an example. The recently released 3D game ‘RealKanojo’ (Real Girlfriend) (2009) again put the disputes between the virtual and the real underspotlight. This game creates an attractive virtual young girl by using motion track technologyand 3D CG animation. According to its maker Illusion Soft, Real Girlfriend aims to be themost technologically advanced interactive virtual girlfriend game to date. By utilizing con-ventional web cams as motion detectors, the female characters in the game respond to theplayer’s movements. Some representative comments from the internet are:

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-INKling-: ‘This is Both Hilarious and Deeply Sinister’Mufujifi: ‘I just find it really, really sad that such ‘games’ exist. But the motion track-ing/sensing technology being used sounds amazing.’SeKToR : ‘Dude, I’d still play this ... even though I have a girlfriend ... just for the shitsand giggles of the failures of humanity ...’ (Gamespot, 2009)

From the above comments, it can clearly be seen that even facing a game, which is merelyfor entertainment and certainly not happening, people are still cautious about its virtualcontent, and blame it for being so real that it causes unpleasant feelings of ‘being fooled’.And such negative attitude of ‘being fooled’ by VR is not just individual, it can be seen frommany debates on VR products and their consequences. In fact, the Real Kanojo game is notnew; it is just another version of ‘The Sims’ (a life-simulation computer game published byElectronic Arts, Inc.). As long as technology continues to develop, VR games will becomemore realistic. As seen from this viewpoint, VR reality, the simualcral reality, is irritatingbecause its effects are so perfect that they may disturb and threaten our basic and clear cutdistinction about what is happening and what is not.Second, the self-reflective relationship of VR:

VR creates a self-reflexive reality, which is both the subject and the object of itself,that is, VR simulation is not a window to look through, but a space to step into. Distinctfrom the basic distinction between reality (such as everyday routines like eating andworking) and daydream, the ‘in here’ reality that VR provides is still unfamiliar andstrange. When everything is codified as program and exists on a visual and sensorylevel as an externalization of thoughts, the identity of the self becomes the identity ofan avatar, and that in turn invalidates time and space. VR defenders argue that apartfromVR technologies and the necessary hardware apparatus that do exist as real objects,VR simulacra do not necessarily simulate the outside world nonetheless, they have in-dependent forms and real world consequences and follow real world rules. However,it is sometimes still confusing to ask the meaning of the assertion that VR simulacrahave ‘their own reality’. What people desire from the simulacral reality provided byVR is contradictory: the desire to keep it virtual is as strong as the desire to make itactual. In other words, we are told the virtual reality is not the imitation of the actual,but rather a creation on its own, however, the virtual reality is imitating the actual inorder to have a ‘real feel’.

First, let’s look at the virtual side. VR is designed to keep people at a distance from the realworld experience so that they can immerse themselves into the virtual space where thefreedom of thought is maximized. For example: as The Second Life (2009) says, ‘Enter aworld with infinite possibilities and live a life without boundaries, guided only by yourimagination. Dowhat you love, with the people you love, from anywhere in the world’. Suchimaginary freedom is extremely attractive, because it is far from the reality of everydayroutines, and it is the reason why VR is largely applied to entertainment. VR, the virtualreality, the simulacral reality, opens an ‘in here’ reality which is boundless and only governedby thoughts. Second, let’s look at the actual side, the strong attempt to realize the virtual.VR’s immersion strategy is to create a sense of presence, to accomplish which it borrowsphotographic effects that used to be the privilege and a guaranteed reality of photography.

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By its immediate response and face-to-face encounter, VR is a ‘being there’ instead of ‘thathas been’ or ‘that used to be’. Some VR advocators argue that, in order to create a real feel,VR images should mimic daily visual experience as close as possible; however, as its con-tradictory name ‘Virtual Reality’ indicates, people do not want to make the virtual real (asimplied by the fantastic contents of ‘Real Girlfriend’ game and Second Life), in the meantime,people want to realize the virtual by adopting realistic images. What underlies the disputesaround VR simulacral reality are both the innate desire for a more liberated way of image-making and the fear of phantoms and illusions aroused by the images.Now let’s look back at the indexical reality of photography. Photography has long been

struggling between two roles: as a window on the external world and as an expression ofthe internal minds. However, the dichotomy of roles is itself an illusion. There is no univer-sally guaranteed reality in photography except one reality—’the reality of the paper print,the material item’ (Tagg, 1988, p. 4). Photography was accused of creating simulacra longbefore the charge was laid at VR’s door. The difference is that photography does not generatereality out of nowhere. It is the cultural implications of calling photography ‘the pencil ofnature’, ‘the writing of light’ etc., that create implications based on its indexicality, whichprovide a sense of certainty. Indexciality implies that everything shown in the photographcan be located elsewhere. This does not mean photography is more faithful than VR. Actually,VR simulation is technically more precise than photographic representation, while photo-graphy itself, as been pointed out by somany scholars, is inherently deceptive andmisleading.However, photography without the promise of an indexical (i.e. ‘out there’) reality is literallydead, because its essential character strengthens confidence in seeing of ‘that-has-been’(Barthes, 1980/1993, p. 77). Finally, the metaphor of photography’s indexical reality inevit-ably includes life and death.While VR, by borrowing photorealistic effect, brings a simulacralreality to which people are not yet accustomed, because it has metaphorically ruled out lifeand death, thus causing ontological confusions.In sum, the unsettling cultural implications of VR’s simulacral reality come from the

tension between its photorealistic effect, which implies an actual and indexical location, andits virtual existence, which refuses to locate in reality.

Conclusions: Photography and its ShadowVR is the shadow of photography. Compared to photography, VR is not only a more liberatedimage-making approach, but also creates things by the images.The aim of this paper is to take photography as a framework for understanding the fear

of VR. The paper discusses the importance of materiality in visual communications; photo-graphy’s taking process and VR’s making process; and two types of realities (i.e. the index-ical and the simulacral) provided by photography and VR. It starts with the differencesbetween photography and VR, and concludes with their similarities.Both photography and VR are visual communication mediums in narrowest sense. They

share more similarities than differences as a consequence of the evolution and integrationof digital imaging. People are now talking about VR photography, which is not a fiction butthe actual and available product of digital imaging technology. For example, the newly un-veiled 3D digital camera of Fujifilm claims to capture a 3D image ‘with an unprecedented‘real feel’ by a process which is simple and automatic’ (Fujifilm, 2010) ‘in just a click’. Thedefinition of photography, which used to be clear and certain, is now vague and even

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sometimes frustrating when we are trying to distinguish it from other digital images withthe look of photography, because they not only look the same, but are also likely to be thesame by sharing more common features.New technology is its uniform, however, ideas about photography and VR have long been

overlapping each other (as pointed earlier in the paper) in history, and today the convergenceof the two (i.e. VR photography) is actually a technologically advanced version of the 19thcentury stereoscopic photograph. Beneath, is the inherent desire to enter and inhabit into animage, which is both old and new. VR absorbs photography not only with respect to itsphotographic effects, but also regarding its purpose, which is to link the self with the worldin a relationship between the external and the internal through images. VR exists as theother half of photography, because it stands as its opposite. VR evolved beyond photography’sincompleteness that is the product of its dependence on a pre-given existence, its two-dimen-sional surface which is static, its taking process which is irreversible, its meaning conveyingwhich is deferred. VR is transforming into a self-reflexive, three-dimensional, ever-growingreality, which approaches a perfect and idealistic mode of image making, freed from photo-graphy’s sociocultural commitment as index. Therefore, VR is the shadow of photography,because what it has achieved is the dream that has been haunting photography for so long.Photographic image tends to be read as text rather than merely to be looked at, which

leaves more space for literary imaginations. Photographs are treated as words and possessedas things, which in turn offers confidence in seeing, certainty of knowing and the satisfactionof having. Therefore, it is necessary to be critical and cautious about the virtual trend inphotography, because even in a post-photography age, we long for the lost aura of photo-graphy as a confirmation that bears accountability for the solid.While VR image tends to be felt as simultaneous experience, which brings both applause

and blame. Its impact far exceeds its total visibility, for it constructs a relationship betweenthe external and the internal that refuses to fit the usual categories of human experience andthe common distinction between the genuine and the forged, the existing and the imaginary,because it claims to exist as both. VR is unsettling because it arouses the uncertainty ofseeing, the suspicion of knowing while realizing the daydream of a boundless freedom. Sincepeople are asked to take an open attitude towards its intrusion into daily life as a real exper-ience which influenced the understanding of the visual environment around, equally, thefears and controversies triggered by VR should be tolerated, because the negative attitudegrows from contemporary society in which the doubts about the virtual and its cultural im-plications should not be neglected or degraded as nostalgic and blind.Gain and lose, confidence and uncertainty, stay in current and face the challenge, the desire

to know the world is as strong as the desire to create the world. Photography, which is moreassociated with knowing, and VRwhich is involved with creating are the two stems growingfrom one plant that is the innate and endless eagerness to make sense of the world throughvisual communications.

AcknowledgementsWewould like to thank for the funding provided by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University’sJoint Supervision Scheme with Mainland China, Taiwan and Macao Universities. TheCentral Academy of Fine Arts, in particular Professor Ping Xu, provided support to Qianhui

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Bian for her research project in Hong Kong. We would also like to thank the anonymousreviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE IMAGE

About the AuthorsQianhui BianDr. Qianhui Bian is now working at the School of Design, Nanjing Arts Institute. Duringthe preparation of the paper, she was a PhD candidate of the Central Academy of Fine Artsand Research Assistant of the School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Prof. Kin Wai Michael SiuKin Wai Michael Siu is Professor of the School of Design, The Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity. He was Fulbright Scholar of theMIT and ASIA Fellow of the National Universityof Singapore. He has served the Hong Kong Government's advisory committees and profes-sional bodies as members. His research interests are in design and culture, public design,and user-reception.

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QIANHUI BIAN, KIN WAI MICHAEL SIU

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