0(1 IK lion if H* lit*v«- iiiiually donned an HMD (head-mounted display) pit* dl'ii ' c.li'vcs), and none has entered the digital wonderland .....our eyes by the early developers of virtual reality: a K r .iied three-dimensional landscape in which we would in i i|i,msion of our physical and sensory powers; leave ^Hj#* rti"l '•<•'" ourselves from the outside; adopt new identities; ml i......,ilerial objects through many senses, including touch; • I• I. in moilify the environment through either verbal com-Hil> ..i (iliy.ii ,il gestures; and see creative thoughts instantly real-ilniiil ((oing through the process of having them physically ,.l vdii lliotigh virtual reality as described above is still largely n. nil largely what it is called—a virtual reality—there is Ultlli o.i I•l«l| serial novels. The rest of the story has been told many times: how llteN cross-fertilized with the New Criticism, structuralism, ami ill Introduction | 5 II "linguistic turn" in the mid-twentieth century, privi--i Minimi, emphasized spatial relations between words, Itlrtl allusion, parody, and self-referentiality; how the Hi |»lol iiud character, experimented with open struc-miliilloiiN, turned into increasingly cerebral wordplay, lUllniiuiNhable from lyrical prose. This evolution split hi Intellectual avant-garde committed to the new aes-iii|miI.ii 1.1.null that remained faithful to the immersive Mliv. ii, hniques of the nineteenth century. (Ironically, li liniii il nut to be heavily dependent on the resources miIi in lis game of parody.) As happened in the visual III w«« limught down by a playful attitude toward the || iiu mil in this case the exploitation of such features as ^H)e of words, their graphic appearance, and the ■ unrelated senses that make up their semantic (Iiu 1 miiivulesque conception of language, meaning is IMlili iin.ii'r of a world in which the reader projects a " 1.....vrii the dynamic simulation of a world in time, 1 led by associative chains that connect the parti-|| mil lulu textual field of energies into ever-changing 11I UK 1 a me to be described as unstable, decen-ttillil, emergent—all concepts that have become hall- lllllll iii lll,llt. "I •.if.iiiln.ilion needs nothing more than the iiu words on the page and the reader's imagina-BNi It 1» «»y to see how the feature of interactivity 11 dy clri I ionic technology came to be regarded iIm postmodern conception of meaning. Inter- I Ideal of an endlessly self-renewable text from ^^Hlll l<> the. level of the signifier. In hypertext, the ......mctivc textuality (though by no means the 1 • ulri determines the unfolding of the text by • fJMi the so-called hyperlinks, that bring to the lext. Since every segment contains several II .....ling produces a different text, if by rexf one lllfll -.el and sequence of signs scanned by the 1!" n.id.i of .1 standard print text constructs NARRATIVE AS VIRTUAL REALITY Introduction personalized interpretations out of an invariant semiotic base, reader of an interactive text thus participates in the construction | the text as a visible display of signs. Although this process is restrn to a choice among a limited number of well-charted alternativi namely, the branching possibilities designed by the author—this ti tive freedom has been hailed as an allegory of the vastly more cre«tt| and less constrained activity of reading as meaning formation. These analogies between postmodern aesthetics and the idea of mi. activity have been systematically developed by the early theoriitl I hypertext, such as George Landow, Jay David Bolter, Michael Joy and Stuart Moulthrop. These authors were not only literary scholl they had also contributed to the development of hypertext throv the production of either software, instructional databases, or literi works,1 and they had a stake in the promotion of the new mode i writing. They chose to sell hypertext to the academic community-audience generally hostile to technology but also generally open postmodern theory—by hyping their brainchild as the fulfillment I the ideas of the most influential French theorists of the day, such I Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Deleuze, Guattari, and Ba tin—the latter an adopted ancestor. Many of those who came to ell tronic textuality from literary theory happily joined in the chorus.' cite a few particularly telling examples of this rhetoric, Bolter CI hypertext a "vindication of postmodern theory," as if postmodaf ideas were the sort of propositions that can be proved true or l.ih ("Literature in the Electronic Space," 24); Richard Lanham speaks 1 an "extraordinary convergence" of postmodern thought and elc^| tronic textuality (Electronic Word, chap. 4);2 and liana Snyder argu that hypertext teaches "deconstructive skills" that readers supposed do not acquire from standard texts (Hypertext, 119).3 Though all theifl comments describe hypertext, not interactivity per se, it was the into active nature of the genre that inspired these pronouncements. The list of the features of hypertext that supports the postmoder ist approach is an impressive one. It is headed by Roland Barthes ai Julia Kristeva's notion of intertextuality, the practice of integrating U variety of foreign discourses within a text through such mechanism! j as quotation, commentary, parody, allusion, imitation, ironic trans- fttin, miuI decontextualizing/recontextualizing opera-Inli 1 textuality is regarded as a specific aesthetic prolnuli condition of literary signification, it is hard to 1 Imiiii linking that constitutes the basic mechanism I an Ideal device for the implementation of intertextual two texts can be linked, and by clicking on a link the Mill) o .msported into an intertext. By facilitating the ilyvotnl structures that integrate different perspectives 1**1'. tin- leader to choose between them, hypertext is tH to express the aesthetic and political ideals of an ■Minify that has elevated the preservation of diversity riiiuliiincntal values. lllit favors a typically postmodern approach to writing lo what has been described by Livi-Strauss as bricolage In •.In 11 y Tinkle's translation). In this mode of composi-1 1. • li'scrlbes it (Life on the Screen, 50-73), the writer does ni|i down" method, starting with a given idea and break- il..........1 constituents, but proceeds "bottom-up" by fitting n.ilily autonomous fragments, the verbal equivalent of VMi lulu an artifact whose shape and meaning(s) emerge Hni mu process. The result is a patchwork, a collage of • Ii niants, what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have called assemblage" (A Thousand Plateaus, 332-35). As Silvio lliown, this broken-up structure, as well as the dynamic kIIiin of the text with every new reading, proposes a meta-||i*> 11111I modern conception of the subject as a site of multi-lhi|/„ and unstable identities, ptrtext can bring together the heterogeneous, it can also fitments traditionally thought to belong together. The 11111 '11 o I hypertext is one more way to pursue the typically I challenge of the epistemologically suspect coherence, ra-1111 1 Insure of narrative structures, one more way to deny llie satisfaction of a totalizing interpretation. Hypertext Iffttinrs the metaphor for a Lyotardian "postmodern condition" Hfh grand narratives have been replaced by "little stories," or by nu stories at all—just by a discourse reveling in the Der-11 |M 1 It 11 malice of an endless deferral of signification. Through I NARRATIVE AS VIRTUAL REALITY its growth in all directions, hypertext implements one of the f|| notions of postmodernism, the conceptual structure that DeleUM Guattari call a "rhizome." In a rhizomatic organization, in oppmij to the hierarchical tree structures of rhetorical argumentation, imagination is not constrained by the need to prove a point | progress toward a goal, and the writer never needs to sacrifice I bursts of inspiration that cannot be integrated into a linear arttnn Building interactivity into the object of a theoretical mystii|ii»,| "founding fathers" of hypertext theory promoted the new grnf an instrument of liberation from some of the most notorious noires of postmodern thought: linear logic, logocentrism, .ulior cent hierarchical structures, and repressive forms of power. Landow writes, for instance, that hypertext embodies the idem nonhierarchical, decentered, fundamentally democratic political i tern that promotes "a dialogic mode of collective endeavor" (J text 2.0, 283): "As long as any reader has the power to enter the 1 and leave his or her mark, neither the tyranny of the center nor 1 lui the majority can impose itself" (281). Over twenty years ago Barthes identified the figure of the author as one of these oppr forms of authority from which readers must be liberated: "We L to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth [of j author): the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death oil Author" ("Death of the Author," 78). The purpose of new fonni I writing—such as what Barthes called "the scriptible"—is "to makt | reader no longer a consumer but a producer of text" (S/Z, 4). For the critics mentioned above, interactivity is just what the st turalist doctor (would have) ordered: "There is no longer one autL but two, as reader joins author in the making of the text," writes Bolt ("Literature in the Electronic Space," 37). For Michael Joyce, hyr texts are "read when they are written and written as they are read" (( Two Minds, 192). Or to quote again Landow: "Electronic linking | configures our experience of both author and authorial property, this reconception of these ideas promises to affect our conceptioni | both the authors (and authority) of texts we study and of ourselvet 1 authors" (Hypertext 2.0, 25; my italics). In Grammatron, a hy. textual novel-cum-theory that challenges traditional generic distil tions, Mark Amerika takes the cult of interactivity to new extremes, I Introduction (MM mil* In I.....-xHi.il consciousness" as the advent of a I il,. 111.mm , 111 the political, spiritual, and artistic lypertextual Consciousness (HTC) piur of discourse networks creates an en-■■I lomrptions of authorship, self, originality, mmh m.11 y take on different meanings. One can 11. 11.111.11or creating a discourse network that (llll lluil inn point for various lines of flight to pass ......lipiilatc data linked together by the collective- || I iltr (giving birth to a node) will be one way H« inn notion of authorship but in reconfiguring il wr in effect radically-altering (killing) the ill mill opening up a more fluid vista of potential-11 i|'nictit "Teleport") 11 ol server, the accession of the reader to the role of 1, 1.In .is some agnostics facetiously call the new role— mi. i.iphor that presents hypertext as a magic elixir: l mill vim will receive the gift of literary creativity." If taken ......illy does so?—the idea would reduce writing to .voliU to the screen through an activity as easy as one, 1 1 imlci these conditions no writer would ever suffer nl i he blank page. Call this writing if you want; but if f% my through the maze of an interactive text is suddenly we will need a new word for retrieving words from 1 in piu ode meanings, and the difference with reading will * wonders what conclusions would have been drawn about ilgnifkance of hypertext and the concept of reader-11 il.. ulxw mentioned critics had focused on the idea of Hnlm, or on the limitation of the reader's movements to the ,1,.,!,.....I l.y the author. Perhaps they would have been more Ml In rtilmil that aesthetic pleasure, like political harmony, is a I unbridled license but of controlled freedom. 1.....hi iwity has been hyped as a panacea for evils ranging I .1, h .empowerment to writer's block, the concept of immer-iill.-ii-d .1 vastly different fate. At best it has been ignored by 10 I NARRATIVE AS VIRTUAL REALITY theorists; at worst, regarded as a menace to critical thinking. (A notable exception is Janet Murray, who devotes a chapter of her book Hamlet on the Holodeck to immersion as part of a more general discussion of the aesthetics of the electronic medium.) If we believe some of the most celebrated parables of world literature, losing oneself in a book, or in any kind of virtual reality, is a hazard for the health of the mind. Immersion began to work its ravages as early as the first great novel of European literature. "In short," writes Cervantes in Don Quixote, "he so immersed himself in those romances that he spent whole days and nights over his books; and thus with little sleeping ar much reading, his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the ui of his reason" (58). The situation does not seem to be better in til virtual realities of the electronic kind: we hear tales of people sufferir from AWS (Alternate World Syndrome), a loss of balance, feeling < sickness, and general "body amnesia" (Heim, Virtual Realism, 5a), when they leave VR systems; of MOO addicts who cannot adapt to ROL (Sherry Turkle's acronym for "the rest of life"); or of children who experience emotional trauma when they inadvertently let thell virtual pets die. The major objection against immersion is the alleged incompatl* bility of the experience with the exercise of critical faculties. Tht semiotic blindness caused by immersion is illustrated by an anecdoti involving the eighteenth-century French philosopher Diderot. Wallace Martin reports, "He tells us how he began reading Clarii several times in order to learn something about Richardson's tec niques, but never succeeded in doing so because he became person! involved in the work, thus losing his critical consciousness" (Rectm Theories, 58). According to Jay Bolter, the impairment of critical coiU sciousness is the trademark of both literary and VR immersion: "Mm is it obvious that virtual reality cannot in itself sustain intellectual 1 cultural development____The problem is that virtual reality, at least at it is now envisioned, is a medium of percepts rather than signs. It li virtual television" (Writing Space, 230). "What is not appropriate the absence of semiosis" (231). The cause of immersion has not been helped by its resistance 1 theorization. Contemporary culture values those ideas that prodl brilliant critical performances, that allow the critic to deconstruct 1 Introduction 11 (Mil it buck together again in the most surprising configura- I ui 1.111 be said about immersion in a textual world except ^HM pUce? The self-explanatory character of the concept is HfcVprated as evidence that immersion promotes a passive atti- 1.....1.In, similar to the entrapment of tourists in the self- vlitiuil realities of theme parks or vacation resorts. This In 1 rmforced by the association of the experience with |f 1 nil mm "| ,<>sing oneself in a fictional world," writes Bolter, "is ninplex mental activity that goes into the produc-| a vlvi.l in. ni.il picture of a textual world. Since language does 1 1111 ■ 1 h in 1 he senses,4 all sensory data must be simulated bythe Hit, In "The Circular Ruins" Jorge Luis Borges writes of the •t, who In trying to create a human being by the sheer power H§|IiimiIoii, "He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream inilr integrity and insert him into reality" (Ficciones, 114). \ W# limit dream up textual worlds with "minute integrity" to 1 llir Intense experience of presence that inserts them into ii iiliiy Is this the trademark of a passive reader? lli 1 thr.se two trends it will be necessary to take a more 1 ill Interactivity, and a more sympathetic one at immer-Mlllliiilr is admittedly no less biased than the approaches I •I, hut it offers an alternative to both the rapturous cele-' ll||lliil literature and the Luddite laments for the book that I NARRATIVE AS VIRTUAL REALITY Introduction | have greeted the recent explosion of information technologies. If appear harsher on interactive than on immersive texts, it is not cause I view the intrusion of the computer into literary territory i threat to humanistic values, as does Sven Birkerts, the most eloqua champion of immersion, but because interactivity is still in an exp< mental stage while literature has already perfected the art of imr sive world construction. It is precisely its experimental nature makes interactivity fascinating. I am interested in the device not a ready-made message-in-the-medium, as its postmodern advoc read it, but as a language and a design problem whose solutions 1 always be in the making. In my discussion of interactivity I theref avoid allegorical readings and concentrate instead on the expressto properties of the feature, its potential and limitations, its control the reader, and its problematic relation to immersion. The organization of this book grew out of the very definition til inspired the whole project: "virtual reality is an immersive, interacts experience generated by a computer." We will begin by visiting virtual as philosophical concept, move on to VR as technology, plore its two components, immersion and interactivity, and conclud the itinerary by considering what is for me the ultimate goal of art: tin synthesis of immersion and interactivity. This book, then, is as must about virtual literature—literature that could be—as about the actul brand. But since we cannot even begin to envision the virtual witholl an eye on the real, my presentation interleaves theoretical chapters Of the problematics of immersion and interactivity with short case stutw ies of actual texts, labeled interludes, that anticipate, allegorize, concretely implement one or both of the dimensions of the archetypl VR experience. Judging by their current popularity in both theory and advertising language, the terms virtual and virtuality exert a powerful magnetisi! on the contemporary imagination, but as is always the case when word catches the fancy of the general public, their meaning tends H dissolve in proportion to the frequency of their use. In its everydl usage the word virtual is ambiguous between (1) "imaginary" ant (2) "depending on computers." (A third, more philosophical sens does not seem as influential on the popular usage.) When we speak ( iv. 11 ir.111 I he computer image of corporeally nonexis-Miipiininns, but when we speak of "virtual technologies" nl>- .1......1 mean something that does not exist, or we would • I......In 11I dollars for computer software. Virtual tech- • objects that are virtual in sense 1 but they are them-In xrnsc 2. When N. Katherine Hayles characterizes the .......niporary mankind as "virtual," and further defines tin mi "the cultural perception that material objects are let I by information patterns" ("Condition of Virtuality," !m 1 .1 . nit 11 rally well accepted, but philosophically less ........ Why should information be regarded as virtual, nteiiningfully connected with virtuality? Is it because II. iiitblrs us to build "virtual realities"—digital images that • 1 nl physically habitable environments? Is it because ltttti.il |iiiI! .1 them. In my discussion of temporal and emotional immersion 11 explanations for two closely related immersive paradoxes that generated lively debate among philosophers and cognitive p»ye| gists for a number of years: how readers can experience suspenM | second or third time they read a text, even though they know M ends; and how the fate of fictional characters can generate en toll reactions with physical symptoms, such as crying, even though I ers know fully well that these characters never existed. Chapter 6 examines the change of metaphor that marked the I sition from immersion to interactivity as artistic ideals. Whertjflfl aesthetics of immersion implicidy associates the text with a "Wfl that serves as environment for a virtual body, the aesthetics of lit activity presents the text as a game, language as a plaything, reader as the player. The idea of verbal art as a game with langu admittedly not a recent invention; ancient literatures and folklore | full of intricate word games, and the novel of the eighteenth cent! engaged in very self-conscious games of narration. But it is only In | middle of the twentieth century, after the concept of game 101 prominence as a philosophical and sociological issue and began I trating many other disciplines, that literary authors developed metaphor into an aesthetic program. The concept of "game" CO however, a wide variety of activities, and it is too often us generic sense by literary critics. Chapter 6 narrows down the phor by exploring what kind of games and what specific fell pertaining to these games provide meaningful analogies with the I ary domain. No less intuitively meaningful than immersion, the concept 1 teractivity can be interpreted figuratively as well as literally. In a fl| sense, interactivity describes the collaboration between the reader i the text in the production of meaning. Even with traditional ty narrative and expository writing—texts that strive toward glob herence and a smooth sequential development—reading is ni passive experience. As the phenomenologist Roman Ingarden and I disciple Wolfgang Iser have shown, the construction of a textual Introduction ■>» m iiv. )•■<>. ess through which the reader provides as 1.1- hi id 1 ims from the text. But the inherently interac-mft IMiIIiir experience has been obscured by the reader's .1........i|', tin- necessary world-building operations. id Inn classic narrative texts—those with a well-. 1 .in visualize, and characters who act out of a lal wr do not notice the mental processes that enable |f Mlii 11 nipni.il How of language into a global image that nil.........I l\>stmodern narrative deepens the read-mi iviili 1 In- text by proposing new reading strategies, or ilnn lo ihc construction of meaning. Through their I m II referential character, these texts stand as the .linn)! denial version of interactivity. ,, . ni interactivity that receives the greatest attention in ii one that largely owes its existence to electronic id.....in il methanisms that enable the reader to affect i tin i< n t as a visible display of signs, and to control the i h( It* unloliling. Here again we encounter a contrast bell N strong form. In the weak literal sense, discussed in 1 n mlii .11 nvity is a choice between predefined alterna-^H|*i« ij and 10 I consider a stronger form in which the i|.il, ..died the interactor—performs a role through .. in.ns, llms actually participating in the physical 1 l hi li hi (By textl do not necessarily mean something ^^Hllllly Inscribed.) would demand that I split my coverage of interactivity mil a poetics chapter, as I do for immersion, but in the MftNi llvliy the two concepts are much more entangled, and Urpote of theory much more problematic. As a type of 111 in 1. immersion is a relatively speculative idea that ........Mist heorization depends on a particular concep- 11.1 .1 y text, while its poetics is a typology of its various 111« Interactivity, by contrast, is an empirical feature of nl text, and its plain existence is no more in need of 1......1 texts than in VR. We can debate endlessly what it J| Immersed, but if we stick to what I call a literal concep-tillvlly, the mechanism is easily defined. What distin- I NARRATIVE AS VIRTUAL REALITY guishes the pure theory from the poetics of interactivity, in rent literature, is mainly a matter of ideological slant: we "theory" the postmodern/deconstructionist readings of inter* discussed above, while a "poetics" would be a more descripti empirical approach that keeps its mind open as to what the un effects of interactivity might be. Most work on the subject of tronic textuality is a blend of the two approaches, but I would H the work of Landow, Bolter, Joyce, and Moulthrop on the theor though these scholars did make important contributions to |H areas, while the more recent books of Espen Aarseth and Janet MurM clearly occupy the poetics end of the spectrum. Bypassing theory, then, I present in chapter 7 a list of listl fl examine a variety of concrete rhetorical problems associated w|B interactivity: the forms and functions of the device; the rekitlofl between interactivity, electronic support, and ergodic design (a c|H cept proposed by Aarseth); the properties of the electronic medllM and their exploitation in the creation of new modes of interfaci tween the text and the reader; and the metaphors through whlafl hypertext readers conceptualize interactivity. Chapter 8 narrows down the inquiry to the possibility of crcntlM genuinely narrative structures in an interactive environment. II 11.1114 tivity is a reasonably universal semantic structure, a cognitive frttlflfl work in which we arrange information to make sense of it am representation of events and actions, it consists of a certain reperlH of basic elements arranged into specific logical and temporal confl urations. Several scholars have raised the question of narrativity in conjunction with hypertext, but the paradox of maintaining a reaajH ably solid semantic structure in a fluid environment has been gCI|H ally avoided in favor of more discourse-oriented issues. (I am alludfl here to the classic narratological distinction between discourse, fl "expression plane of narrative" [Prince, Dictionary, 21], and story,H "content plane," the "what," the "narrated.") Aarseth, for install proposes a narratological reading of hypertext and computer gtifl that remains entirely focused on the relevance of the parameter! ■ Gerard Genette's model of the fictional narrative act: author, rea^| narrator, and narratee. Landow discusses hypertext as a "reconfigufjB tion of narrative" ( Hypertext 2.0, chap. 6), but the interactive preitjfl Introduction 1« In mind is either a novel discourse phenomenon ...... deep structure intact, or a fundamentally . tit 11.1 1h.1i icsulls in the breaking apart of this deep m admittedly achieve significance by challeng- >.....11 r and traditional plot structures, as postmod- 1.1 noiiNtrated, but in giving up well-formed nar-ilnu 1 enounces the most time-tested formula for 11 ill the ideal of immersive interactivity is therefore ...I. ni mi i he development ofwhat Janet Murray (Ham-.IN (I "multiform plot" or "storytelling system": a mu ni 1. in il li.laments and combinatory rules that generate 11 lor every run of the program, much in the way a ^jÉt ||i Miumiir produces a vast number of well-formed sen-ilii|t wot (Is according to syntactic rules. In such a "ka-mi|||> «i"i' in," .is Murray also calls it, the user's actions would 11 . iiinliuiations of elements, but the pieces would min .1 narratively meaningful picture. Murray illus-111. .1111 y telling system with the example of the bards »1 iiliiin .vim built ever-new narrative performances out of a .if phrases, epithets, similes, and episodes, but the ......1 I" directly transferred to the domain of electronic HER Hft'aimr oral epics are not interactive on the level of plot, in .il 1 >i 1 lormance reacts to subtle clues from the audi-|i. ..inns, laughter, and the particular quality of the 1111 bard does not normally consult the audience on illiiur llic tale; and even if he did, the audience, knowing • ulil |noluMy ask for an episode that would readily fit into l.l.l .lni. ture. In chapter 8 I look into designs that provide minu', io the problem of interactive narrativity. This leads 1 ........hi.>n ul the options between which the interactive text . liooae in order to survive as an art form when the interest h 11» linvrlly recedes. 11 narrative coherence is maintained, though, immersion in- an rlu,sive experience in interactive texts. In the last two lift I nigne mat tfie marriage of immersion and interactivity H>« IIip Imagined or physical presence of the appreciator's body I NARRATIVE AS VIRTUAL REALITY Introduction | in the virtual world—a condition easily satisfied in a VR syst problematic in hypertext because every time the reader is U make a choice she assumes an external perspective on the wof the textual universe. In VR we act within a world and experli from the inside, but in interactive texts of the selective varli choose a world, more or less blindly, out of many alternatives, I are not imaginatively committed to any one of them, becai interest of branching texts lies in the multiplicity of paths, not I particular development. As chapter 9 shows, VR is not the only environment that I an experience both immersive and interactive: children's and games of make-believe, fairs and amusement parks, ritual, Hsf art and architecture, and certain types of stage design in the propose an active participation of either an actual or virtual be reality created by the imagination. The study of these experli should therefore provide valuable guidelines for the design of | tronic texts. Chapter 10 expands the search for immersive intere to digital projects, such as computer games, MOOs, automate logue systems, installation art, and even a virtual form of blueprint for future projects—called interactive drama. It is tomatic of the Utopian nature of this quest for the ultimate experience that the most perfect synthesis of immersion and activity should be found not in a real work but in a fictional 1 multimedia "smart" book described in Neal Stephenson's fiction novel The Diamond Age. By proposing to read VR as a metaphor for total art, I do not I to suggest that the types of art or entertainment discussed in the two chapters are superior to the mosdy immersive forms of part I the mostly interactive ones of part III. If aesthetic value couli judged by numerical coefficients, as in certain "artistic" sports stl equestrian dressage or figure skating, a text that scored 10 on mersion and 1 on interactivity—a good realistic novel—would higher than a text that scored 3 for each criterion. Whether or j future VR installations will be able to offer more than mediocrlt both counts, however, we can still use the idea of VR as a metaphc the fullest artistic experience, since in the Platonic realm of idei scores a double 10. mill I lie synthesis of immersion and interactivity mat-eettIietIt philosophy? In its literal sense, immersion is h 1.11. e, .iiul as I have hinted, it takes the projection of hi 1 vi n lull t-t, the participation of the actual one, to I en at I world. On the other hand, if interactivity is applet ialor's engagement in a play of signification mi the level of signs rather than things and of words Miii'. .1 purely cerebral involvement with the text .........ns, curiosity about what will happen next, and ' ||ip text with personal memories of places and peo-*ui tin <■ nf signs—the signifier—there is no room for I III I. lual or the virtual variety. But the recipient of l.i......It earn such a thing, should be no less than the III* nl I oyola defined it: an "indivisible compound" of 1 * Whrtl Is at stake in the synthesis of immersion and I III 11 d in* nothing less than the participation of the II v 1.11 ■ .11 in the artistic experience.