Malthus Blake

Towards a Theory of Dark Immersion (Essays, #1) (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The following essays (written between 2010 and 2018) all began as blog posts documenting observations made whilst working in the virtual world Second Life. In the shift from social interaction in the physical domain to social interaction in a virtual, symbolic domain, there appears also to be a shift in how we are engaged with each other more generally - psychic communication through artificial, conceptual and graphical description pertains to a wholly different set of social rules than interaction in the physical domain. Where in physical space, you engage through a body (with all the vulnerabilities that this physical presence entails), in the conceptual space, you manifest and interact only through psychology. The rules of interaction in virtual space therefore become symbolic rules, textural rules, environments not of utility and expediency, but environments designed to have emotional and nervous effects.

The following collection contains what I consider to be the best of these blog posts. They expand on the notion that virtual reality tends towards the immersive and that immersivity naturally favours the creation of nervous effects. The thesis is that what we might call 'Dark Immersivity' is a consequence of our increased involvement in the virtual and that this is the driving force behind what has become known as Dark Erotica in contemporary fiction. What follows then is a collection of essays which provide some tools for speaking about Dark Immersion and Dark Erotica outside the usual moralising terms (terms which belong to a pre-virtual order of practical material necessity). These posts serve as a way of identifying the tensions in our current social and cultural attitudes, and though they do not explicitly reference the Dark genre, I believe they go some way towards understanding the emergence of dark sexuality and help to speak about its legitimacy.

The essays are ordered, more or less, in the order they were written, though some have been rearranged so as to more sensibly show the development of the ideas. Some of the earlier writings would have benefited from a better understanding of Baudrillard's thoughts regarding simulation and symbolic exchange, which only came later in the writing. As such, I have broken the collection into 2 sections, the essays of the first section being primarily influenced by Marshall McLuhan and Georges Bataille and suggest (like Foucault) that sex and sexuality are phenomena specific to our cultural conditions. Bataille is seen as one of the first examples of a sexuality expressed under modern electronic conditions - a sensorium of immersive nervous interactions, which is the essence of dark erotica and dark fantasy in immersive digital environments.

The second section of the collection expands on this idea and uses Baudrillard's notion of symbolic exchange as the electronic replacement for a more linear and mechanistic reason. This second section is preceded by a description of relevant concepts that will hopefully serve to make some of the later writings more clear. Rather than a coherent thesis, these essays should be viewed as what they are - a set of imperfect tools for talking about and defining what dark immersion is and how it emerges in contemporary virtual culture. The second section, and in particular the final essay 'On Dark Immersion in Virtual Reality', is perhaps the most complete part of this theory and yet the most complicated. It is hoped that the preceding chapter on Tools and Concepts will make this section clearer.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Malthus Blake
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. November 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781005461409
• Artikelnr.: 72829957

Autorenporträt

Writer of darkly immersive, realistic nonconsensual forced sex erotica. Themes include blackmail, dubcon, magical realism and surrealism with weird fiction/horror elements.

Erotica, well written, can be a poetry, an art form and a subversive aesthetic and philosophical vision in its own right. I try to get ideas into what I write, seeking those moments in which the erotic and the idea or image overlap. If you like realistic, forced-sex type stories where the writing has a slightly broader ambition, and you think there can be beauty in ugliness, you may want to check out some of these scribblings.

Also, a genuine and enormous thank you to those of you that feel my writing is worth a financial contribution. I can't stress enough how encouraging this is. It is a wonderful thing that even though you give some of your work away, some people remain generous enough to give you something back, so thank you.

What Readers Say:

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