Embodied avatar. Autorappresentazione e incorporazione nella realtà virtuale dal VR Cinema al VR Arcade

In cognitive psychology, immersive experiences depend on a series of “illusions” – presence, body ownership, and self-identification. Relying on these notions, the article discusses some phenomenological aspects of two forms of Virtual Reality experience – the VR cinema and the VR game – and two respective forms of “incorporation” of the spectator/user in the virtual environment. Self-representation in virtual worlds, in fact, deals not only with the inscription of the avatar in the visual field, but also with the agent’s proprioception and the sensorimotor feedbacks provided by the technological system. Whereas in the VR cinematic experience a conflict between the transparency of the agent’s body and his/her proprioceptive opacity arises, in the VR gaming immersive experience both the avatar partial visibility and the sensorimotor feedback offer a bodily ground to the players’ agency and, consequently, an effective embodied engagement.