“Zeroth: The self-awareness sense embodied by facing the coexistence of the physical and virtual bodies in the mirror” by Miura, Uchida, Kawamura and Zempo
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Title:
- Zeroth: The self-awareness sense embodied by facing the coexistence of the physical and virtual bodies in the mirror
Session/Category Title: Digitizing Routines and Rituals of Subjectivities
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Abstract:
“Itadakimasu” is a gesture performed before a meal in Japan. It is meant to express gratitude for the cycle of life and the upstream supply chain. Still, it is also meant to express gratitude for the awareness of the boundary between self and others before eating a piece of life and using it as one’s own flesh and blood. This ritual, which we all perform almost unconsciously without question, is a ritual that has become customary in recent years thanks to the invention of the radio, which allows us to share the same topics of conversation even when we are far away from each other.
Today, physical reality and the XR/metaverse, here and there, are being connected without seams. As a result, the boundaries between oneself and others, oneself and the world have become blurred, and the loss of the “self” recognized by each living in this society is not far away. In the present age, when anyone can easily make discrete phase transitions anywhere, we believe it is necessary to perform appropriate rituals to recognize the boundaries between self and others, rather than just connecting without difficulty blindly. We sense and recognize all signals from the world through our five senses. It is a recursive structure in which one perceives one’s existence for the first time as a contrast to the world one smells, and one can sense the world only through one’s existence. In this art Zeroth, the user confronts himself in physical reality and himself in XR simultaneously. This experience allows the user to consider the appropriate ritual actions.
