Friday 11 AM section
I had no idea what to expect when visiting the Cave. Who knew that on our campus there was this space where four screens (three walls plus the floor) can provide one with a virtual reality experience? I found the concept behind the Cave fascinating. However, I wouldn't want to spend much of my time in the Cave because of the power I have to relinquish. While I found that the experience was a great chance to explore this technology, my interaction with this space made me feel more constrained.
I felt restricted immediately. The small space was made to feel even smaller when the curtains were closed behind us. In addition, the fact that five of us plus the leader were placed in the Cave at once did not make me feel completely comfortable letting loose in the 3D reality.
The final piece we interacted with, the PIM program, placed an interesting turn on the idea of control. In the other pieces, the person with the tracking glasses was considered the "driver" because they were in control of how the group navigated the space and could experience more than the rest of us with just the normal glasses. However, for this program, the person with the tracking glasses actually did not know what was fully going on. The person could select a form of torture and could then proceed to deliver more. However, the person could not actually see what was being done. Any time they tried to look at the image, it would disappear. The rest of us, the audience, could see these images until PIM finally dies. It made me think: why was this kind of experimenting okay in virtual 3D? Why are we so willing to blindly follow instructions in these types of programs?
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