the self is now swaddled in electromagnetic skin.

• +..Experimental


• +..Teeth of the Sea


• +..Alt

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For Thompson, the vampirization of our etheric juices reaches its apogee with the gloves, bodysuits, and head-mounted displays of virtual reality technologies—gear that allows for the total electromagnetic colonization of the energy body and the astral body alike. But while some see the inbreeding of virtual and energetic bodies as perverse, even demonic, others find it can be almost angelic. One of the most evocative and visceral virtual reality technologies to date remains Osmose, a high-end electronic art installation created by the Canadian Char Davies in the mid-1990s. Exploiting the same graphics programs that conjured Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs to life, and running on SGI hardware normally reserved for big-budget science and military simulations, Osmose swallows the participant—suitably swathed in electronic gear—into a sensuous, luminous, and deeply enveloping dreamworld of cloud forests, dark pools, and verdant canopies. Using spatial ambiguity and tricks of light, Osmose conjures up the perceptual high of a walk in the woods; many “immersants” feel at once immaterial and embodied, like angels moving with animal grace. Some immersants emerge from Davies’s dappled and vibrating pixelscape weeping or lingering in trance; others have compared their trips to lucid dreams or out-of-body experiences.
Davis, Erik.