Experiencing Virtual Worlds: Observation to Co-Creation

Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. xiii + 399 pp.

Marie-Laure Ryan's new book can be regarded as both an expansion of and a complement to her groundbreaking 1991 study Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. It is an expansion insofar as it extends the domain of phenomena discussed from traditional print literature to a variety of narratives in other media, such as amusement parks, rituals, drama, hypertext, and Virtual Reality (VR), the last two being of course the new electronic or computer-based media. At the same time, the ontology of nonactual worlds, which was a principal theme of the first book, is now complemented by a comprehensive theory of the ways and modes in which we can and often do experience these worlds. In this two-pronged approach, Ryan follows in the footsteps of such distinguished phenomenologists as Mikel Dufrenne (1953) and Roman Ingarden (1931, 1968). The author's goal to provide a "phenomenology of art experiencing" (2) is achieved via a series of logical steps, even though the book itself is organized according to media and not according to these steps.

The first step consists of an outline of the constitutive conditions and basic varieties of the narrative worlds one encounters in each medium, from print to VR, correlated with the basic features of the underlying medium itself. Next comes a general theory of the ways in which we experience narrative worlds—between the extremes of immersion (feeling as if we are members of the displayed or signified fictional domain) and interactivity (self-aware or un-self-aware engagement with or manipulation of the signifiers that give rise to the corresponding fictional domain). This theory is followed by a careful correlation among media, their basic varieties, and the kind(s) of art experiencing they enable or are most conducive to. The final stage defines Ryan's ideal mode of art experiencing—namely, maximum simultaneous interaction with and immersion in a work of art—explains the reasons why VR is the medium most conducive to it, and considers how far this ideal can be achieved in print literature.

The book's jacket copy states that it "draws on several disciplinary traditions" and that it is "characterised by encyclopedic richness and technical precision." This is absolutely true and presents the reviewer with a strategic problem: how can one adequately deal with such a comprehensive, condensed, and innovative book in the short space of a review? My solution is to sacrifice almost all details of the discussion (although God is said to be in the details) and focus entirely on the book's key concepts, basic assumptions, and overall discursive design as it moves from print narrative to VR, concluding with a few critical observations and queries.

Ryan's implicit initial premise is that all works of art in all media are semiotic objects. They consist of a represented domain or world—which contains locations, time frames, entities, and in narrative, also changes of state—and of the means of the domain's representation, whose specific nature depends on the medium utilized. For Ryan, the essence and goal alike of art is the creation of alternative worlds. Her aesthetics has an unabashed Aristotelian ring to it: art is first and foremost representational, seeking both to create worlds semiotically and to create in the art experiencer the illusion of "being there" in time and place and of being concerned with the occurrent action.

Works of art are virtual in two senses. First, the domains and entities they project are nonactual, forming not an addition to actuality but rather an alternative to it. Second, the represented domains are nonautonomous ontologically: they are rooted in, and depend essentially on, the complex signifier that gives rise to them, its nature and particular structure. More than that, the structure of signifiers (the "text" in any medium...