I’ve been reading some texts about interactive media for my Digital Theory and Aesthetics course. The first was Representation, Enaction, and the Ethics of Simulation by Simon Penny and the second was Seven Ways of Misunderstanding Interactive Art by Erkki Huhtamo

The first text discusses the use of simulations in the military and otherwise for ‘body training,’ metaphors in simulators, simulation constraints

In a section about metaphorisation I found this quote that I liked:

Even in immersive stereoscopic environments (such as the CAVE) the user is navigating not a real space, but a pictorial representation of a space, according to certain culturally established pictorial conventions of spatial representation (such as perspective) established centuries ago for static images.

There, that’s related to whatever I was saying in my last blog post, something about accurate representations of what the human eye sees. Perspective and stereoscopy are established metaphors for spatial awareness and depth perception.

The text also discusses how these simulations can unconsciously train users in response to images that appear to them. What we are creating with The Amnesia Project is not going to be a simulation, but there will be the chance for users to respond and manipulate the images generated. Could this be used to train users? Could amnesia sufferers learn to adapt unconsciously using logging and simulation tools?