Understanding Virtual Reality

APPENDIX D

Placeholder, An Artistic Exploration

The Placeholder virtual reality experience is an artistic exploration into new paradigms for interaction and narrative in virtual environments. In this experience two participants don head-mounted displays, embody, or indwell, themselves within the body of one of the various “critters” that inhabit the environment, explore the several places that exist in Placeholder, and leave their mark on the space for others to encounter (FIGURE D-1). Beyond this, Placeholder pushes the common notions about virtual reality, place, play, and self.

FIGURE D-1 A map of the Placeholder world done in a “primitive” ...