Touring the ‘World Picture’: virtual reality and the tourist gaze

ABSTRACTThe proliferation of VR travel documentaries in the new era of head-mounted-displays connects to desires for temporal and spatial mobility that have previously been realized in photography, stereoscopy and cinema. Continuing trends begun in Heidegger’s ‘Age of the World Picture,’ these documentaries promise to fulfil utopian aspirations to conceive and grasp the world as a picture with an emphasis on exotic views and pleasurable spectacle. They also attempt to realize Andre Bazin’s prophecies regarding the emergence of a Total Cinema which would allow viewers to move beyond this ocular emphasis and into a fully immersive, multisensorial engagement with representation. In this context, VR offers the possibility of creating virtual experiences that the tourist-viewer accepts as substitute for physical visitation to inaccessible sites. At the same time, VR has also been used as a marketing tool to promote traditional tourism to certain destinations. In each case, VR experiences operates as both repla...