Distributed embodiment : real presence in virtual bodies

This chapter discusses the notion of mediated presence, the feeling of being experientially present in a virtual or mixed reality, and describes how this form of virtuality is developing into “distributed embodiment.” When we experience strong mediated presence, our experience is that the technology has become part of the self. Distributed embodiment describes how our sense of being present in the world is becoming separated from our sense of ownership of a particular body, through the development of new approaches to deploying the technologies of virtualization that give rise to what is known as “mediated presence,” or “telepresence.” The possibility for distributed embodiment comes from the physical-virtual nature of familiar, first-person embodiment. We move from a sense of presence in the physical world, though a mediated sense of presence in virtuality, to the mediated sense of being in the physical-virtual world in another body than our own.