The performative role of the body in gamified vision and VR

Starting from Flusser’s intuitions on the role of buttons and how they have modified our images, the article aims to investigate the relationship between the new technologies of the audiovisual world and the body. Using the phenomenon of gamification as a solution to understanding the complex landscape of hybrid media, the categories of interaction and immersion will be examined. The objective of the research is the analysis of the performative interactions of the body immersed in the virtual reality of videogames and software cinema. The phenomenological crisis of the body inaugurated by virtual technologies produces the need to rethink its performative possibilities in an amplified way within the virtual immersion. The scattered body in the image -and not vanished-, within the analyzed virtual contexts, appears as an element of the narrative itself. The consequences of this performance increase are examined here, such as the the author’s disappearance in a strong sense and the weakening of the state of aesthetic contemplation, both results of the gamification of technical images. The article takes advantage of the valuable interview with virtual designer Enea Le Fons for his unique and extended experience in a VR session.