Based on a nuanced understanding of immersion and sense of presence as two key aesthetic effects that the application of virtual reality to cinema is believed to innovate, this paper develops the concept of synthetic vision as fundamental to understanding the visual experience of VR media, particularly VR documentaries. The concept contends that viewers’ experience in VR is based on two visions that seemingly contradict each other: first, a disembodied vision that transports them to a simulated world, and second, an (...) embodied vision guaranteed by the freedom to control kinesthetic movement and direction of gaze. This serves to advance the idea that immersion and SoP are not unified but rather multifaceted concepts premised on a nuanced understanding of the varying relationships between the technological system of VR, its media content, and its user. For the concept of synthetic vision points to the paradoxical coexistence of viewers’ presence in the virtual world and their structural absence from the world that lays the groundwork for their immersive experience. By classifying three generic categories of contemporary VR documentaries, and by examining the aesthetic and ethical underpinnings VR brings to each of them, I argue that it hinges upon what kind of cinematic conventions and genres are remediated to determine the effective synthesis of the two visions. The varying effects of synthetic vision in the three subgenres of VR documentary stress that immersion and SoP have different political and ethical consequences of media witnessing. In the conclusion, I recapitulate multiple implications that the concept of synthetic vision has in regards to both the studies on VR and the recently flourishing investigation into cinematic VR artifacts. (shrink)

The combination of COVID-19 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought an unprecedented new normal, which has affected all aspects of human life, including religious activities. As a consequence, church mission and different ministries have found themselves more dependent on media. Furthermore, the convergent digital technology continually develops augmented reality and virtual reality, in which churches are planted and continue to carry out their mission and ministries. Although virtual reality churches are new mission frontiers in the digital age, there are (...) several theological issues from the conventional perspective of church ministry and mission. This paper aims to address the controversial theological issues and reflect on them from an ecclesiological perspective to explore a theological possibility to overcome the issues and to justify their mission and ministries in virtual reality. (shrink)

Second Life, a virtual world, has been heralded by some scholars and transhumanists as a sacred, “heavenly” space. Through detailed ethnographic work on Buddhist religious spaces in Second Life, this article argues instead that just as in actual life, virtual life is comprised of both sacred and profane spaces. By demonstrating different types of Buddhist spaces, community-practice-oriented and individual-practice-oriented, and the meaning that these spaces hold for practitioners, readers come to understand that the sacrality in Second Life is just as (...) contingent and constructed as it is in the actual, physical world. (shrink)