Virtual Dwelling and the Phenomenology of Experience

Museum Encounters between Self and World

Bibliographic Data

ID20249014
AuthorsCatherine Palmer (0000-0002-4680-6558, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume12
Issue6
Pages148
Publication date2023-12-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHumanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/h12060148
OpenAlexW4389624769
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited52

This article provides an anthropologically derived philosophy of the nature of experience in relation to the lifeworld of virtual tourism. Framed around Martin Heidegger and Tim Ingold’s concept of dwelling, I interrogate what the implications of a virtually derived experience of tourism might be for how we understand what experience means and by extension the experience of being human-in-the-world; in effect, what it means to ‘experience’ virtual tourism. I illustrate my argument by focusing on extended reality (XR) technology within the context of three museums, since museum experiences are increasingly mediated by varying forms of XR. I am interested in what the virtual-tourism-world of a museum might reveal about the experience of being human, experience that I refer to as virtual dwelling. The museums are the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and the Louvre, both of which are located in Paris, France, and the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex in FL, USA. These examples provide a snapshot into the merging, blending or overlaying of the physical with the virtual. In other words, the inseparability of virtual, person and world. Drawing from Heidegger, I argue that the significance of technology does not lie in its instrumentality as a resource or as a means to an end. Its significance comes from its capacity to un-conceal or reveal a ‘real’ world of relations and intentions through which humans take power over reality. The nature of experience, as virtual dwelling revealed, concerns the relationship between humans and the natural world, understandings of cultural value and cultural wealth and notions of human exceptionalism. Ultimately, what technologically modified experiences of a virtual-tourism-world reveal is experience as virtual dwelling, experience of the embeddedness of being human-in-the-world

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Epistemology · Geography · Lifeworld · Social science · Sociology · Tourism · Virtual reality · Visitor pattern · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Philosophy · Psychology · Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts