體知傀儡──談虛擬實境中的身體操偶

Embodied Puppet─Discussing Physical Manipulation in Virtual Reality

近年為虛擬實境作為新興藝術形態的狂飆年代，虛擬實境（Virtual Reality）如何成為讓體驗者的身體成為媒介，將知覺經驗透過科技傳導？又是如何透過VR建立體現化經驗？皆成為研究者關注的面向。本文以跨足當代馬戲（contemporary circus）、舞蹈裝置的藝術家布爾喬亞（Yoann Bourgeois）與電影導演合作的混合實境作品《賦格VR》（Fugue VR）展開討論，探尋展現儀式性的現場表演如何藉由編導後的舞蹈影像結合混合實境，為觀者創造虛擬的身體運動感知──如失重、暈眩與懸止經驗，而這些經驗又如何回頭形塑體驗者的身體美學。
上世紀法國現象學家梅洛龐蒂將人的身體分為存在於「活的世界」（lived world）與「客觀世界」（objective world）的二元論，提出肉身即是交織兩個世界的體現，然而，在VR的視域之中，「客觀的身體」（objective body）和「立活的身體」（lived body）不僅可同時存在，且藉由藝術性編導數位影像的腳本，使得作為體驗者的傀儡得以藉由「美學身體」的體現化經驗超越原有肉身經驗的限制。本文綜合討論原始舞碼《賦格／蹦床》（2014）與虛擬空間《賦格VR》（2019）再現的兩造場域，並淺談「體現經驗」作為一種嵌合時間和空間的藝術種類，視作當代科技發展下的新興形態學，有其開拓性的知識形式，然而其也引發了科技帶來的相關追問。
筆者試圖比較與作品中原舞者「客觀的身體」及體驗者「立活的身體」中由視覺圖像生成的體現經驗（embodied experience），辯證當代藝術發展因邊界擴張所引動的跨媒介敘事如何因科技的介入提升人的感官經驗及身體延展性，並追問VR技術中生成的身體知覺，如在物理空間和幻象的交織下，可能導致感官錯置、身體代理的矛盾性聯覺經驗。

Virtual reality, or VR, has become one of the most popular emerging art forms in recent years. How has VR transformed the participant’s body into a medium, enabling the perceptual experience to be communicated through technology? Furthermore, how does the agency of VR generate the felt sense of embodiment? For many researchers, these are the questions that need to be addressed. This study examines artist Yoann Bourgeois’mixed reality work Fugue VR, which combines contemporary circus arts and acrobatic art installations, in partnership with film director Michel Reilhac. The goal is to explore how the live performance that features ritualistic movements and the VR video of a choreographed dance are combined to create a mixed reality environment that transports participants into virtual realms of bodily sensations, giving them the experience of momentary weightlessness, vertigo, and suspension, as well as how the participants’embodied aesthetics were reshaped in response to such experiences.
According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), a French phenomenologist of the twentieth century, the human body adapts to the dualistic existence of the lived world and the objective world. He maintained that the corporeal body is the embodiment of the two worlds intertwined. However, in terms of VR vision, the“objective body”and the“lived body”exist synchronously. Furthermore, through their embodied experiences of the“dancer’s body,”participants—who act as puppets—are enabled to transcend their physical limitations through artistically-driven digital image scripting. This study seeks to compare and discuss the two distinct scenarios represented in the original dance piece Fugue/ Trampoline (2014) and the virtual space of Fugue VR (2019). It also aims to provide a rough guide to the“embodied experience”as a genre of art that fuses time and space. Accordingly, as an emerging approach to morphology under contemporary technology, the embodied experience manifests itself in a promising form of knowledge production. However, it still arouses technology-induced questions.
By comparing the dancer’s“objective body”in the existing dance piece with the embodied experience through immersive visual images as an integral part of the participant’s“lived body,”I aim to explore the dialectical dialogue lying in the transmedia storytelling in view of the boundary-pushing development of contemporary art, specifically the role of technology-based interventions in enhancing one’s sensory experiences and body perception. Going further, I intend to investigate how VR-manipulated sensory perception affects the ambivalent synesthetic experiences of sensory mismatch and body replacement, as perceived at the intersections of physical space and illusions.