ParaHuman: Enhanced Human Perception and Augmented Physics in Virtual Spaces.

By

Richard K. Merritt

Literary and cinematic science-fiction has long offered a prescient glimpse into society's possible futures. Over the last several years computer gaming, console gaming and computer art have added to this complex network. It has been argued that recent advents in physics modeling, coupled with socially challenging content, have increased the dynamism and viscerality of experiences in virtual spaces.

The expanding computer game market (in 2001 U.S. consumers spent 9.4 billion dollars on computer gaming hardware and software, an increase of 43 percent from 2000) has challenged the market and cultural dominance of the box-office. With this challenge we see an increase interrelationship, a dynamic exchange, between various forms of time-based narrative media. A chief focal point of these changes in the computer art, gaming, cinematic and literary science fiction and comic book media constellation, is the drive to augment and enhance human physical and perceptual capabilities. Inspired by the computational aesthetics of physics modeling in computer and console games as well as the dynamic content of comic books, cinema, and literary science fiction, individuals have been exploring the limits of human physical abilities as well augmenting those abilities through artificial means. With a keen eye to the aesthetics of virtual spaces(particularly games),augmented human abilities and an awareness of sometimes challenging content, humanity has been traversing the border between simulacra and the material. Consider the following:

· Are there inherent paradigms in physics modeling that inspire real world duplication?

· What cultural characteristics contribute to this?

· How are aesthetic considerations made in virtual spaces with respect to both physics modeling and challenging content?

· What, if any, are the inherent dangers of this amalgam of immersion, God-like powers, seduction and technological advancement?