The virtual world of "My Language and I

This VR experience is to a large extent individual: what happens in the course of the game depends on what the individual players do in each case.

It is no longer read from beginning to end

The Virtual Reality Project "My language and me" was launched on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ilse Aichinger's birth and in recognition of her critical understanding of language. With the VR experiment, author Sarah Elena Müller and her transdisciplinary team raise questions about the reading, interpretation and function of literary and programmed worlds.

Virtual reality is a novelty for dealing with literature. Suddenly it is possible to dive directly into a text. Claudia Keller thinks this is an understandable development. The literature and cultural studies scholar is researching how our reading processes are changing at the University of Zurich.

"There is this traditional understanding that you read a text linearly from beginning to end and thus understand it 'correctly'," says Claudia Keller. Digitalisation is changing this understanding.

Today, links can be used to quickly create new connections. As a result, we are moving from the traditional understanding of texts as something "linear" to a more spatial perception of reading.

In the head of the performer

However, virtual reality does not necessarily give us more direct access to the text, says Claudia Keller. Although there is the fantasy that if you immerse yourself in literary texts, you can look directly into the head of another person, she says, virtual reality does not necessarily give us direct access to the text.

That is certainly possible with such a VR project. But here you can look less into the head of the narrator. Rather, you look into the head of another interpreter, says Claudia Keller.

"My Language and I" thus does not allow us to experience Ilse Aichinger's text directly, but the way Sarah Elena Müller and her team imagine the world of this text.

Source: SRF / sarahelenamueller / vimeo