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Typically,
ideas about the application of virtual realities have neglected
to consider their affect upon the spectating of sports. In the
same sense that one may consider television to have radicalised
spectatorism by providing wider opportunities for people to experience
events and by separating the spectator from the event (Shergold,
1979), simulation realities may be argued as presenting
the same degree of radicalised spectating. Hemphill (1995) describes
how VR head-cameras could be worn by spectators that would enable
total immersion spectating where the spectator could (virtually)
experience the performance of the athlete as if performing for
him/her self. Less radically, greater interactivity between the
spectator and the event would allow the spectator to direct the
performance that he/she observes, choosing camera angles, zoom
length, and replay. The "revisioning" (Hemphill, 1995) possibilities
for VR are many, and describe circumstances that would affect
the athlete's as well as the spectator's experiences of sport.
For example, it is implicit within projections about VR that athletes
of the future would not even need to attend events but would be
able to compete from virtual booths. Walser (1991) describes a
theatrical interpretation of sporting experience and considers
that "cyberspace is fundamentally a theatrical medium" (p.51).
On such an understanding, sports are described as events within
which persons can experience their bodies and confront their embodiment.
Cyberspace provides an environment where such embodiment can take
place and where it cannot help but be juxtaposed to the embodiment
of sports, and as having ambitions to be indistinguishable from
sporting activities. Thus, virtual reality presents fresh ideas
about what it means to say that one is active, mobile in space,
and participating in sports and imply a reforming of what constitutes
sports and bodies.
Also
of significance for sports, though not requiring quite so advanced
technology is the less immersing VR of video technology, which can
provide a “third eye” (Duncan, Thorpe and Fitzpatrick, 1996, p.22)
to the officiating of sporting events. Recognisably different from
the implications of virtual reality, this technology causes concerns
over whether the innovation will help or hinder the particular sport.
Whilst offering a more reliable decision to be made with respect
to officiating, it might be argued that using video re-plays of
controversial decisions would undermine the officials or may interrupt
the 'flow' of the game. Thus, it is arguable whether such negative
effects of the innovation are admissible when they enable competitions
where no controversial judgements are made. With such technology,
no longer would the situation arise where one team felt they had
lost (indeed, where history had been made) because of a bad officiating
decision, since the video evidence would settle any dispute. Comparable
to other ideas about using computer technology in sports is the
implicated re-description of the sport experience. Such ideas describe
the effects of athletes becoming isolated, coaches becoming redundant,
and officials becoming undermined, all because of supposedly beneficial
technologies. Needless to say, the benefit of these technologies
is far from clear and must be brought under the scrutinization of
sports ethicists, so that it becomes clearer whether the altering
effects of these technologies is at all desirable. If it were possible
to entirely simulate sporting environments, there would be no need
for athletes to travel to compete, no need for a sports arena. Highly
sophisticated ergometers could simply replicate the competition
environments. Thus, we might envisage cyclists within a cycling
booth, sitting on a real bicycle, not too different from high-tech
exercise bicycles. The bicycle is not actually moving anywhere,
but the input of the cyclists efforts is digitized giving a representation
of how well the athlete is doing. Again, similar to current technology,
this can be placed alongside similar data belonging to other athletes
in the race. A similar construction can be achieved with other activities,
such as sprinting, jumping, throwing, even golf (which, Stephen
Van Esh, by all accounts, is as much a sport as many of the activities
within the Olympics. Using a dictionary to define what constitutes
a sport will not help you! Dictionaries only give common usage;
they do not define things. I will save the critique for a further
article. For now, let me give a more useful definition of a sport
that I heard once from someone very wise. Quite simply, a sport
is anything that makes the back pages of a newspaper.)
For
each of these sports, the technology exists in varying capacities
and promises to become far greater. For some sports, virtual reality
is even being used as a training mechanism for elite competition.
Perhaps the most notable example is the US Bobsled team, which utilised
a simulation environment to experience the track they would face
at the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998 (Huffman & Hubbard, 1996).
Where spectatorship is increasingly comprised by remote viewers,
the purpose of a 'real' sporting location becomes nonsense. If it
is possible to construct a realistic simulation, where competition
is still taking place, then sport can offer much more to the viewer
– new environments that can be constructed to varying degrees of
difficulty and imagine, and also where the competition, the contest
of the event is still very real.
It is
significant to recognise the hypothetical nature of many of these
discussions, acknowledging that, for such circumstances to transpire,
virtual reality must fulfill its promises. Yet, this is not to regard
the ideas as irrelevant to current sporting experience. Rather,
whilst real boundaries must be crossed before anything close to
some of the above ideas are realised (Walser, 1991), the circumstances
that these ideas describe must be credited as logical extensions
of current tendencies within technological advancements, which must
be anticipated as occurring within these times. Furthermore, analyses
of such technologies – sooner, rather than later - will allow a
more informed knowledge of their significance and may permit a more
rational decision about their use.
References
Duncan,
J., Thorpe, M. and Fitzpartick, P. (1996). Sport on the Verge
of the Third-Eye Era. The Guardian. London: 22.
Helsel,
S. K. and J. P. Roth, Eds. (1991). Virtual Reality: Theory, practice
and promise. London, Meckler.
Hemphill,
D. A. (1995). “Revisioning Sport Spectatorism.” Journal of the
Philosophy of Sport XXII: 48-60.
Huffman,
R. K. and M. Hubbard (1996). A Motion based virtual reality training
simulator for bobsled drivers. The Engineering of Sport: Proceedings
of an International Conference in Sheffield. S. Haake. Netherlands,
Balkema Publishing: 195-203.
Shergold,
P. R. (1979). The Growth of American Spectator Sport: A Technological
Perspective. In R. Cashman and M. McKernan (Eds). Sport in History
Queensland, University of Queesnland.
Walser,
R. (1991). Elements of a Cyberspace Playhouse. In S. K. Helsel
and J. P. Roth. (Eds). Virtual Reality: Theory, Practice and Promise.
London, Meckler.
Copyright
© 2001 Andy Miah. All Rights Reserved.
Andy Miah is interested in sport and ethics. andymiah@hotmail.com
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