ABSTRACT: Nulltopia is disjunction in space, the non-space between one space and another. Such disjunction becomes important in the ontology of imaginary worlds, whose thresholds are not fully traversable. Some knowledge and some exigencies transfer across the boundaries of an image, but some do not, remaining asymmetrically bound, extant only on one side – potentiating scenarios like starving while eating Minecraft cookies. This theoretical study presents an exercise in the metaphysics of digital games, defining nulltopia in reference to dreams, the theatrical proscenium, vehicle windows, video screens, loudspeakers, and interactive consoles; and contextualizing nulltopia relative to immersion. Developing from a syncretic combination of movement and depiction, the video screen extends a technology of imagination that already existed in component forms. Partially separating slow reality from fast imaginary, nulltopia affords both discourse and addiction to the ‘etiolated actual’, in contrast to an imagined, perfectly immersive, ‘society without screens’,the bounds of whose world become imperceptible.
KEY WORDS: digital game, imagination, immersion, nulltopia, ontology, perception of motion, space, virtual reality.
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