THE OBSCENE DEVICE. ARCHAEOLOGY OF IMMERSIVE PORNOGRAPHIES

This dissertation is devoted to examining the interplay between immersive devices and erotic-pornographic images. Employing a media archaeological approach, the research delves into technologies of the past to shed light on contemporary phenomena. Specifically, the stereoscope, in its various material forms, has served as the focal point of this exploration into erotic archaeology. The initial segment of this study elucidated conceptual frameworks and interpretive paradigms essential for understanding the processes of immersion in the image. Posture and inclination were thus examined both as symbolic forms that co-partecipate in the immersion process and as metaphorical models underlying the transfer of meaning that attributes moral and social qualities to the bodies that perform it and the devices with which they come into contact. Subsequently, the historical evolution of the stereoscopic apparatus and the philosophical discourse surrounding it have been examined. This investigation laid the groundwork for a theoretical trajectory exploring the stereoscopic devices both in their ergonomic conformations and rhetoric communication. This structure was then applied to the more properly erotic-pornographic sphere. This section examined the functioning and compositional strategies of the stereopornographic image, focusing on the second half of the nineteenth century. One of the main aims was to demonstrate the non-coincidental synchronicity between the emergence of these machines of the visible and the definition of the pornographic in the modern sense. Indeed, it has been argued that the ambiguous relationship with technically reproduced reality inaugurated by the stereoscope has contributed to the ever-unstable definition of the ontology of the pornographic, beyond its genealogy related to cinema. In keeping with the intention to propose the most situated analysis possible, we then proceeded to outline the relations – theoretical, scopic, social and political – between the female figure and erotic-immersive spectatorship in the same years, hypothesising a form of female resistance to the paradigms of the male gaze. Finally, the dissertation returned to the present. Maintaining the perspectives used so far – posture and female spectatorship – the final chapter focused on the re-emergence of immersive pornography through Virtual Reality (VR), highlighting its main compositional, aesthetic and political characteristics.