Call for Papers
Virtual Sex: Pornography, Immersion, and Erotic Environments
Issue of the online open access journal “AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images”
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/198
Edited by Ihsan Asman, Giovanna Maina, and Roberto P. Malaspina
Deadline for submission of full articles: March 15, 2025
In a letter published in 1969 on Architectural Design, Donald Kenzotaki from the Bio-Cybernetic Institute of Tokaida, Japan, details the marvels of his research team’s latest invention. This ground-breaking device, known as “Cybersex,” is engineered to record the multimodal expressions of a sexual encounter, store them on a hard disk, and reproduce the experience for distribution to anyone seeking a multisensory encounter. Users would be able to visit a cybersex studio, select their preferred recording, and initiate a fully immersive experience. The complex computer system would respond dynamically to the user’s body, adapting the visual, tactile, and olfactory stimuli of the recording to ensure an immediate and erotically effective experience.
A contemporary reader of Architectural Design at the time might have reacted with amusement and disbelief, recognizing that this account was, in fact, part of Cosmorama – a satirical column that playfully speculated on the future potential of emerging technologies. Nevertheless, this fictional description serves as an early articulation of what would become central to a “sexual futurology”: the utopian desire to combine technology and sexuality in ways that transcend “physical” limitations. Kenzotaki’s “Cybersex” anticipated several topoi that would come to define the discourse on mediated sex in the following decades. Concepts such as technical reproducibility, complete multisensoriality, immediacy, and telecommunication have remained at the core of discursive experiments, cinematic portrayals, and rhetorical promises. This set of new technologies claims to enhance sexual experiences with increasing efficacy and erotic satisfaction, combining the rhetoric of “new” media with the indexical instability of the pornographic product.
Among the devices that seem to most effectively embody these long-standing aspirations is Virtual Reality (VR). Since its most recent technological re-emergence (2014-15) (Evans 2018), VR has brought forth new possibilities for both the mediation of sex and the porn industry. Indeed, virtual technologies have created immersive forms that produce both social experiences – such as multi-user sex games – and pure “simulation,” as in the case of pornographic audio- visual products. Most pornographic materials conceived for VR to date are based on a form of virtual augmentation of the POV (point-of-view) subgenre: even though they limit themselves to 180° or 360° videos rather than actual interactive environments, they integrate the strong agency of the first-person shot with the visceral capacities of the body transfer process (Slater et al. 2010). The success of virtual forms of pornography raises urgent issues regarding the aesthetic consequences that such images have on visuality and bodily self-perception: on the one hand, VRredefines the composition qualities and directing strategies of the pornographic image (Evans 2020); on the other, it constructs new horizons of social and political agency (Paré et al. 2019; Wang 2021). VR porn may therefore constitute complex biocultural dynamics concerning the politics of bodies and the gendered perceptions of the self (Tacikowski et al. 2020; Zhang and Juvrud 2024). Following a somatechnical (Sullivan and Murray 2014) perspective – stressing the co-constitution between bodies, technologies, and images – VR pornography seems to “excite” with particular effectiveness the primary potentialities and problematics of environmental images (Pinotti 2021), especially in relation to intersectional identity proprioception.
In addition to VR, other technologies like AI (Viola and Voto 2023), haptic feedback systems (Ley and Rambukkana 2021), and teledildonics (Reinghold 1990, Liberati 2017) are transforming how sexuality and intimacy are experienced and represented.
In this issue of AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images, we invite contributions that critically engage with the intersections of immersion, technology, and sexuality through various methodologies. While VR is a primary focus, we welcome papers that explore other immersive technologies, including AR (Augmented Reality), XR (Extended Reality), AI-driven environments, and social VR, to expand the discussion on how digital environments shape and redefine sexual experiences, pornographies and identities.
Contributions might relate to the following topics:
- Genealogies, media archaeologies, and imaginations of sex and immersive pornography. How technically mediated sex and immersive pornographies have been imagined in the past?
- Social, political, and identity consequences of erotic-pornographic virtual simulation. What social and political effects arise from virtual erotic simulations? How do these simulations impact identity formation?
- Identity performance in Social Virtual Reality. How does social VR influence the performance of identity, gender and race? What opportunities or constraints does it create for exploring fluid identities? How do queer communities use immersive technologies to challenge normative sexualities?
- Post-porn perspectives and virtual technologies. How do virtual technologies contribute to post-porn aesthetics? What new forms of sexual representation do they enable that challenge mainstream porn?
- Analysis of VR porn production, directing, and distribution strategies. What are the key challenges and innovations in VR porn production and distribution? How do these strategies differ from traditional pornographic works?
- Political-legal issues: virtual harassment and consent in digital spaces. How do legal frameworks address virtual harassment and consent in immersive environments? What new regulations are needed to ensure ethical interactions in VR?
- Ethical implications of artificial intelligence in virtual pornography. What ethical concerns arise from the use of AI in virtual pornography? How do AI- generated erotic contents affect issues of consent and privacy?
Contributions must adhere to the Journal’s editorial guidelines (https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/about/submission). Manuscripts that fail to do so will not be considered for peer review and will be desk-rejected.
No payment from the authors will be required.
If motivated by the nature of the research, word count for manuscripts destined to this issue may be extended to a maximum of 10.000 words (footnotes included – final reference list excluded).
Please sign up / login to the Journal’s webpage and upload your complete manuscript here:
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/about/submissions
In case you have any question before submission, please contact:
Roberto P. Malaspina: roberto.malaspina@unimi.it
Ihsan Asman: i.asman@hotmail.com
Giovanna Maina: giovanna.maina@unito.it
REFERENCES
Conte, Pietro. 2024. “Rape or ‘rape’? Questioning the boundaries between the physical and the virtual.” Studi di Estetica, accepted. https://doi.org/10.7413/1825864668.
Evans, Leighton. 2020. “‘The Embodied Empathy Revolution…’: Pornography and the Contemporary State of Consumer Virtual Reality.” Porn Studies 7 (2): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2020.1777894.
Evans, Leighton. 2019. The Re-Emergence of Virtual Reality. Routledge.
Ley, Madelaine, and Nathan Rambukkana. 2021.“Touching at a Distance: Digital Intimacies, Haptic Platforms, and the Ethics of Consent.” Science and Engineering Ethics 27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00338-1.
Liberati, Nicola. 2017. “Teledildonics and New Ways of ‘Being in Touch’: A Phenomenological Analysis of the Use of Haptic Devices for Intimate Relations.” Science and Engineering Ethics 23 (3): 801–823. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-016-9827-5.
Paré, Dylan, Pratim Sengupta, Scout Windsor, John Craig, and Matthew Thompson, “Queering Virtual Reality: A Prolegomenon.” In Critical, Transdisciplinary and Embodied Approaches in STEM Education. Advances in STEM Education, edited by Pratim Sengupta, Marie-Claire Shanahan, and Beaumie Kim. Springer.
Pinotti, Andrea. 2021. Alla soglia dell’immagine: Da Narciso alla realtà virtuale. Einaudi.
Rheingold, Howard. 1990. “Teledildonics: Reach out and touch someone.” Mondo 2000 2: 52–54.
Slater, Mel, Bernhard Spanlang, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives, and Olaf Blanke. 2010. “First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality.” PLoS ONE 5 (5): e10564. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010564.
Murray, Samantha and Nikki Sullivan, eds. 2014. Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies. Ashgate.
Tacikowski, Pawel, Jens Fust, and H. Henrik Ehrsson. 2020.“Fluidity of Gender Identity Induced by Illusory Body-Sex Change.” Scientific Reports 10 (1): 14385. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71467-z.
Viola, Marco and Cristina Voto. 2023. “Designed to Abuse? Deepfakes and the Non-Consensual Diffusion of Intimate Images.” Synthese 201 (1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-04012-2.
Zhang Jingyi and Joshua Juvrud. 2024. “Gender Expression and Gender Identity in Virtual Reality: Avatars, RoleAdoption, and Social Interaction in Vrchat.” Frontiers Virtual Reality 5: 1305758, https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2024.1305758.
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