VR Porn is Art

Image Credit: WankzVR

What would life be without art? Music, poetry, painting, sculpture, cinema, drama, and even dancing are the activities that delight our senses when we perceive them, but also enrich our lives and make us feel better about everything when we perform them. I suppose that we can all agree that art is much more than a mere and seemingly-insignificant hobby, but much more of a way to survive our daily routines without losing our mental sanity. It’s the reason why we carry on with hope and the kind of spiritual aspiration that keeps us alive. We love artists and we love performing or creating an art of our own. But can we affirm that VR porn is a form of art?

Well, in order to make such a statement, we need to set some criteria and find the closest commonly-agreed form of art that it resembles. Before proceeding to other more specific discussions, first we must define VR porn and identify its particular characteristics: as a branch of the virtual reality technology, we can affirm that it’s a branch or genre that portrays adult content. This content, in terms of how it is produced, can be either filmed or digitally-produced.

And it is exactly this dichotomy that sets apart the two artistic dimensions of VR Porn: it can be an artistic performance in front of a camera or live audience (much like a filmed Shakespearean play), or it can be the product of our own imagination and fantasy. For example, you can enjoy a filmed content with a beauty like Dakota Skye who plays the role of a horny arts student, or you can create your own ideal fantasy sexual partner (though made out of polygons) in VR Titties, then have intercourse with the special assistance of smart synchronized sex toys.

Art is all around us and VR porn is no exception. We get to witness art through an artistic framework. Image Credit: WankzVR

There is also a differentiation between the various genres of VR porn, in terms of what is portrayed: accordingly, there is the first-person sub-genre (in which you take part to the action) and the voyeur sub-genre (where you get to watch the action like you’re in the same room). The former creates the impression that you’re partaking to the sexual act, while the latter turns you into a spectator. They’re both really great, but offer varying experiences, and immerse the VR headset user into a different kind of virtual realm. Ultimately, it all becomes a matter of personal preference if you want to be an active participant or a mere observer.

1. On Art, Life, and Reality

Much like Michelangelo Antonioni’s counter-cultural hit “Blow Up”, the VR porn consumer perceives a reality of its own through a lens: in the case of the film’s protagonist David Bailey it’s a photo camera, and in our cases we use the VR headset. The captured images look so real that we might as well be unable to tell them apart from reality – but the confusion can only appear if we mix reality with the virtual medium, and transfer facts and elements from one onto the other (just like the film’s protagonist believes that the murder he captures on camera is real, but feels unsure up until the moment he revisits the scene).

Yet another cinematic reference would be Alfred Hitchcock’s “Read Window”, where James Stewart plays a temporarily-disabled photographer who has to stand still and observe the world outside from the lens of his camera. Much like VR porn, utilizing the device allows him to see a side of reality that he would normally observe only if he was physically close. The virtual reality headset transports us into time and space, allows us to witness past events in a very visually-believable manner, and temporarily tricks our senses into believing that the perceptions are real.

Pole dancing and striptease, as the more sensual branches of choreography, are forms of art. Image Credit: VRBangers.

After choosing two realistic movie depictions and drawing parallels to technological devices that are used as fundamental means, we can affirm that VR porn is definitely an extension of life and reality. And by logical deduction, if art is the representation of life and imagination, thus incorporating the perceived reality, then VR porn us certainly a form of art. But then again, who are the artists?

2. On the Artists of VR Porn

VR porn films are recorded performances of acting on camera. The roles are taken up by professional sex workers who receive a script and fulfill certain pre-determined demands. However, much like the enactment of a scene from “Hamlet”, different directors and actors can take the same bit, turn it around, and deliver it in various original ways. The reason why VR porn works and can perpetually present the same setting and plot is given by the fact that the performers are diverse and project a different kind of charisma.

Giving the performance a personal touch with gestures and actions that nobody else can replicate is in itself a form of art. Image Credit: HologirlsVR

If Kagney Linn Karter plays the role of a perverted girlfriend who gets turned on by the simple presence of her man, then Sasha Leigh can do it just as well, but also add a personal touch to it. If opera demands a high degree of imitation and there is a right way and a wrong way of performing, then VR Porn offers much more freedom in terms of choosing the approach to the scene. As long as the purpose is fulfilled, the performers can add a few words that aren’t on the script, delight the viewer with cheeky glances, and even display more passion than usual. These factors and indicators are certainly crucial for the final quality of the film.

VR porn is a spontaneous yet carefully-produced form of art that relies on intimate relations between two or more performers: even though they share no emotional attachment, they’re supposed to display gestures of affection, lust for each other’s body, and please any lustful voyeur with a curious eye. The spontaneous ones are the performers themselves, while the ones who ensure that the scene is much more than an ad-hoc theatrical play are the cameramen, producers and directors who deliver the content to the masses by making the best out of it. Polishing and making the best out of a performance is an art in itself.

3. On the VR Porn Viewer as an Artist

But here’s the bolder statement: the VR porn consumer is also an artist, since he interacts with the medium he is provided and makes the best experience out of it. How is it different from playing a guitar or moving around with a video camera? Well, the art you produce is personal, and for your own enjoyment. It’s just like inventing a new dance move that you will never do in public, or writing a song that soothes your pain, but nobody will ever hear it.

The way you choose to enjoy Victoria Chase’s striptease and lap dance is subject to your free artistic will. Image Credit: HoloGirlsVR/VRPorn.com.

Though the means are limited by the movement of your head, VR porn allows you to be the artist of your own pornographic masterpiece and you can watch the same piece over and over, yet approach it differently each time.

If we refer to the CGI branch of porn, with apps such as VR Titties, then we can all agree that the art is taken to a whole new level: you create your own ideal partner, your own environment, and through the hand movement tracking the Oculus, PS 4 VR, and Vive provide, you can also alter the nature of the content by the way you use your hands. What is also special about CGI VR porn is that you get to choose exactly what, when and where happens: you can get your dream partner to sit in any position at any moment you please, in any provided environment.

The ways you can produce art might sound limiting, but we have to remember that music as we know it has only 7 notes you can use, the rainbow has only 7 colors, yet millions of masterpieces have been created by through creativity and ingenuity. All we, the VR porn users, have to do is be creative with out approaches and lay the foundations of a special kind of art, for our own enjoyment.

4. Conclusion

VR porn is an interactive medium and we should all manipulate it in order to get our kind of enjoyment – which is also one of the primary purposes of art. Since it combines acting and other performing arts, writing for its scripts and settings, cinema-esque production for both creating the set end producing the filmed content, and music, it can certainly be affirmed that VR porn is a sum of well-established arts that are meant to tingle our senses and produce enjoyment. However, users of this genre are not simple consumers, but also artisans of their own pleasuring activities: if we write a poem in our secret diary to make us feel better and always cherish a moment, and we also sing tunes that come from our imagination, then we also create unique experiences through the VR set, in order to maximize our pleasure. At the end of the day, the headset and the software are just molds that wait for us to be sculpted and get turned into a masterpiece we enjoy and cherish.

VR porn is art and we are its most important artists.