SEMIOTICS OF DISTANCES IN VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED ENVIRONMENTS

The interpretations of emerging media as vir- tual and augmented reality debate the theme of distance to highlight aspects of immersive mediation: from the rarefaction of enunciative and referential distance, to that which leads to the solipsistic isolation of the user behind the screen. By tracing the semantic articulation of these interpretations, the contribution aims to place emphasis on the way these media remedy the concept of distance by investing it with new meaning. In particular, we will focus the illusory cancellation of the distance that occurs during an immersive experience and the establishment of a critical distance in the user, which can be linked to the emergence of a meta experiential competence, by means of the installation of an interstitial device such as the prosthesis and the interface.