The Taxonomy of Experience: Part 3
A universal language for categorizing IRL and XR experiences.
Additional Sensory Points of View
So far, we have discussed narrative and visual points of view. Visual POV corresponds to one of the five senses: sight. That means that there are four additional senses left: smell, sound, taste and touch. Can—and should—we have points of view that correspond to each of those senses? Absolutely!
While at present some are more common—and more likely—to be used in immersive storytelling, they are all likely to be used in the future. And more of them than you’d think are possible in the present.
Auditory POV
Sound is absolutely being used in XR experiences and immersive audio gives participants the feeling of really being in a space: sounds that would be coming from in front of you sound like they’re in front of you, sounds that would be coming from behind you sound like they’re behind you, etc.
Immersive audio is often used to make a person feel like they’re really in a virtual space. It can also be used to make a person feel like they’re really in an alternate space; the first time I put on Bose AR glasses, the sounds surrounding me were convincingly those of nature—there was a waterfall, birds chirping, trees rustling. If I were to close my eyes, I’d have been convinced I was in a forest. In truth, I was on the Warner Brothers’ lot.
Tactile POV
Those familiar with virtual reality—or even just video games—might be familiar with the phrase “haptic technology” or “haptic feedback.” “Haptic” means relating to the sense of touch and it describes the vibrations you’ve likely felt from video game controllers or race car simulation games. To take things to the next level, Tesla is working on a Ready Player One-style suit. And then, of course, there are companies working on providing virtual touch without any wearable at all.
Olfactory POV
While many think of adding scent to VR as something that will happen in the distant future, the truth is, it’s happening already. Jacquelyn Ford Morie and Simon Niedenthal have created scent devices that can pair with VR, including the scent collar, which I got to test out back in 2017. Here’s how I described the experience to my class:
“You put on a VR headset and the scent collar. And then, you enter a virtual bakery, and when you go and smell a virtual cookie, it actually smells like lemon tart or whatever it is, which is pretty crazy.”
—Eve Weston, in 10 Kick-Ass Careers for Storytellers
The secret is that the computerized collar sprays the scent at just the right moment.
Gustatory POV
Taste might seem like the hardest thing to mimic virtually; then again, if we’ve already conquered virtual smell, taste can’t be far behind! In fact, in 2018 researchers demonstrated that simply heating and cooling the tongue can simulate a variety of tastes. The digitization of taste is not impossible. But while we’re waiting for that to happen, virtual reality experiences are already using a clever hack to provide “virtual taste” experiences.
“I did Wolves in the Walls at the Tribeca Film Festival, and at the end, I actually went into a room physically before I put on the headset on that was the room of the character. And I put on the headset, and then the story unfolded. And at the end, you get handed a cookie by one of the virtual characters, and [at that exact moment] the docents… running the experience handed me a cookie, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s a cookie!” And I ate the cookie, and I’m like, “That’s so cool. Like, physical-digital.’”
— Matthew Neutra, interviewed in 10 Kick-Ass Careers for Storytellers
And Wolves in the Walls isn’t the only purveyor of this physical-digital taste experience. In 10 Kick-Ass Careers for Storytellers, Neutra also describes Tupac Matir’s Cosmos Within Us. And Rene Brinkley shared her virtual reality dining experience on CNBC.
Five Senses, Three Points of View Each
While each of the five senses gives a distinct experience, they are alike in one way: each sense has what we would call three possible “points of view”—or what we might now prefer to call “points of sense.” Sound, smell, touch and taste can also be first, second or third person POV (or POS). What does each of those mean exactly? It’s fascinating enough to warrant its own post; in the meantime, here are a few mind-bending examples:
1st person gustatory POV: You taste what you eat.
2nd person auditory POV: You smell what someone else smells.
3rd person tactile POV: You feel what someone else feels without even existing in their world, or you feel something completely unrelated to the scene at hand.
Discussion of this taxonomy continues in Part 4,
which explains social point of view.
The author of this post is also the author of the taxonomy and can be reached with comments, questions or consulting requests on social media at @eveweston across platforms.
