VIRTUAL REALITY AND ADULT ENTERTAINMENT: THE NEXT HIGH-TECH SYMBIOSIS by Erik Rochner Almklov A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Science and Natural History Filmmaking MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY Bozeman, Montana November 2016 ©COPYRIGHT by Erik Rochner Almklov 2016 All Rights Reserved ii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 2. ANCIENT XXX ..............................................................................................................6 3. DEFINING PORNOGRAPHY ........................................................................................7 4. TECH-SEX ORIGINS .....................................................................................................8 5. OBJECTIVE SEX ..........................................................................................................11 6. PORN ON TAPE ...........................................................................................................16 7. CYBERSEX ...................................................................................................................20 8. A BRIEF HISTORY OF VR .........................................................................................25 9. CONTEMPORARY VR ................................................................................................28 10. VR PORN IS A THING ..............................................................................................31 11. VIRTUALLY REAL PROFITS ..................................................................................35 12. FUTURE GLIMPSE ....................................................................................................43 13. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................49 REFERENCES CITED ......................................................................................................53 iii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE Page 1. Ivan Sutherland’s Experimental 3-D Display ....................................................26 2. Virtual Real Porn Screenshot of POV perspective ............................................34 3. HTC VIVE Gaming HMD .................................................................................38 4. Samsung Gear VR Mobile HMD .......................................................................39 5. Google Cardboard VR Viewer ...........................................................................40 6. NullSpace Haptic Vest and Gloves ....................................................................43 7. Tenga’s VR Sex Suit ..........................................................................................44 iv ABSTRACT Technology and pornography have a longstanding symbiotic relationship. Pornographers have historically relied on technology to distribute personalized sexual experiences to consumers. Emergent communication technologies have similarly found commercial success through the adult industry in the 20th and 21st centuries. A mutually beneficial sex-tech relationship now endures as the modern adult industry exerts significant influence over the fate of new communication technologies. In this paper, I examine the historical role that pornography has played in the mainstream integration of modern communication technologies. I next apply this analysis to one of the most discussed technologies on the market to date, Virtual Reality (VR), to argue that its mainstream adoption is similarly being influenced by porn. The adult industry’s early monetization of 360º content, and relevant immersive innovations, are early indications that VR porn may be the next high-tech symbiosis. 1 INTRODUCTION Pornography has an unglamorous history of censorship, criminal activity, and sexual exploitation. Yet the mega-industry built around sex is seldom credited for its prominent historical role in bringing emergent communication technologies to mainstream, commercial success. Pornographers are some of the unsung heroes of technological commercialization. As posited by Patchen Barss, author of The Erotic Engine: How Pornography has Powered Mass Communication, from Gutenberg to Google, “if it were not for the subject matter, pornography would be publicly praised as an industry that has successfully and quickly developed, adopted, and diffused new technologies” (5). Key contributions include the VCR, DVD, Cable TV, the Internet, and a swathe of other ubiquitous hardware devices and software that were catapulted into common household commodities thanks to pornography. At the core of this tech-sex interdependence is the adult industry’s willingness to adopt and experiment with the new and unproven technologies. Under this historical proclivity, it has graduated from “smut peddler” to modern technological gatekeeper over the last few decades (Barss 19). The multibillion dollar industry now exerts significant influence over the fate of emergent communication technologies. Technology and pornography have a longstanding symbiotic relationship. Pornographers have historically adopted new technologies before other media industries to skirt censorship, personalize the viewing experience, and innovate how sexual content is consumed by the masses. Similarly, new communication technologies have regularly incubated under the auspices of the adult industry to mature from niche products into 2 mainstream commodities. Pornography, defined here as the visual representation of the hard-core sexual act, can be traced back centuries before it was possible to mechanically reproduce reality with photography. “Hard-core” creative works, such as art and written narratives, existed long before pornography came to be defined as a sexually obscene genre of content. Technological innovation, however, gave it shape as expressed by Patchen Barss: Throughout history, across cultures, and in every part of the world, whenever a new means of communication emerged (with the possible exception of smoke signals), people adopted it and adapted it so as to find new ways to produce, distribute and consume pornography (3). Inversely, the demand to create new types of sexual experiences may also be influencing technological innovation. From cave-wall erotica to modern teledildonics (wirelessly controlled masturbators), a tech-sex relationship has advanced alongside human evolution. This tradition endures in the present as some of the most sophisticated technologies today are used to communicate and commoditize human sexuality. Pornography is therefore a product of technology as the gamut of sexual experiences is furthered by each new communication technology. VR is at the cutting edge of communication technology. It functions to provide a simulated sense of presence through rotationally and positionally responsive head- mounted displays supported by motion tracking accessories (HMDs). The experience allows users to immerse themselves in distant places and foreign subjects with 360º 3-D, 2-D, computer-generated, and live-action content that mimics and deviates from reality. 3 With billions of smartphones powering the content, VR is predicted to play a major role in the future of digital entertainment. VR launched commercially in 2016. As of the writing this paper, four premium, HMDs make up its official consumer launch: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Samsung Gear VR. New entertainment and education content channels are emerging in parallel to supplement the hardware, with sports and news outlets taking a special interest in the technology. Despite a rapidly growing infrastructure and the support from technology brands such as Sony, HTC, Google, GoPro, Samsung, and Facebook, however, VR is not yet mainstream. Horizon Media, “the largest and fastest growing privately held media services agency in the world,” reported in a March 2016 study that two-thirds of Americans are unaware of the technology. This illustrates a unique challenge to the medium as commercial saturation requires large-scale consumer exposure to contextualize its practical applications. In other words, until mass consumers strap on a headset for the first time, VR will remain a niche technology. Emergent technologies do not transform into consumer products overnight. The VCR incubated underground for a decade between the 1970’s-1980’s before it was inaugurated as a mainstream product. VR is at a similar introductory stage, tottering between disruptive-tech and bubble-bursting device. With less than 2 million HMDs in circulation to date, too few consumers own the hardware to inspire content producers to create compelling content (“People More Likely To Buy With Strategic Virtual Reality Use, According To New Study”). Inversely, consumers are unlikely to adopt HMD hardware without a library of compelling content to put their expensive devices to use: 4 the early VR market is analogous to owning an expensive gaming console without the content to play. The trajectory of the VR market is therefore economically uninspiring to most commercial businesses, with the exception of one opportunistic industry: pornography. VR is predicted to revolutionize the ways in which consumers experience porn. In a 2016 poll conducted by Xbiz Research, the “leading authority in adult industry news and market research,” 53% of 10,000 industry participants reported that VR will revolutionize the adult industry (2). The technological implications