Unwrapping virtual space through the myth of total cinema

Visionary promises of a 3D virtual future are unfulfilled. Online 3D platforms such as VRML, Second Life, and Open Sim sought a 3D web of worlds and delivered, at best, mixed results. To understand the broad creative and cognitive challenges that drive the design of 3D virtual spaces, a cross-disciplinary design review of early cinema, a technical precursor, is needed. 150 years ago, a simulation oriented "Myth of a Total Cinema" guided and limited the development of the earliest films (Bazin 1958, Manovich 2001). Cinema was first seen as a realistic mirror world made of captured images. It would take decades for film makers to discover how to leave the myth and create montage, literally breaking a simulated reality apart in service to narrative. This text retraces the creative process of discovery, the tension between montage and the myth of total cinema, and then proposes a virtual design foundation stemming from an overlooked aspect of videogame theory.