Teleplastic technologies: charting practices of orientation and navigation in videogaming

In this paper I develop the concept of ‘teleplastic technologies’– technologies that pre-shape the potentials and possibilities for human action, movement and sense – through the example of videogaming. I develop a case study of videogame users through which I unpack the characteristics of teleplastic technologies and the ways in which they operate to reorganise the capacities and capabilities of users’ bodies through spatial means. In the first section I argue that teleplastic technologies should be understood from a spatial/ethological perspective and show how ethologically limited videogame environments encourage users to act and move without conscious thought in response to various inhibitors and disinhibitors designed into that environment. In the second section I show how the somatic techniques users develop in response to these worlds reorganise the cardinal orientation of users’ bodies and, thus, how the ‘geography’ of teleplastic technologies shape the potential and possibilities for spatial sense.