Back to the Future. 'Hamlet Encounters' and the Use of VR to Address a Time "out of joint"

The aim of my contribution is to investigate how Shakespeare has entered the cyberspace and in particular the reasons for and modalities in which the arts company CREW chose Hamlet to portray a time "out of joint" (Shakespeare 2003, p. 126). Since every generation seems to find in Hamlet and his troubled time a metaphor for current conflicts, CREW used the play to draw a parallel between the quest for truth in the conflicted world of the seventeenth century and our own times. The use of VR inevitably leads to the loss of reference points, therefore the experiencer of the virtual space must negotiate his/her senses that cannot be trusted anymore. Thus, Hamlet Encounters offers the tool needed to highlight how technology is changing our own perception of the world and how it brings us to question ourselves like Hamlet does.