For the new pornographers like Adam Sutra, technology can erase the material world. In virtual reality, there are no limits, not even when it comes to sex. “If you can meet in your virtual-reality space, anything’s possible,” Adam observed coolly as the man bore down upon the woman, her prerecorded moans filling the air. [...]
Whether or not people get turned on by VR pornography, the technology is changing the places where adult content has traditionally been created. Porn Valley is being displaced by porn’s uncanny valley—an X-rated version of the theory holding that a robotic or simulated entity that appears to be human, but not quite fully human, revolts us. Losing a connection to the material world—the skin and sweat of reality—may also lose what makes porn alluring. [...]
When I moved back to Los Angeles last year, I rented an apartment in the Valley. I wanted to know what had become of the adult-movie business. As it turned out, Porn Valley had changed. Technology had transformed it. A perfect storm had slammed the industry. The Great Recession had hit it hard, a handful of federal obscenity prosecutions during the Bush administration had caused a chilling effect, and widespread digital-content pirating had oversaturated the market and devalued the product, decimating the competition and slashing profits by the double digits. Once upon a time, porn had led technology, adopting VHS over Betamax in the video-format wars of the late ’70s and ’80s. In the new millennium, technology was porn’s undoing. [...]
Adam and his team had spent a year building a virtual porn world “the size of Grand Theft Auto,” but the technology wasn’t perfect yet. No matter. Their population was growing. They were scanning more porn stars and shooting adult performers in motion-capture suits bouncing lustily on top of each other in an array of sexual positions. The results were impressive. Casey’s skin was eerily lifelike, porous and pliant. Their genitals were, well, sufficiently realistic. (“It’s easier to do a hard penis than a vagina,” Adam confided.) There was something disconcerting about the simulacrum of Casey, though, especially in her face, which was weirdly human and disturbingly not, more uncanny valley than Porn Valley.
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