Introduction - Virtual Sex: Pornography, Immersion, and Erotic Environments

This introduction frames virtual sex as a crucial site for rethinking the relation between pornography, immersion, and environmental images. Starting from the fictional “Cybersex” device imagined in Architectural Design in 1969, it traces a genealogy of technological fantasies centred on multisensoriality, immediacy, reproducibility, and erotic presence at a distance. The text then considers how VR, AI, haptic systems, teledildonics, webcamming, video games, and early online platforms reconfigure pornographic experience by transforming images into environments and bodies into interfaces. Presenting the contributions included in the issue, the introduction outlines how virtual sex opens questions concerning spectatorship, embodiment, gender, agency, monetization, synthetic erotics, and the historical formation of pornographic imaginaries.