Re: [-empyre-] real vs unreal

[<tom@nullpointer.co.uk>]

Hi Again,

I'm down with you J.
I agree that the eagerness to locate the borderlands between  V & R is
a somewhat impossible task. It is also something that often seems linked to
a
rather odd notion that there is a pure polarity of V & R. The intervention
of semiotic theory
into this area usually hints at this pure world of signs
(immateriality,total simulation) but of course
this is just a theoretical construct. I feel that (as sterling sugests) the
relationship is now more an
everyday one, and is obviously not going to implode in some abstract data
wormhole.
Most people have an increasing cultural awareness of this relationship and
as such it has become just another
part of our language (semiotic or otherwise). I agree with Chad that it is
too easy to just identify 'video games'
as an obvious example of this relationship. As with most
imaginings(games/films e.t.c.) it is the thought processes and
discussions(like this)
that follow from the experience that often make the relationship more
virtual than the actual experience.
Obviously games are becoming more aware of these issues and I am intrigued
by productions that
play with these notions/references within their own environment rather than
just trying to build another world.
(GTA3,Viewtiful Joe e.t.c.)

Tom
http://www.nullpointer.co.uk



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <jesis@xs4all.nl>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] real vs unreal


> hi,
>
>
> Just some thoughts after getting into reading mode again (I skip lots of
> lists these days), the words about the real caught my attention...
>
> First: at DEAF symposium this year themed Data Knitting the focus was on
> the archive. This last (unvoluntarily?) choice somehow confused me,
> especially since many of the speakers started talking about networks as
> "archives of the real". I thought that was stretching the definition of
> the word archive a bit far, and also clouding the experience of
> networking, of the flow of it. Of course every archive somehow archives
> the real, but here the thought seemed very much centered on 'now-ness' or
> some kind of experience of real time movements of all sorts. I tried to
> find out what they meant with 'the real', but DeLanda the moderator got in
> the way by explaining for the speaker that "the real is the bullet
> entering your head"(DEAF was shortly after the start of the Irak war).
> Finally the explanation of what exactly was meant with archiving the real
> was extremely fuzzy and unclear. It seems as if there is confusion about
> the real. To some it points at a kind of hyper reality tv experience,
> which is somehow skattered and devided into many small pieces in new
> media. To others the real is only that which is physical. It is with the
> latter that the problems seem to start.
>
> It looks like we are still suffering from the Descartian problem, the idea
> that there is a difference or clear border between material and immaterial
> experience, between mind and body. I don't think it is possible to come to
> an agreement on the issue whether such a divide exists or not. Personally
> I think there is no divide, that mind and body are one. To me, so called
> VR experiences are real too.
>
> Secondly I would like to support something Alan Sondheim wrote about the
> physicality of new media by quoting from a publication about the
> preservation of new media art, made by the Guggenheim and the Langlois
> Foundation. In it Bruce Sterling writes :"Very little materiality, is
> very, very far from no materiality at all. Total immateriality is
> metaphysical illusion; it has nothing to do with physics or engineering.
> It's exhilirating to watch these heaps of data vanishing into microscopic
> scales, and if it's doubling every 18 months-hey everything in
> computerland wants to double every 18 months-then it looks like it's going
> to totally vaporize, just any second now. But it never does. Never. Even
> vapor is material. Mass and energy are conserved in an Einsteinian
> universe, so things just don't "immaterialize". Forget about it." To just
> emphasize the physicality and 'real-ness' of information and data and
> everything happening around and with it.
>
>
> My two cents. Back to the autumnal storm and work.
>
>
> J
> *
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