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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