Re: [-empyre-] the symbolic and the real

["eugenie (temp)" <eugenies@onetel.net.uk>]

sorry, i should've made myself clearer - i would argue that bergson's
definition is still useful in distinguishing physiological vision from
'visuality' - a term which still enjoys a great deal of currency, especially
in the cultural studies field. visuality is very much about passive
engagement, and in that sense it is very different from embodied vision -
which, as you point out, is a form of tactile engagement.

> Again I'd like to argue that there is no difference between vr and pr
> except for ontology -

i agree completely - but try telling this to a lacanian - there are still
loads of 'em out there, insisting that his model is workable in analyzing
VR.

e

on 8/10/03 5:55 AM, Alan Sondheim at sondheim@panix.com wrote:

> 
> 
> Except perhaps that Bergson's view of vision is outmoded; from Land and
> David Marr on, vision has been shown to be pro-active - ranging from
> retinal processing (Pribram) to saccadic movement - there is constant
> sampling and perceptual reorganization going on. Vision is no more passive
> in the world than touch - in fact, considerably less so, given the amount
> of processing necessary.
> 
> I'd argue that vision in this sense is also a reciprocity, an engagement
> with the real that goes far beyond passivity. Saccadic movement, for
> example, requires considerable readjustment of eye and body in relation to
> the seen. And this would occur as well in vr.
> 
> Further, the symbolic also displays upon the body; the body is read
> through display (tattoo etc., but even prior - the body itself is always
> already symbolic and symbolized).
> 

> Alan
> 
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, eugenie (temp) wrote:
> 
>> hi all...
>> 
>> 'the symbolic made real' .... this is a really interesting idea. in lacan's
>> little world, of course, it's a complete contradiction in terms. his model
>> of perception could be called 'Cartesianesque' in that it assumes  an
>> ontological distinction between objects in the world and the mental ideas
>> the subject forms of these objects - i.e. between the symbolic and the real.
>> 
>> this distinction doesn't hold true in VR: the three-dimensional worlds with
>> which the user interacts have no corresponding extension in physical space;
>> nor, however, can they said to be ?in the mind¹ or ?in the brain¹.
>> 
>> the phenomenological take on this is a lot more convincing than the lacanian
>> or cartesianesque (i.e. visually biased) schema. phenomenological or
>> reflexive models hold that perception cannot take place unless the visual
>> system is engaged by an object in the world. perception, in other words, is
>> an 'event', it is located in the world.
>> 
>>> the game world is quite literally
>>> addressing the player as an agent in the simulation. At the same time, the
>>> artifice of the simulation immerses the player so that they perceive it
>>> as real. This is typically through the use of depth cues, spatialised sound,
>>> immediacy of feedback, realistic behaviour / physics, lighting, and so on..
>> 
>> as troy points out - and, as i was arguing earlier via the example of
>> holbein's painting - the experience of virtuality involves a wide variety of
>> perceptual data. the visual/pictorial aspect of VR has attracted the most
>> attention - certainly a lot of the history and theory of VR carries its own,
>> innate visual bias (i'm thinking  of lev manovich in particular) - but
>> clearly, virtuality as a phenomenon resists partitioning along the lines of
>> subject and object, real and symbolic, material and visual.
>> 
>> bergson's discussion of the virtual and the real is useful here. For
>> Bergson, vision  is a passive sensory modality ­ it can only measure
>> possible action on things, and for this reason it is confined to the domain
>> of the virtual. Touch, by contrast, is an affective sense, the only one in
>> which the subject¹s perception of quality is blended with a reciprocal
>> experience of force, and the only one that necessarily takes place in
>> conjunction with movement. touch, for bergson, engages with the domain of
>> the real. it is touch and movement, along with vision, that give spatial
>> coherency to perceptual data, touch and movement that form the basis of the
>> body schema. bergson's model is a much more useful one in examining VR,
>> which, as troy points out, blurs the distinctionn between the symbolic and
>> the real.
>> 
>> later
>> eugenie
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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>> 
> 
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