Re: [-empyre-] PATINAGE and TURNBABY by Babel

[Simon Biggs <simon@littlepig.org.uk>]

On 09.03.05 11:21, "Adrian Miles" <adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au> wrote:

> I'd suggest the Deleuzean inspired work that proposes a much stronger
> distinction between the virtual and the actual has established a more
> robust and pragmatically useful approach. The virtual (in a crude
> nutshell) are that set of possibilities available, the actual are
> those possibilties actualised. eg right now in the next few minutes I
> might go to bed, keep writing, go to the toilet, attend to my kids in
> their sleep, put the dog out, change tv channels, etc. This is the
> virtual. The actual is what is actualised. both, however, are real.
-----
Or more precisely unreal. That is the point I am making. The virtual<>real
dialectic tends to rest upon such a simplistic ontology where so much is a
priori. Even Deleuze falls for that one with Kantian/Bergsonian echoes all
the way down the line. Foucault had a more nuanced take on this - the real
as social construct allows for the virtual as an equivalence as then both
are equally "unreal".

Best

Simon


Simon Biggs
simon@littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Professor, Fine Art, Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/