RE: [-empyre-] discussion on Second Life in another list

"Christy Dena" <cdena@cross-mediaentertainment.com> · Tue, 7 Aug 2007 23:58:01 +1000

Hello Ana,

Thankyou for this contribution. I found Guiselle Belangue's comments
interesting. In particular, I found the following quote (and your addition)
personally resonant:

[quote]
We had to change from cinematography (the writing of motion) to what I would
call the writing of seeing: opsigraphy, from the Greek word opsis (as in
"optics"). Or even to opsiscopy, the seeing of seeing - in other words, the
observing of observing mechanisms. In cyberspace, for example, when you see
yourself and your actions as an image, you are already in opsiscopic space.
You are observing yourself in a picture that you observe; it is an
observation of the second order.
In fact, cyberspace is the beginning of opsiscopy: of machines that see how
we see."

In short, I think SL can be considered an opsiscopic space that allows to
transcend sometimes the basic descriptive movements we do in our FL (First
Life) and because of this points to new directions in the digital arts field
in general and digital images in particular.
[/quote]

I love the notion of opsiscopic space, but what enthralls me about it is
that it highlights (for me) a cultural phenomenon. What I have observed in
entertainment forms -- particularly in the context of tiering -- is that
society is observing itself more. People are able to observe each other on
the Net, able to observe each other interact in Second Life and able to
observe each other in the second-order artworks that created to communicate
highly personalized interactive works. To elaborate this idea I have been
drawing on the theory of Internet theorist Lars Qvortrup. Qvortrup argues
that society has reached such a state of complexity that simplifying life is
no-longer an option. Instead, society is responding with 'hypercomplexity'
(after Niklas Luhmann). Here is a quote from a paper that is on the web:

[quote]
The implicit idea behind the first thesis is that we are on our way into a
society which is radically different from the so-called modern society. It
has been described as ?functionally differentiated? (Luhmann 1997), as
?polycontextural? (Günther 1979) or as ?hypercomplex? (Qvortrup 1998),
emphasising that it does not offer one single point of observation, but a
number of mutually competing observation points with each their own social
context. This does not ?create? new art forms in any causal sense, but it
creates a need for observing the world differently. 

This of course is a challenge to art and to the development of new art
forms, and as a matter of fact the change from modern society's
anthropocentrism into present society's polycentrism has been reflected by
new art forms since the beginning of the 20. century. Particularly, this
change has been taken up by so-called ?digital art? which in a particularly
adequate way has articulated the hypercomplex conditions. However, digital
art is not a product of society, but it is a form that one may choose in
order to observe new societal trends. More important in the present context,
digital art is not a product of technology, but new digital media offer us
new ways to observe society, and instead of analysing digital art within a
technological context, it should be analysed within an art-historical
context.
[/quote]

Source: http://cmc.uib.no/dac98/papers/qvortrup.htm

In the context of Second Life, the notion of polycentrism takes on a new
direction too: Second Life is a confluence of (somewhat competing) forces.
It is a social environment, a business environment, an education and
training environment, a marketing environment, a creative environment, a
gambling environment, a perverse environment, an environment that is at once
a simulation of what already is and an experimental lab for what isn't.
Compared to many other virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online
games, Second Life is a highly unusual confluence. I find its development
over the years, the media coverage it attracts, the activities that take
place in response to media hype and in spite of it a compelling case study
for a world that is as complex as our own yet is not bound by the same
constraints. I'm keen to see what will flourish and what will wane? And
taking notes on why...

Best,
Christy

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Ana Valdés
Sent: Monday, 6 August 2007 22:19
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] discussion on Second Life in another list

I participated in an interesting discussion about Second Life in
Trebor Scholtz's list IDC. Here was a good intervention from Guiselle
Belanque.
Ana

ps: This is my friend he Swedish architect and teacher Tor Lindstrand,
who teaches about Second Life and virtual architecture in the Royal
School of Architecture in Stockholm.
http://www.unrealstockholm.org/drupal/?q=node/76

His place on Second Life is http://www.theport.tv/wp/wordpress/, The Port.

<<But not for a second do I buy the argument that synchronous virtual
worlds like Second Life are the future of the net.>>

I agree. Nevertheless is a very interesting art space. SL has a
curious cybrid format. I mean a space between on and off line networks
that can be used as new layer of our territorial experience. I'm
working now on a new project conceived for SL, exploring its potential
as a cinematic space and the resources its inhabitants can use in
order to get different points of view (flying, zooming etc).
It seems to me that the cinematic experience you have there announces
in some ways what can be the the migration from machines of motion to
machines of vision, or the new cinema. Peter Weibel wrote some years
ago a long essay on digital images that could be a point of departure
for that discussion:

"The nineteenth century was obsessed with motion - with illusions of
motion, and with machines of motion. There were two kinds of machines
of motion: the first tried to analyze motion, the second to synthesize
motion. The analysis of motion was the task of the camera; the
synthesis of motion was the task of the projector. The evolution of
cinema in the nineteenth century can be attributed to two major
trends: firstly, to the progress in experimental physiology and
psychology leading to the Gestalt psychology, and secondly, to the
advances in machines attempting to adapt and transfer the
physiological mechanism of perception into machines capable of the
visual simulation of motion and - herein lies the problem - not into
machines of perception.

Therefore, what we know as cinema today is in fact already a reduction
of the nineteenth-century principle that began to investigate machines
of vision, but finally reduced them to machines of motion. There is
the moving-image industry with its motion pictures, that is to say:
the Hollywood system. Its code is a legacy of the nineteenth century,
and reduces the initial exploration of machines of vision to machines
of motion. Only the avant-garde cinema of the 1920s, 1950s and 1960s
maintained the original intention of creating machines of vision.
Classical cinema, therefore, already diminished the initial
enterprise, which was about perception. Perception was reduced to the
perception of motion, and remained on the retinal level because there
was no pursuit of the question of how our brain perceives the world.
People constructed machines with a kind of graphic notation - "la
methode graphique" (Etienne-Jules Marey) - of motion. This method can
be said to be still valid, tragically enough, today.

What Marey did was to analyze, and deconstruct, motion with his
famous graphical method. It made no difference whether a drawing
machine was used or, as in the case of Eadweard Muybridge, a
photographic machine. Both Muybridge and Marey soon realized that it
is not enough to analyze motion, but many other machines had to be
used in order to project, to synthesize, motion. We may conclude this
interpretation with the fact that cinema was invented in the
nineteenth century. The twentieth century merely turned the
nineteenth-century inventions into standardized mass media - including
television, which became a consumer apparatus. As a side-effect, we
simultaneously turned this machinery not only into mass media, but
also into art, an individual approach.

Cinema is a writing of motion (cinematography); it is just a machine
that simulates motion for the eye. The avant-garde, from Dziga Vertov
to Steina and Woody Vasulka , kept to the initial idea: machine
vision - not machine motion. Vertov gave us the term Kinoglaz , the
camera eye. With the advent of video (Latin: I see), it was clear that
we had to make a paradigmatic shift from imitating and simulating
motion to imitating and simulating vision with the help of machines.
We had to change from cinematography (the writing of motion) to what I
would call the writing of seeing: opsigraphy, from the Greek word
opsis (as in "optics"). Or even to opsiscopy, the seeing of seeing -
in other words, the observing of observing mechanisms. In cyberspace,
for example, when you see yourself and your actions as an image, you
are already in opsiscopic space. You are observing yourself in a
picture that you observe; it is an observation of the second order.
In fact, cyberspace is the beginning of opsiscopy: of machines that
see how we see."

In short, I think SL can be considered an opsiscopic space that allows
to transcend sometimes the basic descriptive movements we do in our FL
(First Life) and because of this points to new directions in the
digital arts field in general and digital images in particular.

GB

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