[-empyre-] real vs. unreal

[Julian Oliver]

..on Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 11:46:15AM +0200, Tamiko Thiel wrote:
>
> Is a painting real but a projection not real? Isn't visual phenomena  
> real - and therefore any AR object also real? Are perhaps these not the  
> correct terms to be using when talking about AR and VR, even though both  
> terms use the word "reality" and therefore bring us into discussions  
> about what is real and what is not?

That which comprises 'real' is simply what is experienced. It's very difficult
to say otherwise, of course. 'Reality' however is more a consensus of
experience. AR, as an actor of the real, has not yet reached consensus, as your
conversation with Mathias here conveys.

Much of AR is concered with targeting the visual cortex as the site of
exhibition directly. It doesn't matter what form the light-projecting object
itself takes. No one ever experiences 'Digital Art' anyway, rather the analog
symptoms of mechanical events, like photons shot from a screen, some of which
pass through a cornea, converted by the retina into electric events then ordered
and interpreted by nets of neurons which later become 'experiences'. 

No one has ever experienced a digit.

Plato put it well:

	"The image stands at the junction of a light which comes from the object 
	and another which comes from the gaze"

That "object" has merely widened in scope with screen based innovations, like
AR.

FYI Here's a short article I wrote on this topic: 

	'Option Illusion Art as Radical Interface'	

	http://julianoliver.com/share/text/Oliver_Optical-Illusion-Art-as-Radical-Interface.pdf

Cheers!

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Berlin, Germany 
currently: Berlin, Germany 
about: http://julianoliver.com
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