Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 11:36:45 +0100 From: jnech-AT-imaginet.fr (NECHVATAL Joseph) Subject: Deleuze & Guattari & IMMERSIVE IDEALS I have my own Bulletin Board discussion area up on The THING web site for the discussion of the theme : IMMERSIVE IDEALS / CRITICAL DISTANCES at: http://www.thing.net/thingnyc/msgboard.html I sincerely hope you -AT- deleuze-guattari will join in the discussion. The issue(s) under consideration : an examination of the affinity between art based in Virtual Reality (VR) and previous artistic expressions of the "immersive ideal". This board will attempt a speculative, rhizoid, hypothetical, theoretical account of the artistic heritage which precedes VR immersion - the emblematic characteristic of Virtual Reality (VR) and all aspects of the "immersive ideal". My hope is that here we may collectively identify, define and evaluate the immersive ideal as it is found in artworks utilizing Virtual Reality technology and in previous artistic movements and periods in the history of art. The primary objective is to create a cross analysis of the immersive aspects of art employing the technology of Virtual Reality, recent postmodern and modern avant-garde art movements which will lead to the identification of immersive visionary ideals in art as they have emerged throughout art history. An examination will be made of the capability of high technology computing systems to realize these earlier artistic immersive ideals within a contemporary framework. BACKGROUND - BwO: What does my terminology 'immersive ideal' mean? Obviously its meaning would consist, at least in part, of the two halves of the phrase : immersion and idealism. Immersion is the principal feature of VR systems. VR immersion, though clearly phenomenologically different from previous ideas and ideals of artistic immersion is, I propose, shaped by the subconscious effects of all human visionary traditions whose narratives and ways of envisioning the world (the imaginary virtual visionary world) have entered into our collective memories and thus culture (Deleuze & Guattari). Consequently they have shaped our expectations for the technical virtuosity of artistic VR mediated data immersion. Thus the interest in a rear-view look at artistic immersion in light of Deleuze & Guattari and VR. Idealism: It can be shown that there have long been ideas of ideal virtual immersion, whether grounded in mysticism, sex / violence (Bataille), abstract analytical thought (Deleuze & Guattari), or romantic SF fantasy (Gibson, et all). All of these historical approaches have sought to shape and manipulated invisible worlds accessible only through the imagination, and in some cases have led to models which have achieved ontological privilege. I am beginning this board with the initial contention that immersion in a VR system is quickly becoming the key to understanding a great deal of contemporary cyberculture as well as aspects of non and pre-computer culture. It is indisputable that today the image is resurgent if not triumphant in the West (Baudrillard) and VR represents the creme de la creme of illusionistic image production - the latest thing. My gut feeling is that immersion in art holds the possibility of bringing the hidden, overwhelmed, internal life of the mind to light (Deleuze & Guattari), to overflow our records of experience, and to reconstruct our sensations anew (Deleuze & Guattari), for immersion transpires in deep space and, in a sense, secures that space for us. TO START : We might start hypothesizing whether such a perifial encounter with the work of art would extend consciousness laterally and horizontally (Deleuze & Guattari), extending and flexing perceptive reception into an area normally unconscious and inaccessible to direct self-conscious reflexivity. What would be the result of such an immersive artistic encounter which by heightening the surrounding presence is felt laterally by the viewer with a pattern of rhizoid nerves of which we normally remain insensitive. How fully art functions as art is an exceptionally complex issue, suggesting a need for a theory of art itself. Perhaps in light of VR, a larger theory of art is needed - a theory of immersive imagination which leads to a consciousness of one's place within an artistic picture plane without fixed edges (Deleuze & Guattari) or even a fixed surface? Perhaps inversely we need a larger theory of VR also -a VR theory in light of the hermeneutic artistic tradition of interpretation and communicative symbolic interaction where immersion is both signifier and signified? I hope we can through this IMMERSIVE IDEALS / CRITICAL DISTANCES BB come to understand how contemporary theories of the virtual relate to systems of Deleuze & Guattari's thought, and how such ideas, emerging from the human imagination, have manifested themselves in new technological systems. I look forward to your participation. Thank you. Joseph Nechvatal Paris http://www.dom.de/arts/artists/jnech/ http://www.cybertheque.fr/galerie/jnech
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