File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1996/96-08-12.171, message 147


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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