Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 01:16:26 +1100 (EST)
From: "Glen Fuller" <g.fuller-AT-uws.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Zizek Virtual/Actual and empirical


Just to clarify my last comment, I should not have written 'less 
actual' I should have written "Or another way to put the question how 
is VR not of an actual reality?" In the sense of the virtual being 
imperctible but real, that is as truth (actual real) is not opposite 
false (possible real) but the absurd (a kind of virtuality).

> Steve,
> 
> You have to forgive me, as I have not read Levy, could you please 
post 
> references? I am very curious how he sustains the notion of virtual 
and 
> actual in the context of VR. My understanding is that the 'virtual' 
in 
> the V of VR is not the same virtuality as the virtual of the initial 
> stage of an the ontogenetic process (becoming). Stanford Kwinter has 
a 
> good, short summation of the relationship between the possible, the 
> real, the virtual and the actual as I also understand it:
> 
> "The so-called emergence and evolution of form will no longer follow 
> the classical, eidetic pathway determined by the possible and the 
real. 
> Rather, it will follow the dynamic and uncertain proceses that 
> characterise the schema that links a virtual component to an actual 
> one. What is most important to understand here is that unlike the 
> previous schema where the 'possible' had no reality (before 
emerging), 
> here the virtual, though it may yet have no actuality, is nonetheless 
> already fully real. It exists, one might say, as a free difference or 
> singularity, not yet combined with other differences into a complex 
> ensemble [assemblage] or salient form. What this means is that the 
> virtual does not have to be realised, but only actualised (activated 
> and integrated); its adventure involves a development passage from 
one 
> state to another. The virtual is gathered, selected - let us say 
> incarnated - it passes from one moent-event (or complex) in order to 
> emerge - differently, uniquely - with another. Indeed the actual does 
> not resemble the virtual, as something preformed or preexisting 
itself. 
> The relation of the virtual to the actual is therefore not one of 
> resemblance but rather one of difference, innovation, or creation 
> (every complex, or moment-event, is unique and new). Thus realisation 
> (of a possible) and creation (through actualisation-differentiation) 
> are two intrinsicallydistinct and irreducible processes. The first 
> programmaticallyreproduces what was already there, formed and given 
in 
> advance, while the other invents through a continuous, positive, and 
> dynamic process of transmission, differentiation, and evolution." 
> (Architectures of Time 8-10).
> 
> Your comments about Zizek (oWb: I am yet to receive from amazon.com, 
so 
> I don't actually know the context of his comments) and VR struck me 
as 
> having a different understanding of the virtual to Kwinter's. Liz 
Grosz 
> has had this to say about the virtual-VR question:
> 
> "Neither vision nor sound is virtual but rather the _objects_ and 
> _spaces_ that vision and sound find as fields of play. Vision, sound, 
> touch, taste, and smell function in their same modalities as always. 
VR 
> works, if and when it does, only on the assumption that the senses 
> function as they always have, even in the face of perceptual inputs 
> that have been drastically altered. Virtual [reality] objects are now 
> capable of generating the same perceptual effects as 'real' objects. 
> [...] mLacan both affirms and undermines the reliance of the real on 
> the space of virtuality, showing the necessity and impossibility of 
> their separation. In a strange and rare congruence if not agreement 
> with Lacan, Deleuze too, in his writings on Henri Bergson and the 
time-
> image, affirms that the real is only functional as such, exists in 
> time, through its immersion in virtuality and saturation as the space 
> of virtuality. The very term _virtual reality_ attests to a 
> phantasmatic extension, a bizarre contortion to save not the real 
> (which is inevitably denigrated and condemned) but rather the will, 
> desire, mind, beyond body or matter: this is a real not quite real, 
not 
> an 'actual real', a 'really real' but a real whose reality is at best 
> virtual. An apparent rather than actual 'real'." 
> 
> My confusion can be located in the problem of how is it a state of 
> virtuality if it is perceived, if it is actualised? (even if it is 
> actualised as an 'apparent real' [simulacra-ish] not a 'really real' 
as 
> Grosz suggests) I can understnad Zizek's point as resonating with 
> Grosz' notion of a phatasmatic extension (the feminist argument of 
her 
> essay lampoons the masculine disembodied aspects of VR). I guess my 
> real problem is what do you mean by VR? Is it a perfect VR like the 
> Matrix where the reality is as ours (say, the work of Descartes 
genie)? 
> If the potentialities of the Matrix are as the are in this world 
> (assuming for a non-paranoid moment this is 'this' world), they are 
> actualised in the same way, so then how is the matrix VR 'reality' 
> anymore virtual or actual than this world? Or another way to put the 
> question how is VR any less of an actual reality?
> 
> Maybe it is because you are talking about objects in the world being 
> virtual/actual, that is I liken the virtual to the actual like 
> the 'unthought' to thought and see virtual as a function (latency) of 
a 
> connection with the actual. I need to get out the cinema books 
again...
> 
> Ciao,
> Glen.
> 
> 
> 
> > Glen
> > 
> > I am suggesting, following Levy amoungst others, that the Virtual 
as 
> > described in Deleue's piece "The Virtual and the Actual"  is 
related 
> to 
> > the virtual in VR. This is precisely as Levy describes and defines 
> the 
> > virtual. What he does is slide VR as one virtual technology 
amoungst 
> > many, into the set (The set consisting of  the Deleuzian candidates 
> of  
> > The virtual, the actual, the real and the possible), as a dependent 
> > subset of the virtual, a technological manisfestation of the the 
> virtual.
> > 
> > Within the use of the virtual that Deleuze and Levy produce it 
> becomes 
> > obvious that Zizek's favorite art form cinema is precisely a 
virtual 
> > form as in "memory is a virtual image contemporary with the actual 
> > object, it's double, it's mirror image..."  and "The virtual image 
> > absorbs all the characters actuality, at the same time as the 
actual 
> > character is no more than a virtuality..." (From a brief discussion 
> by 
> > Deleuze of an Orson Welles movie).
> > 
> > So yes VR is related to the virtual - and perhaps most 
interestingly 
> in 
> > the way that we are 'becoming virtual...'
> > 
> > regards
> > steve
> > 
> > 
> > Glen Fuller wrote:
> > 
> > >Steve,
> > >
> > >
> > >  
> > >
> > >>actualization." (This is radically different from the false 
concept 
> > >>    
> > >>
> > >that VR
> > >  
> > >
> > >>has in the Zizek quote where he talks of VR as a miserable 
> imitation 
> > >>    
> > >>
> > >of
> > >  
> > >
> > >>reality, a status which he does not give to his own favorite art 
> form
> > >>'cinema') 
> > >>    
> > >>
> > >
> > >Are you suggesting that the virtual of 'VR' is the same as the 
> virtual 
> > >of the virtual/actual couplet?
> > >
> > >Ciao,
> > >Glen.
> > >
> > >  
> > >
> > 
> > 
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> > 
> 
> -- 
> PhD Candidate, Centre for Cultural Research
> University of Western Sydney
> 
> 

-- 
PhD Candidate, Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney