Virtually real or really virtual?
When we think of new media forms we might think about once physical media objects like books or newspapers being superseded by digital artefacts or versions. Or we might think of old media forms – like film and television – being distributed via new platforms such as smart phones and laptops.
For a while the buzzword that surrounded the redistribution of these old forms on new platforms was ‘convergence’ – but it’s a word that has fallen out of fashion – mainly because convergence has pretty much happened. Media integration (virtual/digital) is here and almost everything we consume (and contribute to) happens in an online environment.
Is digital virtual? Or is virtual digital?
Consider this:
or this:
CAVE UT, and Kinect are examples of new, interactive, immersion technologies that will eventually emulate the holodeck.
These environments can be used in various capacities; to entertain us when we’re exercising, or to help us learn new skills. But we know we’re not really there – don’t we? We know the difference between reality and virtuality. Well, apparently not. Our ability to suspend our disbelief and become immersed in a fantasy environment seems to be hard wired in our brains and this ability has some interesting outcomes.
Phantom limb mirror therapy is one of them:
It’s clear why the guy in the video wants to be tricked by mirror therapy. But even when we’re healthy we WANT to be tricked. We WANT to be transported. Often to the places where guys get their limbs blown off in the first place!
WHY?
Frank Rose, in his book, The Art of Immersion explains that when we play immersive games our brains release high levels of dopamine (the brain’s pleasure hormone) and this natural high is addictive.
New forms of non-linear storytelling are emerging online and the main traction of these types of transmedia property allow the audience to become part of the narrative. This can be a compelling experience. The audience has the opportunity to influence the outcome (or at least the audience has the impression that they can).
We’re seeing more and more that old media properties are re-platforming their narratives. Madmen characters have Twitter profiles for example. TV and book franchises serve up extra content online.
Rose believes it takes 20-30 years for people to really master a new form of media – so in terms of transmedia, we are still learning (and will we ever completely learn as new technologies continually take over from older forms).
If we have time we could look at:
- Portal Entertainment
- Prison Valley – this is transmedia storytelling with a purpose
Let’s look at some history – and hence unravel the motivation for immersive storytelling. Let’s look at the paintings of Lascaux for a moment. What’s the purpose of these images?
Oliver GRAU
Oliver Grau, (Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion) says that these “immersive” techniques have been utilised by artists throughout history to create the environment for worship and ritual. Grau’s work is comparative and examines how virtual art fits into the art history of illusion and realism. He does this by tracing the history of the image through to the present day and examining how the immersive techniques of the ancients continue to impact on the aesthetics of New Media. Here are some of the Illusion spaces he uses as examples.
The examples of Trompe l’oeil also illustrate our love of being ‘tricked’ – we like to blur the edges of reality, it appeals to something fundamental and aesthetic. The popularity of Sleeveface and other illusory/trick-based imagery is testament to this (not to mention our obsession with magicians and illusions).
The earliest artists were also concerned with creating illusions, and fantasies – just as image makers and game creators and movie makers are today. Look at Inception or Avatar for example – twitter posts after Avatar came out suggested people felt depressed that Pandora didn’t exist – there was even a forum on the film’s website where people were supporting one another through their post-Pandora crises.
There is something fundamental about art and image making that touches the human heart – something about creating fantasy. Of course not all artists/photographers are concerned with this. Many photographers in fact want to show people the truth. Photography was viewed as ‘true representation’ – the camera never lies! There have been and will continue to be huge discussions on that topic but here’s an interesting piece from Culture Wars.
We are more inclined to think a photograph is an accurate representation than a painting or a sculpture, the former of course having the advantage of immediacy and spontaneity so the ‘artist’s touch’ can be more easily hidden.
But here’s the question: Does the making of a representation immediately move it into the realm of the virtual?
In a way you can say that any image or representation is a fantasy even if the image is of something prosaic or everyday – even if it is true. The mere fact that it isn’t real – or that that moment no longer exists in real time but is still able to be viewed without being real gives it (or the subject matter) an existence in virtual time and space.
Grau goes further and argues that the aesthetic preconcepts of virtual art are traceable and seamlessly connected to the present incarnation of New Media with its
real time computation, sensorial interactivity, relational databases, distributed networks, knowledge engineering, artificial intelligence, telepresence and artificial life functionality. (Joel Slayton)
Seems strange to think that artists working before the birth of Christ could have been preoccupied with immersive concepts, let alone interactivity or virtual reality as we know it today. But if we replace the words virtual or digital or immersion with illusion then maybe we can get a bit more of a handle on these techniques.
More recently visual artists have tried to add an additional playful element. Liu Bolin and his distinct – Urban Camouflage
Or street artists Kurt Wenner and Julian Beever go to town with chalk and murals
So Grau is, in a way (as is Manovich – see his introduction to The Language of New Media) saying that digital/virtual and traditional have exactly the same purpose – to create illusion – to give us, the viewer the opportunity and sensation of experiencing an alternate reality – and, we can argue that this is one of the primary functions of art. Even the ‘true’ representations of photojournalism go through a process of choice of subject, setting up (Capa’s famous Falling Soldier from the Spanish Civil War was arguably ‘set up’ – and there has been 60 years of controversy regarding Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima and Raising the Red Flag over the Reichstag), developing, editorial veto etc etc.
Recent incarnations of ‘Digital Art‘ and the work of photographers concerned with the hyperreal are also an interesting addition to this virtual/illusory discussion. In a world where so much trickery is available to us, how can we distinguish what is reality and what is fantasy?
Just the other week a blog post on BBC News examined the uncanny similarities between war photos and games – and the new craze of setting up game scenarios in the real theatre of war.
…highlighted by a recent Ofcom ruling that ITV misled viewers by airing footage claimed to have been shot by the IRA, which was actually material taken from a video game. (BBC News)
And then there was the research from Nottingham Trent University last year about Game Transfer Phenomenon – which seems to show that you can momentarily transfer elements of game playing into your real life. Things blur. It happens!
I want you to consider Plato’s Cave Analogy:
What does this story remind you of? Are we prisoners – are we free?
Lev Manovich, in his book The Language of New Media says:
Whose Vision is it? It is the vision of a computer, a cyborg, an automatic missile. It is the realistic representation of human vision in the future, when it will be augmented by computer graphics and cleansed from noise. It is the vision of a digital grid. Synthetic computer generated imagery is not an inferior representation of our reality but a realistic representation of a different reality.
With so many online tools encouraging us to create the narrative of our lives (see Facebook timeline or Intel Museum of Me) the age of the 1st person POV where we are no longer passive consumers but become embedded in a virtual narrative ( a weird human meets digital hybrid ) means that in terms of storytelling at least we are virtually real and really virtual.
Tags: Grau, hyperreal, illusion, immersion, Plato, reality, truth
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