Michael Podolak'ın hoşuma gitmiş bir yazısı, ilgiyle ..

To invent new instruments is to invent new spaces.  -Marcos Novak

The Absence of Myth is the dissolution of veiling, of the impossibility
of masking in the face of pure Absence.  –Karl S Chu

            Technology is characterized as the development of functionality
through an applied material.  As a tool, it reproduces an act with an
increase in reliability and form.  Technology is often utilized when a desired
outcome surpasses the expectations set forth by our own imposed levels
of productivity. In a sense, Technology can be seen as an augmentation of
our natural abilities, and an active force that implants our desires into the
functionality of objects and processes.  With the ability to determine the
relative amount of repetition, efficiency, and inventiveness contained within
our tools, we create both objects and processes to perform acts otherwise
seen as impossible.  With the advent of the digital computer, we are now
engaging in a practice that augments our physical abilities as Mechanism
and our conceptualization as Binary Code.   When applying this formula to
Art practice, we begin to develop an interstitial relationship that includes
our body, mind, and cultural affect.  As these entities begin to overlap, we
see the use of Technology in Art practice influencing how we internalize the
projection of our bodies into space.   As our technological advancements
increasingly serve as stronger models for theoretical inquiry, we continue
to engage Art practice as an emergent instrument of Virtuality.[1]

            The presentations given by (but not entirely specific to the work
of), Jordan Crandall, Brian Goldfarb, Adriene Jenik, Lisa Cartwright, and
Norman Bryson, flirt with the changing notion of “Body” and its placement
within a constantly shifting spatial dynamic.  Here, our technological
advancements facilitate a growing interest into the fundamental realities
that we determine may exist within the growing spheres of Biology,
Phenomenology, and Cultural Determinacy. We enact our perception of
reality through our tools directly effecting our ability to create the Virtual
through the practice of Art making; but, the Virtual itself will inevitably
effect how we formulate what it means to be a singular entity otherwise
known as human-being.

The Deterioration of Space at the Virtual Hands of Technology


In Arthur C Danto’s introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Human, All Too
Human, we are encouraged to develop a relationship with the distortions
expressed in Life as characterized by the qualities of Change.[2]  In doing
so, we can hope to establish Truth: Not only do we begin to discover that
life itself is a byproduct of Change, we also realize that our construction of
self-identity arises from a region of indeterminacy.  It can be argued that
early Modernism sought to exploit these spaces of falsification in terms of
the Spectacle of Vision.[3]  Virtuality is the space(s) in which Art practice
engages this idea at this time.  We will see how the articulation of this
space advances proportionately with developments in Technology in
accordance with the creation of more spatially oriented models of Body and
Mind.

The exploration of Vision in Modernist Art practice was fundamentally
dependent upon developments in Technology specific to Ocular-centric
modes of Representation.[4]  As a result of this trajectory, we begin to
more clearly explain the phenomenology of the Eye. However, because of
this, our ability to grasp the location of self-identity is further displaced.  If
this location is purely a construct of a phenomenological exchange
between light and synapse, how does our sense of self remain intact?  As
we clearly externalize this exchange through our advancements in
Technology, we must ask ourselves, “Where is it that ‘we’ go?”  We must
also inquire about the nature of this space, its location, and its
boundaries.  We will learn that Art practice directly influences the shifting
topologies of these virtual locations as an instrument within these
externalized realms of Cognitive Space.  As a generative process, it serves
as a navigational device utilized within various Virtual constructs.

As our Technology continues to replicate and render our experiential reality
with more precision, the levels of augmentation grow more extreme.  It can
be argued that as our Technology exponentially grows stronger, our
externalized versions of self become more real.  Coupling this with
Technology’s tendency to bootstrap itself along with the advancements of
Capital, our desires are inevitably  re-projected into our consideration of
both self and other.[5]  If we were to trace the commodification of
fundamental reality (another lie for Danto?) it would be necessary to begin
at the development of the Camera Obscura.[6]  Moving forward to its
inevitable distribution as Photography, we are inclined to transverse
beyond this development towards Cinema, through motion-pictures and
towards their distribution as home Television, and finally into the reverse-
authored realm of the Internet. Eventually ending up on the other side of
the Eye, we suspiciously look at ourselves from the nebulous realm from
behind the Screen.  This is an external Cognitive Space, publicly accessed
and autonomously designed.

From the vantage point of Virtuality, our new perspective will simulate
every possible coordinate in space, converging together at once.
Considering this, we can not help but reference Michel Foucault’s Panoptic
Machine.[7] As we begin to realize that Technology formulates an external
model for Intelligence (projecting its own will back onto us), it re-converges
itself within the actuality of the Body and upon the topology of virtual
space (Cognitive Space).  As a result, in consideration of the structures
embedded in Virtuality, our use of Technology for the first time gives us the
ability to render our orientation within, and as a part of, the Panoptic
Machine itself.  No longer are we obliged to access this space only in terms
of theoretical constructs.  We design it for ourselves.

Jordan Crandall questions the notion of the Panopticon as a crisis of
Representation directly referencing the territories from which the Body is
transversely redistributed across various agencies of militarization and, as
a logic of Vision and Sight. In his work, Crandall exposes how the individual
formulates himself as a Subject of the “Gaze,” enveloped in mechanisms of
libidinal power, subjugated to an engagement of Portrayal and Process,
and thus exploited as a Technology of rhetorical concern.[8]  Further, he
utilizes various technological advancements in optical augmentation,
likened to a military surveillance capability (and at times a consumer/traffic
watch), inherently instilling within his audience the simultaneous sense of
being both the “viewer” and “viewed.”  It is from this duality that
Crandall’s audience inadvertently experiences the notion of Virtuality.  We
are neither ourselves, nor anyone or everyone else.  In a sense, we (not
so) simply become a transitional process of cross-modal actualization.  We
become Virtual, or possible.

As further elaborated by Rosalind Krauss, the geometry of this space is
parallel to the coordinated geometry arising between the actual
demarcations formed while traveling light exists within the space of visual
perspective, and the vanishing point both within that respective space and
that of the eye.  As a mental (virtual) exercise, we must consider what
happens when this arrangement becomes dynamic, shifting as quickly as
that of the blinking eye itself.  Krauss determines that this geometrical
model turns around on itself reaching the unimaginable limit of Infinity.
This “point “is literally reduced to nothing.  Existing beyond the point of
thought, this space requires all perspectives to coordinate upon
themselves to validate its existence.[9]  However, Krauss goes on to say
that constructions of visual augmentation “will short circuit the physical site
of mere phenomena to exfoliate within the domain of Mind.”[10]

Technology externalizes the “domain of Mind” in many ways.  However, it
becomes alarmingly clear that our determination of Truth must extend
beyond externally physical and phenomenologically-oriented methods of
validation. Advancements in Technology that are specific to the digital
computer’s ability to instantaneously recreate representational scenarios,
allow us to argue the authenticity of our experience.  If the “host” of
engaged phenomena is inevitably in question, then by contrast, the space
that hosts that individual must follow in question as well.

Further questioning the authenticity of empiricism, Brian Goldfarb
entertains the possibility of Technology augmenting internal processes of
Body.  He hopes to engender awareness towards the changing notion of
Body by questioning the ethics surrounding  “prosthetic enhancement.”  As
our tools become miniaturized and re-implanted within, or around, our
bodies, Goldfarb argues that the conception of Body, and in a sense
originality, must be subject to change.  In his fictional and yet prophetic
website, Goldfarb dedicates the “Ocular Convergence Consortium” to a not-
so-distant scenario where technologies of data dispersion and biological
modification intersect.[11]  Here, the body becomes networked.
Experiencing augmented Vision as a multi-tiered concept for tele-presence,
empirical index, and cohabitation of multiple forms, the individual who is
embedded in Virtual space becomes decentralized.  From a conceptual
standpoint, the individual has now re-implanted his functionality as a
human being within himself, encapsulating it within the interface of digital
Technology. As a result, his sense of self becomes holographic.  His tools
become externalized thought processes, developed and then hidden
within his own form, graciously allowing him to experience thought (and
the thoughts of others) as freed from the Mind/Brain/Body/Soul dilemma.

Roy Ascott describes this multivalent perspective in Virtuality
as “Cyberception.”  Analogous to the criteria established by the Ocular
Convergence Consortium, Cyberception also heightens experience to
transpersonal levels.  Involving technologies of communication,
collaboration, and transformation, Cyberception informs the practice of Art
making as the definitive behavior of a Transpersonal Art.  It provides
insight into the interconnected and interdependent nature of phenomena.
In its lack of distinction between dualities, Cyberception exploits the
permeability and instability of boundaries.[12]  Ascott continues to describe
the redemptive qualities of Cyberception as, “the antithesis of linear
thought….  An all-at-once perception of a multiplicity of viewpoints, an
extension in all dimensions of associative thought, a recognition of the
transience of all hypotheses, the relativity of all knowledge, and the
impermanence of all perception.”[13]  Cyberception joins with Virtuality to
actualize pure Process.

Adopting the notion of Cyberception while presently within the
landscape/mindscape of Virtuality, we can see that we establish some
comfort in relation to Foucault’s Panopticon.  We also gain some
understanding into Paul Virilio’s similar recognition of “tele-presence” in his
theories describing the dissolution of space and time within Virtuality.  For
Virilio, the implosion of distance in virtual space is seen as an affect of the
digital realm itself.  This negation of dimensionality regards the Virtual as
less than actual.  It is seen as an unfortunate constituent of a theory
of “real-time” discourse surrounding the advancements made by
information technologies.[14]

Conversely, a cyberceptive orientation of Virtuality provides a critical
difference in its interpretation of the tactility of distances occurring in
space.  As Erwin Panofsky eludes in Perspective as Symbolic Form, the
exact perspectival constructions occurring within real tactile distances are
merely systematic abstractions from the structure of a psychopysiological
space.[15]  Thus, applying this logic to our consideration of the Virtual, we
realize the veil existing between our phenomenological reality and
Virtuality is lifted.  Panofsky continues to explain that the purpose and
effect of these perspectival constructions are intended to reinforce a
realization of what these spaces represent: Precisely, a homogeneous and
boundless quality to space characterizes its foundation, foreign to our
direct experience of that space.[16]  Becoming a mathematical space,
differences between body and intervening spaces are negated.  As
a “quantum continuum,” the differences between psychologically
conditioned visual pictures (which directly stimulate our sense of selfhood)
and mechanically constructed retinal imagery, are no longer taken into
account within this space.  Hence, there is “a fundamental discrepancy
between Reality and its construction.”[17]  We construct the differences in
Reality, creating “lies” to reinforce our sense of Self.  Technology will
continue to show us how our prior modes of survival are now expiring.

The realization of the fundamental Truth underlying the construction of
Reality empowers our ability to enter into a realm of Virtuality. Where we
were once cautioned to observe the perils of Virtuality as intrusive, existing
as negations of our current structures of orientation (ie-tactile distances
reinforcing the real, perspectives symbolizing structures of power), we are
now in a profound position to question the actual authenticity of our prior
engagements.  Through a cyberceptive orientation of Virtuality, we realize
that all space is virtual.  All our previous constructs are now seen as
processional. They move in accordance with the lies that Danto encourages
we embrace.  The hypothesized distance, which grows between Spectator
and Spectacle, simply disappears into irrelevancy.

Human, all too (post)Human

            The notion of Self has been brought into question by the (tele)
presence

of Virtuality.  The boundaries of identity become negotiable, allowing for
new modes of exploration.  Through Technology, we navigate through this
dimension of possibility generating new practices of Art making and
facilitating new domains of inquiry.

            The infinite progression into Virtuality produces successive worlds
along with every transgression against the Real.  Adriene Jenik explores
our new mannerisms within these worlds.  Invading Internet chatrooms
and environments such as The Palace, she utilizes various avatars in her
performative project entitled Desktop Theater.[18]  As a collaborative
effort, these somewhat random performances encourage all participants,
unsuspecting or not, to investigate the notion of online identity as a form
of expression compressed into two dimensions.[19]

            The ontological, and epistemological, implications of design and
creation within the digital realm resemble new structures of Myth.
Considering the index-specific capabilities of Virtuality, future inhabitants
(cognizant or artifically intelligent) of these new dimensions may regard our
current methods of Art practice as the genesis of new forms of conception.
Proliferating our Cognitive Spaces as the first-order structures of these
new realms, we become the holographic dimensions of Virtuality,
exponentially unfolding with every gesture; physical, mental, virtual, real,
artifactual, and artificial.

            Christine Paul clearly brings to our attention the use of a religio-
centric vernacular in Virtuality.  In her description of online multi-user
environments,

Paul emphasizes how individuals create visual representations and
assumed identities of themselves as “Avatars.”[20] This term originates
from Hinduism and represents the “descent” from which celestial entities
embody themselves into terrestrial forms.[21]  Paul is specific in noting the
conceptual links between descent and ‘downloading’ amidst the
distribution of identity in Virtuality.[22]

In a contrasted approach to this issue, our ability to ‘upload’ our
networked sense of self into the cognitive and virtual space of other users
resembles early Gnostic Myth.[23]  With our knowledge of the fundamental
structures of our physical reality, and our ability to extend the metaphors
of acclivity essential to our structures of being, the conceptualization of
Virtuality informs our worldly sense of purpose.

The practice of Art brings this capability into realization through its use of
Technology.

            Virtuality contains within itself the idea of Parallel Empiricism.[24]
Together, its inhabitants engage each other in rituals of Process and
Becoming.  We see that the moment one instance is noted, another event
is destroyed.  We also realize that creation is distributive amidst this
scenario.  As a result, Art practice inevitably is redefined.  The creation of
objects becomes the design of spaces.  These spaces will be experienced
in isomorphic gestures.  In our investigation of identity we see that the
notion of individuality becomes subjective.  As the individual blurs between
notions of Body, the spaces in which they are actualized must be designed
for process and situational determinism, not impact.

            In a virtual and transitional space, defined by the potential of
possibility, the criteria of Art practice begins to change.  Celia Larner and
Ian Hunter argue that a redefinition of aesthetics must follow.  As our
nervous systems are redistributed across the entirety of the globe, a
physical dematerialization occurs.  Describing this as “The Nervous
Aesthetic,” Larner and Hunter claim that “our apprehension of loss of the
personal in the face of the apparent autonomy of Technology gives way to
an intuition of the becoming of meaning.”[25]  Because of this, our
linguistic and cognitive mechanisms are overloading.  As a result, the
singular implication of an autonomous aesthetic becomes obliterated.
Quite frankly, in Virtual spaces we do not have the time to entertain an
independent theory of meaning. We do not need time to exist.
Fortunately, with every gesture in these new spaces, we create
instantaneous paradigms.[26]  Moving beyond this for a moment, we can
inquire into how this issue recapitulates itself in the “real” world as well.

            Through Technology we realize that our Bodies are not our own.
Lisa Cartwright promotes a dialogue in which the standardization of the
notion of Body is brought into question.  Through her critique of the Visible
Human Project, Cartwright centralizes her argument of the problem of
standardization to the “crisis of commensurability.” [27]  This idea is central
to the paradox of visibility as a component of this project: The proliferation
of new technologies making this creation possible begins to demand
information that is unsupported, let alone impossible to prove.[28]  It is
important to note however, the significance of this dilemma depends upon
our necessity towards expressing multiplicity through verbal description.
Although our Technology of Language requires us at times to generalize
concepts in order to promote heightened levels of access and potential, at
times it contains within itself certain levels of abstraction. Therefore, these
verbal constructs begin to align themselves with locations in the virtual.
The issue of Body as cognitively intangible phenomena, becomes a
prerequisite of virtual habituation.  Further, without the regard for Body (as
concept or entity), our definition of self is determined accordingly to our will.

            In our newly defined post-human state, “our new Body and new
consciousness will bring forth a wholly new environment which returns our
gaze, which looks, listens, and reacts to us, as much as we do to it.”[29]
For Roy Ascott, our reconvened sense of Mind (and subsequently Body),
joins together with the other, displaced beyond our individuality and
conception of self, seemingly forming a new model of Hive Mind, interacting
with ourselves, and independent in an entirely new frame of reference.

            The transitional state of Virtuality creates “mutant bodies” for its
inhabitants.  As Norman Bryson explains, mutation occurs from the
disestablishment of normalization.[30]  Mutation can be seen as an artifact
of the distribution of Ideals.  As we move across the spectrum of
representation, we realize that our preference for a singularity within the
extent of the Real will induce the presence of its opposition.  The plasticity
of phenomena potentially generates structures that deviate from the
expectations warranted by repetitive engagements with our belief
structures.  In a way, the Ideal becomes the Unreal. We see that reality
informs the Virtual and vice versa.  Actualizing these mutations as residual
capabilities governed by our continual transverse between the topology of
the Virtual and the terrain of the Real, our inherent potential as human
being is therefore constituted by ability to change.

(trans)Architecture as Art Practice in Virtuality

            We can argue that every act is an act of creation.  Conversely, our
lack of action, or better yet our tendency to focus on singularities, is an act
of deconstruction.   Considering this logic, we should accept that our
presence in Virtuality formulates and destroys new worlds instantaneously.
We realize that the existence of Time is merely a subjective phenomenon.
In Virtuality, the difference between disparate entities is a series of
multiple instances following a generative trajectory, which develop a
potential to share information over an infinite pattern of possibility.
Technology gives us the opportunity to access any of these points and
experience them at a universal scale.   When we restructure our Body and
Mind in accordance with the principles of Virtuality, we actualize a
holographic moment in which all potentials inform one another.  Ironically,
we realize that the conceptualization of Virtuality is merely just that.  The
virtual becomes the possibility to inform the Real, in and of itself, and yet
characteristically beyond any reality existing at the same time.  If we follow
the trajectory imposed by our own desires of functionality, we realize we
have gained the ability to challenge our own articulation of what is
characterized as real.  Implanting functionality into our desires, and desire
into our functionality, we are able to decode language through our
Technology.  In doing so, we make the Real malleable within the realm of
Virtuality, and coincidentally, together within itself.

            The Genesis of Virtuality is formed as an artifact of Technology in
the practice of Art.  We distinguish that the mere acknowledgement of
Virtuality itself, becomes a fundamental practice of Art.  In order to facilitate
a phenomenological environment that gives light to the structures that
Possibility may inhabit, we must create transitional spaces.  Otherwise
known as (trans)Architectures, these spaces are characterized by their
hyper-surfaced orientation, which synthesize media and language, and
challenge our adherence to the authenticity of the phenomenological
world.[31] Marcos Novak, the leading proponent of (trans)Architectures,
explains how these forms come into fruition:



            Accepting that we are using Technology to increase constantly
the ‘visible’ portion

            of the world means also that even if the distance between the
conceivable and the

            presentable remains unchanged, the interval between them
advances in direct

            proportion to our technological progress.  Revealing uncharted
territories of the

           newly presentable, we can register this advance without judging it
to be progress

           or regression, without calling upon Utopia and totalization.  When
the interval has

           moved sufficiently far away from any given position, we are
transformed.

           Exponential change means that we are transformed ever more
frequently.[32]

The practice of Art making in the domain of Virtuality, is a response to the
qualities of Change.  As we govern over existence within this realm, we
design spaces to exist as metaphors for the Other.  These spaces retain
within their structure an embedded sense of potential, networked through
the historicity that underlies our development of functionality, through the
processes made specific by our sense of desire.  As N. Katherine Hayles
emphasizes, Virtuality is a transmodern phenomenon, moving into new
realms of inquiry.  It is marked by a shift from possession to access,
becoming an extension and modification from post-modernism, dealing with
pattern and random mutation.[33]   Through the practice of Art making in
Virtuality, our Technology provides a dynamic interface for the potentials
that characterize an accelerated convergence of dimensionality.  These
liquid phenomena in turn inform our sense of immediacy, through which we
mediate our existence in relation to our experience of the Real.