The concept of virtuality has been with us a remarkably long time. It is a coherent and functional idea in Plato’s writing, where both ideas and simulacra exist in some state of virtuality. Instead of too closely identifying it with the invention of new technologies — as is the current obsession — we must realize that since there has bee writing (in the Derridean sense of trace — that is, as the very I precondition of culture itself), there has been some idea of the virtual. The text we read may be in real space, but to the extent that it is comprehensible to us, it also exists in a state of virtuality. We did not have to wait for the computer screen or the movie projector in order to enter virtual space; we have been living in its shadow more or less continually.
Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space
by Elizabeth Grosz
(2001)
The concept of virtuality has been with us a remarkably long time. It is a coherent and functional idea in Plato’s writing, where both ideas and simulacra exist in some state of virtuality. Instead of too closely identifying it with the invention of new technologies — as is the current obsession — we must realize that since there has bee writing (in the Derridean sense of trace — that is, as the very I precondition of culture itself), there has been some idea of the virtual. The text we read may be in real space, but to the extent that it is comprehensible to us, it also exists in a state of virtuality. We did not have to wait for the computer screen or the movie projector in order to enter virtual space; we have been living in its shadow more or less continually.
Yet significantly, and in spite of much of the accompanying rhetoric, the capacity for simulation clearly has sensory and corporeal limits that are rarely acknowledged, especially because the technology is commonly characterized as a mode of decorporealization and dematerialization. While the computer and its modes of simulation work with remarkable ease and offer pleasure in the visual realm, where we can enjoy the sight of virtual objects in virtual spaces, it is less clear whether we can draw a distinction between the virtual and the real in other perceptual modalities: it is hard to see what would constitute virtual sound and how it could be distinguished from “real” sound. Moreover, neither vision nor sound is virtual but rather the objects and spaces that vision and sound find as their 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 objects are now capable of generating the same perceptual effects as “real” objects.
Elizabeth Grosz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Grosz
Elizabeth Grosz (born 1952 in Sydney, Australia) is an Australian philosopher, feminist theorist, and professor working in the U.S.
In 1981, Grosz received her PhD from the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where she was a lecturer from 1978 to 1991. She moved to Monash University in 1992. From 1999 to 2001, she was professor of Comparative Literature and English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She taught at Rutgers University in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies from 2002 until becoming professor of Women’s Studies and Literature at Duke in 2012.
(sk)
Real と Virtual のあいだの線は、40年前ぐらいからぼやけ始め、いまはもう誰にもその線を見ることができない。
ほんの少し前までは、鏡の向こう側が Virtual で、鏡のこちら側が Real だと言っていればよかったのが、いまは何が Real で何が Virtual なのか、わかろうとしてもわかりようがない。
見せられている映像が、撮影したものなのか、作られたものなのか、それとも撮影したものに手を加えたものなのか、わかる人はいない。
聞かされている音楽が、演奏されたものなのか、作られたものなのか、それとも演奏されたものに手を加えたものなのか。
嗅がされている香りが、自然のものなのか、作られたものなのか。
食べさせられているものの味が、料理によるものなのか、実験室で作られたものなのか。
触れているものが、実際にそこにあるのかどうかさえ、私たちにはわからない。
与えられている情報はどれにも手が加えられていて、そのままを伝える情報にさえバイアスがかかっている。