VIRTUALITY AND REALITY: AN INTERTWINING MOBIUS

The article addresses the relationship between virtual and actual reality as the external world of users. The objective is to study the relationship between two realities: virtual reality and actual reality in their ontological uniqueness and distinctness. The set objective implies that virtual reality should be seen as a specific conditional reality. The applied methodological principle incorporates concepts of ontological/ functional/ artistic conditionalities. The development of modern VR technology contributing to the formation of cyberculture is shown to bring the functional conditionality to the forefront, putting into action and emphasizing the leading part of an individual, the importance of his or her self-subject position (as the Participant or the Observer) in social construction of reality. The specific nature of the boundaries of conditionality as well as their penetrability/ impenetrability (characterizing openness or closeness of realities) make it possible to draw a demarcation line between the actual reality and other realities. The comparative analysis given in the article revealed a number of distinctive features inherent in virtual realities. Due to these features, virtual realities can be differentiated both from the actual reality and the realities (mental, artistic) generally referred to as virtual by a number of scholars. As defined, the actual reality, as long as its social and regulatory pressure is imperative and unconditional, can compete with virtual realities, which, on the other hand, due to their interactivity can have such an impact on the actual reality that any concept of two autonomous worlds makes no sense.

Discusiones Filosóficas, 2011

2001

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe)

tive structures of perception and the cultural models involved in the process of understanding the reality. In the second section, as architects, we use to have "a global set of social and technical responsabilities" to organize the physical space, but now we must also be able to organize the "virtual space" obtained from a multidimensional set of computer simulations. There are certain features that can be used as "sensory parameters" when we are dealing with architectural design in the "virtual world", taking into consideration the differences between "inmersive virtual reality" and "non inmersive virtual reality" [2].Velez Jahn 99. In the appendix we present a summary of some conclusions based on a set of pedagogical applications analysing the positive and the negative consequences of working exclusively in a "virtual world".

UMI Dissertations A Bell & Howell Information & Learning, 2000

Virtual reality (VR) is examined in principle as an interface concept and in practice as computational communications media. A Delphi forecasting method is used to support a theoretical core of natural and critical philosophy. The virtual world is seen to be ideal for supporting an understanding of how we construct objects of consciousness. We actively construct these objects. Virtuality supports awareness of the active nature of perception and awareness that all experience is constructed. Virtuality suggests fluid boundaries and dissolution of difference, with a synchronous intermingling of inner self with outer world. Traditional categories are too limiting. Virtuality suggests a qualitative change in the environment of thought. A qualitative change in thought suggests a qualitative change in the nature of consciousness. Beneath a change of age lies a change of thought. Virtuality supports reflection upon intentionality and the role these new media play in supporting cognitive appreciation, or 'mindfulness,' of the connections between action and experience. Freedom and choice are seen to be foundational, with attendant accountability and responsibility attached. Seen in this light, everything is at stake. Virtuality is the intentional, technologically mediated effort to amplify, to extend, and to manifest intentionality by extending experience. Virtual objects are acts of volition. They are minded information. The teleology of virtual reality media is to point to the inscription of media as intention. The thrust towards experiential, tangible manipulation of virtuality aims to extend our understanding of the role of intentionality in the creation and apprehension of the subtleties of reality. Virtuality inscribes a novel re-presentation of the theoretical concepts of the natural philosophy of the early twentieth century. These created a profound paradigm shift in the intellectual and philosophical apprehensions of reality and consciousness. VR media embed this re-presentation into the collective mind. These principles condition basic assumptions of this age and take on global cultural significance. Virtuality provides dynamic indication and sensate feeling of the demise of a mechanistic, deterministic, and linear paradigm. i

Based on a brief overview of the history of ontology and on some philosophical problems of virtual reality, a new approach to virtuality is proposed. To characterize the representational (information, cognitive, cultural, communication) technologies in the Internet age, I suggest that Aristotle’s dualistic ontological system (which distinguishes between actual and potential being) be complemented with a third form of being: virtuality. In the virtual form of being actuality and potentiality are inseparably intertwined. Virtuality is potentiality considered together with its actualization. In this view, virtuality is reality with a measure, a reality which has no absolute character, but which has a relative nature. This situation can remind us the emergence of probability in the 17th century: then the concept of certainty, now the concept of reality is reconsidered and relativized. Currently, in the descriptions of the world created by representational technologies, there are two coherent worldviews with different ontologies: the world is inhabited by (absolute) actual and (absolute) potential beings—or all the beings in the world are virtual.

Human Choice and Computers, 1998

Global communication technologies need to go beyond intersubjective symbolic exchange toward supporting the engagement of people in their cultural context. Hence, what is needed is an understandingfor the way in which the efficacy of cultural contexts manifests itself. Mass media have been successful in including people in a cycle of cultural production and consumption, but this process is accompanied by increased standardisation. The interindividual forms of communication, on the other hand, lend themselves to customisation but are too text-based to leverage the cultural context for purposes of creative collaboration. Virtual reality, we claim, by propagating a form of interaction based on immersion, could become the means of addressing and operating with cultural contexts. But then it needs to comprehend their ontological status in a new way. We place the efficacy of the cultural in the domain of the virtual. Our short paper gradually develops and refines a notion of virtuality that will stand up to the demands of grounding a development in that direction. In the process we draw on philosophy, cultural and media studies, and psychoanalysis. L. B. Rasmussen et al. (eds.

Virtual Reality: Cognitive Foundations, Technological …, 2001

2014

Presented paper is divided into two parts. The first part concerns the main philosophical aspects of Virtual Reality. At the basis of the J. Baudrillard theory of aesthetic simulacrum the differences between imitation and simulation are considered. The M. Heidegger’s notion of “lifebeing”, Dasein and nature are presented. In the second part, Virtual Reality is analysed from two points of view – as a tool for presentation and as an environment for direct designing in the virtual world.

2016

Abstract Twentieth-century art favors an aesthetic no longer oriented to beauty (which is associated with harmony and unity), but to “sublime”. Immersion by itself is a triumph of the experience the sublime offers over a detached viewpoint of the object-artwork; it mobilizes the entire human body seeking to offer a full experience, which is essential for the artwork to move us; it can fill us, though, with awe and make us weak-willed beings that accept without criticism the value system and the ideological choices inherent in the artwork. Virtual worlds are increasingly seductive, and people immersing in them end up perceiving reality through the lenses of virtual reality; and wanting to create a reality resembling virtual reality. The current paper attempts to investigate how it is possible to achieve a kind of immersion that allows for a full experience not marginalizing thought. It will provide an in-depth analysis of the nature of immersion, and of the means used to achieve it. This will help highlight which kind and which “quantity” of immersion has to be sought for, in order not to provoke adverse and unwanted results, such as the creation of the feeling of uncanny, or create empty signifiers, that make us loose interest in the artwork.