Continued from part 2.
VIRTUAL: as used in the context of "virtual world." A continued analysis of the word in the taxonomy of digital game aesthetics.
In the last post, I stated that Tom Boellstorff's book, Coming of Age in Second Life (2008) adapts the term virtual from Gilles Deleuze's metaphysical expression of virtual, based on the earlier philosophies of Henri Bergson. I agree with Deleuze that the virtual is real, yet is not actualized (like our "tangible, actually real" reality). However, Deleuze was speculating on the very nature of reality, not a digital world simulated on a computer and mediated with video screens. I don't think that Jaron Lanier was thinking of Deleuze's 1968 Difference and Repetition (which wasn't translated into English until 1994) when he popularized the term virtual reality in the 1980s, so it doesn't seem like Deleuze is helpful here.
[Update 23 Nov 2022]
Lately, the word "virtual" has fallen "somewhat out of favor with media scholars" (Brendan Keogh, A Play of Bodies (2018) pg. 55), likely partly due to its overuse as a marketing term for the past 30+ years. Like Keogh, I think that the term is still useful for discussing a player's sense of embodiment when perceiving and interacting with a digital world.
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[Update 4 Dec 2022]
N. Katherine Hayles wrestles with dualism as she defines virtuality as "the cultural perception that material objects are interpenetrated by information patterns" (Hayles "The Condition of Virtuality" The Digital Dialectic 1999 pg. 69 emphasis original). She wants to put forth that virtuality is a material, embodied experience, but admits that her definition plays on a dualism of information/matter, and likens it to the older traditional dualism of spirit/matter (Ibid. pg. 73), that she is trying to contest. As she writes to counter this dichotomy as a historical fallacy, she "can feel the language exerting an inertial pull on my argument, for only through the dichotomies constructed to describe it can [she] gesture toward the unity that the world is" (Ibid. pp. 75-76). The two concepts are thoroughly entangled and information can never be wholly abstracted from the material. Hayles reminds us that "for information to exist, it must always be instantiated in a medium" (Ibid. pg. 75).
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| Rob Shields, The Virtual (2003) |
Sociologist Rob Shields also struggles with dualism. He "resets" some of the Bergsonian dualisms that Deleuze wrote about with an eye to make sense of our digital-created virtual experiences in his book, The Virtual (2003). Shields asserts that the virtual is an idealized reality while the concrete is an actual reality. They are in contrast with the abstract (the idealized possible) and the probable (the actual possible).
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| David Rothenberg, Hand's End (1993) |
Thus, the virtual belongs to the realm of the ideal, the non-material. It is not in the "tangible world," as philosopher David Rothenberg describes it (in Hand's End: Technology and the Limits of Nature (1993)). So, where is it? Rothenberg: "It exists within the relation between machine and the user."
This last point may be the key to understanding what is meant by virtual in digital media. An environment may be simulated on a computer on displayed on a screen (or, "conjure it up" - Rothenberg), but this does not in itself make a virtual space. At this point, there is no space; it is merely excited phosphors inside a CRT tube, a flat array of lit LEDs, or maybe a sequence of cells of charged ionized gas. A user (gamer, resident, etc.) must interface with the computer (look at the display, place hands on control mechanism) and interpret the symbols they perceive on the screen as representing a space (the user must "invoke it" - Rothenberg).
At this point of interpretation, the user starts to embody the virtual world and realize (as in, bring into reality) that space in the user's mind. The virtual space that is perceived is incorporated into the perceptual image that the user actively constructs of reality within their mind. This is not an actual space, but the user's body and mind react (in some way) as if it is actual space (harkening back to Berthier's definition of virtual as "not real" but "displaying the qualities of reality"). It is an ideal reality, with no extents into the material world, that becomes mediated by the user's brain.
The user does not enter the virtual world. The virtual world is instantiated in the user's perceptual image.
[Update 23 Nov 2022]
Videogames do not allow players to step into virtual worlds, but they do allow players to actively perceive and interpret screen imagery, digital sounds, and haptic interfaces as if these things constitute an extended world of virtual bodies and objects (Keogh 2018 pg. 55).
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I don't simply write about wholly-immersive VR displays and equipment when I write about virtual worlds. I also see early 2-D arcade games and even many non-game forms of digital media as examples of virtual environments. These games, graphically primitive by the standards of modern technology, still hold the same qualities of virtuality explored here, although to differing degrees.
Any of these digital games and simulations may affect a human user's sense of proprioception, the sense of the motion and position of one's own body in space. Watch as a car racing game player, without thinking, will lean right or left as they steer, or a Doom (1993) player peer their head around to attempt to peek around a corner (a useless gesture with a 2-D display). These are preconscious movements in reaction to the computer-generated, virtual space, what I've come to term as "cyberkinaesthesia." But, that's a thought for another post.
In an attempt to finally define virtual:
- Is simulated and mediated by digital technologies (computer)
- Is only realized when interfaced with by a person
[Update 23 Nov 2022]
A virtual object is only in "potential" form until the moment it is realized in the mind of an actual person. Until then, it is merely so much computer data and maybe lights on an unseen screen. A virtual space and the actual player are co-constituted when the computer and person interface together into a perceptual circuit (system shows game state through audio and visuals; player's senses take in this information; brain processes information and makes decisions; player's body makes movements through system's input device; system creates new game state based on player input). "Neither the player nor the videogame comes first; each is created and mediated by the circuit" (Keogh 2018 pg. 41).
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And thus, a virtual space:
- Is simulated and mediated by digital technologies (computers)
- Has geometry (dimensionality, metrics, and extents)
- Conveys a sense of spatiality when realized by a person
This includes other forms of digital media, such as web pages, interactive fiction, and videoconferencing software. There are many virtual spaces in cyberspace, just no actual spaces.
Bringing it all back to Boellstorff, a virtual world:
- Is simulated and mediated by digital technologies (computers)
- Has a virtual environment (see below)
- Is enabled by online technologies
- Conveys a sense of spatiality when realized by multiple persons
Has a field of action within a geometry that is defined by its dimensionality, metrics, and extents Is populated by content, objects at specific positions within the geometry Is moderated by dynamics that determine the rules of interaction within the environment
Note that a virtual environment is a database of parameters that defines a specific virtual place. A VE "is not, by itself, associated with the user... until it is put into action and interfaced with the user" (2006 pg. 528). We can speak of a VE whether or not it has been realized by a person.
[End Update 23 Nov 2022]
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