collected thoughts on histories of Virtual Realities / VR in the Arts and related technosocial systems
“(Interviewer, Melody Sumner) How does this differ from what other people call virtual reality?
(Woody Vasulka)Virtual reality is basically the viewpoint that you, as a participant, are inside the computer memory’s space. What I am trying to do is make a view that is more allegorical. You observe rather than participate. This has very little to do with virtual reality directly, it belongs to the field of space control. Virtual reality controls virtual space but I am trying to control actual space. My work is rather theatrical, cinegraphic. It is a redefinition of dramatic space.
(Interviewer, Melody Sumner) What are the implications for the human imagination?
(Woody Vasulka) Basically, it provides a critique ofpsychological drama as presented in film and theater. If you take the traditional genre of drama it is a psychologically supported system. I would like to find something that appeals to human perception from rather a different angle. Like what I am saying about people observing a psychological ritual that is unrelated to their own emotional conditions, their own psychological state. Something that not concretized by an emotional relationship between protagonists, but still represents a certain order or pattern that can be discerned. I think by now we are all in search ofnew structuring. Music has gone through centuries of exploration of particular structures since the Renaissance up to the nineteenth century which allowed it to become very very perfect and precise. Minute emotional changes can be expressed mapped into a vast orchestra. Today I guess we know that we can’t really repeat the past as far as the level of craft and the social circumstances that were available back then. We are in a desperate search for a new structuring, and so this effort in using technology is taken to be part of that search. The separation that people try to put between themselves and technology is quite silly. When you start working with technology it provides an environment in which your craft can be practiced.” — Interview with Woody Vasulka by Melody Sumner, for Crosswinds, in Santa Fe, November, 1992
“Steina: I have a friend who’s interested in the aesthetics of computer generated spaces, which at the consumer level are mainly games. There’s one game he was into where the object is to destroy six enemy helicopters. He shoots down five, and he keeps the sixth going, so this game won’t close on him. He can hover in space. He can see how it was built and go places. Eventually, the sixth one would shoot him down and finish his game, but in the meanwhile he had time to look at things aesthetically. Why wouldn’t they just put a toggle and let you just hover in the space for hours if you wanted? He wanted to have a dialogue with his mind, and he didn’t want those damn helicopters to be in his way but, that’s the way the game is set up. In a way we have been so betrayed by virtual reality. Instead of being this perfected aeshetic space for us all to be in, so that we can dialogue with our minds, it has become this mindless war machine.” — Vasulka Interview — David Sears Mather (Monday July 29th, 1996)
“This fetishistic anthropomorphism drives many discourses today: no longer just friendly, computers are interactive; not just communication, the Internet offers interconnectivity; and so on. Today the pathetic fallacy is a technological truth, and per the structure of fetishism the reverse must be considered as well: a technological fallacy whereby the machine projects its modalities into the subject. In this regard consider the language of the electronic revolution. From Microsoft to Mondo 2000, this rhetoric is less cyberpunk than techno-psychedelic; hence the hallucinogenic tropes of virtual reality (the rebirth of Timothy Leary as techno-guru is telling here), or the aleatory tropes of the Web (the new site of post-Surrealist derives). Access is two-way; the epiphanic entrance to the Information Highway is promised as a euphoric exploration of the mind. This is not just Clockwork Orange paranoia: in the age of electronic information a principal frontier of capitalism is the unconscious.” — The Archive without Museums — Hal Foster (1996) published in October, Vol. 77 (Summer, 1996), pp. 97–119
“And then everything started going hexadecimal on me. All I was seeing were web colors. It was low-res, digital, cosmic, groovy. I could no longer tell the difference between hallucinating and being on-line.” — Hard_Code Theater: In Remembrance of Things Unknown — The Unknown (2002)
“Multiple User Dungeons or Multiple User Domains are text-based virtual reality platforms where players interact through massive role-playing and characterisation, investing a lot of time and text in creating the contexts and environments for their interactions. One of the most celebrated MUDs, Lambdamoo, has been made popular by Julian Dibbell’s essay “How a rape happened in cyberspace.” More information on Lambdamoo is available at http://www.lambdamoo.info .” — PlayBlog: Pornography, Performance and Cyberspace — Nishant Shah; from C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader — Editors: Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen, Matteo Pasquinelli (2007)
“Participation in text-based virtual environments like Lambda.moo allows the user to develop an online persona in the virtual environment. That persona can truly reflect the person, as they perceive themselves, or it can present the kind of person they would like to be or to become. Text-based virtual reality environments are somewhat like a cross between multi-user chat, and text-based adventure games. People who are connected can either interact with (type messages to) others currently connected, or they can manipulate virtual objects through special commands in the virtual space. Such text-based virtual reality environments are used for any or all of the following purposes: they can present environments for online collaboration and learning, facilitate learning about programming objects in the environment, for developing and sharpening social, communications and writing skills. In particular, they are locations where one can meet and engage with one or more people who may share interests. Such meetings may involve social or technical chat, can lead to fostering romance, or — very common in some of the environments — act as virtual venues for engaging in virtual sex (often termed netsex or tiny sex).
To get a sense of how environments such as lambda work, as well as some perspectives on virtual reality, object permanence, online addiction and ‘net sex,’ the lambda moo transcript as saved by Colin McCalmac (Samiam on Lambda) is a good starting point.8 For an example transcript of a net sex interaction between three members from an online community, and an anthropological deconstruction of the interaction, see Marshall (2003).
Cotton (his Lambda identity in the early-to-mid-1990s) writes, “I spent a ridiculous number of hours on Lambda. I chatted, explored, and searched for virtual sex partners. The cool thing was that on Lambda you even could have virtual clothes, and could Emote actions, as well as just speaking. As well as making some good friends, from all over, I also ‘virtually’ dated, snogged and got off virtually with several people in the lambda community. It was pretty cool, particularly because I could follow the lead of people more experienced with dating and courting rituals, and all the (normally visual) actions 96 C’Lick Me were described in text. In real life, as a blind teenager, I had no romance, a bit of faltering play, but none of those first base, second base third base things, necking kissing, all of that stuff you see in the movies. Lambda was helping me regain a lost past, a past where my disability seemed to preclude everyday social/sexual experiences. I met a couple of my lambda friends in real life, sometime later, and was pleasantly surprised how they mostly matched my mental image of them” (Conversation with the author, August 2005).” — Netporn, Sexuality and the Politics of Disability: A Catalyst for Access, Inclusion and Acceptance ? — Tim Noonan; from C’Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader — Editors: Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen, Matteo Pasquinelli (2007)
