The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

October 14, 2010


Virtual

[Thinking about the discussion on Netbehaviour, I did a cull of 'virtual'
within a textual grouping, tightened the syntax, and produced the follow-
ing - a form of virtual theory, circumambulating the subject and process
of thought, production nonetheless.]

Virtual matter, one ends with ellipsis ... 'my three little dots' ...
Nikuko: Social philosophy is always virtual. Julu: Every word you say is
virtual; words are not for eating. The virtual world is described; it's
choice / intentionality. The virtual world is chosen; it's within a
potential well; it has both internal and external loci of subjectivities
in relation to spewing-forth in real or virtual, however defined; in a
sense virtual worlds, are subsets. Virtual worlds are always already
as-if; there's nothing else to them. The body, inscribed, is already
virtual; the virtual world, embodied, is polarities, circumscriptions, of
virtuals and reals. Suturing in virtual worlds: coherent physics,
discordant continuity, words; in virtual worlds, one's avatar is present
or not present, 'alive' - but the virtual body is not always there.

One need not ingest or excrete (unless it is written into the virtual
world itself); it need not sleep, does not get sick, and so forth. There
are problematic issues of ontology of real life: virtual particles,
information, and so forth, just as there are problematic issues of
ontology of virtual worlds: mathesis/inscription - manifestations.

In virtual worlds, information may be classified, transmitted. But
there's a distinction between the ontic emptiness of real and virtual
worlds. Between dreams, hallucinations, etc. and a concrete or virtual
arising there seems to be a radical difference, evident in the mixed
ontology of of hierarchical data-bases, but virtual worlds can split.

Is mathesis the fundamental operation in virtual worlds? I'm thinking of
virtual worlds as abstracted, split, chosen, programmed: given, born-into:
thought as conceiving. Consider virtual worlds _not_ as subsets of real
life - as fulcrums. Again, in virtual worlds, the body as entangled
projections or introjections elicits non-traditional diegetic functioning
or logical grounds. I argue this is a basis for being, not only in the
virtual, but also within the real.

It's the complete seamlessness of virtuality that we have achieved - the
artificial intelligence of virtual reality is well ahead of schedule.
Virtuality is _driven_ in fact. (Could this be the difference, the
_driven_ of the virtual, in relation to the obduracy of the real - i.e.
against the the exigencies of virtuality, the age we find ourselves in?

The virtual bites into the visible; you never see the skeleton of the
virtual, however; everything dissolves into inscription, mathesis.
Everything in the virtual real world is inscribed, including ontology. And
in dreams... real and virtual coalesce, ascii-dreams, livid dreams, maroon

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