Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1010140321400.3617@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Virtual
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:21:53 -0400 (EDT)
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