studia universitatis babeş – bolyai dramatica teatru, film, media 2

DIANA CHIOREANU
Several conclusion may be drawn from these lines, first if we think of
the effect of defamiliarization the virtual has upon the real, we could measure
the cause by its by its effect: according to Victor Shklovsky 9 , aesthetic
response is influenced by newly experienced stylistic features that result in
defamiliarization. According to the above-mentioned author’s “theory of the
poetic function”, that de-familiarization invokes feelings which call on personal
perspectives and meanings; and that these aspects of response are more
prominent towards the normal reality not the virtual reality which has
boosted them. As a matter of fact, we can say that after a virtual experience,
the real world is re-experienced in an unfamiliar way, cutting the chain of
routine representations: it can make the real stone feel stony.
On the other hand, the effect can be double-folded. Since perpetual
simulation can lead to reality, the immersed user of the VR is not presented
with a copy or mimesis of the real, but rather with a diegesis that has its
own ontological status. Because of this, VR is known to be compensative;
manipulative; evasive; de-personalizing, escapist or a domain of unimaginable
empowerment and agency. This paradox, which explains VR’s unstable
ontological status, allows for the creation of an art form that both utilizes and
subverts canonical concepts of “the real” by feeding from it (cannibalizing it,
if you will) and deconstructing it byte by byte.
According to the same Michael Heim,
“Sensory immersion has broad ontological implications. First, virtual entities
are not representations. They do not represent. […] As in the medieval theory
of transubstantiation, the symbol becomes the reality. This is the meaning
of telepresence. 10 ”
I would like to fuse Shklovsky and Heim’s theory with that of
synesthesic experience: “in virtual reality, a stone is not a stone until it hits
you in the head and it hurts”. (Stenslie Stahl, virtual character in a MOO).
If more people say it, it is real…
As an alternative topography, beyond the limits of norms and
materiality, virtual communities have amazing response to people. The
CAVE (developed in Illinois, Chicago) is a VR theatre stands for Cave
Automatic Virtual Environment, a title most obviously inspired by Plato’s
exploration of perception, illusion and reality through the metaphor of the
cave in The Republic, offering the experience of immersion in a room-sized
environment while navigating a wand which transports the person‘s senses
from one world which has been created for this system to another. A free-
9 Shklovsky, V. Art as technique. In L. T. Lemon & M. J. Reis (Ed. and Trans.), Russian
formalist criticism: Four essays. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
10 Heim. Idem, p. 130.
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