Reality of the Virtual

Media devices of contemporary society constantly tread towards an ideal of transparency and immersion. We want the artifice of our tablet or phone devices to act as physical extensions of our own limbs and perceptual faculties –
just look at touch-screen, voice-command, and the visual interfaces which simulate tangible objects such as loose leaf paper or sticky notes.

In addition to practical tools, our entertainment media too progress towards an ever more immersive experience.

48 fps films such as the new Hobbit series,

3-dimensional cameras for films such as Avatar which attempt to transmute its audience to an alternate universe,

or videogames such as Call of Duty which simulate battlefield experiences with point-of-view perspective and high-definition graphics.

The above media exemplify a cultural push for virtual reality – the simulation, perhaps even the electronic accentuation of immediate physical experience with the environment.

Historically, prominent schools of intellectuals and social theorists have expressed anxiety towards virtual reality, arguing such technology obfuscates reality. Some of the founders of the field of Communications, picking up a line of discourse formulated by early 20th century sociologists, argue our very state of existence is so highly contrived by a phenomena of perpetual imagery

from billboards

to neon lights

to street-side advertising signs

that our psychological state has been fractured. The modern individual subject is interpolated by the ideological agendas imagery which populates physical artifacts around him or her to the point of a distantiation from material, or perhaps even spiritual reality.

I would like to complicate this common fear of virtuality. I agree that the transparency and immersive capacity of our surrounding media has grown exponentially. Rather than seeing this increased virtualization of the social landscape as a shift away from reality, however, I posit a bolder claim – that increasing virtuality offers deeper insight into the glimmering reality behind the virtual.

For one thing, let us consider Hollywood films such as The Matrix and Inception. Both are big-budget special effects movies which draw audiences with the promise of immersive spectacle, yet simultaneously function as convincing demystifications of immersion.

The Matrix is about an ideal society which is, in fact, simulated by an apparatus of robots conspiring to oppress the human civilization. The film suggests the possibility that social organization and modern luxury are false freedoms in exchange for mental agency. This is not just an entertaining story, but a self-reflexive depiction of the Hollywood image manufacturing process – which sells utopian visions in exchange for our time, money, and subservience to consumer ideals.

Inception tells a suspenseful story about invading an individual’s dreams and planting ideas that had yet not existed within their subconscious. As the film’s complex narrative web unfolds, the ambiguous layers of dream-consciousness seem to fold over one another, leaving the audience unsure of which dream each character currrently resides in, or whether there is any real in the first place, or whether each plane of existence the protagonists inhabit is in fact a dream. Inception too propagates a message of false consciousness – that aspects of material existence may be manufactured projections rather than self-evident material reality. Moreover, Inception articulates a theory of ideological interpolation – that the artifacts of simulation which surround us may be sowing the seeds of ideas in our minds.

At the point where seemingly neutral objects of social organization are always-already manipulating our psyches, perhaps the way to resist is through a recursive act of hypersimulation. In other words, rather than attempting to disengage from the contrived advertising culture which permeates every thread of the social fabric, a strategy of inflecting an entertainment culture of virtual reality with visceral encounters of authentic reality becomes possible.

For example, how might an immersive, psychological identification with a soldier in Call of Duty not only simulate a fictional war-time experience, but also demonstrate the real and horrible effects of war and militarization? Or how might the fantasy-land of Naavi in Avatar serve as a serious critique of technological overconsumption of natural resources.