Negotiating virtual spaces: Exploring the collision of real and digital space in human perception.
Date
2011-11-08
Authors
Edwards, Natalie.
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Abstract
In a global environment where communication, socialization and entertainment are increasingly defined by digital media technologies, the boundaries that delineate perceptions of what is „real‟ from what is „virtual‟ are being critically disputed. In relation to digital media, one of the challenges that typical human perception is currently faced with, stems from the intrinsic human need to map the digital space according to a set of „reality‟ mapping coordinates. New media art explores the way in which the two seemingly incongruous languages of the „real‟ and the „virtual‟ can be manipulated to affect a shift in human perception from the „ocularcentric‟ (Lenoir xxii) to the embodied. Cultural theory, as well as theories relating to cognitive processes and perception are being revised and reinvented by authors such as Lyle Massey, Kim Veltman and Mark Hansen, in an attempt to understand our relationship with technology. In a world where seeing is no longer believing, the tools by which we typically identify reality are rendered obsolete and with them, the boundary that separates the virtual, digital world from the real, tangible one.
My work looks at the ways in which we perceive digital spaces whose co-ordinates waver between a state of constant flux and momentary stability in relation to the our physical proximity to the digital space. Using Rennaissance trompe l‟oeil techniques and digital projections of virtual space, I explore the role that specific pieces of new media art have in affirming the form-giving potential of the human participant, by coaxing them into performance. I look at the work of contemporary new media artists William Kentridge, Robert Lazzarini and Pablo Valbuena, in my investigation of the human conception of the digital space. I look at simulacra, artifice, and the gaze as components of digital illusions that give rise to a performative comprehension of corporeal and virtual space. Ultimately I will show that the only means by which we distinguish the real from the virtual is through embodied, haptic human perception that arises out of human performance around the digital.