Memory is the Message

Symposium:

• ISEA97: Eighth International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA97:  

• Theories of Digital Art

• Memory is the Message

• Bruce Brown

• Today, innovations in digital technology seem to have created a new and imaginary world of virtual reality. But I want to argue this is not so, and that virtualization is in fact a biological skill unique to all humankind, and it helps us to deal with the real world -being employed from the earliest pre-technological cultures down to our own technology-saturated ones. Our ability to virtualize things is not technology dependent nor is the process derived from technology – it is an absolutely fundamental part of our biology, one that we have transported into various artificial technologies. Whoever put the words ”virtual” and ”reality“ together must have enjoyed creating this impish paradox. For virtual sex will likely be as available and preposterous as real love is fulfilling and elusive. And it is the latter we must relentlessly pursue. Let me try and reassess this by looking at two things -the virtual, and its twin partner, the actual. Simply put, something that is actual exists at this moment in time and in this space, here and now. The same thing made virtual is it in essence, so being transportable through time and through space. But both are real – one thing existing in two forms.

   

  Full text p. 10-12

Category:

• Paper