O imerziji, čistoj percepciji i diskurzivnoj gustini u virtuelnoj umetnosti / On Immersion, Pure Perception and Discoursive Density in Virtual Art

Abstract

In this paper I will apply bergsonian model of pure perception modified as transitional step of immersion in some projects of virtual art (Dervish by Markos Novak and Placeholder by Brenda Laurel and Rachel Strickland), extrapolated from an analogy observed in the processes of exclusion in bergsonian theory of perception and lacanian theory of subjectivation. For Bergson, my body as an image/screen is carved out, and, in turn, is carving from, the aggregate of other images. Object appears to my body in the process of conversion from present to represented object by exclusion of its greater part, as perception. For Lacan, process of subjectivation includes a phase of aphanisis, „the division of the subject – when the subject appears somewhere as meaning, he is manifested elsewhere as ‘fading’, as disappearance“. Subject appears as a kind of agency capable of isolating and playing with the function of the image/screen as a form of his or her represenation. When entering the VR, our body, delimited as a screen, as a centre of indetermination capable of eventual actions, will be delimited again in another aggregate of images, specified by what I shall call different discursive density: new discursive-specific time-space grid, after which our screen will form gradually. At first, access of perception (of the user) to the memory (of the VR system) and consequent forming of affection which distinguishes between virtual and real actions establishing boundaries of the body, seems to be absent. This generates transitory disorientation for the user descended to defective position of the cyber-produced borderline state, until
another screen with adequate discursive density is delimited, allowing for its visibility in the VR system – reflecting the actions of that system with increasing ability to delay its own.