Part One
Jean Baudrillard begins his text "The Precession of Simulacra" [2] with a recounting of the Borges allegory of the cartographers and the 1:1 map of the Empire they created.[3] It was my intention to begin this paper weeks ago with the introduction of that same allegory. Only I wanted to actually read the Borges text, and Baudrillard only sporadically provides source information. Maybe to do so would be the same as suggesting a "real" text exists, I don´t know, suffice it to say I required the text. In my quest for "Of Exactitude in Science" (a title I learned only after finding the short story) I spent several weeks reading as many books by Borges that I could find, until I was no longer searching for one short story, but reading with a growing admiration the short stories of a writer I had hitherto been unfamiliar with. Finally, when all thoughts of this paper had been driven from my mind, I found the story and realized the topic of my paper had changed ever so slightly. The ramifications of Virtual Reality and Simulacra no longer interested me as much as the utter uselessness of "Virtual Reality" as it is being defined and shaped by the vast majority of programmers and users. It´s use as a tool for education has been grossly limited and its potential as an artistic medium almost nonexistent. It seems the only use people put VR to is to build 3-D representations of Reality in which to escape. While I am well aware that this is a perfectly valid enterprise, the programmers, by merely mimicking Reality, are backing themselves into a corner from which they cannot escape.
By touting to be "Virtual Reality" VR [4] is creating its own demise. It is not virtually real, nor can it ever be virtually real. Of the reality that surrounds you (I would never presume to suggest that your reality and mine are the same, but the fact that I am capable of communication with you suggests that there is some amount of overlap between our reality sets), I would wager that you systematically ignore seventy to 80 percent. Sometimes even more (as I write I am watching a lady watching her clothes dry in one of those large windowed driers and she has to be asked once . . . twice . . . thrice, ahhh, there she goes, to move her feet so the janitor can sweep around her). For VR to be aptly named, I would imagine that you would have to ignore maybe thirty to 40 percent of the environment at a minimum. In all the VR realms I have visited there is so little information present (sight, sound and sometimes touch being the only senses currently available) that everything can be taken in almost at a glance and one only begins to ignore information because that information is static and never changing, or repeats the small amount of information in an infinitely looped sequence. Some might argue here that the Science Fiction of VR will include tactile suits with the possibilities of smells and even tastes being introduced or the even more exotic "direct-connect" to the brain, where all of the senses can be stimulated by an electric jolt. But even if this were possible, there must still be a programmed interface, and a programmed reality. Imagine the difficulty in programming a reality of which a third is ignorable. Ignorable, not as a result of dull repetition, but as a normal everyday occurrence, just as you ignore the feel of the pants or shirt that you are wearing. Only by concentrating can you become conscious of your full peripheral vision, and after the first ten minutes how much attention do you pay to the body odor in a gym. Granted, a programmer with infinite patience (not to mention time and attention to detail) would be capable of such a feat but, while I know some programmers that seem to have an infinite amount of time on their hands, I have yet to meet one with that much patience.
VR can never become close enough to Reality to earn the name virtual. And why should it? VR is not virtual. It exists in and of itself. We only degrade it with the misnomer of `virtual.´ VR is one of the purest examples of Baudrillard´s Simulacra. It is completely divorced from the reality it was originally modeled after. In fact, it bears no relation to that reality and never has. There has never been (and, I argue, never will be) enough information in VR to ever represent a Reality outside of itself. `VR´ is a hyperreality. A reality divorced even from itself. In the VR world presented to us in a computer screen there are endless variations between one viewer and the next. Although a programmer might believe she is programming for an "average" viewer, let´s face it, the average viewer does not have a T3 connection to the Internet (I myself barely get by in the VRML world with a 28.8K modem) and the time lags between giving the instruction to move and the actual movement can sometimes make one feel that they are trapped in ice (which is actually pretty good practice for increasing one´s "Patience Quotient"). Just as time can create vast differences in a user´s experience of the VR world, monitors can also manipulate the programmer´s original intent. The difference between a "calibrated" monitor and an uncalibrated monitor can be astronomical. All of these items and a countless number more can change a person´s perception of the VR world.
Instead of seeking to undermine VR´s very hyperreality, one should exult in its lack of signification. Instead of trying to recreate a Reality that is best experienced in first person (rather than through a tin plate mirror), VR could become the newest medium for artists (like paint, pixels and potsherds). Put the viewer on the head of a comet and show them what it´s like. Or in the depths of Jupiter with its massive gravitational tides. Give the viewer a world they could never imagine, something that has nothing to do with Reality. Make the users look at themselves in ways they would never have thought of.
Which brings me to a second short story by Jorge Borges. The story, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote" [5] more readily expresses the metaphor of VR´s hyperreality than "Of Exactitude in Science." The story is a catalogue and discussion of the works of the recently deceased, Pierre Menard, a Symbolist poet. Menard conceived the idea of re-writing "Don Quixote," but not merely by copying it: "His admirable ambition was to produce pages which would coincide--word for word and line for line--with those of Miguel de Cervantes" (p49). With this ambition Menard manages to produce Chapters 9 and 38 of Part One and a fragment of chapter 22, but also destroys all of the intermediary versions, daily, in a "gay bonfire." Borges argues that the work by Menard is infinitely richer than Cervantes´ original:
| [...truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.] |
| Written in the seventeenth century, written by the "ingenious layman" Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical eulogy of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes: |
| [...truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.] |
| History, mother of truth; the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an investigation of reality, but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what took place; it is what we think took place. The final clauses--example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future--are shamelessly pragmatic. (p53) |
As Borges suggests, Menard´s "Don Quixote" is an artifact mirroring another artifact only coincidentally. At the level of signification Menard´s work has no relationship to Cervantes´ at all. But Menard´s work itself never existed except in the mind of Borges. He has presented us with a non-existent hyperreality. Such should be VR.
[1]. Simulations, by Jean Baudrillard. trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman, Semiotext[e], New York, New York, 1983, Page 2.
[2]. Simulations, by Jean Baudrillard. trans. by Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman, Semiotext[e], New York, New York, 1983.
[3]. "Of Exactitude in Science," (1946) from A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, 1972.
[4]. VR, not meaning `Virtual Reality,´ but meaning `VR.´ Which is to say, it is a shortcut convenience with no real signification at all. I could as easily have chosen `BS,´ but very few individuals would understand.
[5]. "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote," (1939) from "Ficciones" by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. by Anthony Bonner, Grove Press, Inc., New York 1962.
© 1999 by Kyle T. Carlson