I am interested in the differences and similarities between physical and virtual reality. The influences that these two realities are having on the notion of self, I find more and more interesting as I continue to investigate the relationship between person and object. By investigating the qualities of the physical object, I am beginning to have a fuller understanding of the qualities that make up our physical reality. Having a deeper understanding of physicality and how we interact and experience it, may contribute to our understanding of the virtual reality which is also influencing our notion of self but in a different manner. Physical reality is based on basic states of being and dimension. We know this based on our development of the senses. Our notion of self is linked to physicality and has been the basis of our evolution. Virtual reality on the other hand possess qualities similar albeit abstracted from our notion of the physical. And yet, I exist virtually regardless of dimension, material, and form. I predict that knowing one’s self will be influenced by these immaterial qualities in ways yet foreseen. The representation of the object, both in physical and virtual formats shown concurrently, may create a transformative experience of understanding this ambiguous identity for the interactive viewer. The object serves as relational device for understanding ourselves existing in dual realities.
Understanding of the physical world and our notion of self in it, is described from an art perspective by Ellen H. Johnson in Modern Art and the Object written in 1976.
“By Isolating and concentrating on single objects from his daily environment (a flower in the garden, a toaster in the kitchen) the artist creates an image which may be an intensification of his experience - of the mysterious power of simple things, of the wonder with which he regards the world - but which he has brought into an entirely different state of being from the source object. These created objects ‘lead their own lives’ and find their meaning in the realm of shape, line, colour, texture, volume, plane.”
According to Nathan Shedroff, author of Experience Design, the meaning in experiences directly relates to objects and how people interpret them.
“People find meaning in experiences and things based on a wide variety of personal values. That people find meaning in things is, perhaps, the only constant that can be relied upon. To this end, it’s important to design experiences so that audiences or participants can find meaning in them by making connections to their own lives and values - that is, if we want these experiences to have lasting impact.”
Shedroff explains further, “Meaning is often built by objects and experiences that allow us to grow or experience intense emotions. Not every experience should, necessarily, have this as a goal but, often, the distinction of a successful or memorable experience is that it transforms us or makes us feel something. Artifacts of an experience (physical objects from the experience that serve as reminders of what we experienced, such as photographs and souvenirs) become valuable to us because they serve to remind us and help us relive those experiences.”
Acknowledging the importance of experiencing and interacting with physical objects, things made from material, can be understood by the concept of entropy. Based on the second law of thermodynamics, a foundation of physics, and according to psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in The Evolving Self, this law states that “every system tends to decay into simpler forms. Mountain ranges turn into desert plains, burning stars freeze, great geniuses turn into indifferent ash.” Because we know decay and death, we know the meaning of objects in their present moment. This natural process, i.e. metamorphosis, is what sustains our material consciousness, i.e. connection, with the object in the present. Our experience and interaction with an object in the here and now, is important because we know that in time, the same object will no longer have the same qualities or characteristics; possible, it might even be destroyed beyond recognition - fire damage for instance. Richard Sennett in The Craftsman states that we are engaged with material through the awareness that it’s form is a temporary moment in time. Objects have meaning because we know that we have limited moments of experiencing them in their present forms.
Evocative Objects, the book edited by Sherry Turkle explores the notion of loss, whether of object or person, when referring to the work of psychotherapist Sigmund Freud. She states, “The psychodynamic tradition - in its narrative of how we make objects part of ourselves - offers a language for interpreting the intensity of our connections to the world of things, and for discovering the similarities in how we relate to the animate and inanimate. In each case, we confront the other and shape the self.” Turkle suggests that physical reality, “the world of things” is intrinsically related to our sense of self through interaction, “confront(ation)” with objects being “the other.”
As stated by Dr. Thomas Klee, the study of how we relate to objects, “is a psychodynamic approach to understanding human behavior, development, relationships, psychopathology and psychotherapy.” Similarly, transitional objects also play a part in the process of psychotherapy. In her essay The Rolling Pin, the psychologist Susan Pollak uses an except form Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past to suggest that, transitional “objects have a profoundly healing function.”
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more substantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest, and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”
Proust is describing the awareness of his senses having experienced a small cookie called a madeleine and reflecting on this process of his mind. An object of his childhood, that when experienced through smell and taste, after what is implied having been many years, bring a full recollection of consciousness through memory. As he states, “...the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me...” Pollak suggests that through the power of the senses, our interaction with objects establish strong memories associated with meaning with that particular object and the engaged individual.
Material objects also have qualities that go beyond our identities based on memory. Their very physicality gives us tangible information that digitally based information forms do not. Turkle describes architect Susan Yee’s essay The Archive, as a “narrative (that) captures an anxiety that digital objects will take us away from the body and it’s ways of understanding.”
While studying the physical paper blueprints, drawings, and handwritten notes of Le Corbusier in Paris in the mid-1990’s, Yee becomes intimately aware of the designer’s successes and frustrations. This experience of not only witnessing, but touching the smudges, fingerprints, and dirt that these articles held, encourages her own identification as an architect. A meaning becomes established through the sensibilities of the physical object. After days of pouring over these inspiring objects, the curator of La Foundation Le Corbusier informs Yee that they are archiving everything into a digital database. In one single measure, the tactile information that made Yee’s experience with the physical objects so meaningful is erased. Devoid of it’s dirtiness, texture and dimension, the digital process has turned the object of presence and time into an irregular image accessible where ever and when ever by anyone. When the archive became digitized, Yee experienced a loss to her connection to Le Corbusier. Experiencing the work digitally, Yee says, “It made the drawings feel anonymous.” Furthermore, the digital experience made Yee feel anonymous.
Turkle compares Yee’s plight to the work of philosopher, Jacques Derrida. He states the converting of the physical to the virtual is “transforming the entire public and private space of humanity.” Turkle explains, “...any archive is a selection of material that erases what has been excluded - the digitized archive goes a step further. Its virtuality insures another level of abstraction between its users and what has been selected.”
As the object loses it’s object-ness when virtually transformed, it also changes in meaning for us. As a maker of objects, I have intrinsic knowledge of the qualities that make them, that of material and form. If these are the same conditions that define our objects of identity, and furthermore our physical reality, how is the virtual transference of these qualities to be understood? Near the end of her essay, Yee acknowledges that digital technologies have instructional opportunities, yet subjectively, they pose larger psychological issues concerning identity. I feel that the closing questions of Yee’s essay stem from an anxiety that I too share.
“...what will these technologies do to us? How will they affect the way we feel, see ourselves, and see design? What will (technologies that lack time and place) do to our emotional understanding of the human process of design? What rituals might we invent to recover the body’s intimate involvement with these new traces of human imagination? Will we be able to feel the human connection through digital archives? Will we care?”
Psychologist Jean Piaget says, “objects help us think about such things as number, space, time, causality and life” due to which, “ our learning is situated, concrete, and personal.” Conversely, virtual reality is not based on the conditions which we have come to know and be defined by our physical reality. Time, dimension, form and space are the formative physical states of being and therefor of self. The things which we refer to as objects in virtual reality, are formless entities which have put a stopper in our ultimate notion of time - the inevitability of death. To know death is to know life. To know space is to know form. Virtual reality is an abstraction of our natural sensibilities. The impact of the virtual, will have profound psychological influences on our notion of self. Proper transitionary experiences through relatable but virtually influenced objects, may be able to bridge the dual-reality gap which is part of our ever evolving minds. I plan on showing this gap for my practicum. By creating an interactive experience that is conditional to the idea of one object but shown in multiple physical and virtual forms at once. The viewers will be participants in some manner, whether hands on or not I am not sure. What I am interested in is getting the idea across that one’s presence influences perspective and therefore, awareness of what an object is.
Bibliography
Bernard, Edina. Modern art, 1905-1945. English-language ed. London: Chambers, 2004. Print.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Evolving Self. Harper Perennial, 1994. Print.
---. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. Basic Books, 1998. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Diacritics 25.2 (1995): 9. Print.
Johnson, Ellen. Modern art and the object : a century of changing attitudes. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Print.
Turkle, Sherry. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. The MIT Press, 2007. Print.
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