10.1 THE NATURE OF ILLUSION

The historian of art Ernst Gombrich has observed:

Starting with this consideration and assuming that each object and each model have a meaning and are always perceived within a given cultural system of reference, illusion could be defined as the annihilation of the perception of the difference between the object and its representation, between the model and its copy.

But, giving such a definition, the notion of difference becomes crucial, or, more precisely, as just said, illusion is given by the annihilation of the perception of difference. Such a statement assumes, as a consequence, that the perception of difference deals, at least, with that aspect of the information that does not make us identify and mistake the object for its representation, the model for its copy. In fact the notion of difference is decisive to understand the concepts of information and communication. As a consequence it is necessary to make a reference to the considerations made by Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist and a philosopher, who, refusing western dualism, takes into consideration notions such as interface or context, not as places of separation (for example between external and internal, focus and background, between appearance and reality, mind and body, etc.), but, on the contrary, as those of information and communication².

If difference enables us to grasp the information, as in painting or in photography, which are not simply trompe-l’oeil, as in cinematography (except for some films or some sensational scenes³) or in TV, there is not any illusion, or at least this kind of illusion to which Gombrich refers to, which seems to be identified with deception. The frame makes of a picture a picture. It gives it the border of meaning and sense, that is to say that it creates a context that makes what is described in the picture peculiarly comprehensible.

Frame creates the difference between the meanings contained within the picture and the world outside. It is the same in photography, in cinematography and TV. It is true, as Gombrich says, that it is impossible that one observes oneself in the act of yielding to an illusion, but this happens when one loses the sense of difference, that is to say when one deceives oneself on the nature of what one sees, as in trompe-l’oeil, or when one identifies oneself to the point of forgetting that one is witnessing as in cinematography. In general, in any case, things are not in this way, because frame avoids turning illusion into deception, marking the limits of the context of the meanings which are within its borderlines⁴. As a consequence one, looking at a picture, a photograph, a film, a broadcast, thanks to the frame which produces difference, is warned about what one is watching and the illusory nature of the High Definition Technologies (HDT) does not turn into deception. Because of the frame the dream of the HDT of identifying the copy with the model cannot be realized. The copy, as a deceptive substitute of the model, rarely succeeds in escaping from the border-lines imposed by the frame and, as a consequence, nearly always tends to betray its nature of copy.

However, if the definition given by Gombrich about the nature of an illusion, does not seem to be pertinent as far as HDT are concerned such as prospect, photography, cinematography, TV, it is as far as Virtual Reality (VR) is concerned.

10.2 THE ‘FINESTRA ALBERTIANA’ AND VIRTUAL REALITY

There are at least two reasons imposing this question.

The frontality and the separation of the observer from the context of observation have been two characteristics of the modern conception of the subject-object relationship and it was the Renaissance perspective painting, born in Florence thanks to Filippo Brunelleschi⁶, which started the modern idea of High Definition Technology. As already studied, since the twenties’, thanks to the art historian Erwin Panofsky, following Ernst Cassirer, a philosopher in symbolic forms, the 15th century invention of the pictoric perspective created by Filippo Brunelleschi, and mathematically expressed in De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti, gave birth to the modern idea of space with the determination of that relationship between subject and object which would then be theorized by Descartes⁷.

The perspective of the 15th century, which shows the image in the picture as through a window⁸, gives the modernity the three following characteristics:

A scholar in multimediality, De Kerckhove, has observed that VR is an overcoming of the relationship subject-object based on frontality and a victory on ‘the tyranny of glance’. According to De Kerckhove, we were used to seeing the world partially, always in a frontal way, at the level of our eyes, nothing above them, nothing below them, nothing under our feet, influenced by Renaissance painting and reading. The other senses which, until the apparition of perspective were dependent on environment, started to have, because of the tyranny of glance, instrumental instead of cognitive functions. First of all, they are useful to inform the point of view before contributing to link people with each other. The apparition of the virtual also demands a transformation of the strategies of the visual control⁹.

Myron Krueger, a theorist and a planner of artificial reality, says, regarding his strategy of research, that the aim of his work is of connecting mind and body in a new intellectual experience of the world. According to Krueger, since the invention of writing the life of the mind has been separated from the dinamicity of the body, which had to remain inactive given that only the writing and reading techniques were used. Now it is impossible to commit the body again to the research of knowledge and of the composed experience¹⁰.

As a consequence, we are in a strategic and theoretical context, where VR wants to propose itself as an answer, and probably as a solution, to the western dualisms of subject and object, of mind and body, to frontality, to the domination of the eye over the other senses, and so as an answer to the limits of HDT, which are a heritage of the 15th century perspective painting.

But, besides any (though comprehensible) emphasis, the consequences (negative and positive ones) of the achievement and development of VR are not predictable. There is no doubt, in any case, that the idea of overcoming the principle of frontality and the attempt to eliminate the separation of the observer from the context of observation is very interesting, epistemologically and philosophically speaking, and deserves a very careful remark both from a sociological and in a psychological point of view, but also as far as relationships within the built environment are concerned.

Furthermore, evidently as the idea of overcoming the principle of frontality such as that of including the observer in the observation acquires a very important meaning in the matters of communications and learning. It could be important to remark on one hand the relationship between body, communication and learning and, on the other hand, the distinction between dualism, implying a separation between two poles, and duality, implying, on the contrary, a difference and, at the same time, a relationship between two poles (the borderline as an interface)¹¹.

Theoretically speaking, a tendency of HDT is to create effects of illusion, that is to say reaching such a perfection in building a copy so that the copy itself becomes the model and substitutes it thanks to its greater power and perfection. But this tendency of HDT, whose hypothetic perfection could exist with the achievement of a perfect identity, seems to be, in any case, a psychological and literary nightmare of man, who is substituted by his double. Between this tendency of HDT and the nightmare of man is that whole of identity and diversity which, in different ways, is at the head of our symbolic production, communication and learning: our double (homo duplex as Buffon, Baudelaire and Durkheim say), whose image is shaken each time we are in front of an epistemological and cognitive uneasiness. According to John Raltson Saul, the author of Voltaire’s bastards, the electronic perfection of image has been the final step of the research for idolatry taken by western man, which started with the integration of the Roman pagan and rational foundations in the Christian Church, then by the important step of completing the perfection of the static image, thanks to Raffaello who painted the Athens principles for a Renaissance Pope, until reaching its epilogue today. The fear consuming the human soul is a reflection of this conclusion. It is as if our image and we were going around an eternal circle, looking at ourselves the one in the other suspectedly and intensively¹².

10.3 ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDOL AND ICON

Suzanne Said, has observed, also following the consideration made by the philosopher Jean-Luc Marion, that the distinction between idol and icon in the ancient Greece is characterized by an opposition which sees in the idol the copy of the sensitive appearance and in the icon a transposition of the essence. What Suzanne Said wants to point out is the fact that idol, differently from icon, would mainly deal with the sphere of the visible. Its main characteristic is the deceiving resemblance: the idol tends to mingle with what it represents and, as a consequence, to substitute it. According to Said, in origin the archaic idol is not the product of the human industry, but after that the resemblance of the image has become the product of a human art, it has not been admired anymore as a miracle, but the phenomenon itself of resemblance started to be analysed and the illusion of the trompe-l’oeil¹³ started to be denounced. All the contrary happened for icon, which opposes itself to idol character, due to its role of symbol and not due to that of simulacrum. The icon does not want to substitute the model and create a deception. The idol pretends to be its model and tries to mingle with it. The icon recognizes itself as different from the idol and only wants a relative identity¹⁴.

The ideological implications are evident in this work by Suzanne Said, which has its roots in the difficult discussion about images concerning the great monotheistic religions: the opposition idol/icon tends to save conceptually at least an aspect of the role of images (icons) from their tendency to be deceiving substitutes of the model they should represent.

Things, however, do not seem solved at all. Jean-Pierre Vernant has pointed out that, at least in the archaic period, between idol and icon there is not any opposition. Idol and icon, in fact, are not contemporary, since Eikòn is not used before the 5th century¹⁵. Before Plato the word mimeisthai, associated with the tragedy, deals with the relationship between the imitator and the spectator who watches. Plato remarks the relationship between the imitator and the imitated thing¹⁶. From this point of view, Plato, opposing more deeply the appearing to the being, separating the one from the other instead of associating them in different balances as it had happened previously, makes the image independent, with its own existence¹⁷. Before Plato, as shown¹⁸, a precise distinction between appearing and being is not given. But things are in this way, Vernant concludes, as far as the archaic period is concerned, it is not possible to think about a precise distinction idol/icon which, as a consequence, cannot be used as a reference for a survey on the statute of image, its functions, its nature¹⁹.

According to Vernant, the eidolon in the Archaic Greece is not an image in the same sense we mean it, who are accustomed to the opposition between appearance and essence, but a real presence which shows itself, at the same time as an absence, which, showing itself effectively here, reveals itself as another itself, belonging to another world. In the Archaic Greece idol is more a double than an image in the sense we mean²⁰.

10.4 DUALISM BETWEEN APPEARANCE AND REALITY

What Vernant wants to say here is the fact that assimilation of the notion of double to the notion of image as a possible deceiving substitute of the model occurs when, as it has been observed, the platonic distinction between appearing and being has come to pass.

Before Plato there was not, in Greek thought, an idea of dualistic opposition between appearance and reality, on whose conceptual basis the matter of a representative which becomes a deceiving substitute of the represented model can occur.

It is starting with the opposition between appearance/reality that Plato, in Respublica²¹ and in Sophist²², can condemn the representation by images, such as the pictorial one. But a condemnation of the kind makes a sense (beyond the opinion about Plato’s position towards visual art²³) only if an ability of illusion and deception in painting is assumed. That is to say that only if painting reveals itself as an art capable to produce deceiving substitutes of the represented model within a context in which the opposition between appearance and reality, it reveals itself as an a priori. In the popular example of the bed and the carpenter, book X of Respublica, Plato, in order to consider the art of the painter who paints a bed as an art producing illusion, must assume the fact that an observer may mistake the bed of the painter for the bed of the carpenter. This possibility of deception can be given only if the painter is technically able to give the illusion of the third dimension.

In any case the opposition illusion/reality corresponds to the opposition appearance/reality²⁴. Within these contexts, the technical ability of the producer of deceiving substitutes lies in diminishing the perception of the difference between the two poles of attraction as much as possible, or, in other words, in reaching the highest degree of resemblance between the copy and the model.

But it is necessary to specify that a reality independent from the system to which it refers to, does not exist. As far as painting and the idea of realism as a representation resembling the object are concerned, the philosopher Nelson Goodman has observed:

10.5 BETWEEN INCLUSION AND IMMERSION

Only abstractly and theoretically speaking, it might be possible to think that if the aim of HDT is that of producing a copy as exact as possible to the model to mingle with it, deceiving in this way the observer, it is in contrast with a basic cognitive element of the human mind, that is to say the idea of difference, which makes us perceive both the context within which information and communication are produced and the meaning of information and communication, which is not possible to be obtained without a context and a difference.

We are obviously following a schematic line of conduct which, in any case, can make a sense only if we take into consideration the fact the VR is producing, both from a cognitive point of view and one concerning social forms of life, new and interesting (but also worrying) problems within the relationship between imaginary and reality with VR, in fact we are, not only in front of a technology wanting to build a copy exactly alike the model, but, as it has been already said, the ambition is to build a copy capable, in a certain sense, to be independent from the model. In other words, VR does not just simulate²⁶ reality, but also produces an independent world which produces on its turn an imaginary and a reality²⁷.

In any case, two lines of consideration are possible.

1) The role of the observer in VR and its possible modifications towards other HDT.

It has been previously said that VR seems to confute two principles which have characterized the role of the observer in a modern way: frontality and the detachment from the observer. In a certain sense, these two principles, supported by the metaphor of the ‘finestra albertiana’ are based on the idea that the reproduction of the real can occur simulating the tridimensionality in a bidimensional plane. But with VR this seems to be overcome²⁸.

And, in any case, theoretical problems, which deserve a project of research, are present. One of the recurring metaphors concerning VR is that of immersion which has the intention of indicating the process of inclusion of the observer²⁹. This would place VR outside the two previously mentioned principles, because if frontality and the detachment of the observer are within the metaphor of the ‘finestra albertiana’, this metaphor does not imply an immersion but excludes it. In fact, the ‘finestra albertiana’ works correctly only if it is perceived as it is³⁰, that is to say only if the observer still succeeds in distinguishing copy and model, knowing that the ‘finestra’ is the borderline between inside and outside. The ‘finestra albertiana’ assumes the distinction between inside and outside, whose borderlines would appear less marked in the process of the inclusion of the observer as it is produced in VR.

To all this it is necessary to add another element. The HDT, referring to the metaphor of the ‘finestra albertiana’, have a low level of interactivity. Televiewers, for example, have no possibilities to interact with what they see (phonecalls and surveys are caricatures of interaction based on reciprocity). VR seems, instead, to promise a high level of interactivity. The matter deals with the metaphor of immersion and the concept of inclusion. If, in fact, in an interactive point of view, in VR the effect of the simulated immersion of the observer seems to be dominant, and the observer can have, as a psychological and epistemological consequence, the oblivion of his double, in Artificial Reality (AR) by Myron Krueger, on the contrary, the process of inclusion of the observer does not assume immersion at all, but the possibility for the observer to see himself acting³¹. From this point of view, the impression is that VR and AR, in a certain sense, as far as the role of the observer and the psychological and epistemological conditions of interactivity with the machine are concerned, are opposite.

A survey, both historiographical and epistemological on the change of the role of the observer, produced by VR in comparison with other HDT, seems to be necessary, in particular within a context of research and application which assumes, from a technological point of view, multi-mediality. It would be interesting to try to understand this problem and its possible consequences in a situation of interactivity man-machine inside a scene where several HDT, usable for the same aim, are together and within a tendency of the developments which already propose, as in the case of the comparison between VR and AR, conceptual problems which could become soon problems of usability.

2) Images and learning.

In one of his Lezioni americane, precisely in that one concerning Esattezza, Italo Calvino speaks about an epidemic plague which has affected the language, an epidemic which reduces language to generic formulas, to the dilution of meanings, to the loss of the cognitive force. And he adds

The uneasiness Calvino feels is because of ‘la perdita di forma’ (the loss of form). This is a paradoxical situation. During the age of the great development of the high definition technologies, of precision and exactness, Calvino denounces a loss of what is essential for each learning and each communication: the form. In fact, as known, to inform means to give a form. A loss of a form is a loss of information. It almost seems that the more the means to have information about the world and the environment we live in are developed, the more the aim for which these means have been projected and realized is dissolved. Things are not necessarily in this way. However, to consider such a possibility can be important for a research about the relationship between images and learning. It would be naive and wrong to think that the coming of a new technology, surely full of new possibilities, can solve problems concerning in particular the social life. And however we are in front of new worries concerning the relationship between a medium, such as TV, and social life. Many people think that the power of a medium, such as TV, whose interactive level is almost absent, has created, in a democracy, a decrease in the taking part of the observer, marking the distance between being a spectator and being an actor. ‘The plague of the language’ and ‘the plague of images’ depend perhaps on the fact that, in a certain sense, the decisive element of communication, that is to say the centrality of the relationships among people as a decisive element for meanings and their enrichment seems to lose strength. Learning always deals with a social-symbolic relationship (starting with the relationship between mother and son). It is impossible to learn a world or an environment outside social-symbolic contexts. In everyday life, now, a medium such as TV is getting more and more substitutive of human and social relationships and, as a consequence, images do not reveal themselves as an increase in knowing possibilities but become substitutive of the language. Language gets poorer and poorer in the inevitable process of simplification which is at the head of the very short time of the advertisements of goods.

Now, our form of social life seems to go towards a struggle between language and image, and for this reason it is necessary to wonder if VR, in its several modalities, can mark even more the process of substitution of the social-symbolic relationship or if it can, on the contrary, give them more strength. It is true, in fact, that VR assumes interactivity and so a reciprocity of relationships that TV hasn’t got and cannot give, but this does not assure a positive answer to the question. The fact that the notion of the inclusion of the observer can turn both into an immersion and into a seeing oneself acting presents some epistemological questions about the matter of learning. But, apart from this, the problem is the fact that the effects of simulation given by VR can either enrich the knowledge of reality (or more precisely the knowledge of our relationship with reality) or can make it poorer or even substitute it. But the answer cannot depend on the analysis of the relationship between technology and individual learning, but on reflection about the complexity of the forms of communication, within which that one of the relationship between technology and individual learning is only a particular case.

References