The Virtual Space Theory

The topic of virtuality and virtual space is one of the most confused fields in contemporary culture, to the point that, for many people, its elusiveness is considered to be an inherent part of its nature. From such a point of view, any attempt to define virtuality is considered to be pointless, since what defines it – so it would seem – is precisely that it cannot be defined. However, that is not the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory.

The Virtual Space Theory is based on the approach that our ability to understand anything (as opposed to experiencing it) is enabled by the language we have for describing it. Furthermore, any viable communication is dependent on the accuracy of the language as well. And so, if we experience confusion with respect to a certain aspect of the world or its phenomena, what we need is to first sort out the language we have for it. Therefore, the core of The Virtual Space Theory is the creation of a systematic language capable of handling the complexities of virtuality and the whole range of phenomena that are related to it. Once the language is sorted out in such a way, a clear understanding of what is going on follows it almost automatically.

The first step to creating a systematic use of language is a careful and consistent choice of words, down to their finest details. For example, an expression such as “a virtual place that is found in a painting” might seem completely harmless at first. However, in some contexts, it might actually defy the principles of The Virtual Space Theory: Since this theory proposes that a painting is a window to virtual space, then by definition nothing can be located in the painting. Rather, there are dabs of paint on the canvas, which create a virtual place that can be seen through the painting. The location of this place, then, is in virtual space. A major difference – arising just from the use of different prepositions: ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘through’.

The second step to creating a systematic use of language is to define terms that might not have existed before, or to tighten the definition of relatively loose terms. For example, in many texts discussing similar topics, expressions such as ‘virtual place’, ‘virtual world’, and ‘virtual space’ are often used interchangeably as if their meaning were the same. According to The Virtual Space Theory, however, these are three distinct phenomena: A virtual place is the place you see through a particular pictorial image; A virtual world is a set of virtual places which are presented in a context which suggests that they are continuous with respect to each other (such as different scenes in a film); And virtual space is the overall visible space that contains all virtual places and all virtual worlds (whether they are continuous to each other or not).

Such a tight use of language sometimes leads to expressions that may sound a bit strange, or not quite ‘correct English’ at times. The point, however, is that the use of language in The Virtual Space Theory is not so much descriptive as it is generative. It is unlike most forms of writing, where the words are merely an approximate description of an essence that already exists outside of them. This kind of writing, in contrast, requires absolute precision, since the essence of what it discusses is formed by the words themselves. Consequently, when such a demanding procedure is successful, a clearly formed language can lead to a more clearly understandable world.