The Virtual Space Theory

A TV commercial which has aired recently is yet another good example of the irrelevance of the popular notion of trying to determine what’s real in pictorial images:

This commercial’s success in creating a buzz, apart from its considerable humor, wit, and boldness, has to do with the fact that it also stirs a conversation among its viewers around the inevitable question “How did they do that?” or, more specifically, “Is it real?” As already discussed in an earlier set of two posts, the answer will challenge our notion of what’s real once again.

Among the many events that are packed into this commercial, I would like to focus on its continuous transition between three locations: a bathroom, a boat deck, and a beach. According to The Virtual Space Theory, since we see all these places through a pictorial image, they are all virtual places in virtual space – regardless of whether they might have an equivalent in the physical world or not. Therefore, in such a context, one part of the question “Is it real?” is whether these virtual places truly reflect physical places in the physical world, or whether they were computer-generated. The other part of that question is whether the visual transition between such physical places indeed happened while the commercial was shot, or whether it was stitched together after filming.

The answer is that – apart from the transformation of objects in the actor’s hand – everything you see happened in front of the camera in one shot: this whole commercial was filmed in a single physical location. Its production crew built a section of a full-scale boat on a beach, along with a mock-up of a bathroom suspended from above by a crane, as well as a hidden mechanical system for sliding the actor onto the back of a horse. These were then all set in motion as the camera was rolling, and after three days of repeated shooting, they finally managed to get it all to work properly in one continuous sequence (you can check it out for yourself in an interview with the people who created it).

What this means, in popular terminology, is that “Yes, it’s all real!” And yet, there’s a catch. If we expand our notion of what’s real by just a bit, we realize that to seriously consider what we see in this commercial as being real is actually quite absurd. Even though the places we see in this commercial do exist in the physical world, the beach is the only one of them that is real. The bathroom has a physical existence, but it is not a real bathroom – it has a missing wall, and it is not part of any real house. The boat has a physical existence, but is not a real boat either – it is only half-built, and it can neither float nor sail.

The point is that what actually interests us in watching this commercial is not to see bathroom mock-ups hovering over half-boats, but to observe a virtual world where a man can seamlessly switch locations to match his mood and speech. Our curiosity may draw us to wonder how it was made in the physical world, but only because we were charmed by what we saw in virtual space. Therefore, in that sense, the only real bathroom, real boat, real beach, and real transition between them are the virtual bathroom, virtual boat, and virtual beach in virtual space – as seen in the virtual world of this TV commercial.

A question which often comes up regarding The Virtual Space Theory is its relation to abstract art. In order to establish the foundation for future discussions of such matters, this relatively theoretical post will attempt to first clarify the term ‘abstract’. Similar to the term ‘virtual’, the term ‘abstract’ comes up in many contexts; it is a recurring term in art-related discussions, yet tends to have quite a few different meanings. In this post I will differentiate between four such meanings of ‘abstract’, emphasize alternative terms that can be used for maintaining a distinction between them, and point out how The Virtual Space Theory mainly uses this term. Paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, the abstract painting pioneer, will provide most of the examples in this discussion.

Abstract as meaning ‘distilled’

Over a hundred years ago, when painters started to gradually let go of the centuries-old tradition of making paintings that try to look like the physical world, many alternative forms of painting were explored. One of these alternatives was to paint objects that might also exist in the physical world, but without trying to present them in full detail. Rather, such paintings aim at conveying the sense of their painted objects in a simplified or distilled form, trying to capture their characteristic essence rather than their correct visual appearance. Consequently, this distillation often meant that the sense of space created by the painting was lost as well, or at least challenged. An example of this is Kandinsky’s painting Moscow I.

Abstract as meaning ‘non-identifiable’

Another direction explored by artists was to make painted objects that are not quite identifiable. Such paintings employed many of the techniques of traditional painting, only that they did not do so in order to create objects that stand for ones that also exist in the physical world, but rather what might look like nameless blobs (which may only hint at something identifiable). And yet, using the terminology of The Virtual Space Theory, such paintings may still create virtual places in virtual space – except that the visual contents that are seen in the image’s space are non-identifiable. An example of this is Kandinsky’s painting White Line.

Abstract as meaning ‘non-pictorial’

Yet another form of painting which artists increasingly engaged in during the 20th century was to let go of making any kind of objects in space whatsoever – whether they are optically accurate, distilled, or non-identifiable. Instead, the focus was on making the canvas a visual object in itself. From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, the designated task or mode of such form of painting has shifted: it is no longer the creation of a virtual place to be seen through the painting, but rather the production of a flat pattern to be seen on the surface of the painting. As seen in Kandinsky’s Little Game, the result is still an image, but more precisely, it is a non-pictorial image.

Abstract as meaning ‘non-concrete’

This is the primary use of the term ‘abstract’ by The Virtual Space Theory, and unlike the previously mentioned ones, it refers to the image as a physical object in itself rather than to the visual contents seen in it. Due to technological developments over the centuries, our ability to see the virtual place of a pictorial image became gradually less bound to the physical object of the canvas on which it was originally painted. Ever more sophisticated techniques of mechanical reproduction have now reached the point that this physicality has been reduced to bits of data and an array of colored pixels. They are physical too, just not as concrete as layers of paint on a sheet of canvas are. This is the topic of an elaborate discussion in the book, but the main point here is that as a physical object, the image has become much less concrete, and much more abstract.

In many cases, of course, it is not so easy to determine in which of the above senses a painting may be abstract: distilled, non-identifiable, non-pictorial, and non-concrete forms of abstraction may often overlap, yet it is still useful to be able to tell them apart. This painting by James Whistler, for example, is highly distilled (it tries to capture only the essence of things), its contents are hardly identifiable (it is difficult to say what is painted in it), and it is on the verge of being non-pictorial (it is nearly just a flat pattern on a surface). And by the way, as you are watching it on your computer screen, it is also non-concrete (what you are looking at is not the physical object of the painting).

Music videos are not always necessarily focused on the music’s performers, who sometimes use the video as an opportunity to provide a short cinematic experience in its own right. Its visual contents may be related to the lyrics, music, or atmosphere of the song, or it may present a theme that is important to the musicians, or it may even follow some totally unrelated idea. In either of these cases, the making of a music video sometimes involves the creation of new places altogether. The following is a collection of a few prime examples, some of which might best be watched in full-screen mode.

The first example is the brand new music video for Massive Attack’s recent song Splitting the Atom. Even though this blog is not a news blog, it is still a pleasure to occasionally be able to also include fresh creations in the discussion. In this case, a highly stylized visual depiction of a city, presenting intense action in a frozen moment, in which nearly the only visual dynamics are the evolving view angles that we are provided in order to witness it:

Whereas the above example is wholly based on digital production techniques, the following example is a reminder that other techniques remain just as valid. The music video of Muse’s song Uprising creates a city with its own disaster scenario (as well as its own monsters), but this time using the technique of filming a physical scale-model:

In the next example, the music video of DB Boulevard’s Point of View creates a city using a highly imaginative play on production techniques. It is made purely with computer graphics, and yet it uses these tools to give the impression that it was filmed using a scale-model made of pieces of cardboard. Even more interesting is that the character of the city – although made to reflect contemporary urban environments –clearly also incorporates its actual cardboard nature:

Finally, the visual contents of the music video of Goldfrapp’s Twist may not be quite urban, yet it presents a fascinating journey through a whole range of inventive places at different scales, unfolding before our eyes on a continuous roller-coaster ride. Shall we go on another round?

Since pop music is largely an urban culture, it is no surprise that many music videos use an urban setting within which to present their music performers. In most cases, the urban location is presented in the context of a straightforward documentation, as if we were witnessing the music being performed right then and there. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is the award-winning music video of U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name, which is a filmed performance of that song on a Los Angeles rooftop (and a tribute to The Beatles’ live performance of Let it Be on a London rooftop nearly twenty years earlier):

In some cases, however, the urban environment seen in a music video is not quite a documentation of a physical city – it has undergone some form of transformation. Technically speaking, the filming may have still taken place in an actual city, but what we see in the music video has been visually manipulated so as to create the experience of a new place which can no longer be considered quite the same city. As the following examples demonstrate, the extent to which such urban transformations occur may vary, and so do the techniques used to achieve them.

The music video of Cornelius’s Point of View Point shows a relatively mild transformation that is achieved mostly through the editing of the video, its manipulation of the sense of time, and its synchronization with the music:

The music video of Lauryn Hill’s Everything is Everything shows a transformation that is primarily that of context: the city streets are transformed into the grooves of a spinning record. This is achieved through image manipulations and the overlaying of additional elements, but its success is in making even the unchanged images appear to belong to this transformation just as well:

Finally, the music video of Robbie Williams’s My Culture, which is the most architecturally interesting one, is primarily a transformation of content. That is, the urban elements filmed on location are playfully rearranged into a new composition, resulting in a different place altogether:

If you know of additional examples of urban transformations that were not mentioned here (or other interesting music videos)… you are welcome to make suggestions!