The Virtual Space Theory

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).

If you visited the section of this website which describes the book and went through its table of contents, you probably came across a peculiar word: contextography. This is a term which is introduced by The Virtual Space Theory in order to address some of the questions that inevitably arise due to its alternative approach to pictorial images and virtuality.

The Virtual Space Theory accepts digital technology’s victory in producing photorealistic images and therefore approaches the question of how to differentiate between pictorial images by shifting the discussion to virtual space itself. In other words, it proposes that all pictorial images present virtual places, whether they were made with a computer, a paintbrush, or a camera. The difference between various pictorial images, then, is not considered to be in whether or not what is seen in them is virtual, but rather in the context of the resulting virtual places.

For example, the following painting by El Greco from around 1610 shows the grim fate of Laocoön, the Trojan priest from the Homeric legend of Troy, who dared to defy the Gods and warn the Trojans of their impending doom:

This painting is also shown in the book as an example of architecture performing the role of the background of a painting – in this case, showing the city of Troy. And yet there is another painting which El Greco made in more or less the same period, and which looks very similar:

The second painting is a view of the city of Toledo in Spain, where El Greco lived and worked. Seeing this painting now raises questions as to the nature of the city we just saw in the first painting, doesn’t it? Indeed, the technique El Greco used in creating the city of Troy for his Laocoön painting was to stand on a hill across from Toledo and use it as a reference for the Troy of his resulting painting. Maybe El Greco even did this with some symbolic reference in mind to the people and city of Toledo, but this makes no difference to our discussion. The city we see in the first painting is not Toledo; it is Troy. Only the city in the second painting is Toledo.

To be more accurate, they are both virtual places, and despite their similar technique of production as well as similar visual content, they have totally different contexts. The context of the first virtual place is that of a reconstruction of a physical place which might have existed sometime in the distant past. In that sense, it has a very similar context as that of the film Troy (Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) made some four hundred years later:

Returning the discussion to El Greco’s second painting, however, the context of the virtual place presented by it is rather that of a documentation of a physical place which existed at the time the image was made, and which the person making it was actually present in. In that sense, it has a very similar context as that of the following contemporary photograph:

The Virtual Space Theory, then, approaches the study of the various contexts of virtual space by reinterpreting them in geographical terms – hence the term ‘contextography’. It proposes that each such context can be considered as a section or a zone within virtual space, inside of which the virtual places that share this context are to be found. In that sense, the virtual place of El Greco’s Toledo painting and the virtual place of the above photograph are close neighbors in virtual space, and both are located very far away from the virtual place of El Greco’s Laocoön painting.

What contextography provides is an alternative system for differentiating between pictorial images, in a way that is independent of their medium, visual content, or technique of production. The book elaborates this system far beyond the discussion in this post, and maps out nearly 20 such distinct ‘context zones’ and their relation to each other. That work may still be extended further someday, but at this stage I think it is quite detailed enough to make the point.

One of the common approaches to understanding pictorial images, especially in photography and film, is to consider them in terms of how real they are. Following the release of the film Avatar (James Cameron, 2009), this post and the next one will explore this idea and the way it is being challenged by the recent achievements in image-making. The idea of what’s real has many aspects and layers to it, and has been a recurring topic in philosophical debates for millennia. These posts will obviously not get into all of them, yet it is interesting to try and observe what might be behind the contemporary everyday usage of this term with respect to pictorial images.

When we look at a pictorial image and say that what we see in it is real, there are several things that we might mean by that. For one, it could be a way of saying that we consider that what we see in it has an equivalent in the physical world. Also, it could be a way of saying that the technique used for making the image was that of photography. In some cases, it could be a way of saying that what we see in this image is consistent and believable enough to be considered as something that could have existed in the physical world, even though it might not.

For example, the cathedral in Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s painting Cathedral over a Town may indeed seem very real. Not because the painting looks like a photograph, but because its visual contents are quite convincing and believable. However, in the sense of having a physical equivalent, that cathedral is not real because there is no (and never has been) such a cathedral in the physical world – it is Schinkel’s own invention which he made specifically for the painting.

The following example, however, challenges these notions of what’s real quite a bit. It is a video which presents several famous buildings using advanced computer graphics, combined with unmistakable personal talent. Called The Third & The Seventh, it was made by Alex Roman in homage to the arts of Architecture and Cinema. This beautiful video runs 12 minutes long, and it is highly recommended to watch it in full-screen view:

In the context of our discussion, the contents of this video are visually very convincing, and in this sense they surely seem real. Additionally, the places we see in it are also real in the sense that buildings just like them indeed exist also in the physical world. And yet, in the sense of ‘real’ as meaning ‘photographed’, what we see in this video is not real at all: Even though it looks as if this video was filmed on location, everything in it is computer-generated.

To part 2…

The approach of The Virtual Space Theory is to present a different way of thinking about familiar topics, as well as to bring together topics that might otherwise be considered mostly unrelated. This theory, however, is neither true nor false – it is simply a model of thought. Its goal is to provide a tool with which it might be possible to understand and explain phenomena that might not be explainable by other ways of thinking.

To clarify what I mean by the term ‘a model of thought’, a useful analogy is that of the different ways physicist have developed for explaining various phenomena. For example, from my secondary school days, I clearly remember studying the challenge of classical physics with regard to determining what the phenomenon of light might actually be: is it a wave or a particle? On one hand, some behaviors of light (such as interference or polarization) suggest that it can only be a wave: the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. On the other hand, the fact that light has energy and momentum (such as in the photo-electric effect) suggests that it can only be a particle: a flow of photons.

So which is it, then? I do not have the conclusive answer, and as far as I know, neither do physicists. The point of this example is not to try to engage you in the study of light in physics, but rather to demonstrate the power and value of having alternative models of thought to choose from.

In the case of The Virtual Space Theory, the subjects being tackled are pictorial mediums and virtuality. Its opening conditions are: A wide range of mediums – old and new – each with their separate theories, and the widely undefined topic of virtuality. Its tasks: To present an alternative model of thought that would be equally applicable to all pictorial mediums, as well as provide a consistent definition of virtuality.

The cost? In its proposed model, The Virtual Space Theory marginalizes the importance of technique, and disregards matters of style, meaning, or the social role of pictorial images – which happen to be at the heart of most existing media theories (as well as the main dividing factor between mediums). However, even though this theory does not address such issues, it does not necessarily negate them either – it rather recontextualizes them.

For example, let’s take the matter of the meaning of symbols in pictorial images, and demonstrate it using Arnold Böcklin’s symbolist painting The Isle of the Dead from 1883:

Now, let’s also consider the following video:

These two examples are from different mediums, and as such, they might normally require very different theories in order to discuss them. Yet from the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory they are just two types of windows towards the same virtual place. Therefore, whatever the symbolic meaning of the cypresses you see, it is no longer associated with the art object of the painting or the video, but is rather to be found inside of virtual space. Deciphering what such symbols might mean, however, is a task that is left to other existing theories.