The Virtual Space Theory

An inherent characteristic in the making of pictorial images is that their visual pattern can sometimes be interpreted in more ways than one. Unlike in the discussion of the previous post, however, the two interpretations I am referring to here are not the pattern on a surface vs. the space that can be seen through it, but rather two different spatial contents altogether. This is most familiar in the many optical illusions found in images that seem to have different visual contents depending on how one looks at them, such as the famous examples of ‘old woman or young woman’, and ‘rabbit or duck’. In other words, such images are ‘ambiguous’.

Normally, this ambiguity is actually a limitation of the art of image-making. As a result, a whole range of conventions and techniques have been developed over the centuries precisely in order to overcome it and produce images that would have only one consistent visual interpretation. Yet an alternative approach to the issue of ambiguity was to actually embrace this limitation and incorporate it into a part of making art. An example of this is some of the work of Salvador Dalí: his painting Raphaelesque Head Exploding simultaneously shows a human head as well as the interior of a dome.

Sometimes, also an image that presents a seemingly continuous space can still include within it parts that are made in an ambiguous way. When seen as a whole, then, the result simultaneously seems correct and incorrect, and provides a visual experience that is quite different from either the physical world or most pictorial images. This is the principle behind some of M.C. Escher’s work. In the following example, Convex and Concave, the two spaces on the left and the right are visually consistent each in itself as well as compositionally symmetrical, yet they are incompatible with each other. However, by drawing ambiguous elements along the part of the image where the two spaces connect, they appear as if they create one continuous visual space, even though such a space would be physically impossible.

Similar principles have also been applied to moving images such as TV commercials and music videos. In the following example (which is also mentioned in the book), a car commercial presents the abilities of the advertised car to handle challenging road conditions. This is done by showing it driving through an urban environment that can be visually interpreted in several ways simultaneously:

The last example combines the ambiguity of the optical illusions discussed above together with the issue of pictorial and non-pictorial images discussed in the previous post. It is a music video of the Chemical Brothers’ song Let Forever Be, which was directed by Michel Gondry:

What I find so brilliant about this video is that it expresses in a moving image the same kind of concerns that have preoccupied painters and art theorists for generations:

First, it employs rudimentary film editing techniques (such as various forms of image duplication) in a way that, at least to me, seems to echo some of the approaches of modernist painting as discussed in the previous post. That is – as seen in Pablo Picasso’s Violin – it uses multiple pictorial fragments as mere elements from which to construct a flat arrangement of paint (or pixels) on a surface.

Second, the video reinterprets the resulting image pattern as if it were itself a pictorial description of another kind of visible world, one which actually looks just like that resulting image. By repeatedly moving back and forth from one visual interpretation, to the flat pattern of the resulting image, and to another visual interpretation altogether – this video demonstrates the whole issue of the ambiguity of pictorial images in an ingenious and playful way.

From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, therefore, this video uses the added dimension of movement in time to suggest that an ambiguous visual pattern is simply one single window to two distinct virtual places.

(This is the third in a series of posts that discuss the relationship between virtuality, abstraction, and pictorial images from the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory.)

One of the most dramatic events in the history of art was the transition from the demand that artists make only pictorial images, to the acceptance (and sometimes even demand!) that they make non-pictorial images. Somewhere along the passage from the 19th to the 20th century, paintings were no longer required to look like the physical world, but were rather expected to present nothing more than a flat arrangement of paint on a canvas. Many of the works of the painter Piet Mondrian are extreme examples of this.

In some cases, however, paintings can not quite clearly be defined as either pictorial or non-pictorial. These are paintings that – depending on how we look at them – can either reveal a visible world that seems to lie behind their surface (i.e., a ‘pictorial image’); or instead, they can appear to be nothing more than a pleasant smear of paint on a flat surface (i.e., a ‘non-pictorial image’). In other words, whereas fully pictorial images pull the viewer’s gaze into their space and the details it contains, such ‘semi-pictorial’ images make it possible for the viewer to let their gaze go only as far as the surface of the image and just enjoy the overall visual experience of it as a flat colorful object – as if it actually were a non-pictorial image.

When the making of such ambiguous or ‘dual-mode’ images is successful, it can result in fascinating works of art. An example of this is Claude Monet’s painting Impression: Sunrise (which later came to also stand for a whole new approach to the making of paintings, but that is another topic):

During the 20th century, such tension between pictorialism and non-pictorialism within the same image was the driving force behind the work of many painters, who searched for ever new ways to achieve it. A beautiful example of this is Lyonel Feininger’s painting Bridge I:

This search for the ambiguity between the surface of an image and the space seen through it is not limited only to the medium of painting. As newer mediums developed – and ever more so from the last decades of the 20th century – other forms of image-making have dealt with the same issues. For example, in the music video of Fujiya & Miyagi’s song Ankle Injuries, the visual contents are basically nothing more than an arrangement of game dice on a surface. All we see is a pattern of dice in one of eight colors, where each shows a face with up to six dots on it. Regardless of the question of its technique of production (physical dice or computer-generated) it presents a clearly flat arrangement. And yet it is also carefully made so as to provide the impression that what we are seeing through this arrangement of dice is the band performing their song, along with other spatial visual content:

From the point of view of The Virtual Space Theory, then, where is the visual content of such paintings and videos? Is it inside the virtual place that is seen through them, or is it on the surface of an image in physical space? Well, what makes such images so special is precisely that they can be seen either way!

The kinds of images that abstract art creates are obviously quite difficult to define. Add to that the growing popularity of the elusive term ‘virtual’, and it becomes tempting to use this term to describe also the elusive nature of abstract images. And yet, according to The Virtual Space Theory, most forms of abstract art are actually not virtual at all. This may seem surprising given the popular use of the term, but this is quickly sorted out once the terminology is clearly defined.

In an earlier post I proposed a distinction between several uses of the term ‘abstract’ and their relation to the notion of virtuality. The main conclusion was that calling an image ‘abstract’ might just mean that its visual contents are distilled or hard to identify, yet it could still present them in visual terms of physical objects in a space. However, one of the most common uses of the term ‘abstract’ is to describe images that do not present a likeness of the physical world at all, but which are rather made specifically as a flat arrangement of matter on a surface. In other words, such an image is no longer pictorial, but rather a non-pictorial image.

Therefore, in order to address the relation of abstract art and virtuality, we need to first resolve the difference between pictorial and non-pictorial images in that respect. According to The Virtual Space Theory, whereas pictorial images can be interpreted as creating virtual places in virtual space, non-pictorial images can not. This does not mean that someone viewing such an image could not interpret its visual pattern in terms of space, but what is seen in it would only be the viewer’s personal interpretation. For example, given a painting of Jackson Pollock, one viewer might see a castle in its pattern of paint, while another might see an elephant (look at it long enough and you will see ones too ).

This is opposed to the visual contents of pictorial images, which are very similarly interpreted by anyone who has grown up in a civilization that makes common use of images. There can be no serious argument as to what is seen in the visual pattern of the following image by Giovanni Battista Piranesi. There might still be minor differences of interpretation, but surely not as many as in the previous case.

According to The Virtual Space Theory, then, the castle or the elephant of the non-pictorial image are confined to their viewer’s mental space, which is strictly private, and in sharp contrast to the public nature of virtual space – as demonstrated by the grand ancient forum of Piranesi’s pictorial image, which we can all see. In other words, pictorial images create virtual places, whereas non-pictorial images do not.

Now we can return to the question of abstract art. Since it is a form of art that is only marginally concerned with creating pictorial images, then as a general rule we could say that its contents are not in virtual space, and as such, they can not be considered to be virtual. They may be elusive, they may be non-concrete, they may be non-identifiable – but none of that necessarily makes them virtual.

There could be exceptions, of course. One of them is the particular area of interest created by the undefined field that lies between pictorial and non-pictorial images – which is the topic of the next post.

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).

To the next post in this series…