The Virtual Space Theory

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…

The previous post presented some of the varied uses of the term ‘real’ with respect to pictorial images. In this post I would like to focus particularly on the use of this term as a way of describing the technique by which an image was produced. In that sense, the term ‘real’ is often used to denote a pictorial image which was made with the technique of photography, as opposed to one which was made with some form of ‘special effects’– or in more recent times, by using computer graphic programs. In this context, then, to say that something in a pictorial image is real would be to say that we assume that the image is a photograph, and that there indeed was a corresponding physical object in front of the camera when that photo was taken.

Such an approach towards pictorial images seemed to work fine for many years since the techniques of making them could usually be quite easily discerned. As CG technology is improving, however, it is becoming increasingly difficult to truly figure out how an image was made, and the irrelevance of this notion of what’s real is becoming ever more obvious.

The approach of The Virtual Space Theory in this matter is that regardless of how a pictorial image might have been produced, what we see in it has its own independent existence as a virtual place in virtual space. In other words, it considers it to be irrelevant whether what we see in a pictorial image indicates what was in front of the camera, or whether it was achieved through some cinematic trick. Instead, The Virtual Space Theory focuses the discussion on the virtual place which has been created as a result.

The recent release of the film Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) makes this point perfectly evident. In this film Cameron created a virtual world called ‘Pandora’, complete with richly detailed landscapes, vegetation, and life-forms. When watching it there is no way you could distinguish the line between what was physically present in the studio and what was generated using computer graphics. They completely blend together in the creation of a continuous and consistent virtual world. The following video is a documentary-like presentation of that world:

The visual achievements of Avatar clearly demonstrate many of the principles of The Virtual Space Theory, as well as emphasize the irrelevance of trying to decipher how an image was made. James Cameron himself actually explains these issues very clearly in the following interview (starting from 00:37):

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…