The introduction to the essay explains that there is a inherent integration of technology into our ‘real life’. What may have been assumed as virtual or unreal has adapted itself to become apart of our daily lives as part of the ‘real’ we see everyday. This they explain as the era of ‘biovirtual’ which combines technology and culture together. This suggests that there is not a hierarchy over one or the other but that the two are collaborative and inform each other.
Through the context of the material world, the ‘future’ ideations of technology have progressed with heist. From performances on YouTube, to large performance in theatres, these digital performances not not seem new or unique anymore. This also includes digital consumerism and engagement in a surveillance society like social media forums.
They describe two theoretical responses to the relationship between the subject and technology. Firstly, the anthropological response to challenges in identity and subjectivity within virtual spaces. Secondly, a response to the human condition through the use and advancements of technology. The second theory exists in not representing the virtual space as a place where ‘other’ possibilities may occur but that the spaces created are being informed by the humans evolving cultures. They also touch on the study that has been directed towards the embodiment of virtual life being corporeal experiences.
The bio-virtual and the post-human
Questions that surround the concerns around Virtual reality being detrimental to human condition or solipsism (self being the only thing to exist). They explain that the concerns have almost been debunked or have become redundant because of the emergence of bio-virtual theory. It explains how categories of biological and virtual co-exist and are linked. This theory is explored through performance and technology in multiple ways. In one where a subject enters a virtual space alone and explores alone, as they may explore their own physical/tangible space, and large virtual performances which appear online, open source.
Rosi Braidotti speaks about the virtual and real as an experience which is post human. Her explanation being that their is a juxtaposition between organic things and manufactured things and that these two defend the difference. However a newer understanding of this contempt could be that organic creations and manufactured creations are intertwined and this is seen in the way that we learn through digital spaces. The future is unknown about what the happenings will be after this book but what they have explained is obvious is the engagement with technology which questions the ‘real’ and virtual. The potential here could be that the space provides communities to connect through a extension of the artist themselves, and the technology becoming a partner in which performs a mediation we physically cannot.
“At this meeting point (if we can still assume any boundaries) we wonder what it is we can know (epistemically), how we might act (ethically), and what shall we do with all of this useless beauty (aesthetically).”
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