 | ||
 | | |
ITA ENG | ||||
| | | | |
 | ||||
But it is valid also for non standardized products. For example, on the German site www.dove.net.au it’s possible to appreciate the splendid futuristic images of G.R. Witting or A. Skrzypnik in computer animation. One is fascinated and held in thrall by these scenes of the 21st century, but the criteria of distinction among the various works of art is contextual, not stylistic. In brief, if it’s obvious that the work is unique in itself, its uniqueness derives from the exclusive combination of objects which transform it into an unambiguous unit of perception: scene, lighting, depth consent the distinguishing of the contents of the work, but do not allow for the idea of elusive specific difference among the works, and, we can imagine, a scene taken from a virtual sequence of which there are many excellent films such as Matrix by the Wachowski bothers, or like the last episode of Star Wars by Lucas. Now it appears that the convergence among the prevalently two dimensional characteristics of the web and its hypertextual property manifests in intrinsic limit that can and in fact must be overcome. It’s true that the structure of hypertext favours an exploration of divergent semantic paths, but it’s also known that a site taken in itself must necessarily obey thematic logic. For example to mix the sacred and the profane in the same site. The pornographic image of Selen or Rocco Siffredi can’t be beside the icons of Father Pio, unless the same site is unreservedly and volubly blasphemous. Notwithstanding all this, its contents would belong however to a precise unitary theme. In general, then, we can affirm that the hypertextual form or the visual two dimensional form conserve strong traces of the textual dynamic. From an aesthetic point of view, one can compare the web also to an immense, inexhaustible and multiform magazine that communicates with itself; but every segment of the magazine inserts into a taxometric structure. Without taxometric unity, for all that is blurred and unclear and at least in small measure fluid, the motors of research wouldn’t have sense and wouldn’t function. And without motors of research the internet wouldn’t assume the function of a real environmental context. The metaphor of the magazine isn’t incidental. In a magazine the thematic unity is the page, or a sequence of pages which make up an article. The sequence of the articles forms instead a thematic unity or higher order. When we browse through an illustrated magazine we mentally pass from a two dimensional context to a three dimensional context, that is we exit from the text (2 dimensional), enter the index (3 dimensional), which supplies us with a vision from up on high of everything together, and then plunge again into a different 2-D context. The continual passage from one dimension to the other consents the categorization of the perceptions, and a de-facto categorization involves without doubt a certain type of cellular activity, a certain functional order among the resources of the short term memory and the imaging of selected perceptions for the long term memory. And all this is without diminishing the overall effect of psychodynamics, that is relative to the relationship in place between the individual impulses and the replies of the system. In order that the system is really functional and productive, a strict correspondence between the structures of the individual brain and the type of psychomatic activity put into being by the brain (and the body that participates in a similar party of thoughts and senses) must exist. This today isn’t happening. The human species must still adapt to a psychosymatic environment which is far above its present capacity. Is the web therefore destined, even in a new and unexpected way, to go through the route of sensorial experience already interiorised by the species? Certainly not. But at a quantum leap in the dimensional structure of the system there must be a corresponding quantum leap in the species: a species change. If, as we are at the beginning, it seems that this process isn’t happening at the speed of Achilles, it is evident that it has been in progress for some years thanks to the growing interest in the applications of VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language). In a totally virtual 3-dimensional and interactive environment such as VRML, the process of recognition becomes internally situational, or for this we can say “local”. It depends on the configuration of the objects placed in its universe; there exists no intrinsically specific quality which can compete with the same semantic richness as the real world, and this would be true also if one day there could be arranged a magazine with capacity such as the structure of a virtual agent composed of millions or billions of polygons. What effect will the platonic universe of VRML have on the specialized memory? I will dedicate further thoughts to this question. For the moment it’s enough to think of VRML in connection with the passage among the various semantic units which implies a constant passage from the third to the fourth dimension. The spatial and non time dimension of the present web transform rapidly in a space-time dimension. In some cases in the VRML world it’s possible among their fusions to experiment even in five dimension perception. The second part of the equation , that is the field of the genetic engineer applied to the human genre, notwithstanding all this, advances once more the march of the tortoise. Notes 1) Mark Dery, Escape Velocity, 1996, Velocità di fuga. Cyberculture a fine millennio, Italian translation by Mirko Tavosanis, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1997, pp. 53-54 2) Merlin Donald, Origins of the modern mind, 1991, L’evoluzione della mente. Per una teoria darwiniana della coscienza, Italian translation by Laura Montixi Comoglio, Garzanti, Milan, 1996, p. 364 3) Ibidem 4) Niles Eldredge, Reinventing Darwin. The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, New York 1995, Ripensare Darwin. Il dibattito alla Tavola Alta dell’evoluzione, Italian translation by Simonetta Frediani, Einaudi, Turin, p. 198. 5) Christian De Duve, Vital Dust, 1995, Polvere vitale, Italian translation by Libero Sosio, Longanesi, Milan, 1998, p. 483. 6) Loc. cit. 7) Andy Clark, Microcognition: Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Parallel Distributed Processing, Cambridge Mass., The Massachussetts Institute of Technology Press, 1991, Microcognizione. Filosofia, scienza cognitiva e reti neurali, Italian translation by Anna Berti, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1994, p. 93 8) Ibidem p. 96 9) Alan Baddeley, Working Memory, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1986, La memoria di lavoro, Italian translation by Alessandra Cavallarin and Irene Perin, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milan, 1995, p. 151 10) R. Notte, La seduzione virtuale, in “IdeAzione”, no. 2, March-April 1999, pp. 152-159 Riccardo Notte is a professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. Numerous collaborations to periodicals as "Mass Media", New York Arts Magazine", "Ideazione", "Il Tempo" | ||||
| | | | |
 | ||
| | |