ITA ENG

Voluptuous Viractualism

by Joseph Nechvatal

vOluptuary drOid décOlletage - computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas - 66 x 120 inches

My concept of viractuality-and viractualism-emerged out of the research I conducted in virtual reality at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, in the U.K..[1] It begins with the realization that every new technology disrupts previous rhythms of consciousness. I believe that the viractual realm is now the authentic domain of art in the information age. This concept is central to my work as an artist.

The basis of the viractual conception is that virtual producing computer technology has become a significant means for making and understanding contemporary art and that this brings us as artists to a place where we find the emerging of the computed (the virtual) with the uncomputed corporeal (the actual). This merger-which tends to contradict some dominant techno clich*s of our time-is what I call the 'viractual'. The blending of computational virtual space with ordinary viewable space indicates the subsequent emergence of a new topological cognitive-vision of connection between the computed virtual and the uncomputed corporeal world.

Gilles Deleuze's consideration of Baruch Spinoza-the 17th century philosopher who merged mind and matter into one substance-was a key influence. In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy,[2] Deleuze indicates how desires propel us to move towards greater or lesser states of exalted wholeness depending on whether the object encountered is harmonious with us, or on the contrary, tends to decompose us. [3]

The viractual recognizes and uses the power of digitization while being culturally aware of the values of monumentality and permanency - qualities which can be found in some powerful analog art. It is a significant concept, I feel, which indicates and initiates communions of the protoplasmic

body to virtual spatial conditions. As Roy Ascott, in his essay "The Architecture of Cyberception" stated,

... to inhabit both the real and virtual worlds at

one and the same time, and to be both here and

potentially everywhere else at the same time is

giving us a new sense of self, new ways of

thinking and perceiving which extend what we have

believed to be our natural, genetic

capabilities.[4]

Consequently, the viractual articulates a new techno-digital sense of life and art.

The viractual has proven to be a useful conceptual operative for constructing a fuller account of my own work as well as the work of other artists. The art of Inka Essenhigh is one example. When I began exploring the viractual image in 1986 I created ridiculously complex numeric images which consisted increasingly of a mixture of drawing, digital-photography, painting, written language, and externalized computer code-all of which were submitted to computational manipulations (including viral attacks).

This viractual subject and method will be exemplified again in the new digital work which I will be showing under the title of "vOluptuary : an algOrithic hermaphornology" at Universal Concepts Unlimited.[5] The viractual will be exemplified here by mixing my artificial-life virus project with my continuing project as a post-Warholian painter. This combination of stasis and flight manifests itself in the form of computer-robotic assisted paintings which depict representations of the body and sexuality. The representations are then problemitized through hermaphroditic (alchemical) depictions achieved through algorithmic codes.

Of crucial interest to "vOluptuary" will be the origin of the hermaphroditic image. This hybrid viractual image first appears in Ovid's classic text Metamorphoses-and perhaps this emergence is well worth recounting here. The hermaphrodite initially occurs in Western culture as a son of Hermes and Aphrodite named Hermaphroditus. Hermaphroditus was a typical, if exceptionally handsome, young male with whom the water nymph Salmacis fell madly in love. When Hermaphroditus rejected her sexual advances, Salmacis desired him even more. One spring day Hermaphroditus stripped nude and dove into the pool of water which was Salmacis's habitat. Salmacis immediately dove in after him-embracing him and wrapping her body around his, just as, Ovid says, ivy does around a tree. She then prayed to the gods that she would never be separated from him-a prayer that they answered favorably. Consequently, Hermaphroditus emerged from the pool both man and woman.

The patriarchal construction of woman as other and the female body as object is deeply rooted in the supposed duality (opposites) of the (two) sexes. Most feminist theory questions this patriarchal construction of sex and gender, suggesting that sex is expressed through a continuum, rather than as an opposing couplet based on heterosexist male/female polarities. Accordingly, within my viractual multiverse, containments designed for womanhood/manhood are subverted by the presence of ambiguous genitalia-the mutable image and performance of pan-sexuality. Gender here is viewed as an act of becoming. Consequently, gender performance fails to sustain sex oppression by ceasing to draw the boundaries of the Other.

1 2 >> of 2