Reality has been questioned by physics and philosophy throughout the ages. “I think therefor I am” is perhaps the most notorious philosophical phrase thrown around in that regard and has many hilarious interpretive phrases as in “I shop therefore I am” and so on. In our own time as opposed to that of Descartes we continue to question the phenomenon of reality and how it might be defined.
For example, a useful question for today with all our sentences about virtual reality might be, “If we can see a banana physically existing in front of us as it lays on the kitchen counter, and I close my eyes and I can still see in my imagination that same banana sitting on the counter, would the banana I see in my imagination be virtual or real?”
Ha! Ha! What a conundrum! There we are, fast asleep, running down the road in a dream, in a space that seems to be totally realistic until we wake up. We might indeed even see that same banana and be eating it and get the same digestive feelings, and assume reality is extent, but upon waking find that it is not. Oh dear, its hard to think about and keep straight in our minds, so much so, that in general people prefer not to think about it!
A hundred years ago the world was not all a twitter about virtual reality, computers, tablets, and devices that kids shouldn’t be using. It wasn’t concerned about your daily ‘screen time’ or getting addicted to virtual computer games so much so that you don’t eat or sleep. But now, wow, those extra bananas are multiplying.
If we step back a bit, we can learn on the one hand that some physicists and philosophers presume that the universe is a mathematical construct. A limitless conglomerate of mathematically prescribed locations. The huge objects, near and far, moving in all locations can be analyzed right down to smaller and smaller particles, smaller than an atom, until the particles may be made of nothing material! Yikes! That means us as well! Are we then walking blobs of nothingness? It may be so.
On the other hand we can examine our growing concepts of virtual reality and find they too are mathematical constructs of nothingness into which we place forms and realities which are also made of nothingness. In simple explanation, think of a space like a shoe box, or even a large cubic space like a warehouse, and consider that by using numbered intersecting lines in space you would be able to exactly locate every single point in either space. From this you can understand that you would be able to create a cube or any other shape, a banana for example, in that enclosed space by picking the points that would describe its exact three-dimensional outline expressed in those numbers. So voila, there is our banana sitting there suspended in a shoe box or a warehouse, and it doesn’t move because there is no gravity.
Now we will take a massive leap off a cliff and say if we can create art, the banana, in what we consider everyday reality, we can do the same thing in virtual reality! Why not? Here we have a figure like the Venus de Milo, we take all her measurements,
and we locate that same mathematically described shape inside the numbered shoebox, or the numbered warehouse. As long as we keep the same proportions as the original, we can have her created in any size, as small as a desk statue or as big as the Statue of Liberty!
The trouble is, or the situation is, or the expectation is, we are constantly getting better at defining the objects in mathematical space. Just like the universe is defined so accurately as a mathematical space. In which case, we could presume, there is a convergence going on that will make virtual reality a mirror image of what we have considered every-day reality. And more confusing than that, how will we tell the difference?
A giant change in devices could perhaps have us move physically from our present reality into a far superior virtual reality. For example, a few years back we were in the stores staring longingly at “2K” TV’s, and that moved on quickly to “4k”, and now to “8K”. It didn’t take very long. If all other devices expand and change at the same rate, or even faster, it may indeed be just a short walk into virtual reality to get really close to those virtual bananas! But if virtual reality is really detailed, just like or physical reality, how will we know the difference?
All the images in this blog were created by an AI generator of images. This image, like other artistic images it is an illusion of reality. It has jumped from one virtual situation where artists long standing ‘rules and tools’ have been used to create it, to the other virtual/real situation of this blog. There was never a canvas, or piece of paper, or paints of any sort, involved. Even though the meme-type message has significance it actually doesn’t exist in a ‘real’ physical format, nor has it ever existed previously in a ‘real’ physical format. So it appears that it is virtual and living in a virtual world that is now available to all via a virtual device.
Peter Marsh March 8th 2024
