Viractualism

8/8/2019 Viractualism

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Emergence of the New Paradigm: Viractuality

by Joseph Nechvatal

talk/demo delivered at the cole Suprieure d'AudioVisuel

Universit de Toulouse le Mirail

November 3rd, 2010 in Toulouse, France

the birth Of the viractual Joseph Nechvatal

2001computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas

70 x 70 inches


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This paper will investigate the idea of the emergence of theviractual era, which I maintain i

already upon us. First, I will formulate an argument for what theviractual is and what

viractualism is about.

As I work on this idea in my own work, I will illustrate my argument with examp

own art practice, but by no means is the concept of viractualism limited to my art a

On the contrary, it is a widely used perhaps dominant - technique, even if it has n

fully recognized as being so, yet.

First, what it is.

Viractuality is a theory that strives to see, understand, and create interfaces betw

technological and the biological. The basis of the viractual conception is that virtua

computer technology has become a noteworthy means for making and unde

contemporary life (and thus art). And that this virtual production a digital product

been going on for a long time now - brings artists to a place of paradox where

increasingly the emerging of the computed (the virtual) with the uncomputed cor

actual). This fusion motif - which tends to contradict some central techno clichs of

what I call theviractual . It is the poetic welding of fusion/paradox that accounts for muc

potency and transportative agency of the theory - and the art that it produces.

A key in uence in the formation of my theory of viractuality was Gilles Deleuze's


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of Spinoza - the 17th century philosopher who merged mind and matter into on

Moreover, it is a concept close to that of augmented reality, which is the use of t

displays worn as see-through glasses on which computer data is projected and layere

Digitization is a key metaphor for viractuality in the sense that it is the elementary

procedure today. But the viractual recognizes and uses the power of digitization w

culturally aware of the glamourous values of monumentality and permanency - qual

be found in some previous compelling analog art that grounded itself in the spiritual value of

beauty.

For me, viractualism signals a new emerging sensibility respecting the integratio

aspects of science, technology, myth and consciousness an aesthetic consciousnes

to attend to the prevailing contemporary spirit of our age in which everything, every

once is connected in a rhizomatic web of transmission. But the lurking viractual re

political-spiritualchaosmos in the sense that new forms of order may emerge in such a w

any form of order is only temporary and provisional. Within viractual cre

understanding, all signs are subject to boundlessly inverted semiosis - which is to s

are translatable into other signs. Here, of course, it is possible to nd resonances an

between formal and conceptual opposites. Hence, I wish to suggest that the term an

viractual (andviractualism or viractuality ) maybe helpful in de ning our now third-fused

spatiality reality a reality forged from the meeting of the virtual and the actual.


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Now, what it means.

The history of art and the history of technology are often marked by ruptures. Mo

overlook moments where deep fusion occurs, as I see happening now with viractual

another temporal model for cultural consciousness is needed. Something other

majestic forward and upward thrusting model of evolution. Something more humbl

on itself (as Deleuze suggests). Or perhaps something even more insinuatingly pene

in a viral-host model. I have chosen the viral model so let us now consider the ac

viractual as a surge of emergent and embedded critical consciousness that o ers

clarity true to our glorious age.

After a long period of temporal disjunctions following the demise of the modernist

the excessive abuses of the post-modernist non-project; I wish to now suggest

clarifying paradigm has emerged based not, however, on the ideals of the raw, the

reduced - but rather on the internal tic-tic-tic bomb time of the embedded and pa

attack. So I am suggesting here a seething project of critique within critique that r

the broken gaps of temporal displacement that followed the demise of modernis

appearance of now listless super fragmented irresponsible glut of post-m

construction.

When looking at cultural production through the paradigm of the viral viractual, m

binary oppositions fail to function in a stable way - and start to pulse t

consciousness. Most basically, even the de nitions of life and death are destroyed b

as a biological virus is precisely neither alive nor not-alive as it depends for its ex


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on it's host's viability. The seeing-power of the host/parasite model alone must not

A virus cannot and does not exist alone. It exists solely by entering in and coupl

we add the once binary de nitions of virtual and actual into the voluptuous vir

existence - and observe how they interact - a form of both/and fusion di eren

dominant within the scope of the viractual lens.

What I nd exciting about this viral viractuality is the tendency here to discover a

stuttering, nervous discrepancies between art's internal theoretical and external man

mechanisms. For example, the instantaneous reading of reduced modernist form

of pop art form is problematized by buried (often cryptic) fugitive qualities of o

informational de-materiality. Unsustainable forms of opposition that are exploded

viractual time bomb are: the mind-body dualism typical of the western philosophic

thus the once held opposition between the physical and the conceptual, re

representation, nature and culture, presence and potentiality, and the (most cent

artistic production) still and the moving. A clear enthusiasm for post-humanist met

is evident here, where the interchange between one body and another dominates.

Other now exploded ruptures include: the classical and romantic, repose and energ

and spirituality, organization and vigor, simplicity and complexity, smooth and ro

and chaos, restraint and e usion, sparseness and abundance, abstraction and s

stability and stress, composure and imbalance, plan and chance.

So viral-viractality means cultivating another form of grandeur more concerned

related passage than avant-garde rupture. Its leitmotiv is an interest in seductive in

Yet I believe it still can be said that viral-viractality is revolutionary in that it surf


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the digital revolution while, in my case, participating in the aesthetics of glitch an

noise. But it is revolutionary in a new non-ruptured sense (what a dreaded sens

waiting for a rupture that may or may never come) as it uses an inner-outer confusio

sense writ grand) that is not clearly obvious on rst-take by design. Yet it is non-all

its strategy clearly has no interest in art that is without compelling poetic narrative,

designy, decorative or ornamental. Rather, it is interested in fabricating unique arti

and experiences of sensitivity via con ation. Here I o er, as example, my con

painterly glazing tradition with genetic programming, where a very intense ana

di erence is confronted and addressed in both directions.

For anyone unfamiliar with genetic programming, brie y, it is a technique for writi

computer program based on arti cial intelligence that uses an algorithm-based m

takes its programming cues from biology. In my case, from the biology of the virus

me, bio-tech genetic programming as applied to the traditions of painting and art

important to the ideas of viractuality that it may be said to be emblematic of it. Thi

represents the seminal function of viractuality: that activity that occurs between th

time and the captured archived.

Again, my interest is not in denying di erences here between the two mod

investigating how these two models may interact in new ways as we pay atten

direction of light as it applies to display. Cyborgian computer-assisted forms of c

social activity (keep in mind that around 75% of stock trades are now made auto

computers using algorithms) raises important issues of scale, materiality, and inten

viractuality, energetic connectionswithin competing forms and forces are relished. Thu


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penetrating viractual lends us a sense of new beginnings, albeit absent the rush

rupture. It is an idea of viral temporal interruption alined with the haunting qua

phantasmagorical and that is what lends it its sense of authenticity in our

materialized informational codes.

scOpOphiliaJoseph Nechvatal

2009computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas & screen with viral attack animation

20 x 20 inches & screen


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*What is the definition of parasite-host? ....... art dealer

**The omnijective concept arose out of the discoveries of quantum physics, a non-spatial physics (and logic) which has

been shown to parallel the workings of consciousness itself. (Clarke, C. J. S. 1995. "The Nonlocality of Mind" In Journal of

Consciousness Studies: Controversies in Science and the Humanities , Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 231-240) More specifically, the

concept of omnijectivity emerged from the theories of quantum physicist David Bohm (1917-1992), protg of Albert

Einstein; and Karl Pribram, author of the neuropsychological textbook Languages of the Brain . Pribram noted how modern

theories of how the brain stores memories did not explain how memories seem to be distributed throughout the brain as a

whole. Each memory a person has was believed to have a specific location somewhere in the brain cells. Pribram, however,

made the discovery that memories are not localized, but rather they are somehow spread out or distributed throughout the

brain as a whole. Even when much damage is done to a brain, or pieces of it are removed, organisms don't lose sections of

their memory. He knew of no process that could account for such a phenomenon. Finally, the process that made the most

sense in metaphorically explaining this aspect of the brain was holography .

But Pribram was not alone in adapting the holographic model in explaining reality. David Bohm also arrived at the

conclusion that the universe operates under holographic principles . Bohm, who had studied at the University of California,

Berkeley with Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (noted theoretical physicist and director of the Los Alamos

Laboratory during the 1943 to 1945 development of the atomic bomb), received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1943 and taught

widely before becoming professor emeritus of theoretical physics at London University. His explorations into the nature of

consciousness were stimulated by Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) and later by the Dalai Lama. His most celebrated book is

Wholeness and the Implicate Order in which he expresses his disinclination with the previous prevailing interpretations of

quantum theory and suggests that an unseen order is at work beneath the ostensible chaos and lack of continuity of the

individual particles of matter.

Bohm had been dissatisfied with the unexplained dual nature of subatomic particles, the fact that they behave sometimes as

particles and sometimes as waves. According to Bohm, the holographic model explains it. Hence, Bohm claimed that

though our plane of reality makes it seem as if things are separated, at a deeper level of reality everything in the universe is

part of a total unified continuum (thus subject and object coalesce in omnijectivity). Holographic film is an appropriate

model, according to Bohm, because of its implicate order, as the image is encoded in the film's interference patterns. It

contains a hidden perceptual totality enfolded throughout the whole . Equivalents to this recognition exist in fractals in the

sense that they present a system in which all parts are encode into the structure of the whole; that a small extract contains, or

has enfolded within it, the essential features of the whole. The hologram projected from the film is an explicate order

because it represents the unfolded and perceptible version of the image. This relational structure means a mutual and

dynamic coexistence where each part depends in its being on the other part. This relational structure theorizes a space/time


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matrix (the enfolded order) which in itself has no mass or density but is the source of all that we call matter. This implicate

order acts like a projector of the explicate order in a way which can be likened to a hologram .

Hence, Bohm sought to develop a theory of reality that would be inclusive and whole ; a coherent hyper-spectacle of

omnijectivity in which things hook together. As Bohm said in his key book Wholeness and the Implicate Order (a book which defines a seamless physical order of continuous wholeness), "I would say that in my scientific and philosophical

work, my main concern has been with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular as a

coherent whole, which is never static or complete but which is an unending process of movement and unfoldment". (Bohm,

D. 1980. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Ark Paperbacks, p. 9) Also in the book, Bohm emphasized the

distinction between wholeness and holism, because he felt some holistic theories have had very negative effects in the past.


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Viractualism