The real, the virtual and the imaginary.

[carllooper]

To understand and critique realism requires understanding the real first, understanding realism first.

In optics a real image is the image that occurs on a surface (eg. retina, photographic film, movie screen). In other words the "real" is not what apparently takes place in front of the camera but what takes place on the surface. The realism associated with photography has it's origin in this real image, ie. the image that occurs at the surface. A real image has a factual status.

A virtual image differs from a real image. A virtual image is an "apparition", within consciousness, of where an otherwise factual image appears to be in 3D space. For example, the image on our retina is a real image but from the point of view of ourselves it appears to be outside of us, out there in a 3D space. This is particularly clear with stereoscopic images. From within consciousness we hallucinate the resulting 3D image as out there in space, even though it's a result of two real images on the back of our retinas.

The virtual can be regarded as a mental space where a correction occurs, where the real image is hallucinated as back outside of ourselves, because intuitively, or genetically, or for whatever reason, we understand that the real image is not a result of our own personal imagination (the imaginary), but must have it's basis in something outside of ourselves, out there, in a world other than ourselves. A virtual image is constructed from a real image, and is an attempt to correct the real image.

But at no point does the virtual, or it's basis: the real, exist outside of perception. The real is created within the perceptual system, as a result of an intervention between a surface and light. The virtual operates on that real, and creates a virtual version of such, within a space we allow for hallucination of the outside.

We are now ready to discuss an important split in philosophy that extends back to Ancient times. In Ancient Greece there was a debate between Plato and Stoic philosophy, between what we might call Platonic philosophy and Stoic philosophy. In a famous parable Plato makes fun of prisoners (the Stoics), in a cave, who believe the shadows on their walls constitute a reality. If the prisoners were freed, they would see, argues Plato, that the shadows are just an effect of what is outside the cave.

But as we've just discussed, the outside of the cave is the effect. A virtual image. What is real (and what remains called as such in science) are the shadows on the cave wall. What is outside the cave is an apparition born of the shadows (on the retina of whoever is standing outside the cave). Meditating on the cave wall shadows is a way of temporarily separating the real image from the virtual that would otherwise kick in (as a distraction) when standing outside the cave.

We are now in a position to clear up a massive confusion in some contemporary media theory which seems to think that realist theory has been about posing the outside of the cave as real and the cave wall shadows as a rendering of that real. But on the contrary, what realism has always been about, is that the shadows are (at least) real, but that what appears to be outside of the cave is a virtual effect of such real images, and potentially misleading.

Meanwhile, Plato (Aristotle etc) and the tradition which inherits that philosophy has always thought the opposite - that the outside is reality and that the shadows are an image of that reality. If, in recent times, it has turned away from the outside and joined those inside the cave to look at the cave wall, it nevertheless brings with it the baggage of having spent so much time outside the cave. It brings with it the baggage of all that hallucinating. It trys to put up on the cave wall the paintings it has made ouside (in the virtual). It trys to say that the real image (the shadows) are no different from their paintings, that both represent the reality outside the cave.

But in agreement with the realists, and their shadows, it tries to dismiss the outside, but not because the outside is an apparition, because it still believes it is a reality of some sort. However it is suspicious of it. In many ways it does get it. It gets that the outside is open to social, cultural, political criticism. But what it still thinks, and can not shake, is the inherited error, that a shadow on the cave wall is somehow a mechanical reproduction of this outside. It consults it's diagrams, be they nicely arranged in perspective, or according to a cartesian mathematical schema (which it nevertheless pretends to treat as suspicious without really knowing why or how) and thinks from such that the shadows on the cave wall just reproduce what is already outside the cave. They mistakenly believe that the realists are reproducing it, and think that the realists should be reprimanded for reproducing it.

The problem, as discussed, is that, in the first place, the real (and realism) does not reproduce the virtual (what is apparently outside). It is the virtual which reproduces the real and transforms it according to it's particular baggage. Now the real is no less under the influence of culture etc. but it is a different problem, and requires different solutions to the way in which a history of painting, graphic arts, computer animation, etc. might deal with their set of particular problems and concerns.

There are two "outsides", one of which is an effect (the virtual as discussed) and the other which remains an ongoing question, partially explored by quantum mechanics, and otherwise lost on much of contemporary media theory and it's classical heritage. It is perhaps the first phase of the digital, a neo-baroque photorealism, that is the culprit here. It picks up where painting, prior to photography, left off. And media theory, sensing this continuity, tries to retrofit photography into this narrative - to critique photography in the same way it critiques the neo-baroque.

Photography, in this context becomes equated as a just another special effect, but on the contrary, photography is a special defect in this narrative.

The digital, in it's second phase, has connected back with photography and facilitated some new ideas that differ from the neo-baroque and it's discontents. Machine vision is an example, something working in the background for quite some time now. Indeed the neo-baroque has enlisted it's service in techniques such as match moving. Subsequent techniques have explored the creation of new virtuals such as panoramic stitching for example. These virtuals have their basis in the real image rather then the imaginary. There is no need for panoramic stitching of imaginary images since imaginary images can be generated from scratch as already panoramic.

Carl