September, 1993 _EJournal_ Volume 3 Number 2 ISSN 1054-1055
An Electronic Journal concerned with the
implications of electronic networks and texts.
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KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR:
Leibniz, Baudrillard and Virtual Reality
by C.J. Keep
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario Canada K7L 3N6
[email protected]
Early in the eighteenth century, Leibniz envisioned what might
fairly be called the first reality engine. Central to the argument
of the _Theodicy_ (1710), is the claim that the mind of God
comprehends an infinity of possible worlds, each of which exists *in
potentia*. Of these, only one was brought into being, because only
one --the actual world in which we live-- fulfils the divine plan for
creation. For Leibniz, this world is the best of all possible
worlds precisely because it is the only one which the Almighty chose
to instantiate. "God must needs have chosen the best," he writes,
"since he does nothing without acting in accordance with supreme
reason" (128).
[l. 67]
The Theodicy concludes with a journey that anticipates both the
nature of virtual reality technology and the epistemological
problems arising from it. Extrapolating on Laurentius Valla's
_Dialogue on Free Will_, Leibniz tells of Theodorus' dream in which
the goddess Pallas guides him through an infinitely large pyramid,
each hall of which contains, "as in a stage presentation" (371), a
fully realized possible future. The pyramid is a series of tactile,
three-dimensional, but wholly fictional environments through which
Theodorus can physically move and experience the full spectrum of
sensory stimuli --sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. He can,
moreover, control the degree of representational detail of each
scene with a wave of his hand. Pointing to a book which appears like
a pull-down menu in each room, Pallas explains,
It is the history of this world which we are visiting .
. . . Put your finger on any line you please . . . and
you will see represented actually in all its detail that
which the line broadly indicates. He obeyed, and . . .
lo! another world, another Sextus [came into view].
(371-72)
The sense of depth, of fullness and representational plenitude, that
Theodorus experiences in the worlds populating the great pyramid --
and the ability to interact with those worlds-- are the goals of
virtual reality technology, or VR. Current attempts to realize
these goals usually require the user to don a headset which
completely encompasses the field of vision, and one or more other
items of peripheral hardware such as a glove or a body harness. These
input devices are equipped with remote sensors which translate the
body's movements into a stream of digital information. Thus trussed
up, the modern day Theodorus is connected to the "reality engine,"
a high-speed graphics-oriented computer. This sends to the headset
a three-dimensional image of a virtual environment -- a classroom,
for example, or the surface of the planet Venus. When users,
completely immersed in "cyberspace," turn their head, walk forward,
or crouch down, the image moves accordingly. The use of stereo
sound effects and the ability to pick up or move objects within the
virtual environment help reinforce a visceral sense of "being
there."
[l. 107]
The verisimilitude offered by current state-of-the-art VR technology
is somewhat short of that depicted in the 1991 film _The Lawnmower
Man_. The advanced computer graphics which provide some of the
film's special effects present alternately glorified and demonized
images of virtual worlds which are simply beyond the current state
of the technology. Even the well-funded NASA/Ames project has only
been able to produce a cartoon-like environment, one lacking the
texture, detail and gradations of colour necessary to produce a
truly convincing "reality." But we should not underestimate the
pace of developments in computing. Not twenty years ago, computers
filled entire rooms and could still perform only rudimentary tasks.
Today the same tasks could be performed by the microprocessor in a
wrist watch. Thus when Michael McGreevey of the NASA/Ames project
says he will walk on a *virtual* Venus in the next two years, I
suspect we should believe him.
The possibility that we will be able to mould and shape our own
private alternate worlds, that there will exist for each of us a
means of realizing some personal Platonic ideal behind the mask of a
stereoscopic LCD display, raises serious issues concerning the
epistemological status of the real. If the virtual can offer the
complete range of sensory experiences available in the empirical
world, and if, as some proponents claim, VR can even optimize those
experiences such that the real comes to seem a pale shadow of the
virtual, how will one still differentiate between the sign and the
referent? Is this the telos of a world in which, as Baudrillard
claims, the real "is produced from miniaturised units, from
matrices, memory banks and command models" (3), in which "the very
definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give
an equivalent reproduction" (146)?
[l. 139]
The virtual gave Leibniz no cause for alarm. On the contrary, the
Theodicy posits the existence of "an infinitude of possible worlds"
(128) not in order to volatize the model of a fixed and determinate
uni-verse, but to reinforce it, to justify the ways of God to men.
This vision of a multi-verse, all contained in the halls of a giant
reality engine, concludes with Theodorus' ascent to the very apex of
the pyramid. There, in the most beautiful of the rooms, he
discovers the actual world and is overwhelmed by the experience:
Theodorus, entering this highest hall, became
entranced in ecstasy; he had to receive succour
from the Goddess, a drop of divine liquid placed on
his tongue; he was beside himself for joy. We are
in the real true world (said the Goddess) and you
are at the source of happiness. Behold what
Jupiter makes ready for you, if you continue to
serve him faithfully. (372)
The existence of an infinite plurality of alternate schemes for
creation only serves to renew Leibniz's faith in the one which God
chose to instantiate.
Early initiates to the mysteries of cyberspace report a similarly
epiphanic response. Howard Rheingold claims that many users of VR
technology undergo what he calls a "conversion experience," a
moment in which the sense of having moved into a wholly fictional
reality grips the person with the certainty of a new found faith
(14). The ecstasy of the VR experience recalls the Greek root of
the word, ekstasis, meaning to stand outside oneself, to feel your
sense of self projected to a point outside that occupied by your
body. Where Theodorus' ecstasy essentially leads him back to
himself, to the corporeal body that inhabits the actual world, VR
tends toward an almost religious sense of transcendence. The advent
of the virtual announces the end of the body, the apocalypse of
corporeal subjectivity. According to Randal Walser and Eric
Gullichsen, two of the field's major architects,
[l. 176]
In cyberspace, there is no need to move about in a
body like the one you possess in physical reality.
You may feel more comfortable, at first, with a
body like your "own" but as you conduct more of
your life and affairs in cyberspace your
conditioned notion of a unique and immutable body
will give way to a far more liberated notion of
"body" as something quite disposable . . . . You
will find that some bodies work best in some
situations while others work best in others. The
ability to radically and compellingly change one's
body-image is bound to have a deep psychological
effect, calling into question just what you
consider yourself to be. (quoted in Rheingold,
191)
In the ecstatic realm of the virtual, all things become pliable,
changeable, improvable. We could, for example realize Prufrock's
dream of living as "a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the
floors of silent seas" ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"
73-74), or experience the sense of incorporeality, of having no body
at all. VR shares none of Leibniz's faith in the supreme wisdom of
God's creation, but rather looks to abandon it, to step outside the
body in search of as yet unthought combinations, relations, and
forms.
The virtual then perhaps offers a way out of the cultural and
epistemological dead-end of Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality.
The real ceases to be real for Baudrillard when it comes to resemble
itself, when the difference between the sign and its referent is
obliterated and the subtle charm of the trompe-l'oeil gives way to
the endlessly repeatable perfection of the digital code. The
hyperreal is the condition in which art, as Andy Warhol recognized,
is everywhere, and everything, from Campbell's Soup cans to
reproductions of photos of Marilyn Monroe, is art. The real,
Baudrillard claims, "has been confused with its image. Reality no
longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality"
(_Simulations_, 152).
[l. 215]
The crisis of representation derives precisely from this
catastrophic collapse of difference; when the sign and the referent
are drawn together in an "implosive madness" (_Simulations_, 147),
the space that is representation disappears. But it is in this
space which is no-space, a virtual space, that the virtual is born.
For some critics, such as Benjamin Wooley, VR is associated with,
even seen as the apotheosis of, Baudrillard's concept of the
hyperreal, and in one sense this is justified; VR strives to
simulate not only the look of the real, but also its feel. For all
that it leaves the body ecstatically behind, VR valorizes, even
fetishizes, the five senses in order to produce its visceral sense
of verisimilitude. In so doing, VR looks forward to a time when its
simulated worlds will seem more real than the real, when the latter
will come to have the uncanny sense of appearing similar to the
virtual.
The strain of VR technology which tends most dramatically toward the
dead end of the hyperreal is, not coincidently, the one fostered by
the American military. The "Super Cockpit" program of the U.S. Air
Force, slated for completion in 1996, arose from the recognition
that the technological sophistication of the next generation of
fighter planes would outstrip the ability of human pilots to monitor
effectively all of the two hundred various gauges, meters and
electronic read outs crammed into their cockpits. Placing the
operator in a virtual environment, however, removes the ergonomic
obstacles to delivering death at mach three --even as the pilot
himself disappears behind his headmounted display screen. The
ecstasy of virtual combat, the unlimited freedom that results from
the increasingly mediated nature of technological warfare, is
hungrily anticipated in an article from _Air & Space_ magazine:
When he climbed into his F-16C, the young fighter
jock of 1998 simply plugged in his helmet and
flipped down his visor to activate his Super
Cockpit system. The virtual world he saw exactly
mimicked the world outside. Salient terrain
features were outlined and rendered in three
dimensions . . . . Once he was airborne, solid
cloud cover obscured everything outside the canopy.
But inside the helmet, the pilot "saw" the horizon
and terrain clearly, as if it were clear day. His
compass heading was displayed as a large band of
numbers on the horizon line, his projected flight
path a shimmering highway leading out toward
infinity. (Thompson, 75-76)
[l. 261]
The Super Cockpit program differs significantly from simple flight
simulators. In the *hyperreal* Super Cockpit, the work performed in
the virtual space is also work done in the real world; when the
"young fighter jock" downs a "bandit" by pushing "a phantom button
on a virtual display screen," then it is not a virtual person but a
real person who dies in the bright light of a real air-to-air
missile.
The thanatotic impulse of the military's VR programs, I would argue,
draws out the distinctly masculinist will-to-power inherent in the
attempt to re-make the world, to finally take on the divine powers
of creation. The hyperreal can perhaps be seen as the swan song of
the historical project known as "man": a desperate bid for
transcendence in the dying days of male hegemony in which the
masculine subject imagines himself disappearing down a "shimmering
highway" paved with microchips.
Paradoxically, however, it is at the point where the virtual most
completely approximates the physical world, when VR seems to
collapse the distinction between the sign and the referent, that it
illuminates difference. At the asymptotic limit of representation,
VR breaks free of the gravitational pull of the actual and opens a
new space for the imagination. The difference: Where the
*hyperreal* is constituted by the play of surfaces, by a paralytic
fascination with exteriority, the *virtual* offers images with
depth, images which one can enter, explore, and, perhaps most
importantly, with which one can interact. The virtual is thoroughly
interior. Unlike cinema, for example, or the photograph, the
virtual takes you inside spaces, lets you be surrounded. But its
depth is not that of the absolute ground which guaranteed the
sovereignty of the real; VR's depth is self-reflexively fictional,
tentative, open to change and adaptation.
[l. 294]
For Jaron Lanier, a software designer widely considered the "guru"
of VR, the virtual constitutes a "post-symbolic" order. The empire
of the sign collapses when one no longer requires words, numbers,
keyboards, and screens. Extrapolating from his early efforts to
create a computer language that replaced alpha-numeric strings with
pictograms, Lanier sees the virtual as a means by which people can
regain a kind of immediate relation to their work. "Information is
alienated experience," Lanier claims, but when people are no longer
divided from their tasks by a screen, and can, in effect, enter into
the realm where the work is performed, alienation gives way to
visceral experience. "When you make a program and send it to
somebody else," Lanier told an interviewer in 1985, "especially if
that program is an interactive simulation, it as if you are making a
new world, a fusion of the symbolic and natural elements. Instead
of communicating symbols like letters, numbers and pictures . . . you
are creating miniature universes that have their own internal
mysteries to be discovered" (quoted in Rheingold, 159).
The interactive nature of VR is at the heart of Lanier's vision of
post-symbolic communication. Tele-presence, the ability to project
a virtual body and sense of self to any location connected to a
telephone line, allows people separated by even the greatest of
distances to meet and collaborate in a virtual space. Moreover,
because cyberspace is eminently malleable, the meeting place itself
may become the means by which we communicate with one another.
Lanier's company, VPL Research, for example, recently conducted a
demonstration called "Day Care World." Two architects, one in
Houston, and the other in San Francisco, donned cyberspace suits,
sensor-fitted leotards which turn the entire body into a remote
input device. The architects telecommuted to VPL's headquarters in
Redwood City, California, where they met inside a computer to design
a daycare centre with virtual imaging tools. Upon completion, they
were able to "reduce" their simulated size to that of a child in
order to better understand the problems the building's future
occupants might have with their design.
[l. 330]
VR returns representation to the body at the very moment that it
frees us from it. In the realm of the virtual, one communicates
again with the inflections of voice, the subtleties of facial
expressions and the dramatics of hand gestures. In offering us
alternative bodies, it offers us alternative body languages.
The utopian impulses which atrophied in the age of the hyperreal, in
the age of our mute transfixion before the sign, are revived in the
age of the virtual. The literature of its enthusiasts beckons us to
a land of digital milk and honey:
Only a tradition bound to the precious object as
commodity would find problematic the replacement of
'reality' by a 'simulacra of simulations' . . .
Moralistic critics of the simulacrum accuse us of
living in a dream world. We respond with Montaigne
that to abandon life for a dream is to price it
exactly at its worth. And anyway, when life is a
dream there's no need for sleeping. (Youngblood,
15-16)
Others, noting VR's relation to the military apparatus and its
potential as a kind of electronic opiate for the masses, are less
enthusiastic. Kevin Robins, for example, argues this "cynical
substitution of simulation for reality can only superficially
overcome the alienation of our social existence; our pain will
return to haunt us as nightmares the more we seek refuge in the
'dream' of virtual reality" (114).
[l. 359]
The portentous fears of critics like Robins, or films like
_The Lawnmower Man_ (in which VR is responsible for transforming an
innocent simpleton into a Nietzschean *Ubermensch* with homicidal
tendencies --and a Christ complex to boot) are expressions of a kind
of panic, a panic arising from loss of the comforting assurance of
the real, from the desire to return to the certainties of the
symbolic. What these fears overlook, or attempt to repress, is the
simple fact that it is too late to go back to some putative "real
true world"; we already live, and perhaps have always lived, in the
virtual. When computer graphics programmer Alvy Ray Smith proclaims
that "reality is 80 million polygons per second" (quoted in
Rheingold, 168), he is making more than a statement about the amount
of pictorial information required to simulate the look and feel of a
physical object. He is telling us something we have always secretly
suspected: that reality is an effect, a historically, socially, even
technologically determined means of regulating and representing
experience.
Virtual reality technology is already being used to help
bio-chemists at the University of North Carolina discover new
molecular combinations. American surgeons can practice on virtual
cadavers. Japanese consumers can choose their kitchen cabinets in a
virtual mock-up of their own homes. This past summer, "Virtuality"
arcade games have shown up in shopping malls, dance clubs and
exhibitions across North America. For fifty dollars, you can pit
your wits against a gun-slinging cyborg. And the French consortium
which now owns Lanier's company, VPL Research, has already announced
the opening of the first virtual reality theatres.
The virtual is here. The issue now is whether we allow it to remain
the province of the techno-military apparatus and the vertically
integrated entertainment corporations, or whether, like the personal
computer, it can be appropriated to the task of dismantling the
structures of "Truth" which would pin us to some "Authorised King
James Version" of The Real. Leibniz was right: the actual world is
but one room in the unnumbered halls of the multi-verse. And from
this crucial insight we must find our own way to the apex, to the
uppermost hall of the pyramid. There we shall knock on the door and
wait to see who answers.
[l. 399]
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss et. al. New
York: Semiotext(e), 1983.
Eliot, T. S. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." _The Waste Land
and Other Poems_. London: Faber & Faber, 1988. 9-14.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. _Theodicy_. Trans. E.M. Huggard.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952.
Rheingold, Howard. _Virtual Reality_. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1992.
Robins, Kevin. "The Virtual Unconscious in Post-Photography."
_Science as Culture_. 3, no. 14 (1992): 99-115
Thompson, Stephen L. "The Big Picture." _Air & Space_. (April/May
1987): 75-83.
Wooley, Benjamin. _Virtual Worlds_. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Youngblood, Gene. "The New Renaissance: Art, Science and the
Universal Machine." _The Computer Revolution and the Arts_. Ed.
R.L. Loveless. Tampa: University of Florida Press, 1989.
8-20.
-------- C. J. Keep -------
-------- Queen's University -------
--------
[email protected] -------
((END))
