Being Virtual

It was this moment, when we were exposed to the inconceivable materialization of reality without being in it, and to get through it, we required to a process that philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes as the "Virtualization of Reality" - a process where experience becomes mediated and possible even without physical presence. In a more straight-forward example, think of decaffeinated coffee and non-alcoholic beer - the western culture faced a trauma lacking presence. The merging, melting, collapsing, and interweaving between physical reality and the virtual one are the principle underlying our current condition, which can be called "the new technological condition"

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On 9/11, the contemporary world was re-established, where the boundaries between physical and digital reality vanished, when the media tools, primarily television, not only reported on reality but became those that generate it. The current technological condition is based on a new perception of time and space, where we are exposed to events and the world around us in an immediate and constant way. Since then, the world in general and the West in particular have known many scars from the complex dance between the physical and the virtual invading the space where reality being embodied; The masses, originally gathered on  the facebook platform, breakthrough into Tahrir Square that heralded the arrival of the "Arab Spring”,  journalists' heads being beheaded by ISIS in Mosul on telegram, George Floyd choked under a policeman's knee in North Carolina through the eye of the camera, and the latest in the chain of hyper-real representations - the Terror events of October 7th, and the vicious war that followed.

The fusion of the virtual and physical realities not only increases awareness of traumatic events but also changes much of the fundamentals of human experience.This fusion can be seen in the way we perceive truth and trust in the information presented to us,  the spread of fake news and misleading information becomes an enormous challenge in an era where the boundaries between facts, fiction and delusions are being blurred in the ever shown reality reflected from the screen. Furthermore there's various power agents exploiting  digital media to shape alternative reality and influence public opinion in increasingly productive ways than ever before. Additionally, feelings of disconnection and alienation experienced by many people, stemming from constant exposure to virtual or mediated reality, increase social isolation and naturally reduce the ability to empathize with others. Finally, but not least, the Attachment of physical and virtual poses new challenges regarding privacy and human rights, as media and technology enable surveillance and control on scales previously impossible.

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The development of new forms of media over the Web 2.0 (“The World Wide Web”, more known as “www”) introduced "The Algorithm" to distribution means, a tool that changed media dramatically, presumably unseen since the printing revolution. The digital revolution swelled rapidly thanks to the possibility of virality and the creation of the global village in which it seeks to exist.

Shortly before the collapse of the towers and the transformation of the World Wide Web into the world's most important creative platform, a pioneering video appeared in 1996. In the video, one minute long, appears a 3D animated baby dancing awkwardly to the sounds of the song "Hooked on a Feeling" by the band Blue Swede. Mysterious are the strange ways of the internet to crown and behead phenomenons occurring within it, but something about the amusing baby worked - the video was viewed by millions, and effectively became one, if not the first internet meme.

After the Dancing Baby, many more internet phenomena occurred, whose distribution usually provided life force not to their creators, but rather to the digital platforms themselves, and in doing so positioning their role deep in their viewers' lives and culture. Among the viral images that were a breakthroughs, in terms of exposure and viewer engagement (which were the fueling force for their platforms) are many examples including: "Numa Numa" from 2004, where Gary Brolsma sits in front of a webcam performing a lip-sync to a Romanian pop song, and the british internet classic "Charlie Bit My Finger" from 2007, where two children sit side by side, with one biting the other. Today (06.05.2024), by the way, the video that has received the most views on the content sharing platform is a song-performance from a Korean children's show called "Baby Shark" with about 14,667,391,720 views, the fact that this is a representation of the young generation media atmosphere, can only open ones imagination what's next to come.

We've listed examples of content that on the surface seems marginal, and to some extent they are, but from an internet perspective, these videos are very close to the viral events that led to coups and revolutions that was and are being generated in many countries worldwide for the past two and half decades. In this context, it's important to note that from the perspective of a digital information-based space, the internet makes no distinction between content that might be considered important from a human perspective (like acute revolutions) and that which isn't (like Charlie's biting his brother) - for the internet - data is data.

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 It's easy to resolve the technological condition by using phrases like “one should take a critical stance toward reality”, or to “ constantly trying to challenge the subjective perception of reality and trying to make the best of the situation”. But this might not be enough. I believe the response to the current condition, which to some extent gives renewed validity to art and the imagery it produces, is the attempt to remember oneself, to constantly pass the test of loyalty to an inner voice that may have been lost in the anchorless and sourceless digital flood.

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R E A L I T Y V I R T U A L I  T Y R E A L I T Y V I R T U A L I  T Y R E A L I T Y R E A L I T Y V I R T U A L I  T Y R E A L I T Y V I R T U A L I  T Y R E A L I T YR E A L I T Y V I R T U A L I  T Y R E A L I T Y V I R T U A L I  T Y R E A L

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To understand the thought about expanding technological reality to the point of merging into the physical one, we need to return to the one who dreamed and conceived my very own blue iPod nano, the man who conceived the hardware side and that was needed for the digital revolution more than anyone else - Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. Indeed, the revolution Jobs sought to create actually began in 1984 with the introduction of Apple's first personal computer, the Macintosh. The computer was launched in a very viral way - a Super Bowl halftime commercial directed by Ridley Scott, still considered iconic in media and advertising studies till this day 40 years later.