This article explores a certain type of affect that accompanied the post-1945 European dream: the feeling that an impassable distance separates us from worlds at war. Starting with the interplay between protected spaces and devastated territories, the article seeks to trace the operations that give life to this affect of distance. How does this distance play a part in our ways of being at war? And what kind of agentivity is at work, which makes it possible not to feel involved? Drawing on Martha Rosler’s montages of images and a fragment of Simone Weil, the article unravels the tortuous mechanisms that allow us to be at war, while at the same time setting war apart.
Volumi C. Vassallo, La dimensione estetica nel pensiero di Plotino. Proposte per una nuova lettura dei trattati Sul bello e Sul bello intelligibile [Silvia Ferretti] • G. Gurisatti, Costellazioni. Storia, arte e tecnica in Walter Benjamin [Silvia Ferretti] • J. Balzer, L. Wiesing, Outcault. Die Erfindung des Comic [Mariagrazia Portera] • E.W. Straus, Il vivente umano e la follia. Studio sui fondamenti della psichiatria [Michele Gardini] • G. Böhme, Atmosfere, estasi, messe in scena. L’estetica come teoria generale della percezione [Alessia Ruco] • T. Andina, Arthur Danto: un filosofo pop [Elisa Caldarola] • C. Abell, K. Bantinaki (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction [Elisa Caldarola] Convegni “Gérard Genette’s Aesthetic Thought”, Université de Rennes, 25-27 novembre 2010 [Sandrine Darsel] • “Carattere e stile”, Istituto per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli, 15 dicembre 2010 [Assunta Carotenuto] Autopresentazioni S. Halliwell, Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus
While many scholars have decried the erasure of the body in virtual reality (VR), this paper focuses on the body – and the physical reality for which it stands – as a critical component of any experience of virtual reality. Specifically, studying VR from the perspective of the physical body allows for a more nuanced appreciation of the unique reality of this «virtual» reality. Moreover, this paper argues that the body should not be seen as a distraction from the immersive potential of VR, but rather as a potential tool for augmenting what virtual reality can currently offer.
In this essay, some theoretical semiotic issues concerning immersive technologies are presented and discussed. In particular, the somatic and corporeal dimensions of the construction of the user-visual hybrid, the problematic of point of view and realism, and the narrativity inscribed in immersive technologies will be discussed. The objective is twofold: tracing the semiotic perspective on the real/virtual relationship and questioning certain rhetoric of immersivity that underlies precise ideologies circulating in the contemporary imagery.
In this paper we aim to find a definition of virtual which fits the latest developments of digital technology, but also applies to the analog world. We consider the virtual as related to immanence, taking inspiration from Deleuze’s reading of Bergson and Merleau-Ponty’s last work. We first analyze Deleuze’s idea of immanence, from which virtuality emerges, then we focus on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh and its virtual center. We argue that both philosophers see immanence as a dynamic medium of virtuality, overcoming the traditional concept of substance and theorizing a deep intertwining of bodies and technology. Our analysis shows that the virtual is defined by the following features: it implies an epistemological and ontological monism, relationality, and entanglement with reality. The virtual clearly emerges in digital technologies, but also belongs to analog reality, as a general condition for our knowing and being in the world as such.
