/ Brian Massumi - Virtual Reality.

My research proposal dealt with virtual reality. All of us by know or have a vague idea of what that means.

But one wonders, where did it come from? Where is it going to go? Is it making a difference? If so, how?

Before jumping straight into virtual reality, I'd like to tease out a few more definitions which i hope will help me with my research and better understand VR.


“Virtual reality” has a short conceptual half-life, tending rapidly to degrade into a synonym for “artificial” or “simulation,” used with tiresome predictability as antonyms for “reality.” The phrase has shown a pronounced tendency to decompose into an oxymoron. It as in that decomposed state that it became a creature of the press, a death warrant on its usefulness as a conceptual tool."

Massumi explains the term 'virtual', sometimes is used without its partner in crime, 'reality'- this is because its reality is theorized, it depends on what form it takes.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, virtual reality's reality depends on reality of its change, the chain of events that take place to give it form.

In other words, virtual is the change. It's a mode of abstraction. It is given form when its in transit, moving from one place/form to another. When it changes it is not what it was concretely given to be in the first place. "The potential of its situation exceeds its actuality".

As i mentioned earlier, theorists claim virtual as a mode of abstractness. To look at it, it has no form. Architecture not just deals with its abstract form (some give rise to buildings) but also with its transitional character. So how can VR, which is considered as an abstract form, give way to architecture which is quite literally concrete? (taken from my research proposal). Or as Brian Massumi asks, 'how can a given form function as a form-giver'?

Brian Massumi's answer is TOPOLOGY.




Brian Massumi goes on to explain topology as the science of self varying deformation. it is the continuous transformation of one geometrical figure into another. He gives an example of a pliable coffee cup.

Join the surfaces of the brim, enlarge the hole in the handle, and then stretch it so that all its sides are equally thick. We get a dougnut.. Then tie the doughnut into complex knots. all of the geometrical figures created in this way are versionas of the same topological figure: topological unit is, in and of itself, mulitple.




A very interesting passage from Brian Massumi's essay 'Line Parable for the Virtual'