Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#30 Andrea Pinotti: Beyond the Frame—Virtual Reality, Narcissus, and the Desire to Enter the Image
0 Plays2 seconds ago
Philosopher Andrea Pinotti joins us to discuss At the Threshold of the Image: From Narcissus to Virtual Reality. What begins as a conversation about image theory quickly becomes a sweeping exploration of immersion, identity, and the strange pull of simulated worlds. Why do we long to enter the image? What do we gain—and lose—when the frame disappears? Pinotti guides us from Paleolithic caves to VR headsets, through myths of Narcissus and Pygmalion, to Black Mirror’s digital afterlives. Along the way, we consider how virtual environments blur fiction and reality, evoke religious promises, and reshape what it means to be human.If you've ever wondered why virtual reality feels so real—or so dangerous—this episode is for you.For more, visit ethicscircle.org.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Book Discussion
00:00:17
Speaker
Hi everyone and welcome back to the A-Tech Podcast. I'm Roberto Garcia here and I'm alongside Sam Bennett as always. Today we're excited to share a conversation we had with philosopher Andrea Pinotti about his book recently released in English, in a new English translation, At the Threshold of the Image, From Narcissist to Virtual Reality.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, we you know highly recommend the book. Definitely check it out if you can. um Just to give you a quick sense of the conversation. So, Pinotti, he discusses different kinds of images. We're going to talk about different kinds of images in this conversation.
00:00:57
Speaker
in the history of art, and we're going to talk about um the kind of images that are used in
Framing Images: Art vs. Virtual Reality
00:01:03
Speaker
virtual reality. And so one of his key ideas is that some images sort of clearly signal to the viewer that they are images rather than reality So for example, if you look at the Mona Lisa and the Louvre or whatever, you notice a border around the image.
00:01:22
Speaker
So the image has a frame. And it's interesting how that frame actually helps you recognize that what you're seeing is not reality, it's a painting, right? There's not actually a person in the room with that, you know, enigmatic smile on her face, right? It's it's an image. And it's actually the frame is helping you see that it is merely an image.
00:01:45
Speaker
um But of course, there's other ways to kind of signal that. um There's other ways you can, an image can signal that it's merely an image. So at any rate, so then there's other kinds of images, right? you know, where they actually aim to make you forget that you're looking at an image at all.
00:02:02
Speaker
They kind of try to immerse you so fully that the kind of the boundary between image and reality, the threshold between image and reality sort of fades from your view. And so basically, yeah, this tension between framed images and more immersive images, that's one of the central themes of this discussion.
00:02:24
Speaker
right, everyone, we hope you enjoy the conversation.
00:02:42
Speaker
I remember from my, you know, this is, we're talking 20 years ago, my first art history class, uh, they, the instructor had us go stare at a painting for, uh, you know, considerably long amount of time. I've heard, I've heard longer versions, like three hours to look at a painting, but, um,
00:02:58
Speaker
We were supposed to be there 30 minutes looking at the same painting. and And, you know, as she mentioned just like move around, look at it from different angles, get a little hungry, see how it makes you feel like, ah you know, whatever. um Just kind of ah a keep keep trying to, ah you know, keep it fresh. and And I remember over time, the experience of the painting did change. Yeah.
00:03:20
Speaker
In the beginning, yeah i don't know, you're 18, maybe was a little ah crabby about the assignment, but over time you you really do get a different take and there's a different ah feel in the body as you experience a painting. So I don't know if you want to touch on that at all. I think that this is a very, very good and and crucial experience and experiment at the same time.
00:03:46
Speaker
And I think also that it takes us directly to one of the key terms of our conversation today, namely the virtual.
00:03:59
Speaker
Because when we say today virtual, especially after the COVID period, the the pandemics, we tend to use this term ah in very general way, even generic and simplistic.
00:04:16
Speaker
Because we say that during the COVID and perhaps also in this moment now while we are speaking, we are having a virtual experience because it's remote, because it's online, because it's digital.
00:04:28
Speaker
But actual virtual, if we ah want to be more precise, has to do with virtue. with virtue So that the Latin term virtus, which in the philosophy in the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages used to be employed to translate the Aristotelian term dynamis, which is potentiality.
Virtuality and Potentiality in Art
00:04:58
Speaker
So virtuality means that you have a number of undetermined potentialities that you actualize. in a way or in the other, while you are having an experience.
00:05:12
Speaker
This happens, of course, ah in ordinary perception, because in this moment I am looking at you on the screen, but I could decide if I were bizarre enough and weird enough to spend the rest of our time looking at my chair or at my feet, for example.
00:05:31
Speaker
And so I would actualize my perceptual potentialities in a different way. This is true, of course, for the experience that we are going to describe, I think, later of the virtual environments, ah virtual technologies, ah virtual headsets.
00:05:52
Speaker
But um it is also true, as you just said, for our experience ah in front of traditional painting. Because if you have the patience to stay there enough to let the painting become an experience in time for you, you will see different things ah happening in from front of you, triggered by the same painting.
00:06:20
Speaker
This happens, of course, many times in many different ah cultural situations. Let's think, for example, of a novel that we read when we were young and then we pick it up again after 10 years, and then when we are old, it's the same novel, materially the same letters composing the same words.
00:06:42
Speaker
But the event ah of the experience, which is actualized every time, changes over the years. And so this is the actualization of a potentiality. This is the ergon, as Aristotle would put it, at the the actual ah putting into existence, coming into existence of dynamis, of ah of ah potentiality.
00:07:16
Speaker
And this is very important, I think, to keep in mind, i mean this root, this ancient root, because it helps us ah understand some implications of virtuality that we tend to forget ah or to neglect when we use that kind of simplistic and generic identification of the term virtual with the term be digital, with the term online and so on.
00:07:47
Speaker
It's interesting you talk about um
The Role of Frames in Immersive Experiences
00:07:50
Speaker
potentiality. One thing that it makes me think of is how what occurs in virtual reality, the experience that we have in virtual reality, as you describe in your book, it's almost surprising that it would be possible that that was a potentiality of the image. There's certain ways in which we experience the image that as you describe in your book, in the context of of virtual reality, which are very surprising. You might have not thought the image could be experienced in that way. so um So, for example, the frame, you talk about how in virtual reality, there's this way in which we lose a frame.
00:08:36
Speaker
The image becomes unframed in our experience, ah which... is such a fascinating thing to think about because you almost think it, you almost would be forgiven if you thought it was essential to an image to have a frame or something, you know? I mean, at any rate, it's so, um, it's so much a part of our traditional experience of images that they are in some kind of enclosure, which separates the image from what surrounds the image, the environment. At any rate, um, maybe that can be a way we can kind of move into your discussion. Sure,
00:09:13
Speaker
Because let's think, for example, of the first book in image theory, we could say, even it if it was not presented as such.
00:09:26
Speaker
It was 1435 and Italian Renaissance painter and theorist and architect Leon Battista Alberti wrote this treatise on painting.
00:09:42
Speaker
And in there he presents this fatal analogy. When I want to ah realize a painting, Alberti says, I draw a rectangle as if it were a window through which I can see into other worlds.
00:10:07
Speaker
And I don't know if you use windows, but it has been demonstrated in a very convincing way by Anne Friedberg that when we have to deal either in Windows ah platforms and and interfaces or in the Mac or whatever with our computers,
00:10:27
Speaker
with windows, we are still in the wake of Alberti's and analogy. we We think in terms of our access to images as if they were windows through which we are ah taken into different worlds, into different domains, into different areas of the creation of a meaning of the sense.
00:10:53
Speaker
But um this idea of separating through a rectangle, which it can be used of course an oval or a circle, it doesn't matter, but it does have a perimeter to to to to put a border around the image.
00:11:14
Speaker
On the one side, it was not always so because if you plunge into the Paleolithic caves, you find there, and we are speaking of 40,000 years ago, so a kind of temporal scale I can hardly imagine and But certainly when when you plunge into these environments, you would not find framed pictures. You would find pictures surrounding the entire space and you are immersed. So if we pose the question, which is always a very slippery question,
00:11:59
Speaker
what are the origins of immersivity? We should probably, even it's vertigo, i we should probably go back to these Paleolithic times and ask ourselves, ah we actually don't know what was this picture making, the meaning, the the final meaning, the ultimate meaning for our ancestors.
00:12:20
Speaker
we use a kind of cocktail of terms like it was a bit of magic, it was a bit of art, it was a bit of ritual, it was a bit of apotropia strategies.
00:12:32
Speaker
Because we don't actually have a word, that we put together words which have much later define some practices. Because speaking of art, speaking of the cave of Lascaux as the 16th chapel of the Paleolithic period is in a way nonsense. it's it's ah it's and It's a metaphor because they knew nothing about the system of art which only very much later defined itself.
00:13:03
Speaker
But certainly there was no frame. And this makes us think in terms of what is a frame? How did we start ah to put frames around the pictures?
00:13:15
Speaker
And what do we gain in suppressing frames in virtual environments? Because when we put on a virtual headset, we can turn our gaze 360 degrees they degreees around and there is a continuous seamless landscape of pictures developing in front of our eyes, we are immersed in this landscape, not just in front of a picture which is delimitated by a frame.
VR's Impact on Perception and Identity
00:13:47
Speaker
But Marshall McLuhan, the famous ah Canadian theorist of media, was very clear in saying that every time you invent a new medium, You gain something and you lose something.
00:14:04
Speaker
And there's pros and cons. So one might wonder what do we gain in suppressing, abolishing this framing?
00:14:15
Speaker
We gain, apparently, an emancipation. From what? From what has been defined the tyranny of the frame.
00:14:26
Speaker
What is the tyranny of the frame? The frame... is determined by an author, be it this author, the painter, the photographer, the director.
00:14:39
Speaker
But if Hitchcock decides that i must see the victim, but not the killer in the shower, I cannot go to the screen, move the screen left or right in order to focus ah on and to frame the killer because the killer will be forever off screen.
00:15:01
Speaker
Let's think how much this is important in terms of the creation of the suspense. Very often in this kind of films, it's more important what you do not see and you can only imagine than what is actually framed into your screen.
00:15:18
Speaker
visual field, offered to your visual field. And the same goes for photography, the same goes for painting. If say Edgar Degas, who was kind of s sadistic because he cut very often the legs ah or the bodies of his dancers or ah characters in his painting. You can go through the painting and move this they did the frame and in order to frame, for example, the feet of a young lady or the legs of a dog.
00:15:59
Speaker
If Degas has decided not to show them to you, On the contrary, when you put on your headset, you have the impression that you are free to focus your gaze and to direct them your vision to the piece of visual space, to the part of visual space that you want to focus on.
00:16:27
Speaker
And this is apparently what brings the perception of the image within the virtual headset very, very close to the ordinary perception. Because again, I want to frame you, I look at you on the screen, but but if I want to frame my bookshelves, I turn my head on the left or on the right and i can stay there.
00:16:55
Speaker
Moreover, during a project I ran at the University of Milan, it was funded by the European Research Council on Virtual Environments. We funded the production of a virtual video.
00:17:11
Speaker
um The director was the um Italian guy, Emilio Vavarella. At the time, he was a PhD student. Now, he got his PhD in Harvard, but at the same time, a theorist and an artist. as So it was an art-based research.
00:17:32
Speaker
And this video is very simple. It's called the Lazy Sunday, and it's a typical Sunday of Emilio. different from all the other lazy Sundays in his life, only because he decided to put a 360 camera on his head during the entire Sunday to record his day.
00:17:58
Speaker
is theyve So he prepares a breakfast and then a he takes his bike and he rides, he meets friends, they go for a walk and then they go ah for they go to swim.
00:18:14
Speaker
But when he rides his bike, since Emilio is very prudent and cautious, he looks in front of him.
00:18:29
Speaker
because he doesn't want to run into an accident ah on the highway. But re-watching the scene afterwards, after it has been recorded 360, I feel myself ah as if I were riding together with Emilio on his bike. But I can decide to actualize perspectives on that road That he has not seen because precisely because he was totally right and concentrated in front of himself on the road.
00:19:09
Speaker
But I can see backwards. I can see left. I can see right. I can see what was there virtually and potentially, and I actualize this vision.
00:19:25
Speaker
This is something that I gain framing, in a 360 environment, unframing the image. image But there is also something, if I can go on for a while, which I lose.
00:19:42
Speaker
I lose another liberty, birth probably i wasn't even aware of. Take, for example, the fact that that you the situation in which you are watching a movie, a horror movie,
00:19:58
Speaker
either there on your sofa and you're watching it on on the TV screen or ah the cinema theater. But this horror movie is actually very, very good.
00:20:14
Speaker
And you start sweating, your your heart rate becomes more rapid and intense.
00:20:25
Speaker
And as we all know, horror movies can impact on our physiological parameters. Simply we we are afraid of our our safety because the monster, because the killer, because the maniac and so and so forth.
00:20:42
Speaker
So what do we do? We want to reassure ourselves and that it's just a movie. And so we switch from the screen and we focus off the exit, toilet, or on the person who came together with us to see, to watch the film.
00:21:06
Speaker
In this way, we go off image. When you are a VR headset, you cannot go off image because there aren't but images.
00:21:20
Speaker
All you can see is image. Of course, you can take off your headset or you can close your eyes. This is always a possibility. But as long as you are in the be the virtual experience, ah you have no possibilities of exiting the image.
00:21:38
Speaker
And in this way, there is a kind of identification, the perception of the images and the ordinary perception collapse onto each other.
00:21:54
Speaker
Because you don't have an ordinary perception, you cannot have it any longer while you are in a virtual headset. Because the ordinary perception is identified and equated with the perception of images.
00:22:11
Speaker
this yeah This is really fascinating. So it's like on the one hand, you can think of reasons why the frame of an image could be understood as tyranny. But on the other hand, you can think of reasons to think that virtual reality, which kind of removes that frame,
00:22:30
Speaker
is a kind of tyranny. So on the one hand, you know, in terms of why would the frame be tyranny? I mean, like you're talking about, there's so much authorial control, right? um The creator decides exactly what enters the image and he can exclude. So for example, if he doesn't want to show the feet of his dancers, Degas can exclude them. So that's a kind of authorial control.
00:22:50
Speaker
um Direct your gaze. You know, he doesn't want you looking at their feet. So he excludes it, directs your gaze in a certain way. Um, and then like, like you mentioned, you know your whole experience is really shaped by those exclusions, like the narrative, um,
00:23:08
Speaker
of an image or or work in general is so much dependent on what is left out, not just what is included. um So you know, there's are reasons that like, you you know, for thinking, oh, it's a kind of tyranny.
Control and Freedom in VR Environments
00:23:21
Speaker
But on the other hand, like you said, you know, in vr you're really it's a total enclosure, you know, your your entire perceptual field is surrounded.
00:23:30
Speaker
think the you could even reverse the argument and claim that the tyranny of the frame is more honest than the tyranny of virtual reality.
00:23:44
Speaker
Because the tyranny of the frame is explicit. So the author deciding what he or she wants to frame
00:23:57
Speaker
is explicitly determining through his or her decision what you have to see and what you don't have to see but this is his or her decision and if you want to become his or her beholder you have to accept this but at the same time it's honest and transparent because it says this is my perspective this is my gut This is my cut in in my vision. I offer you this vision. You want to accept it?
00:24:32
Speaker
Don't you want to accept it? It's your business, but at least I am declaring it. What is the danger, on the contrary, and the opacity, if you want, of virtual reality?
00:24:47
Speaker
That it's more promise than an actual emancipation of the tyranny. Because that 360 camera on the head of Emilio during his Lazy Sunday was put on his head.
00:25:07
Speaker
He decided the spot. 360 cameras are not total vision of the total world. They are always located in some place.
00:25:19
Speaker
you see once you are in this virtual environment as if they were infinite spaces through which you can walk for hours, days, months, ages.
00:25:35
Speaker
But as we all know, you have to determine the play area of the virtual reality that you are using.
00:25:47
Speaker
Otherwise, you could crash your head against the walls or even fall out of the window if you are not careful. Meaning that the infinite space is promised, but is not an actual potential experience that you can have in virtual environments.
00:26:07
Speaker
And this idea ah is eventually based ah on an ideological discourse.
00:26:18
Speaker
The promise of emancipating you as a beholder, as the user from the tyranny of the frame, but actually imposing a tyranny which is not transparent, but which is always, as you said, there in a way.
00:26:32
Speaker
and the We could go on because there are other frames. For example, the temporal frame, you decide to put on the headset, you know that it will be a temporal experience because the headset at a certain moment, the the experience will finish or the headset is too heavy and it makes you sick and you have to take it off and so on and so forth.
00:26:53
Speaker
So there are many...
00:26:57
Speaker
options ah in framing, also from a material point of view in virtual reality. But the most important, I think, is the fact that this emancipation is more of a promise than an actual liberty which you can realize in this environment.
00:27:16
Speaker
This is why it's very important to to promote the literacy in the users for this kind of operations. Because ah the awareness, I speak of a critical approach to virtual reality, not because you have to criticize this in terms of negativity, in terms of mere and naive rejection of the technophobic people, the thing that this new media will destroy humanity.
00:27:51
Speaker
which in this course is always repeated every time a new medium is invented, from photography to cinema, television, internet, and now artificial intelligence.
00:28:04
Speaker
But I would say critical approach ah in Kantian terms, because Kant spoke of the critique as the possibility to identify potentialities and limits of a situation.
00:28:21
Speaker
of ah the sensible knowledge, for example. If we translate this approach onto the a media sphere, think in terms of what is possible and what is not possible, what is promised. I insist on on the promise because I think that my book has much to do with ah desire.
00:28:46
Speaker
And unframedness is offered as the satisfaction of a very ancient desire, but it does have its risks.
00:28:59
Speaker
This, ah man, so many questions, ah so many directions we can go at this point. um Really want to talk about this issue of a ah desire related to the image and, you know, whether...
00:29:12
Speaker
Because you talk about in your book, you know, potentially there seems to be this kind of quasi universal or ah culturally ah permeating desire to enter the image.
00:29:23
Speaker
and then But then there's also a kind of question of like, well, maybe what we want to or instead is to be at the threshold of an image, to be sort of in two worlds, both the imagistic um you know world as well as have our other foot in know so in the in the real world. And and so what we'll get into this kind of... um this desire that you, that you discuss in your book. Um, but really quick, I just wanted to think about the, um, the, dangers, uh, of, of the immersivity of immersivity of the, um, virtual reality. I was just thinking it's kind of a silly example, but I was just thinking about how, um, in the matrix, you know, the, the, the film, um,
00:30:10
Speaker
you know that's like That's an example where Neo, when he's in the Matrix, there is no frame. he can't um It's not as though it's like, oh, clearly here's where the simulation ends. you know Here's the frame in which the simulation is occurring. Here's the outside of the simulation. That's kind of how the deception works.
00:30:33
Speaker
works. he There's so many people deceived in the matrix thinking that this is the real thing. And part of that deception seems to depend on there being no frame. If there was a frame, of course, he could kind of step back and say, Oh, Oh, this is a simulation of reality. This is not base reality. This is not the ultimate thing. And so, um it seems like one thing the frame does, like you said, speaking of critical, it it provides a type a type of critical awareness where you can, um,
00:31:07
Speaker
yeah yeah Yeah, I totally agree with you because um looking back to my book, because after your invitation, I was in a way invited and also obliged to rethink in terms of what I had done. I think that there's desire and of course, ah desire is always coupled with fear.
00:31:38
Speaker
So once you think you can satisfy this ancestral desire, this archaic desire of entering the image, and this is a desire...
Myths, Empathy, and VR's Transformative Power
00:31:49
Speaker
Well, I don't like, it generally speaking, the adjective universal, because I've always had...
00:31:59
Speaker
cultural, logical inflection in my in my research, but it is really impressive to see how this idea, which nowadays seems to be satisfied in the best way, thanks to virtual immersive environments, has always been there. We spoke in terms of Paleolithic caves, but we can also evoke the very long history, the long durée of the illusionistic painting, for example, of the tremble, you know, images which deceive your eyes so to make you believe that these are objects in in your environment and not images representing objects in your environment. And then you have ah the camera epict of the Renaissance period, namely
00:32:55
Speaker
ah rooms ah depicted all around in 360 in which you you are immersed ah in in ah in an alternative world. Then you have panoramas in the 19th century.
00:33:08
Speaker
Then you have 3D movies. and those You can describe this ah wonderful, ah long story of of of of immersive environments. and And you can also switch from our Western culture which is, of course, for obvious reasons, so dominant in in my book, um because I am not a specialist of of non-Western cultures.
00:33:35
Speaker
But it is also interesting, to from from my biographical point of view, to to confess that what triggered this book was a Chinese legend, the legend of the Chinese painter who painted... a this this wall for the emperor his palace, and then decided that to say goodbye to the emperor and to enter his own picture and to and to disappear in this painting, in this wall painting.
00:34:09
Speaker
So I have reconstructed this this this desire and different strategies to satisfy this desire in in in different in different cultures.
00:34:21
Speaker
But it is also true that this desire never never goes separated from the fear. Because once you enter the image, you could what can you find beyond the threshold?
00:34:35
Speaker
And what can come out of the image? Because once you have transformed the barrier separating the image from reality into a crossable threshold, you can obviously expect that this crossable threshold can allow a two-way movement.
00:35:00
Speaker
You can go in, but something can possibly come out, can overflow. into your own world. And there are many fantasies about this.
00:35:12
Speaker
ah Images from the mirror, from the from the world ah beyond the mirror coming out, taking their own autonomous existence, haunting you in this world.
00:35:27
Speaker
And you are totally right. The frame is on the one side felt as a strong constraint, a strong limit, And on the other side, it is a tool which reassures us that it's just an image.
00:35:46
Speaker
When you blur this device, but things can happen.
00:35:56
Speaker
Not necessarily good things. Yeah, so it's like on the one hand we have... sort of um sort of mythical cases that suggest this type of desire to enter into the image. So yeah, you you brought up the Chinese legend where the painter, he finishes the landscape.
00:36:17
Speaker
And then he walks into the landscape and he disappears. And of course, especially when the landscape is beautiful, I'm sure we've all had that experience where it's like, I would love to enter into this landscape. I would love to exit where I am.
00:36:31
Speaker
um You also bring up like other mythical situations like narcissists, you know, where he falls in love with his reflection in the water, um which
00:36:47
Speaker
Yeah, that that one's that's a little bit tricky in terms of wanting to enter into the image because there's something um sort of tragic about that case. But at least like Alice, when we think of Alice passing through the mirror into another reality, again, this kind of seems to be like a crossing threshold going into um the fictional imagistic world.
00:37:11
Speaker
And then there also there's these technical... sort of technological cases that you bring up. So you talk about like, um you know, Eisenstein in his book, um in his he had an idea for Battleship Potemkin, movie, and he thought, you know, wouldn't it be great if the the bow of the ship, we we could kind of pierce the um no the screen, yeah, and have the bow, the nose of the ship kind of come through. And there, you know, the the the idea is like,
00:37:41
Speaker
you want to make the image more real. You don't want the image just to be an image, to just be um a representation. You're trying to cross that threshold um to make it as um real as possible. So um I guess these are just kind of cases that we can think about in terms of... Oh, yeah. You yeah you have evoked ah very complex ah cases ah which have fascinated me really through the the writing of of this book.
00:38:13
Speaker
um Alice actually was one of the figures ah most evoked by the first ah experiencers of virtual reality, because the first ah observers ah and users who wrote about virtual reality immediately connected ah their first experiences, these early experiences, with ah ah through the looking glass.
00:38:41
Speaker
Because at the same time, it's it's it's the same world, but not so much the same. Left and right are inverted. ah there is There are processes of magn magnification.
00:38:56
Speaker
ah Things are magnified or they are shrinked. So a totally different physics goes on in terms of what is beyond the mirror.
00:39:09
Speaker
the mirror But again, when Alice comes back to her ah real world, so to say, she wonders, was it just a dream?
00:39:20
Speaker
But who dreamt who? Was it the Red King dreaming of me? Was I dreaming the Red King? This brings us back to, again,
00:39:33
Speaker
Oriental days, the very famous dream of philosopher Chuan Tzu. Jorge Luis Borges was ah very fond of this of this story, of this anecdote, because Chuan Tzu dreamed it was a butterfly, and then when he woke up, he said that he didn't know, he couldn't tell whether he was actually Chuan Tzu, had dreamed was a butterfly oh or a butterfly dreaming that it was Chuan Tzu.
00:40:06
Speaker
and And this is the matrix, no? This is when you cannot tell where the simulation ends and when the real world starts and vice versa. And the matrix is also interesting. i am also thinking in terms of the Terminator saga.
00:40:24
Speaker
and because ah these are dystopic fantasies presenting us with the tale of machines taking over the power and inverting the relationship between the master and the servant, the Hegelian relationship, and using the humans are as slaves.
00:40:51
Speaker
But into in the book, I always i also ah try to enlighten some examples derived from the ancient myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who wanted to realize the statue of a woman and he asked the gods to give her life because he was not satisfied with actual and real women.
00:41:17
Speaker
and he wanted to have this perfect woman and the gods were were gu agreed and to to confer actual life to this statue.
00:41:33
Speaker
the very moment in which the statue becomes alive, the statue gets off the pedestal. And the pedestal is another way of saying the frame, because the pedestal is for the sculpture what the frame is for the painting. also So it's a device ah which is a signal that something there is special. It's an image. It's kind of separation again. It's a kind of of device of two flagging
00:42:05
Speaker
ah to our eyes that you have to orient your perception in a different in a different way. But if you reconstruct the the the long story of the Pygmalion descendants and in terms of um robots, in terms of automatons, in terms of androids, in terms of ah cyborgs, in terms of replicants.
00:42:35
Speaker
You end up with Blade Runner, you end up with ah the TV series Westworld, in which it is very interesting to see how This dystopic line, Terminator Matrix, namely the the machines
00:43:00
Speaker
which dominate the world and enslave the humans, and in that case, the androids reveal themselves more human than the humans.
00:43:14
Speaker
I mean, when Roy Batty in... on the roof of the Los Angeles building saves the life of Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford, who wanted to to to retire this replica, this Nexus 6.
00:43:35
Speaker
Because he loves life and he empathizes, actually empathizes with human who eventually reveals himself as an android. Because you know that in the different cut of the film, you have this this revelation that even the the Blade Runner is himself is himself a And also in Westworld, you have this this terrible idea of a theme park in which humans go as tourists and they can express all their violence and and they can kill, they can rape the these replicants.
00:44:19
Speaker
And then the replicants prepare a revolution in order to to take over and to rebel against the humans. But at the end of the day, who are the ones who are more human, who can show more empathy.
00:44:36
Speaker
Empathy, of course, is a key word when you have to speak in terms of ah virtual reality, because virtual reality has been presented as the ultimate empathy machine, which is also a very strong promise, which has to be addressed in a in a careful, critical way.
00:44:56
Speaker
Yeah, I was wondering if we can talk about the empathy bit a little bit. But before before I lose my thread, I was also going to ask about narcissists. We kind of... um ah hopped over that one. But i was thinking about people speaking of like human needs that people that kind of don't get their human needs met.
00:45:16
Speaker
And so it turns out that to them, virtual environments, maybe games or something like that, it ah it actually gives them a venue where they can be, um, where they feel that they have more of a, um,
00:45:32
Speaker
you know, competent ah mastery over their environment.
Avatars, Identity, and Real-World Implications
00:45:36
Speaker
Maybe maybe their their life is just tough. And so, but when they're in in their virtual environments, they they really do feel like they're they're effectual in in um in a good way. They can also maybe look the way they want to look. And so I was wondering if you can maybe just talk about how It might be the case that virtual environments are, in a sense, i don't want to say addictive, but maybe addictive to a certain subclass or a group of people who really don't have as much as their their basic needs met in the and the regular world. i kind of That's what I thought about when I when i ah thought of Narcissus, that he, you know, we can imagine he didn't have...
00:46:16
Speaker
someone as lovely as him to to be with so when he saw his reflection like oh that's that's what i would like or whatever so anyway was wondering you had interesting thoughts on yeah roberto yeah um i think that here um could address your your your suggestion in um in two ways uh the first is to spend some words about narcissus because and For me, it was a ah real discovery in terms of how paradigmatic this mythological figure is.
00:46:57
Speaker
I call him the proto-immersive subject, now because we all know the story of Narciso's had many lovers, ah but he wasn't really interested in girls or boys, ah and he fell in love with his own image, reflected on the water of the pond over which he it was bending.
00:47:24
Speaker
But as all mythological legends The legend of Narcissus has different variants.
00:47:34
Speaker
In one, for example, in Ovid's Metamorphosis, Narcissus discovers and that the image actually is not the image of a different person, of another, but it's his actual reflected image on the water. And so, desperately,
00:47:58
Speaker
He dies on the bank, and the out of the consumption of the com of the the composition of his body, these beautiful white and yellow flowers are generated, flowers that we still nowadays call narcissuses.
00:48:19
Speaker
But in other versions of the legend, for example, in one told by Plotinus, the Neoplatonic philosopher, And perhaps which is the the the most famous, at least the I thought it was the the most famous, he drowns.
00:48:39
Speaker
He decides to plunge, to dive into the water in so that he can embrace his beloved and he finds death by by water, which is also kind of prediction of the risks of immersion, if you want, in terms of technological immersivity.
00:49:01
Speaker
um There is also another version which introduces ah an an interesting twist in terms of gender and in terms of gender, not only gender equity, but also in terms of a kind of deconstruction of narcissism. Because when we think in terms of narcissism as a pathology or as a as a kind of a psychoanalytic orientation, we always think in terms of a person which is in love with himself or herself, fascinated, are concentrated, egocentric, and so on.
00:49:39
Speaker
And this other version told by Pausanias says that actually Narcissus was in love with his twin sister. She died, and every time he wanted to recall her in his mind, since he didn't have a photograph at the time, he went to the pond, he would bend over the pond and see reflected the image of his own face, which reminded him of the face of his twin sister, which is an interesting inflection, an interesting nuance of of this legend.
00:50:22
Speaker
But in Ovid, I think we find the moment in which and Narcissus becomes, from naive thinking that this image is another person, to aware.
00:50:39
Speaker
Namely, he becomes aware of the fact that it's just his own reflection. And how does this passage, this transformation happen?
00:50:51
Speaker
because it bursts in tears, and the tears dropping on the water, perturbate, modify the surface of the water and destroy the reflection of the image.
00:51:08
Speaker
And the water appears as the support of the medium. So before becoming aware, before the tears would drop on the surface, the medium was transparent.
00:51:26
Speaker
He was not aware of the medium and he saw just the beloved appearing in front of him. After the tears perturbated the surface,
00:51:39
Speaker
he became aware not only of the fact that he was himself reflected in the water, but also that the water was the support of the image. In other terms, you could say that this was the moment in which the opacity of the medium was revealed.
00:51:57
Speaker
And before it was on the contrary, the transparency. Which brings us to ah very important question. ah which is another key term that I have tried to investigate in my book, ah immediate-ness, which is, I think, the most paradoxical aspect ah of virtual environments. The fact that there's a huge investment in terms of mediation
00:52:30
Speaker
at any time nowadays with virtual digital techn technologies. But in other moments, panoramas, for example, stereoscopes, any epoch trying to satisfy the desire of entering the image has engaged in a huge and very sophisticated implementation of technical devices in order to produce this apparent immediateness, this non-being mediated of the image.
00:53:05
Speaker
So this is paradoxical because you want to obtain immediately through the employment of a huge amount of mediation.
00:53:17
Speaker
And the other aspect that you were mentioning in your in your remark, I think brings us to the crucial role played by the avatar.
00:53:30
Speaker
The avatar is... um digital proxy and digital graphic which represents me in a virtual environment in one of the many metaverses that we have.
00:53:45
Speaker
um But as we all know, avatars can represent a very wide spectrum in the negotiation of our subjectivity.
00:53:56
Speaker
We can choose to have an avatar which is photorealistic. I take a selfie of myself, I put it on the platform and that's it. Or we can change our gender, we can change our age, we can assume the avatar of an animal, we can assume the avatar of the even an inert thing or a geometric shape.
00:54:19
Speaker
So it's really a very, very, very wide spectrum. going, spanning from my self-representation as I deem it a realistic one to a totally deformed or ah covered representation of my own identity. I can take multiple personalities in different metaverses, not because I can choose different avatars.
00:54:48
Speaker
I don't know if you have ever come across in these last months or last year, the news about virtual rape.
00:55:06
Speaker
Some girls, masters of female avatars in some social immersive environments, have claimed they have been sexually harassed or raped.
00:55:21
Speaker
in the metaverse.
00:55:24
Speaker
And on many networks, of this news ah were was relaunched and commented with a very interesting, strong polarization. On the one side, you had people saying, laughing, saying,
00:55:41
Speaker
Why don't you go to the hospital and get yourself visited? You cannot demonstrate it was a rape. It's absurd. You can ah plug off, you can switch off the headset. Nothing happens. It's just a graphical image.
00:56:01
Speaker
On the other side, there were people taking this experience, this violent experience in this virtual environment very seriously. There's a colleague of mine and the Department of Philosophy, Pietro Conte, who has worked ah on on this and asking himself, is it rape ah or just rape, inverted commas?
00:56:26
Speaker
And there I think that you have a very crucial um experience ah to be investigated, which is also triggering an interesting line of research in legal studies.
00:56:41
Speaker
What happens if my avatar is attacked in a metaverse? It's just ah something which happens to a mere image.
00:56:55
Speaker
Or is it something which is happening to some extent to myself? So here you have a very interesting polarization between mere representation and a real presence.
00:57:12
Speaker
And studies in avatars and in how we embody in avatars Let's recall that avatar is a Sanskrit term referring to the visualization and incarnation of Vishnu and of Hindu gods when they decided to interact with ah with the human world.
00:57:39
Speaker
Even Jesus Christ was called an avatar of the father and because it's the visualization of the father. And this is a ah religious root of the term, which does not disappear in new technologies.
00:57:55
Speaker
It's still there. And the debate between just a mere graphical representation, it's just ah a rape ah in inverted commas, so to say, or it's a real rape because I am embodied. And what you do against my avatar, you do to to me directly. Just to quote the the Gospel of Matthew, you what you do to my brothers, you do to me.
00:58:22
Speaker
These brothers are my avatars in the metaverse. And this is the debate of the real presence of the Eucharist against the the idea of the sacred icon, which is not in itself divine,
00:58:40
Speaker
But it's just a representation of the divine. Otherwise, we would have as many gods as many painted panels of wood there are in the world.
00:58:53
Speaker
So we would multiply the gods. So this is very, very interesting because it goes back to a very ancient debate within our cultural tradition.
00:59:03
Speaker
Representation on the one side, real presence on the other side. And at the same time, sir fuels a legal and ethical debate on what happens
00:59:17
Speaker
with our avatars and ourselves when we are engaged in these virtual environments.
00:59:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the religious context because it's almost after reading your book at certain points, I started having iconoclastic impulses surge within me because there are different worries you know you can have with respect to to virtual reality. you know The kind of obvious worry right is that um in virtue of those three features that you identify, you know immersion, presence,
00:59:54
Speaker
um that interactivity the sensory motor sensory motor engagement in virtue of those features you know it's so realistic you know one basic worry is that people just start confusing it for the real world right um but you know i think deeper worries more subtle things are like first starting to want you know starting starting to neglect reality because maybe virtual reality is apparently where certain needs at least spiritual needs are satisfied because i guess you can't get your need for hunger satisfied in a virtual world but maybe a need for recognition or a need to feel efficacious it's interesting how maybe those needs are somehow
01:00:41
Speaker
being met in the virtual context. But the worry that I kind of was thinking about with respect to virtual reality is that you can imagine someone who knows it's a fiction, right? They they realize this is you know as realistic as it seems.
01:00:55
Speaker
It's not real. I get it. I get the ontological distinction. We're in an image context. But because it feels so real, they treat what happens in it as sort of evidence about yeah genuine reality. So for example, the kind of case I was thinking of was like, let's say you're in a VR story where um women are represented in a sort of misogynistic way. Okay. Or maybe it's another thing, like maybe religious people are represented very, as as being, you know, idiotic and stupid.
01:01:33
Speaker
because it's so real, you might subconsciously treat it as evidence of, yes, that's what religious people really are like because of how realistic it was.
01:01:46
Speaker
Or yes, that's that's really what women are like because again, it's just so real. And and I think about this with with movies a lot. you know It's like, um yeah, maybe the person knows that it's a movie, that it's not real, but they treat what happens in the movie as if it was kind of evidence um for how reality itself is. you know So I don't know what you think of that type of worry. but no No, thank you, Samuel. it's It's a very, very complex domain, the one that you have evolved, because it has to do with the possibility of
01:02:28
Speaker
telling reality from fiction. This is a very, as you know, a very is the established topic in the aesthetic discourse, because why should we cry for Anna Karenina, knowing that it's just a fictional character?
01:02:51
Speaker
Are these fictional emotions or emotions triggered by a fictional situation in novels rather than in films real or as if emotions? are But I actually am crying in front of a movie so ah when when watching a movie or a sad story.
01:03:12
Speaker
So knowing it's it's a fiction, There is a very simple experience ah in virtual reality.
01:03:24
Speaker
You have many, many examples on YouTube. It's called the Riches Plank. So the Riches Plank means that you have a real wooden plank and and you put it on the floor in front of you and then you put on the headset.
01:03:43
Speaker
And you find yourself in the cabin of a lift of an elevator and you have the button. You but you push one of the buttons and the elevator bring brings us brings you on the top of a skyscraper.
01:03:59
Speaker
And then the door opens and you find the plank. You see the plank. But the plank now is out of a window and under your ah plank, you have the abyss.
01:04:16
Speaker
You see down there the traffic, you hear the traffic and over a the plank, over the skyscraper, you you see the helicopters. It's a metropolitan scenario, say among the skyscrapers in New York.
01:04:33
Speaker
and you hear the birds and you hear the engines of the helicopters and you hear the engines of the cars below and they are very small cars because you are really high and then you are asked to step on the plank and to walk and you perfectly know that the actual plank that you feel under your feet has does not represent any risk at all for your safety because it's on the floor, it's two centimeters, and it's just a very simple walk that you have to do. It's two meters, one meter and a half, but many people are not able to take as one step ahead of themselves.
01:05:24
Speaker
You start having vertigo, you start having nausea, your palms start sweating, your heartbeat is modified, you feel in danger.
01:05:37
Speaker
So this is what in technical terms is called ah cognitive impenetrability of perception, meaning that you know, but your knowing and being aware of the fact that you're risking your life is not able to penetrate what you see and what you hear.
01:05:55
Speaker
Because your audiovisual system tells you that you are on the top of a skyscraper. And the most sadistic end of this little experience, which is very, very telling, which is very, very eloquent of what happens in virtual reality environments, is that the ones that are able to reach the end of the plank are asked to jump.
01:06:25
Speaker
to jump and use can you see the precipice, you know, you see that you are precipitating and you are crashing on um on the on the on on on the road, on the trip.
01:06:40
Speaker
So this, I think, in its very simple nature, reveals many things in terms of our experience in virtual environments.
01:06:52
Speaker
I think it's not enough to evoke the very famous notion put forward by Samuel Coleridge, the suspension of disbelief.
01:07:05
Speaker
Because you you you you think in terms of the necessity when you have this kind of aesthetic experiences, that then you know they are fictional, but you suspend your disbelief and you decide that you want to believe in them.
01:07:20
Speaker
But it's not something that you decide. Because if I decide that I don't want to believe that I am on the top of a skyscraper, my body does not care.
01:07:32
Speaker
Does not care and reacts as if. And again, as if we should take it in very serious terms. Because what does it mean that my body physiologically reacts as if I were in danger? I mean, sweating,
01:07:52
Speaker
Heartbeat, nausea, vertigo, and so on. Fear, physical fear of risking my life. So,
01:08:05
Speaker
it's interesting. It's interesting because yeah it's not something that you can easily solve in terms of... a rationalistic or intellectualistic approach saying, yeah you know, it's fictional, but in a way you you put this fictional into brackets ah and you decide for a provisional period of time that you want to play with it.
01:08:31
Speaker
I know, Roberto, you were you were going to say something, but just real quick. Yeah, it's like, when we see cases like you just gave where it's the body reacting as if the situation is real and it's interesting to think about our beliefs our mind updating as if it was real in other words like an epistemic type of influence going on into our mind where Yeah, okay. i i know I know this is ah that Karen or that Susie in this movie are not real people, but i what I see them do make causes my beliefs to maybe update in a way my representation of women in the real world to update in a way that maybe um' it's not under my control kind of thing. yeah
01:09:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's such ah it's such a fascinating phenomenon to think about the effects of these. environments. And just to to add on to that real quick, there is, um, there's obviously the, the, the negative, so there's a negative version of this where you become more misogynistic. There's also a positive version in which we mentioned. And I do know that there is a, uh, a virtual reality, a simulation of world war one trench warfare in some museum in the Midwest. that I don't know exactly where it is, but apparently grown uh,
01:10:02
Speaker
come out of there crying and uh and even even i mean veterans of course maybe ptsd but just other people as well and i think there might be like a greater aversion to you know voting for a war hawk president or something like that afterward right so that might be like a positive uh more of a reticence to to um you know be pro-war or yeah yeah it's true that um It would be misleading to think in turn of avatars only in terms of graphic digital proxies or or representatives allowing us to go there, to be there, to enter this virtual world.
01:10:52
Speaker
Because there is, um again, a two-way movement. Because the things that I experience through my avatar in the virtual world reverberate onto my personal actual so-called real world.
01:11:12
Speaker
So this is again a two-way movement, which is a transformative power of the avatar. There are experiments ah in terms of Reduction of biases that i mention in my book.
01:11:28
Speaker
again Misogynist people, as you mentioned, gender bias. So you invite these men to assume a female avatar.
01:11:47
Speaker
And after assuming this female avatar, they are exposed in these virtual environments to domestic violence, for example, or sexual harassment. And when they come back, of course, it's a question of how long does this effect endure in time.
01:12:10
Speaker
But in any case, ah it it seems at least that these first impressions are encouraging, also in terms of racial biases. now Racial persons affected by racial prejudices are invited to take and assume an avatar of skin color different of their own.
01:12:32
Speaker
And again, in the virtual environment, they are exposed to acts of discrimination in terms of racial inequality or racial offense.
01:12:44
Speaker
And then when day they come back, they... confess they feel in a way transformed or at least the more aware of their own prejudices because they have experienced in a way potential transformative moment in the virtual environments.
01:13:07
Speaker
And this is, I think, an important point ah to insist on because it reveals the fact that avatars are kinds and occasions and opportunities of an incarnation of an embodiment and what happens to them happens to you in a way well Andrea I've seen we've gone over time here but maybe to kind of ah wrap this up um you can tell us because this book came out about five years ago something that right so what are you working on now
01:13:47
Speaker
I am still working on so-called new digital technologies, also if even if this term is very risky, because when you you speak of new technologies, they have already become old. in and In the very moment you speak of them as new.
01:14:06
Speaker
um But now the perspective is no longer a mythology. the as it was in this ah threshold book, namely Narcissus, Pygmalion, and so on, but more on theology.
01:14:24
Speaker
Because um this is something which ah has already surfaced during our conversation, i am more and more convinced of the fact that there is a resurgence of religious and supernatural elements in how new technologies promise us to satisfy our desires and to protect us from our fears.
01:14:52
Speaker
Take, for example, teleportation. You put on your headset, you are on your gaming chair, but at the same time you are in the middle of the desert ah between Mexico
Theological Implications of Digital Technologies
01:15:05
Speaker
and the US. s Or you are flying in over Notre Dame.
01:15:11
Speaker
in Paris. This is a simultaneous, impossible, of course, presence in two different places at the same time. This is ah miraculous power which has been recognized over the centuries in the wise sages, wise men like Pythagoras or saints like Francis of Assisi, who was at the same time in Tuscany and in France helping Saint Anthony to give her his sermons.
01:15:47
Speaker
This is by location of the saints. And in a secularized way, you find it in teleportation, in virtual reality. Another example is holograms.
01:16:02
Speaker
Holograms are used nowadays to resurrect Tupac Shakur or Michael Jackson. And they put the holograms on the stage and they interact with the actual living singers and rappers and pop stars.
01:16:27
Speaker
And this kind of digital resurrection is another example of how nowadays digital technologies work on desires and fears that have been for centuries negotiated and managed by the religions.
01:16:47
Speaker
Final example that I can give you is a very famous episode from the TV series Black Mirror, which is always a very important source of inspiration for people who want to know what will happen in a future which is just behind the corner, around the corner, not a science fiction speaking of what will happen in 2,000 years.
01:17:16
Speaker
And there is an episode, San Huni Perum, in which two old ladies seek ill... about to die decide to upload their mind on a machine and to live in a simulated alternative world ah which is a world in which you can have parties and cocktails and go to the beach every time you want you to tap to work and you will be happy ever after so this mind uploading
01:17:54
Speaker
is something which is science fiction. But as we very well know, science fiction is also about what will become science and technology in a few years, perhaps.
01:18:10
Speaker
And there are experiments about this idea of transferring our memories, transferring our minds into... um
01:18:24
Speaker
into a digital archive, in into into a machine. Because in imaginary media, fantasized media, as are as important as the actual media.
01:18:39
Speaker
And we should keep our eyes open also on the religious promises which are fueled and offered by by this new technology. and And this is what I'm working on and i hope will become soon another volume as a spin-off of the threshold of the image.
01:19:04
Speaker
Well, we're looking forward to it. So we've been in this conversation with Andrea Pinotti, and we've been chatting about his book, At the Threshold of the Image, From Narcissist to Virtual Reality.
01:19:16
Speaker
And soon another volume to that will be added, which is great news. Andrea, thanks for the insights. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for for this conversation and this talk.
01:19:28
Speaker
Enjoyed it very much.