The Text

Spectres of Cyberspace by Geoffrey Batchen

Batchen’s breezy essay attempts to align the emergence and our understanding of Virtual Reality as a spectre, that is a ghost, which in turn reflects the attempts of virtual reality to ascend to more than a simulation of the discourse of power relations. He begins by giving a compact history of Virtual Reality that defines our understanding of Virtual Reality as being a descendent of the stereoscope. Additionally, he maps the genealogy through Allucueure Rosanne Stones origin myths, Charles Wheatstone and  David Brewster’s Kaleidoscopes. Importantly, and perhaps the crux of the essay is his understanding of the social implications of Virtual reality as defined by William Gibson’s Neuromancer. This idea of the Virtual Reality as being a social construct rather than merely a technological construct is set up against Foucault’s interpretation of the Panopticon. However, Batchen leaves much languishing in his interpretation and spends too much time on the historical precedents rather than tracing his critique of the social relations through the historical manifestations of Virtual Reality. Ultimately, Batchen informs the viewer that like Lacan’s mirror stage, Virtual Reality enables the viewer to see the other in reflection and thus see the self.

Batchen Geoffrey, “Spectres of Cyberspace”, The Visual Culture Reader 2nd edition, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff. New York: Routeledge, 2007. 237-242.

      The Technology

Stereoscope image of Manhattten 1909

David Brewster's Kaleidoscope

External Sites of Interest

Geoffrey Batchen faculty page at CUNY

Charles Wheatstone

Neuromancer by William Gibson

The Text

Electronic Media: The Rebirth of Perspective and the Fragmentation of Illusionby Kim H. Veltman

Veltman’s main thesis of Electronic Media: The Rebirth of Perspective and the Fragmentation of Illusion anchors on the idea that contrary to some theorists such as Arnason, and Novotny, the use and interest in perspective is far from dead and is in fact enjoying a renaissance of research and production. For Veltman this is due to the developments of electronic media that reposition point of view and the rise of attention to space of built environments. In particular Veltman correlates the use of the Renaissance perspectival window, the camera obscura with the contemporary technological instruments such as CAD (computer aided design). The deployment of perspective for Veltman, does shift significantly in the later half of the 20th century to incorporate spherical perspective, and importantly an fragmented illusion of spaces that incorporates… “theoretical, assumed, possible, transposed and deliberate…” conceptions of that space. In a sense, Veltman positions the rise of interest and production of perspective not only as a response the advances in technology, but also as a response to the change in spatial understanding from the Renaissance linear perspective to current focus of a fragmentation of illusion

Veltman, Kim H. “ Electronic Media: The Rebirth of Perspective and the Fragmentation of Illusion.” Electronic Culture; Technology and Visual Representation. Ed. Timothy Druckery. New York: Aperture Foundation Books. 1996, pp. 209 – 227

External Sites of Interest

Kim Veltman at SUMS

Computers amd Renaissance Perspective Window by K. Veltman

One point perspective