On the disembodied body, or in what sense is virtual reality real?

Pastangos suteikti vaizduotei kūną, pabėgti į kitą, kitokią, geresnę, kontroliuojamą realybę per amžius skatino technologijų raidą bei nuolatinę pažangą. Šiandien virtualios realybės įranga jau sudaro sąlygas juslinę patirtį įtraukti į vis virtualesnes tikrovės formas. Supažindindami su šia dar gana nauja sritimi, siūlome virtualios realybės kilmės ir svarbiausių bruožų aptarimą bei svarstymus, kas kūniškumo prasme yra virtuali realybė ir kokios dar tikrovės formos egzistuoja šiandien. For long centuries the efforts to embody the imagination and to escape to a different and controllable reality have promoted technological development and progress. Today the virtual reality equipment grants the possibilities to include corporeal experiences into increasingly virtual forms of reality. The paper employs the semiotic approach in order to reflect on the descent of virtual reality, its links to imagination, mimetic art and its techniques. The semiotic concept of the effect of reality is used in an attempt to understand how a disembodied reality might be treated as a real one. These reflections upon the efforts to grant corporeality to imagination, construct a controllable reality and find the ways of operating within it, as well as the relations of different forms of reality to corporeality are summarised in the semiotic square of the forms of reality. Since submersion and interaction are intrinsic to all forms of reality, each type is described in terms of substance, corporeal perception and the kind of space in which the body acts. The corporeal reality is the reality of presence, the experience taking place here and now and related with the dimension of the world perceived by the senses. Both the subject and the space are physical, and any activity is possible to the extent the limits and potential of a body permit. This kind of reality is self-contained, unmodelled and uncontrollable; imagination is the incorporeal dimension of this reality that can be exteriorised by material artistic means. This corporeal reality is the source, foundation and starting point for all the other forms of reality. [...]