Week 6 Readings: de Souza e Silva, Poster, Lévy, Deleuze, Borges (and Kon)
?Prepare to enter the realm of fantasy and imagination - where reality and dreams collide in a kaleidoscopic mindscape of sheer visual genius.?
As I went through this week?s readings, they continually reminded me of Paprika (2006) and its continual blur of the virtual and actual. The film is by Japanese director Satoshi Kon and you might know his 2003 Tokyo Godfathers. Paprika?s tag line is ?This is your brain on animé? and a brief look at photos from the film indicates some of the bizarre action weaved through its narrative. I hope to highlight some key points from the readings in the context of Paprika?s virtual reality storyline.
Turkle (1995) defines virtual reality as ?metaphorical spaces that arise only through interaction with the computer, which people navigate by using special hardware? (quoted in de Souza e Silva, 2004, p. 50). The hardware present in Paprika is the DC mini, a small device implanted into a person?s skull. The DC mini allows another person to enter the user?s dreams and it?s not too far off some of the things we discussed last week (David?s Red Tacton for body-to-body file sharing, Matt?s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center virtual reality theatre and Dan?s Army thought helmet). The film?s main character, Dr. Chiba Atsuko, is a psychotherapist who uses the DC mini to enter her patients? subconscious. In essence, Dr. Atsuko interacts with her patients in their dreamspace in order to help them live better in their physical space. De Souza e Silva explains the development of computer simulation and virtual reality has created imaginary realities, spaces that ?not only considered what was inside our minds but also virtual spaces that could be constructed by means of technology and that could be shared with other people? (p. 58). Dr. Atsuko and her patients are able to share the dream experience through the DC mini, something that is inconceivable in actual space.
Richard Catlett Wilkerson notes the similarities between dreamspace and cyberspace, as ?Neither exists in any particular space, but in virtual space mediated by special protocols, rules that allow for the unfolding of experiential immersion.? De Souza e Silva asserts the virtual world presented in the Matrix (1999) is ?similar to a dream space, built for the human mind. This means that the matrix is a simulacrum, with no reference or origin in reality. The matrix creates another reality, which we believe is the real? (p. 64). In Paprika and other films that deal with dreamspace, like Richard Linklater?s Waking Life (2001), the viewers (and the film?s characters) have difficulty distinguishing between dreamspace and physical space. Waking Life?s main character is even counseled by those he meets on how to determine if he is awake or dreaming.
Paprika?s DC mini follows Poster?s (2001) assertion that virtual reality technology ?provide prostheses for the real in order to better control it? (p. 129) and Michael Heim?s affirmation that ?with its virtual environments and simulated worlds, cyberspace is a metaphysical laboratory, a tool for examining our very sense of reality (quoted in Poster, p. 130). Applying this logic to Paprika?s dreamspace, Dr. Atsuko assumes the dream persona (avatar?) of Paprika to interact with her patient, a police detective with extreme anxiety resulting from an unsolved murder case. As a synopsis of the film by Sony Pictures Classics better explains, Paprika ?can enter into people?s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious to help uncover the source of their anxiety or neurosis.? Virtual reality is not disembodied, Poster explains, since the messages exchanged are created from our bodies (p. 32). While she is Paprika in dreamspace, her actions still ultimately belong to the physical Dr. Atsuko.
Poster makes an interesting point to those who believe virtual reality is disembodied. ?As sound and images are added to the textual communities on the Internet, skeptics may be forced to reconsider the nature of these exchanges. Those who dismiss them today as ?disembodied? need to ask themselves if full video and audio will make a difference and, if so, why?? (pp. 131-132). Paprika exists in full three-dimensional color and sound, a more youthful and energetic version of her physical form (Dr. Atsuko). Linking dreamspace to the subconscious (and hence the mental portion of the physical body), when the DC mini prototype is stolen, Dr. Atsuko and her colleagues are concerned that ?in the wrong hands the potential misuse of the devise could be devastating, allowing the user to completely annihilate the dreamer?s personality while they are asleep? (from the synopsis). When Dr. Atsuko?s boss, Chief Torataro Shima, becomes trapped in a dreamspace and his physical self tries to commit suicide, Dr. Atsuko must enter the dreamspace as Paprika to rescue her boss. If there was no correlation between the physical body and virtual dream persona, meaning the virtual reality created by the DC mini was truly disembodied, Chief Shima would not have been harmed.
According to Lévy (1988), ?Common sense interprets the virtual as something intangible, the complement of the real, or tangible. This approach contains a significant germ of truth, however, for the virtual is quite often literally ?not there?? (p. 27). Of course, something does not need to exist in tangible form in order to exist, such as the notion of virtual property discussed in my wiki article. Lévy hits the nail on the head when he proclaims, ?Yet the virtual is not imaginary. It produces effects. Though we don't know where, telephone conversations do take ?place? ?. Though we don't know when, we communicate effectively by means of answering machines? (p. 30). When Dr. Atsuko?s patient, Detective Kogawa Toshimi, enters dreamspace to save Paprika, he is forced to confront the source of his anxieties and overcome them. In dreamspace, he is able to succeed where he failed in the physical world.
?Leibniz suggests that two contradictory facts are often both possible, but questions whether they can exist simultaneously,? writes de Souza e Silva (p. 71). In dreamspace, the answer is apparently affirmative. At one point in the film, Dr. Atsuko and Paprika co-exist in the dreamspace: ?Atsuko tells Paprika that she is only a part of her and cannot exist separately and must listen to her but Paprika won?t listen. She, in turn, asks if Atsuko has ever considered that she is part of Paprika, not the other way around? (from the synopsis).