1. In the process of living we find a thing (be it natural or cultural), which stands in the way of our life project. (This is what is meant by the word object.)
2. We try to remove the thing, put it out of our way and thus proceed in our life project. (This is what is meant by the word praxis.)
3. The thing passively resists our attempt to remove it. (This is what is called inertia, or perfidy of matter.)
4. Our attempt to remove the thing changes the thing, and its resistance to our attempt changes us and our life project. (This is what is meant when we say that we are determined by the things that surround us.)

Therefore such an analysis of our cultural surroundings will reveal that we are just as much determined by cultural objects as we are by the things of nature. In fact, since most of the things that surround us are of the type cultural object, we are at present much more determined by cultural objects than we are by the things of nature. Now, this poses a serious problem: Culture is the result of manipulation of natural things, which means that it is the result of attempts to remove those things, to clear our way, to free ourselves from their determination. But analysis shows that those attempts must fail, because the natural things thus manipulated continue to be objects, that is, factors of determination. This has two serious and important consequences:

The first one concerns the project of culture. The whole attempt to change nature into culture, the entire commitment to cultural activity as a liberation from natural determination is thus put into question.

The second consequence is the refusal to accept this dilemma, or to accommodate to the circumstances (to what is standing around us). The revolt against the things whose hard contours prove our limitations leads to attempts to create a world where everything is at our disposal. A world, where things only have the characteristics of things insofar as they do not stand in our way. Where they are freed of their thingness and of their inertia, except if we want them to be inert, hard, and heavy. What we perceive as a thing in such a virtual world is really not an object anymore, but rather a project: programmed by ourselves and then projected upon the retina. VR is the dream of a world without objects, without factors of determination. A world completely at our will.

In the following section entitled VR, or: Into the W'orld Model, I will try to illuminate a few aspects of VR that seem especially interesting to me.

VR, or: Into the World Model

VR is a fashionable term. At present, VR is the technology that seems to fascinate the leading innovators in the music and art scene most. That shows how challenging the creative use of the means of media has become. This use is driven by an aesthetic fascination. VR changes the rules of the process of communication with the computer, because the role of the user is shifting from that of a distanced observer towards that of an experiencing participant.

The concept of VR is radically simple. If you stimulate the audiovisual senses exclusively by means of synthetic information of a world model calculated by the computer, the victim of this manipulation is treated to the illusion of being an inhabitant of the calculated artificial world. Myron Krueger, one of the fathers of VR, believes that the artificial reality could develop into a daily residence and work space that will only be left for a trip into reality: "Physical reality will be like the backwoods - a nice place to visit, but you cannot get anything done there".

Of course, this provokes protest. Flusser, known to be anything but hostile to technology, interpreted a prophecy from the Old Testament in a series of essays, "Kleine Anthropologie der Dinge" ("Short Anthropology of Things"), and related it to the presumption of VR: "How about those who design so-called virtual spaces in order to turn them into alternative worlds? >The Lord will shatter the peoples of computer folks. He will shatter those creators of pots together with their hollow wares.< - This may not sound very biblical, but it does sound creepy, and it should accompany all the symposiums on things like >digital semblance<, >cyberspace<, or >synthetic simulation and holography<". A god of retribution may or may not shatter California. However, Flusser is certainly right about one thing - it is dangerous to create a technology that can make our reality partly superfluous, even if it cannot destroy it.

In VR, you can take the shape of any body. You can also feel it. By stimulating nerves at two different points you can deceive the brain to believe in the stimulation of a third nerve-end that can lie outside the real body.

At present, a new instrument for the visualization of data is being developed. A miniature laser built into a spectacle-frame writes its data directly onto the optic nerve of the eye background. This principle is comparable to that of television, where an electron beam paints its signs onto the phosphoric layer of the television screen. Only here the after-image effect of the optic nerves is taken advantage of. The idea is to create an overlay of real images and additional artificial information. This will change perception fundamentally.

Another example: Participants equipped with VR terminals can share an imaginary conference room at an intercontinental tele-conference. This has already been tried out over standard telephone lines. In each connected computer there is a constant exchange of data on current changes. Thus they all have identical models of the VR shared. This model is experienced by each user from their individual perspective. As the geometrical representation of all participants is also a part of this model world, each observer knows what his or her partners are just doing in the shared reality.

This is a very crucial quality of VR. We have been tought by philosophers and scientists that even in RR, we can never know what is true and what is not. For practical reasons, we tend to accept a perception as true, if it is shared by other people and confirmed by them. Intersubjectivity is the decisive criterion for us whenever we are in doubt whether something is true or not. Now, the experiences in VR can be shared with other people with whom we interact in the VR just like in RR. VR provides us with true, authentic (although unreal) intersubjective experiences. They are authentic, because they really are intersubjective, and the fact that they happen in VR does not make them less real.

The interaction in VR is as true as the interaction in RR. Intersubjectivity of experience is no longer a reliable criterion for what is real and what is not.

Two significant attempts have been made to develop a VR technology that can do without the wearable technology, that is data suits, data gloves, goggles. One is Krueger's "Videoplace". Here, the computer analyzes the silhouette of a person and reacts to it. It is able to calculate the simulation of a three-dimensional space from the movements of the silhouette. Of course, this is only possible, if the computer can differentiate between different parts of the body, even if they only appear as elements of a silhouette. We identify with our representation if it acts synchronously with us (like our image in the mirror).

The other approach is called the "Mandala system". It uses three visual layers composed onto each other. In the foreground, the electronically cut-out video recording of the user moves. The background shows projections of images. In between there is a layer with symbo]s. Just like you use your mouse to click on an icon on your computer screen, the user touches these symbols. That means, his or her silhouette overlaps with them and thus directs the computer. There are several possiblities of how to play with this technology. You can make all three layers visible to the actor and the audience. Or, you can show the visual background only to the audience, or, display the icons only to the actor, who watches his performance on a monitor screen.

In the next section, I would like to focus on the physiological conditions of VR. Our brain constructs reality from almost no outside information. Of course, this situation lends itself to devices of illusion like VR.

VR: Suppositions and Applications

Aristotle defined our senses as "windows to the world". However, today we know that we are only able to perceive less than 1% of the electromagnetic frequences out there. This means that we ignore 99%, and call the remaining 1% "reality".

Perception is a construction. The only thing we can say about what we perceive is that the world is not against it. Constructivists call this unpretentiousness the criterion of viability. We call our model of reality true, if it works, if it fits. The natural scientists of the 20th century have shocked us with their insight that physical reality is nothing but what a hand on a scale is showing. Now, the new media call our attention to the mediality of the senses themselves. The simultaneous boom of radical constructivism and VR is no coincidence.

The limitations of our senses go even further. We hardly notice slow movement or events with a short life span. We cannot perceive things very small or very big. We are basically ignorant. Our reality is nothing but a model. And if we are not aware of these limitations, we are truly held captive by our senses. The order of magnitude our senses are made for determins what we perceive as reality. This can be illustrated by the fact that we have no sense to tell us that the earth we live on is spinning around. If we were born inside a constantly fast-moving train with darkened windows, we would take this state of darkness and vibrations as reaIity. And of course, we would be right. - How would we feel, if the train suddenly slowed down? If it stopped'? If the windows were opened and the sun shone in? Would we not doubt the reality of this experience? Would we not think of the landscape outside the window as of a VR'?

But of course, we need something to cling to. We need to believe in the reality we construe. If VR succeeds in producing images and sounds of very high fidelity, we will be able to take them for real. We will be able - if we want it. I do not believe that VR will work against our will. Like hypnosis, or like every technique of illusion, like theater, literature, or film, VR only works if we venture on the conditions offered by the media, and if we are willing to play the game and use our imagination. Can you be hypnotized against your will? It seems to me that the real question lies in the intermediate area where you feel like your will is still your own but you may be influenced or seduced by very powerful representations already. So, the question is really: Will you notice the point where your will is not really your own free will anymore'?

Theater does not create an illusion, if you do not want it to. Did you ever got really sucked into the plot in a way that would make you forget you were really sitting in a theater'? It does not seem likely that VR will make us forget that we are in a virtual space and not in the RR, if we do not want to make that transition. Otherwise we may forget about the technology we are using, but we will rememher where we are, and how we got there, - provided we will be interested in this kind of self-reflexive thought while we are acting in a VR.

Based on Klaus Lazarowicz's theory about the theater as a triadic collusion, I would suggest a term like contrat virtuel to describe the agreement necessary between the user, the software, and the hardware in order to create the illusion of a VR. Contrat virtuel means an (of course silent and unwritten) agreement between all parties involved, that the creation of a VR is the aim of their cooperation. The virtual world can only be construed in the mind of the user, no matter how perfect the technology of VR will become at imitating RR. Contrat virtuel is a term I propose in order to give a name to the (conscious or unconscious) intention of a person to enter a virtual world, and the corresponding intention of the technology and codes (or, rather, of the creators and programmers of the hard- and software) used to support this intention.

VR, however, can be equally - or even more - convincing than RR. The point where our senses, our eyes and ears become the weakest link in the chain of perception, is the point, where VR subjectively hecomes equal to RR. In fact, VR can contain more information than RR, because it can blend in additional data either artificially created or transferred from areas of the spectrum that we normally cannot perceive, and add them to our perception.

Jan Fikacek in Prague is currently working on a VR program to visualize the validity and effects, and also the aesthetics, of Albert Einstein's relativity theory. He does this by lowering the speed of light in that particular VR down to 40 km/h. Now, if light moves at the speed of 40 km/h, we can actually see it move. Changing this single parameter will lead to a completely different perception, to the perception of a world that is real as well as virtual at the same time. We will thus be able to experience a world whose order of magnitude is usually far above what we can perceive with our senses. We will experience the validity of Einstein's laws. Of course, the space time continuum we will virtually live in will seem to us strange and foreign, distorted and perhaps even absurd. By adapting physical laws to human orders of magnitude, we may even be able to understand four-dimensional space - by acting in its crooked and bent universe and interacting with it in a natural way.

The possible applications of VR are manifold: The Israeli army developed a robot that performs surgery on the battlefield. The real surgeon sits in a hospital somewhere far away. His data helmet supplies him or her with a three-dimensional, live image of the patient's body, while the slightest movement of the surgeon's fingers in the data glove are transferred into movements of the artificial hand of the robot. Thus, the surgeon is safe. He or she does not have to travel to the battlefield but instead can perform many more operations in that time. The robot is always operated by the best specialist there is for each respective kind of surgery. Also, the robot's hand does not tremble. His software corrects and levels out trembling. And perhaps the biggest advantage: The scales of the transmission can be changed, so that a very delicate surgery in a microscopic order of magnitude can be carried out very conveniently. In order to make a cut of 1/10 mm, the surgeon then can move his hand, say 10 cm. And he does not have to worry anymore about a few millimeters more or less. These advantages are so obvious that sooner or later difficult operations may be performed with the help of VR, even if the surgeon is present.

It is a very uplifting feeling to see tons of weight being lifted several meters in precise correspondence to a little, effortless movement of your hand. Wherever there is work to do under inhuman conditions, VR can be a useful tool. Whenever the environment is too hot, too cold, too radio-active. Whenever the pressure is too high or there is not enough oxygen. Whenever there is a dangerous job to do. Whenever we want to simulate the effects of something we consider doing. Whenever we design something. Whenever we have to act in inhuman orders of magnitude, be it microscopic or astronomic. VR has been used in the natural sciences and in medicine for some years already.

The technology of VR allows architects to walk through their buildings when they are still in the phase of planning. It lends a virtual body to the physically disabled - at least for some time.

And, of course, VR is used by the military. There is a famous scene from the Gulf War. A bomber pilot was giving an interview right after he had landed. As he was still wearing his helmet, the cannons of his plane were still following every movement of his eyes. The technology used was not strictly VR. However, the technology that helped develop VR also made it possible for this pilot to destroy something basically by looking at it.

The last section of my paper points back at its first one. I will try to underscore the dual characteristics of VR. It has an inherent potential both progressive and regressive at the same time.

The Gates of Eden

Philosophy begins when a human being hits something hard, stumbles over a stone for instance, and notices that there is a world out there. We realize there is an object, something objecting to us. We are subjected to this stone in our pathway and we would like to get it out of our way.

In paradise, there was no such thing. Were there things at all? We did not stumble in paradise. So much is for sure. There is no subject-object-split in paradise. Paradise is a soft world. Down here, however, we are always between a rock and a hard place. That hurts. No wonder we find a regressive or transcendent longing in almost every culture - a longing to go back to paradise, or to move on further towards a transcendent heaven.

"The kingdom of experience" is a tough, inhospitable, and inhumane place: Auschwitz, the Gulag, Hiroshima, wars and famines everywhere. This is the collective experience of mankind in the hard world that we call real. The objects give us a bloody nose, and in the end we die. We would rather retreat into a soft world without those objects that always hurt and hinder us. Back into paradise, back to Eden: "I had to find the passage back to the place I was before" (The Eagles). Of course, we only know all too well that the passage back will be denied to us forever (and of course, a psychoanalyst would refer the passage back to the birth canal). Heinrich von Kleist made that sufficiently clear in his essay "Ueber das Marionettentheater" ("On the puppet-show") in 1810 that it is an absurd endeavour for us to try to be naive again. There is no passage back. We can only return to paradise after "cognition will have gone through the infinite", not by pretending to be naive again, but by becoming more sophisticated. Saying no to regression is crucial for our cultural and political development. Sapere aude.

Regression is dangerous, and even if it may seem like the easy way out, we know there is no such simple solution. Progress, on the other hand, has become more and more dubious and threatening. And the third option, trying to ignore the technological changes and the paradigm shift they are embedded in, offers obviously no solution at all.

So, now we find ourselves in a difficult situation - between a rock and a hard place in every respect. We are indeed "knocking on heaven's door". And of course, I took the title of this paper, "VR - The Gates of Eden Revisited", from another Boh Dylan song, "Gates of Eden". It contains the following verse: