Re: <documenta X><blast>artificial constructs

Eve Andree Laramee (wander@earthlink.net)
Tue, 22 Jul 1997 21:08:42 -0500

At 12:01 PM on 7/22/97 Morgan Garwood wrote:

>One can honestly say that all human experience is virtual, it is
>an artificial construct.

Hi Morgan,
I am honestly having difficulty understanding how you mean this . Could you
elaborate a little more? I am aware that certain Eastern
cultures/philosophies believe all "reality" is "virtual". But I don't think
you're speaking from that point of view.

Do you believe that only human experience is virtual, or are the
experiences of all cognitive beings virtual as well? (what about machine
perception? the geological record? birds? molecules? termites? genes?)

I agree with you that objectivity is wishful thinking (and a construct
created to support specific power structures) but I'm not sure that
objectivity is the same as experience (I suppose I'm defining experience as
a "package deal" composed of perception/cognition/somatic response). It is
widely believed (at least among many artists and a growing number of
scientists) that we all operate from subjective standpoints. I'm not sure
it's necessary to distill experience into some virtual essence or mappable
neuropathological framework to understand that human experience is a
gloppy, gooey conglomerate of uncertainty, approximation and indeterminacy.
Your reference to "a pattern recognition matrix" makes sense to me.

Eve Andree Laramee