School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemVirtualisation: the convergence of virtuality and digitality in contemporary Australian art and architectural representation( 2001)This thesis critically examines ‘the virtual’ and ‘virtualisation’, as it was used in Australian visual culture and its discourse between 1997 and 2001. The thesis focuses on Melbourne’s Federation Square project, and its representation, during the period of the Square’s construction, and specific non-digital works by Mathieu Gallois and Callum Morton. ‘Virtualisation’, in this thesis, is located at the convergence of two concepts: digitality and virtuality. Rather than confuse the two, as does much digital theory and practice, this thesis reflects upon and separates the two discourses. It then attempts to analyse the ways they converge in recent Australian art. This thesis works outwards from writings by Brian Massumi, Anna Munster and especially Pierre Levy. It argues that virtualisation represents a key aesthetic in Australian visual culture in the late- 1990s. Virtualisation requires that we focus on the virtual experience and perception of art - and on concepts such as affective response - that is signified by, and intelligible through, such operations as electronic interactivity and digital hypertext. By focusing on viewer response, this thesis challenges particular studies of the effects of digital media on non-digital visual culture. These effects have hitherto been limited to issues of form and imagery. Viewers can only see this phenomenon in the work of artists such as Patricia Piccinini, Stelarc and Megan Walch; they do not, themselves, experience ‘virtualisation’. This thesis wishes to put viewers and their perceptions back in the picture. The consequences of my argument are that space, self and the act of perception require reconsideration. Digitality is affecting ‘real’ space beyond the digital print, the computer terminal and the Internet. It affects subjectivity, and awareness of self within very real virtualities. We become cyborgian, but through neither technological prostheses nor computerised clothing. We become cyborgian in the acts of perception and inter-personal negotiation. However, virtualisation is complicated by other, socio-cultural, factors. Can this reconsideration of self be dissociated from contemporary commercial interests in the technologisation of the self and space? Is virtualisation a potentially liberative aesthetic? This thesis considers specific Australian concerns, including Australian cultural policies and artists’ theories of relational aesthetics in the 1990s. I ultimately argue that virtualisation amounts to a commercial aesthetic. Federation Square proffers the ‘realisation’ of architectural and commercial determinations of self, rather than ‘virtualisation’ of the self. Mathieu Gallois’ art, despite its initial deconstruction of the ‘realisation’ of commercial potentiality, proposes a naïve performativity that ultimately reifies the commercialist underpinnings of virtualisation. And though Morton's models frustrate that same performative, they also rely upon commodification for their success. This thesis concludes by doubting whether virtuality is possible in a period of hyper-commercialism and highly-determined cultural experiences. The aesthetic of' virtualisation proposed in this thesis remains problematic and fragile in its actualisation, or at least on the digital ‘ground’.