Concept Description

We spend so much time defining ourselves in relation to our computer and inside of virtual spaces, that there is a desire to shed the physical body and get inside of the computer.  Within virtual environments we can act out our ‘ego ideal’ and take on whatever physical and personality traits that we desire to, it is however, impossible to abandon the physical body.  The more time we spend on the computer, the more aware we become of the burden of our body.  We are reduced to the action of moving the mouse and the rest of the body becomes an impediment to the act of displacement.  In trying to literally get inside of my computer, I am attempting to force the body to conform to the dimensions of self-definition within the computer.

“What we encounter here is the loop of (symbolic) castration, in which one endeavours to reinstate the lost ‘natural’ co-ordination on the ladder of desire: on the one hand, one reduces bodily gestures to the necessary minimum (of clicks on the computer mouse…); on the other, on attempts to recover lost bodily fitness by means of jogging, body-building, and so on; on the one hand, one reduces the bodily odours to a minimum (by taking regular showers, etc.); on the other, one attempts to recover these same odours through toilet water and perfumes; and so on.”

Zizek, Slavoj. The Plague of Fantasies (Wo Es War). Verso, 1997.  135-36

“Machines produce only machines.  This is increasingly true as the virtual technologies develop.  At a certain level of machination, of immersion in virtual machinery, there is no longer any man-machine distinction: the machine is on both sides of the interface.  Perhaps you are indeed merely the machine’s space now – the human being having become the virtual reality of the machine, its mirror operator.  This has to do with the very essence of the screen.  There is no ‘through’ the screen the way there is a ‘through’ the looking-glass or mirror.  The dimensions of time itself merge there in ‘real time’.  And, the characteristic of any virtual surface being first of all to be there, to be empty and thus capable of being filled with anything, it is left to you to enter in real time into interactivity with the void.”

Baudrillard, Jean. Screened Out. Verso, 2002.  177-78