Reality, even virtual reality, is complex and sometimes you need a little help to understand it and find a path.
If we then enter a world that is indefinite by definition like that of art, things get even more complicated.
From this point of view I have always found Sidey Myoo‘s work rather interesting. Sidey is a philosopher based at the Research Section of Aesthetics of the Department of Philosophy, The Jagiellonian University, and Research Section of Theory of New Media Art of the Faculty of Intermedia, The Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts of Krakow and many other prestigious titles that you can find in his biography.
Among all the interesting things he wrote about Art and Aesthetics in electronic worlds, I have always particularly admired the document entitled “10 Truths about the Electronic World“, few paragraphs that I agree with 200%.
For me personally the most difficult truth to understand and assimilate is number 10, “The Electronic World is reality, the game occurs in the physical world“. appears perhaps a little cryptic at first reading, but how much truth.
The text below:
- The Electronic World is an alternative reality in relation to the physical world.
- The Electronic World is a human world, capable of accommodating human dimensions: emotions, feelings, and spiritual values.
- The Electronic World is a reality accepting the transfer of all kinds of human life activity, it is a source of self-creation and autonomous creation, personal investigation and expression.
- The Electronic World is a source of new possibilities, different from those existing in the physical world.
- The Electronic World can provide the area and objectives of existential choices and human decisions concerning the reality in which persons want to experience their lives.
- The Electronic World is immaterial and develops a space different from physical world.
- The Electronic World expands its capacities in line with technological advances.
- The Electronic World develops faster than the physical world, influencing the evolution of human being.
- The Electronic World is not a simulation and there is no space for simulation in it.
- The Electronic World is reality, the game occurs in the physical world.
Follow the “Declaration of morality for a human in the Electronic World“.
- Your electronic identity contains your conscience.
- When you enter the electronic world, you are entering a world where real, objective, moral values exist.
- Once you assume your Net Name, you acquire a freedom impossible in the physical world and become responsible for the morality of your electronic portrait.
- The other electronic identities coexisting with you are real people.
- Your actions in the electronic world will involve real consequences, sometimes stretching further than in the physical world.
- When you do wrong in the electronic world, you hurt the other human emotionally, not physically.
- An electronic identity can change a human in the physical world and be a source of personal experience.
