The virtuality in digital environment
has approached the reality rapidly.
This is a true story: a person overweighed
about 240 pounds and never exercised. However, when
he played an on-line role-playing game, he could stay
up all night and control his avatar to chop woods for
hours, just to increase the attributes of his avatar.
Sounds unbelievable? but today, Everybody's
bank account is a number in cyberspace. Virtuality has
become reality, and reality sometimes is also virtuality.
The gap between abstract and concrete has been filled
quietly by digital tools.
In the old days, Chinese thought that
the words spoken by the great master have souls and
can influence reality figuratively. In the digital environment,
this no longer is a superstition. The computer codes
written by programmers are changing our life in every
aspect. The greatest influence that the cyberspace brings
to us is the tighter and more direct interaction between
human thoughts and the reality.
In the digital environment, philosophy,
mathematics, music, literature and images are all regard
as data. The distinctions between different disciplines
only exist in human's mind. The novel "The Glass
Bead Game" written by Hermann Hesse described a
game that can includes and combines all art forms: "!K
That game began with a rhythmic analysis of a fugal
theme and in the center of it was a sentence attributed
to Confucius!K translating it from the language of the
Game back into its original language, into mathematics,
ornament, Chinese, Greek, and so on." In this book,
Hermann described a game that includes all knowledge.
People can understand, communicate, record and exercise
these art forms through such a game.
In the cyberspace, abstract thinking,
when it is expressed through logic and math, can be
transformed into the "Tao" of the virtual
world. Idealistic and conceptual thoughts can be used
to construct a virtual world. People can travel and
meditate in this world. This world can be concrete,
so that the visitors can understand the abstract thinking
through their physical interactions with this world.
And each individual's understanding is exclusive to
him.
For example, in a completely empty
space, let's put Chuang-Chou's butterfly dream in it.
Then let's add some gravity law. Next, let the audience
interact with the space and wait for the reaction.
Or, using Andy Warhol's words: "Everybody
will be world-famous for fifteen minutes" as a
starting point. Add some crowd cheering sound recorded
in a hockey game, then use chairs as symbol of people
and place them on a concave surface, and start laughing.
This is our unique angle: digitality,
interactivity, humanity and some humor.
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