Aesthetics of hallucination: ontology of visual kaleidoscopes from the Age of Myth to virtual reality

Sandra Cuevas; Reynaldo Thompson; Tirtha Mukhopadhyay

doi:10.7238/artnodes.v0i32.411199

PDF ePUB

Google Scholar citations

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7238/artnodes.v0i32.411199

Sandra Cuevas

Universidad de Guadalajara

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6803-5520

Reynaldo Thompson

Universidad de Guanajuato

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9324-1924

Tirtha Mukhopadhyay

University of Guanajuato

This article discusses technology for visual projections in human culture. It identifies three distinct phases: a) the art of immobile spectatorship in speleological experiences, b) hallucinatory interventions in myth and totem, and c) the development of screen VRs. Hallucinatory effects including illusionary atmospheres typical of cave art, sacred fiction and/or aesthetic virtual reality (VR) projections are all secured by imaginative triggers induced through the body and its neural extensions, An ontology of hallucinatory effects in cultural products such as myth, art, literature, cinema, up to the most recent proposals of VR and its interactive affordances, assumes hallucination, rather than consciousness, self-awareness or even emotions, as a fundamental element of the exploration into how reality is processed to generate fictions that resemble and distort themselves in a randomized illusion of effects. Thus, illusionism constitutes an important part of aesthetic consciousness, as it is seen to mediate between rationality and experimentation in the construction of new realities of all myth, art and VR. The critical proposal of the ontology of virtual reality also derives from a consideration of the role played in world cultures by the curative and emotional enhancement of hallucinogens.

Keywords:

science fiction, virtual reality, psychoactive, psychedelic, hallucination, entheogens, psychotherapy, art

How to Cite

Cuevas, Sandra et al. “Aesthetics of hallucination: ontology of visual kaleidoscopes from the Age of Myth to virtual reality”. Artnodes, no. 32, pp. 1-9, doi:10.7238/artnodes.v0i32.411199.

Rights

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

(c) Sandra Cuevas, Reynaldo Thompson, Tirtha Mukhopadhyay, 2023

Copyright

For all articles published in Artnodes that are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, copyright is retained by the author(s). The complete text the license can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. You may copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work, provided you attribute it (authorship, journal name, publisher) in the manner specified by the author(s) or licensor(s).

Authors are responsible for obtaining the necessary licences for the images that are subject to copyright.

Assignment of intellectual property rights

The author non exclusively transfers the rights to use (reproduce, distribute, publicly broadcast or transform) and market the work, in full or part, to the journal’s editors in all present and future formats and modalities, in all languages, for the lifetime of the work and worldwide.

I hereby declare that I am the original author of the work. The editors shall thus not be held responsible for any obligation or legal action that may derive from the work submitted in terms of violation of third parties’ rights, whether intellectual property, trade secret or any other right.

Author Biographies

Sandra Cuevas, Universidad de Guadalajara

Master in Visual Studies and Bachelor in Graphic Design, both titles from UAEMéx. She has various diplomas in animation, screenwriting, art direction and computer and electronic programming. Professionally, she has collaborated with animation studios as Nikel Studios, Onirik Studio, Inzomnia Animación, and Delotroladodelcero Films, working on projects that have won the Ariel award from the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences and the Silver Goddess, among others. In teaching, she has been a professor in the degrees of Engineering in Technology and Digital Animation at the UVM, in Digital Art in the Faculty of Arts at the UAEMéx, in Design, Art and Interactive Technologies in the University Center of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of Guadalajara. She has been interested in issues related to imaginary production, creative processes, complex thinking, the use of new technologies, and other topics.

Reynaldo Thompson, Universidad de Guanajuato

He studied architecture at the University of Guanajuato and postgraduate studies at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona and the University of Texas at Dallas, where he obtained a doctorate in aesthetics studies focused on Contemporary Art. He has participated in collective and solo exhibitions and curated shows in Mexico and abroad. He served as Head of the Depart-ment of Art and Business at the University of Guanajuato and is currently focused on researching art, science and technology in Latin America. His research results have been published in domestic and foreign journals. He is a member of the National System of Researchers of the National Council for Science and Technology in Mexico and of the Ibero-American Observatory of Digital and Electronic Arts.

Tirtha Mukhopadhyay, University of Guanajuato

PhD and Professor of Art and Aesthetics at Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. He is multi-disciplinary scholar who taught at Presidency University of India (1996-2000), University of Calcutta (2000 -2016) and at the University of Texas in Dallas from 2002 to 2005, before migrating to Mexico. He was Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA from 2013-2014. His publications include books such as Affective States in Art (Proquest-UMI), Cezanne to Picasso (Calcutta University Press, India) and more than 50 articles on creativity, cognition and aesthetics, digital art, visual anthropology and literature, published by reputed publishers such as OUP, IOS Press, MIT and Atelier-Etno. He is also a poet in the Bengali language. He has been the Chief Editor of an indexed interdisciplinary journal called Rupkatha since 2009.

References

Baudry, Jean-Louis. The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 1966: 39.

Botella, Cristina, Rosa Baños, Azucena García-Palacios, Soledad Quero, Verónica Guillén and Heliodoro José Marco. “La utilización de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en psicología clínica”. UOC Papers. Revista sobre la sociedad del conocimiento, no. 4, (2007): 32-41. Redalyc. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=79000409

Fleming, Nic. “Las plantas hablan entre si usando una Internet de hongos”. BBC Tierra. N. P. (2014).

Farah, Martha. J. “Psychophysical evidence for a shared representational medium for mental images and percepts”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 114, no. 1, (1985): 91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.114.1.91

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. Nueva York: Ace Books, 1984, 69.

Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003a, 17. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7104.001.0001

Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003b, 13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7104.001.0001

Grau, Oliver. Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003c, 29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/7104.001.0001

Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of perception. EEUU: Harper & Row Original, 1956, 27.

Hansen, Mark B. N. New philosophy for new media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004.

Jounghyun Kim, Gerard. “A SWOT analysis of the field of virtual reality rehabilitation and therapy”. Presence: Virtual and Augmented Reality, vol. 14, no. 2, (2005): 119-146. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/1054746053967094

Laurel, Brenda. Cited by Rebeca Coyle. The Genesis of Virtual Reality. London: British Film Institute, 1993.

Lem, Stanislaw. The futurology congress. Trad. Kandel, M. Poland: Seabury Press, 1971, 38.

Manovich, Lev. The language of the new media. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006, 109.

McKenna, Terence. Food of Gods. The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. New York: Bantam New Age Books, 1992a, 44.

McKenna, Terence. Food of Gods. The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. New York: Bantam New Age Books, 1992b, 125.

McKenna, Terence. Food of Gods. The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution. New York: Bantam New Age Books, 1992c, 128.

Neumeyer, Alfred. Der Blick aus dem Bilde. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1964.

Noah Harari, Yuval. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Harper Collins, 2015.

Parra Valencia, Juan Diego. “Virtualidad: persistencias e insistencias de un nuevo viejo problema”. Eidos: Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad del Norte, no. 25 (2016): 259-285. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14482/eidos.25.7973.

Article Sidebar

Main Article Content