Aesthetics of hallucination: ontology of visual kaleidoscopes from the Age of Myth to virtual reality
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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.
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(c) Sandra Cuevas, Reynaldo Thompson, Tirtha Mukhopadhyay, 2023
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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.
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