Yes, Sue, I do think that reading (like the reading/viewing of a
play) is a virtual space not unlike the virtual space of digital
life. In fact, I find it hard to see in what way virtual reality
differs from both reading and writing as writing is a reading of
experience, the world, your inner life etc.
Since reading has been my field of research and still fascinates me,
the transition to digital life has been very easy for me, a 'natural'
step. And I don't think digital life is all about disembodiment and
abstraction. Nor is reading. It's in my view the place, or the
interface, where I tip into the Other, the body, the inland of the
imagination etc.
There are a few essays on reading at my site http://freewheelin.nu/
reader/ and I hope that I will be able to write something about
digital life and reading in the future even though the rumour is that
the reader online is dead...
Best
Yvonne
---------------------------------
http://freewheelin.nu
---------------------------------
10 aug 2005 kl. 12.10 skrev Sue Thomas:
> Today I took a trip to London to see The Tempest at the Globe Theatre
> http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/. I was especially interested
> because it
> features the outgoing Artistic Director Mark Rylance, and this
> production
> uses just three actors, playing all the parts. As I had heard, it
> was indeed
> absolutely stunning.
>
> But first, as I waited for the 2pm matinee to start, I sat by the
> Thames to
> eat a sandwich and listen to the radio via the earpiece on my
> phone, anxious
> to hear whether the shuttle would land safely. I did not want to
> begin the
> story of a shipwreck in the knowledge of a recent space-wreck. But,
> as we
> know, all went well and the crew were safe.
>
> Why am I writing about The Tempest on this list? Because I find
> that again
> and again this play comes into my thinking about virtuality, from
> my second
> novel 'Water', over ten years old now, to my most recent essay.
> Because the
> issues it struggles with are familiar ones to those of us who inhabit
> cyberspace: the fascination with abstract thought versus an
> occcasional
> reluctance to accept that we still have bodies and earthly needs.
> In the
> programme notes Rylance explains how this production is inspired by
> the book
> 'Prospero's Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest'
> by Noel
> Cobb (now out of print) which takes a Jungian approach and
> describes the
> main theme of the play as 'the vital necessity of earthiness as a
> counterbalance to intellect'. So it is that we see Prospero
> painfully come
> to terms with his retreat into the life of the mind, books,
> philosophy,
> alchemy, at the expense of an acknowledgement of physical
> existence. Early
> in the play Prosperp is so desperate to deny the animal part of his
> nature
> (the 'savage and deformed slave' Caliban) that as he speaks he is
> at the
> same time struggling to cover Caliban with a carpet, throwing his
> whole body
> onto the writhing slave to still him, make him invisible, forget him.
>
> Here is an excerpt from a review by David Wootton - and if this isn't
> recognizable to the multiple virtual personalities amongst us I
> don't know
> what is:
>
> The play is about the power of words, about illusions, about the
> difficulty
> in telling the dream from the real. And that's exactly what we got.
> Over and
> over again I found myself thinking "This is magic" because I knew that
> something astonishing was happening in front of my eyes. One could
> say that
> Rylance has simply taken the play as an excuse to present a bravura
> version
> of his own preferred style of acting: instead of performing unstable,
> internally conflicted, characters who seem constantly about to
> slide out of
> character he gets to perform a whole series of characters and
> constantly
> slides into and out of each character. All of the characters become
> parts of
> the self, and the whole play becomes a performance within the
> dramatist's
> psyche. If you left Olivier's Othello thinking you had met Othello,
> I left
> the Globe with no sense of having met Prospero; but it did occur to
> me that
> I had met Shakespeare.
> http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000430.php
>
> In the end, order is restored and Prospero vows to throw away his
> alchemical
> staff and book - the equivalent of our vowing to turn off our
> computers,
> perhaps - with the implication that he is glad to be leaving the
> island and
> returning to 'real life':
>
> But this rough magic
> I here abjure, and, when I have required
> Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
> To work mine end upon their senses that
> This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
> Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
> And deeper than did ever plummet sound
> I'll drown my book.
>
> But one wonders whether that real life will be as deeply engaging as
> virtuality or whether he will soon, as Caliban describes earlier in
> the
> play, 'cry to dreame againe'.
>
> Sue
>
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