Time and Space on the Net and in the Fantastic
To a reader of the 21st century, there is an obvious tone of anticipation for innovative technologies present in the text of The Invention of Morel, although it would have possibly been overlooked (or not viewed as such) by Adolfo Bioy Casares’s contemporaries. They would have noticed the explicit discourse related to existing technologies (such as the radio, which for the narrator is a device with the purpose of satisfying the aural sense), but an underlying, implicit technological structure is present as well. In the widely disseminated treatise, “As We May Think,” Vannevar Bush made a call for continuing developments in the world of technological innovations. Looking back on this work, today’s reader can interpret Bush’s words with more significance than the reader of 1945 likely did, assigning more value to the thoughts he presented because we see the physical manifestations of what were-at the time-only visions of his imagination. These two contemporaries, although unknown to each other, created works that nearly predicted some of the technologies that are available today. What they wrote came true, in a sense.
Is employing a short novel from 1940 as a comparison to electronic activity of the early 21st century asking too much of the reader? I say no. Adolfo Bioy Casares included so many technological aspects in his work that he must have been writing in anticipation of inventions to come. The realm of the fantastic inserts improbable events into a seemingly normal world, so which shall we consider the invention? Is it an improbability or is it a part of the normal world?
The 21st century computer user has experienced a transformation of schemata to adapt to the new concepts of space and time present in the recently available technologies. Beginning with avant-guard video experiments as far back as the late 1960s and the early 1970s, artists have found new ways to treat space and time by manipulating what is viewed on a screen. One achievement of such experiments is the demonstration that technology allows its users to be “everywhere while really being nowhere” (Kathy Rae Huffman 203). Those new uses of the screen (now apart from standard movie and television viewing) opened up consumers for the eventual shift to the computer monitor.
The fantastic, as a genre, created similar apertures for its readers. Along with other categories of literature-such as science fiction-there is a distinguishable acceptance of the “other,” in this case another world in which temporal and spatial realities function in unanticipated manners.
Although it would perhaps be worthwhile to examine the fugitive as if he were a participant of virtual reality (VR) technologies (including the headset, gloves and other accompanying hardware and software), I have chosen to study him as simply a user of a virtual environment (VE). As Marie-Laure Ryan states in her “Immersion and Interactivity,” very few of us in society have actually donned the gear to experience the technologies of VR. Many more of us have participated in what is called a VE. This virtual environment is created by all users of the Net, a society that includes those who are the hermits of the Net as well as the more sociable members. I prefer this perspective because it is more understood, more inclusive, and more available to the average computer user.
The island of Morel and the fugitive is a simulacra of a VE and vice versa. Like a virtual society, the fugitive (representing the computer user) does not see the mechanics behind the machine is that is creating his world. It is shut away, typically not viewed by a normal user. The fugitive experiences a bit of rage towards this machine and the projections, like modern day computer rage. His rage does not stem, however from a malfunctioning machine, but rather from one that works all too well. He describes his “temptations” to destroy the machines because he knows that for him, “they could become an obsession” (Bioy Casares 67). Perhaps part of his rage stems from the inability to understand the mechanics of how it works: he states “I knew at once that I was unable to understand the machines” (Bioy Casares 77). He only sees what it produces in his “real” world, like a user, the fugitive does not see the real, physical bodies of the other participants within the space he is occupying, they were there in that space during a different time interval. What he views are the disembodiments of the people with whom he wishes to interact.
The fugitive attempts to open closed and locked doors: why shouldn’t he? Following his normal ideas of what is real, this should be possible, but in his repeating, recorded world, he is unable to change such details. As Craig D. Murray discovered in his study, people do bring real-world understanding to a virtual environment. Also, Kathy Rae Huffman indicates the importance of the depth within the electronic framework, just as Bioy Casares stressed that the characters of Morel’s projection are 3D, not just 2D like a film or a painting. The disembodied representations of a figure (in this case the vacation-goers) must be believable to the fugitive so that they will in turn be believable to the reader. Another consideration presented by Murray is the presence of people in a virtual environment. Their presence is sought out by computer users as an important quality for creating a sense of space. Without people, the space seems too empty or unrealistic. When the vacation-goers joined Morel on the island, he again felt the fear he had before arriving to the island. He was scared of being re-captured. There is a continuum established between the real and virtual worlds for the fugitive, so what was probable in the real world is also ascribed to the island. This occurs with participants in virtual environments as well.
In his “Trans Terra Form: Liquid Architectures and the Loss of Inscription,” Marcos Novak acknowledges that our current “understanding of territory is undergoing rapid and fundamental changes,” noting that space is no longer as concrete as one previously thought. There are now non-spaces and non-places out there. You can go to these places, but not physically. You can travel through cyberspace and visit sites all over the world, but where have you really gone? The current answer to this question tends to be nowhere and everywhere. Where did the fugitive end up after he recorded his image into the projection? He would have died as a result of the machine “recording” his life away, but he would continue to be there for eternity. Where does that leave him? On the island or nowhere?
Works Consulted
Bioy Casares, Adolfo. The Invention of Morel and Other Stories. Ruth L.C. Simms, trans. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1964.
Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. Timothy Druckrey, ed. New York: Aperture, 1996.
Huffman, Kathy Rae. “Video, Networks, and Architecture: Some Physical Realities of Electronic Space.” Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. Timothy Druckrey, ed. New York: Aperture, 1996.
Mitchell, William J. City of Bits. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.
Craig D. Murray, et al. “Navigation, Wayfinding and Place Experience within a Virtual City.” Presence 9.5, 2000.
Novak, Marcos. “Trans Terra Form: Liquid Architectures and the Loss of Inscription.” http://www.krcf.org/krcfhome/PRINT/nonlocated/nlonline/nonMarcos.html
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Richard Howard, trans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer
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May 7th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
This response paper is part of what I’m doing for my final work. I’ll add a “Works Consulted” list later today or tomorrow at the latest.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Lori,
Looks very promising. I’m happy to see the Todorov in the bibliography, as I think what this brief exceprt lacks is an account of the fantastic as genre. I would hope that you’re also able to bring a historical dimension to the analysis, i.e. when and where does the fantastic originate and are there technological conditions in play that are relevant to those in our own moment?
You’re going to have to walk a fine line here, on the one hand (obviously) not making claims for Casares’s novel as a literal anticipation of computer technologies, but on the other hand establishg a relevance that is more than merely arbitrary. The best way to do this, it seems to me, is to look at what kinds of contemporary cultural issues and anxieties the novel is working through and then relate them to the discourse networks of our technological present, taking equal care with both the continuties and the disconnects between the two.
May 9th, 2006 at 6:20 am
Thanks, Matt. I do have more written in my final paper about the fantastic as a genre and its apertures to concepts like Morel’s machines. I didn’t want to reveal everything all at once….
Thank you also for your suggestion to incorporate the anxieties of the time…that is one thing I need to do more work on: connecting 1940 with the present.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
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