John Emerson — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:36 GMT

This is great. I can’t wait to see the book. Much of the history of Western aesthetics is movement towards increasingly total mimesis, moving towards ever finer simulations of reality in our artwork, film, games, and other vehicles of experience and narrative. This seems to be opposite the trend of what Adam describes. Whereas we had been increasingly bringing reality to our representations, we are now at a point of dissolving artifice into our reality. To borrow a phrase, “turning virtual reality inside-out.”

Rather than opposed, though, these seem to be flip sides of the same coin. That is, making the world conform to our interpretations of it, bending it to and increasingly aware of our assumptions and desires—ours, and those that have been manufactured for us.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by John Emerson