The dream of the ultimate artwork has taken many forms and nourished many myths: Pygmalion’s statue transformed into a live woman, the words of language becoming their own referent in a poetic transubstantiation, and the text as a field of energies that produce perpetual becoming and regeneration (this one a favorite of hypertext theorists). All these conceptualizations involve the transmutation of art into some kind of life not far removed, as N. Katherine Hayles suggests, from the artificial life, or alife, generated by computers (“Artificial Life,” 205). (p: 347)
Through the VR metaphor, however, the emphasis on life as the ultimate purpose of art (and artifice) is shifted from the artwork as live object, capable of growth and autonomous behavior, to the artwork as life-giving and life-sustaining environment. The total artwork is no longer something to watch evolve forever but a world in which we will be able to spend an entire lifetime, and to spend it creatively. (p: 347)
Through the VR metaphor, however, the emphasis on life as the ultimate purpose of art (and artifice) is shifted from the artwork as live object, capable of growth and autonomous behavior, to the artwork as life-giving and life-sustaining environment. The total artwork is no longer something to watch evolve forever but a world in which we will be able to spend an entire lifetime, and to spend it creatively. (p: 347)
