Article:

Wie erinnern virtuelle Realitäten an etwas, wie es Bilder nicht erinnern? – Zur Praktik bildunterstützter Erinnerung in Gesellschaften

By means of images and by means of virtual realities (VR) in the head-mounted display (HMD), individuals communicate explicit, iconic forms of knowledge. Both forms of knowledge have to be stabilized in societies by means of communication. The following text shows how knowledge of images differs from knowledge of virtual realities. One difference is that images show their knowledge as a medium of communication, whereas virtual realities communicate their knowledge multi-modally as a medium of interaction. The VR in the HMD explicates a knowledge of how to handle something practically. An example of this would be a Mnemosyne Archive that presents embodied practices in a virtual museum. A virtual museum including its interactive virtual environment could allow physical properties of objects to be experienced, although everything is presented in frames of signs. Like architecture, the iconic knowledge of VR consists in staging a dramaturgy of the path. The way through virtual »spaces« is shown by signs, whose virtual »resistance« develops as dramaturgy of a computer-based interaction medium. Thus, the memory culture of a VR consists of the practice of offering polypragmatic interpretations, which result from thetic architectural signs, hypothetical signs and performative realizations of a sign. Where previously effective powers of the image existed, virtual mnemosyne realities will emerge in the future, which in the holistic medium of VR are to be experienced primarily immersively and less as pictorial signs for realities or simulations. Where previously effective powers of the image existed, virtual mnemosyne realities will emerge in the future, which in the holistic medium of VR are to be experienced primarily immersively and less as pictorial signs for realities or simulations.