From imitation to shaping, how is metacosmic art possible?

"Metaverse" is a word that has been in the spotlight since 2021. As an emerging technological form, the metacosm can construct parallel universes of the real world in the form of data, achieving a fully immersive presentation, which is a complete imitation of the perceptual signal. So, what does the metacosm have to do with art? In fact, the term "metaverse" originally came from literary works - the novel "Avalanche" (1992) by American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, but the "metacosm" in the book is used as an object of description. In some movies, such as The Matrix and Ready Player One, the metaverse is also used as an object of depiction. However, metacosmic art is an art form presented in the metacosm as a medium. It's just that the current form of metacosmonic technology is not mature, so the real metacosmonic art is still a future concept.

Metacosmic art is not isolated and achieved overnight, it has a coherence with the development of traditional art, and this coherence lies in the development of technical media and the advancement of aesthetic perception. As a product of imitation, art's aesthetic perception also depends on the medium of its imitation. Plato said: "[Painting] imitates appearance,...... It grasps a small part of everything, and besides, this part is an illusion (eidolon). If we start with the "certain small part" imitated by Plato, in the process of the development of human art, this "certain small part" is gradually expanded until it becomes the whole of the metacosm. This is the development process of imitation of art media, and it is also the coherence and inevitability of the metacosm as an art medium. From traditional literature and painting to contemporary cinematic art, to today's and future metaversities, we can see metacosm art as an emerging medium art and its perception of the advancement.

From the perspective of traditional art media, our perception of the world does not really imitate nature. The earliest imitations of lines and colors present the image of things, the appearance of things in a certain moment, even flat. Here, our perception of the object is an imagination based on the "appearance" presented by literature or painting, and the imagination to some extent assumes the original presentation of the object by perception, which is originally the "appearance" that is visible at a glance by perception and needs to be completed by imagination.

Perception and imagination are two different stages of our cognitive activity. In psychology, perception is the object information obtained by the individual through the senses, that is, a series of processes of consciousness's awareness, feeling, attention, and perception of internal and external information; while imagination is the processing and transformation of the appearances that already exist in the mind. Then, the imitation of the medium is the basis for the understanding of things, and the part that it can "imitate" is only the object of "perception"; the understanding of things also needs the construction of "imagination". Therefore, from this point of view alone, for the understanding of literature or painting, the imagination constructs not only the meaning of the work, but also assumes the original perception.

When the movie came out, the imitation was more complete. In the film, the image of things, including the accompanying sounds, can be presented. Therefore, in the process of watching the movie, people can more intuitively feel the shape, appearance and emotional state of things or characters. We get more specific information at the perceptual level, which is the presentation of the world imitated by the film medium, and the film is still the way of viewing. Compared with literature and painting, the imitation of film is no longer a "small part" of the appearance of things. What perception obtains here is a window through which we can see the overall form of something, which can be described as the whole information of the "appearance". The film returns the "appearance" originally borne by the senses to the perception, and the imagination gains more space. It can be said that film, as an artistic medium, is precisely to create a metaphor on the basis of the "appearance" image.

The full immersion of metaverse art means that imitations of metacosmology provide us with exactly the same information as we can obtain in nature. In other words, the information we perceive in the metacosm is the same as in nature, and metacosmic art can be completely imitated. For example, a flower presented in the metaverse, we can not only see its entire "appearance", but also smell its smell, and even touch or touch it with your hand to feel its thorns and its flexibility. "Immersion" can actually be understood as the stripping of imagination at the perceptual level, which is also an advanced development of art from traditional literary art to film art to metaverse art. However, this stripping is not the deprivation or abandonment of the imagination, but the liberation of the imagination. For the imitation of nature, from symbols to images to the metaverse, human beings are moving to the extreme step by step, and it may be said that we have finally reproduced nature.

In fact, the creation of art is a fictional world, and we experience a kind of beauty and shape a possibility through imagination in the art world. Literature uses words as the medium to simulate perception, film uses images as the medium to simulate perception, and the metacosm uses perception to shape people. The virtual universe, the virtual data, the real perception. From the perspective of perception, literature is to imagine a world, film is to face a world, and the metaverse dominated by data fiction is to enter a world. The metaverse's breakthrough of space-time makes the person as the perceptual subject enter the medium, and the person becomes a part of the medium.

However, when imagination is liberated, how should the metaverse be artistic? Obviously, metaverseal art is still inseparable from the characteristics of traditional "art", which, like other media art, will have to create metaphors based on the characteristics of its own media. The perception of the metacosm is no different from the real world, but it does not mean that the metacosmonic art is a copy of the real world. Metaverse art can accommodate all art forms in the real world, but it will also shape new art forms with its own media characteristics.

First, metacosmic art is a fully immersive aesthetic perception. Full immersion in aesthetics means that in the aesthetic situation, people and objects are completely in harmony, which is not only the fusion of subject and object, but also the integration of body and mind. "The unity of things and self" is no longer based on the fusion of imagination and objects based on the "mind", but on the perception of "body" to achieve "the unity of things and me".

Second, the perceptual shaping ability of metacosmic art. Although the immersive sensory experience of metaverse art is the same as that of the real world, the difference is that the metacosm can break the organizational principles of real-world things. For example, whales can swim above our heads, and we can walk or even live on the moon without using a spaceship. This otherwise impossible thing becomes possible, and this possibility is given directly to us by perception. The adaptation and identification of perception in this environment is a reshaping of our perception.

Again, metacosmic art is not in the image of the realism, but in the subversion of laws or rules. Rules are no longer like the real world, we are renewed to shape perception. If it is only to present the artistic situation in the way of the metacosm, this can only be compared to the current artistic context is "classified" into art, once the metacosm matures, it is no longer "strange", and the future metacosmection is the defamiliarization of breaking the rules.

The infinite possibility of metaverse art is that each defamiliarization is taken for granted after domestication perception, and there will be new forms of defamiliarization that we cannot imagine at the moment. Experience is no longer unfamiliar, and habitual experience is the basis for further defamiliarization. The metacosm as a data virtual world means that the shaping of artistic images or art forms is superior to that of traditional art media. Therefore, it can be said that the construction of art forms in the metacosm is infinite.

However, if defamiliarization is the possibility of formalization of art, then the construction of the artistic connotation of the metaverse may rely more on the structure of metaphor, which will also become a way for the metacosm to dissolve entertainment and connect with the spirit of reality. The basic composition of metaphor is the structure of the medium, literature uses language metaphor, painting is metaphorically in color, line and even composition, and the metaphorical structure of film lies in the lens, the structure of a single shot, the montage of multiple shots, etc. Therefore, from the perspective of the metaphorical structure of traditional art, metacosmic art seems to be based on its own medium composition as a unit.

The problem is that in the metaverse there is not only visual mimicry, but the digitization of all perceptions. It seems that metaphors can also be formed between the senses, and even the aesthetic subjects who enter the situation will become part of the metaphorical structure. For example, the sound in the movie will be a metaphor, the combination of pictures can be a metaphor, and the costumes, language, and movements of the characters can become metaphors. It seems that later media can incorporate the metaphorical ways of the previous media. However, the "I" of cinema as the art of viewing, as the aesthetic subject, is the face outside the film. However, if in the art of the metaverse, "I" is placed in it, and "I" is also the composition of art, it may therefore become a metaphor itself.

The full metaverse has not yet arrived, and the fully immersive metaverse as we know it today comes only from the reference of the real world. There is a high degree of coherence between the metaverse as a medium and the traditional art medium, and whether the metaverse medium can be completely imitated or even shaped seems to become a new choice for the development of art media.

(Author Affilications:Research Center for Ideology and Culture, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences)

Edit: Zong Yue