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I became fascinated with writing poetry at the identical time I became fascinated with virtual reality. When done well, each function outside of specificity in that their effects and produced sensations are purposely difficult to call. There may be a blurring of body, self and time, a layering of memory and a fusing with the designer of the space, the poet, the maker, the artist. A viewer, reader, user, is provided a chance to remain inside themselves while concurrently vividly becoming and going towards one other self, or at the very least to look down and see one other body. This other, because it is narrated (physically or otherwise) within the mind of the viewer’s self is a few form of version of the viewer too.

I’ve been working on a recent virtual reality film for a show. I’ve been getting high by throwing my VR camera off bridges, into pools, ponds, lakes, the sky after which reliving this throwing (and floating), over and all over again. I ponder after I am making my work: What’s the purpose of getting a body if I theoretically could make or step into so many? The self has been made malleable by the chance to grow to be a type of language. Does the language form a version of code of the self? If I need to fly, I search ‘fly’. If I need to know what it’d feel prefer to attempt to cross the Mediterranean as a refugee, I search ‘refugee’ and I can, and out of curiosity, I actually have. Once I look down in these scenarios I do rarely have a body that resembles what I look down and see with out a headset on. Sometimes, I see the remnants of a tripod, sometimes a swirling nothingness, sometimes I see the people within the virtual space I’m meant to feel I’m in. I’m still me then, I believe.

In the true world, I make sculptures because you can not see the entire sculpture directly. There is no such thing as a turning around to depart in virtual reality. This, I believe, is a sculptural sensation: implicit in large sculptural installations is a period of transition, there may be a moment before I enter — before I’m swallowed up — where I anticipate that I will probably be swallowed and in that very same moment, I can nearly see myself entering. In VR (and poetry) the headset is as quickly on because it is off, the more you might be inside it, the more you read it, the better it is to quickly disappear inside it. The boundaries are fluid, specific to every viewer and their comfort and understanding of the medium. Worlds may be countless, limitless, emotional, tyrannical.

All of this also exists in this particular space of now. With the climate melting and the confusions of race and sophistication and power and all of this stuff, one can grow to be consistently but can one transcend? I’m sure, with enough money, eventually I won’t need a body, I believe, although I do like mine. I don’t think I’ll ever fully give you the option to depart it. I’m still me even when I’m walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon or shooting zombies or dressed as my avatar deep in conversation with one other avatar. How does my flesh relate to all of this. It’s there, sure. I can feel the hair standing up on my arms, for instance, but it is usually in some way not there. We each can and can’t leave ourselves behind. I’m myself and I’m not myself. I’m here but I’m also over there. What would I prefer to grow to be? What phenomenon or idea? Who needs a body anyway? Well, who am I anyway? That’s an interesting query. Today I spent a variety of time underwater swimming, or fairly sitting in a chair in my lounge within the Great Barrier Reef. (It looks as if the older I get the better it’s to do the things that I had desired to do after I was young.)

The one thing that is still fixed in these spaces is the concept we’re in a state of becoming, but we also on this process remain the self that we’re. I don’t grow to be a pilot, I play a pilot. I’m still I and the pilot continues to be a pilot, type of. So on this virtual embodiment muddle we’ve got a type of a self and that self is made malleable by the chance to grow to be a type of language. (Becoming in relation to the linguistic libidinal desire-y soup of the mind.)

The filmmaker Cécile B. Evans jogged my memory that the word ‘virtual’ is used incorrectly. She was speaking of the web and the way we predict of it as not real – but she argues: how could a spot where families are created via online dating and destroyed via online drone not exist? Following her line, one other misnomer manifests: VR is just not a non-existent reality, because we live it, feel it, may be modified by it. We will placed on a headset and physically chat with one other person removed from where we’re. Soon we are going to give you the option to see their whole faces, perceive in the event that they are being funny or deceptive. Either way, physically, they’re still over there and we’re over here. I believe we don’t have the linguistic map to specifically pinpoint where there happens to be on this scenario. That’s the reason I’m making all this art on this space; I actually don’t know where it’s. What happens when language fails us? When it splits and severs? What can we call something or someone then?

If I’m being hyperbolic sometimes, I believe it’s because VR is a funnel, a culmination of each sensation currently classified as a ‘medium’. Alas, for now, it is difficult to work with; when a very ambitious mind decides to construct for the technology it breaks and glitches. Although scent continues to be missing, we’re close. I hope I don’t get sick from being too near the screen; I really like being this near a screen. Each time I get in and placed on the headset, I get very near disappearing. They are saying you shouldn’t stay in there for greater than 20 minutes. They are saying a variety of things that I don’t do. I come out after just a few hours and things are dim and listless. I’m attempting to work out what to call this sensation of being in two places at one time.

What happens when this virtual shapeshifting becomes commonplace? What variety of person might someone grow to be in the event that they were used to existing on multiple planes and in multiple realities? Will we simply follow every utopian trajectory and recreate the society we sought to flee?

Rindon Johnson is an artist and author living between Berlin and Brooklyn. He has an MFA in Sculpture from Bard College and his work has been published or exhibited by Artforum, Cultured, The Recent Museum and Rhizome.

This text was originally published 6 March 2019.