Roberto Diodato

This book investigates the ontological state of relations in a unique way. Starting with the notion of system, it shows that the system can be understood as a relational structure, and that relations can be assessed within themselves, with no need to transform relations in elements. “Relations” are understood in contrast to “relational property”: without a relation there is no identity, therefore no existence. What allows us to do that without hypostatizing the relation, and without immediately taking it simply as a causal relation, can be better grasped, possibly, in reference to a few entities that make best display of their systemic nature, for example images, works of art, and virtual bodies. This book shows how virtual bodies are ontological hybrids representing a type of entity that has never appeared in the world before. This entity becomes a phenomenon in interactivity and evades the dichotomy between “external” and “internal”; it is neither a cognitive product of the consciousness, nor an image of the mind. The user is well aware of experiencing anotherreality, also in the sense of a paradoxical reduplication of perceptual synthesis. The virtual body-environment is therefore simultaneously external and internal, with virtual bodies-environments to be seen as artificial windows to an intermediary world. In this intermediary world, the space itself is the result of interactivity; the world takes place in the sense or feeling of immersion experienced by the user; and the body, perceived as “other”, takes upon itself the sense of its reality, of its effectiveness, as an imaginary and pathic incision, as a production of desire and emotion, to the point that the feeling of reality conveyed by a virtual environment will rely significantly on how this environment produces emotions in the users.

Towards an Aesthetics of Relation

Image, Art and Virtuality

Richard Grusin

Maurizio Ferraris

Mauro Carbone

Alberto Abruzzese

Massimo Carboni

Antonio Somaini

Andrea Pinotti

Francesco Casetti

Antonio Costa

Piero Boitani

Giuseppe Di Giacomo

Herman Parret

Gianfranco Bettetini

Ruggero Eugeni

Valentina Valentini

Giovanni Careri

Claudia Cieri Via

Massimo De Carolis

Massimo Prampolini

Isabella Pezzini

Roberto Perpignani

Roberto De Gaetano

Alfredo Pirri

Franco Maresco

Leonardo Amoroso

Francesco Antinucci

Silvana Borutti

Romeo Bufalo

Stefano Catucci

Pina De Luca

Georges Didi

Huberman

Edoardo Ferrario

Tarcisio Lancioni

Enrica Lisciani Petrini

Giovanna Pinna

Elena Tavani

Stefano Velotti

Costanza Quatriglio

Mario Sasso

Daniele Guastini

Adriano Ardovino

I percorsi dell’immaginazione. Studi in onore di Pietro Montani è un volume che vuole rendere omaggio a uno dei maggiori studiosi italiani di estetica, di cinema, di arti e nuove tecnologie. Diviso in cinque sezioni (Filosofia, Semiotica e teoria dei linguaggi, Cinema, Teoria delle arti e Tecnica e media), che sono altrettante articolazioni di analisi e di riflessione sul presente e la contemporaneità, il libro si avvale della partecipazione di illustri studiosi italiani e internazionali: Alberto Abruzzese, Leonardo Amoroso, Francesco Antinucci, Gianfranco Bettetini, Piero Boitani, Silvana Borutti, Romeo Bufalo, Mauro Carbone, Massimo Carboni, Giovanni Careri, Francesco Casetti, Stefano Catucci, Claudia Cieri Via, Antonio Costa, Massimo De Carolis, Roberto De Gaetano, Pina De Luca, Georges Didi-Huberman, Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Roberto Diodato, Ruggero Eugeni, Edoardo Ferrario, Maurizio Ferraris, Richard Grusin, Tarcisio Lancioni, Enrica Lisciani Petrini, Herman Parret, Isabella Pezzini, Giovanna Pinna, Andrea Pinotti, Massimo Prampolini, Antonio Somaini, Elena Tavani, Valentina Valentini, Stefano Velotti. Ogni sezione è inoltre chiusa da una conversazione con un artista: Franco Maresco, Roberto Perpignani, Alfredo Pirri, Costanza Quatriglio e Mario Sasso. Il volume è curato da Daniele Guastini e Adriano Ardovino.

I percorsi dell'immaginazione. Studi in onore di Pietro Montani

Arguing that the virtual body is something new—namely, an entity that from an ontological perspective has only recently entered the world—Roberto Diodato considers the implications of this kind of body for aesthetics. Virtual bodies insert themselves into the space opened up by the famous distinction in Aristotle’s Physics between natural and artificial beings—they are both. They are beings that are simultaneously events; they are images that are at once internal and external; they are ontological hybrids that exist only in the interaction between logical-computational text and human bodies endowed with technological prostheses. Pursuing this line of thought, Diodato reconfigures classic aesthetic concepts such as mimesis, representation, the relation between illusion and reality, the nature of images and imagination, and the theory of sensory knowledge.

Aesthetics of the Virtual

Roberto Diodato

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