Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 3 Number 3, December 2002
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Phantoms in the Corridor: Portal Systems in the Digital Mind
by
For millennia
the transition from one zone to another, be it physical or psychic, has often
been realised via a transitory passage—the portal. Utilising a portal schema
found in different mythologies and media this paper identifies a portal system
hierarchy from the physical to the non-physical. We have fashioned a digital
portal model extending the different logical and spatial parameters from
previous exemplars with the perceptual engagement offered by an interactive
graphical process. A portal system built upon this model would give participants
the ability to experience a journey through a web of portals in a transformative
and generative continuum.
Throughout
the ages the transition from one zone to another, be it physical or psychic, has
often been realised via a transitory passage—the portal. This hole,
perforation, or gateway demarcating two adjacent or concomitant worlds, commonly
the terrestrial or celestial, has possessed various transformative and
transcendental powers. Commonly linked to different spatial and conscious states
through various mythologies these portals possess similar logical configurations
consistent with an overlying schema. This universal portal schema is the pure
concept of all portal systems. It is a paradigm for consideration of a space as
a collection of independent subspaces connected by transformative portals. Every
portal model is a derivation of this schema, and can only represent a subset of
portal configurations. The subset that a portal model can realise is restricted
by its own conventions and medium for representation. Physically contained
portal systems are subject to more constraints than non-physical systems and
this forms a hierarchy that corresponds to progressive shifts towards complete
realisation of all portal possibilities resulting in heightened psychic and
transcendental states. When applying the portal schema to architecture,
shamanism, and literature, corresponding portal models materialise, each with
their own paradoxes and possibilities attributable to the internal
characteristics of each domain. The nature of the digital domain could allow for
more portal potential than any other medium. Exploring a continuum of formal
possibilities, we have designed an experimental digital model that would permit
non-linear egression through portals connecting multidimensional spaces.
Gothic
Portals
The
architectural portals characterised by the gothic cathedrals are spatially
demarcating structures that act both as gateways and barriers. These portals
must adhere to the general nature of the material world and represent partitions
within a contained physical space. Each portal is necessarily bi-directional;
that is, it is inconceivable that upon entering a portal in one direction it
would be impossible to return in the same manner. However, gothic portals aspire
to possess greater spiritual value than ordinary spatial partitions. Perhaps
what distinguishes the gothic portal from other doorways is its particular
symbolic property. Acting as a spiritual metaphor the material gothic portal
encourages access to the immaterial. As the gateway to spiritual enlightenment
the portal functions as a division between the terrestrial and celestial. This
passage through to the house of God was termed by Abbot Suger as anagogicus
mos, (Panofsky 1979) which expressed the transition from the ‘inferior’
to the ‘higher’ world. The experience of enlightenment via the material
doorway is revealed in Suger’s poem regarding the central west portal of St
Denis:
Should
brighten the minds so they may travel, through the true light,
To
the True Lights where Christ is the true door.
In
what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door define:
The
dull mind rises to truth through that which is material
(Abbot
Suger, as quoted in Panofsky 1979)
Rather
than a disembodied experience, it is enlightenment through a phenomenological
encounter with the luminosity and materiality of the work of art. No
metamorphosis or transmutation takes place; instead a transitory conveyance of
the exalted celestial realm occurs. The mainly visual characteristic of the
portal is exemplified by their didactic function—as a visual extension of
religious teaching. Imbued with symbolic and allegorical significance through a
coherent scheme of iconography the sculptures adoring the archivolts and
tympanum create a terrestrial splendour that permits ‘anagogical’ transfer
of one’s state to the higher celestial sphere. This metaphoric function
elevates the gothic portal in the portal hierarchy to a level higher than the
purely physical portal.
Shamanic
Portals
The
complex transcultural phenomena of shamanism, and its mythology of the
disincarnate being provides an example of transcendental logic contravening the
physical portal arrangement. The shaman, once achieving the ecstatic trance
through intoxicants or other ritual processes, is able to embark on an
incorporeal journey via the soul or spirit into the mystical and celestial
realms. By controlling the techniques of ecstasy the shaman breaks free from
physical containment, safely abandoning his body to roam vast distances. The
portal in the shamanic mythology is a passage from one cosmic region to
another—from earth to the sky or from earth to the underworld. This
transmission among the cosmic zones is made possible by the configuration of the
universe. The universe is envisaged as having three levels or cosmic regions:
the sky, earth, and underworld, which are connected by a central axis. (Eliade
1964) This axis passes through an ‘opening’ or ‘hole’, and is through
this hole that the ‘gods descend to earth and the dead to the subterranean
regions; it is through the same hole that the soul of the shaman in ecstasy can
fly up or down in the course of his celestial or infernal journeys.’(Eliade
1964) Contrasting the physical constraints of the gothic portal we find that the
mysticism generating the shamanic portal allows for a transcendental logic that
involves ‘magical flight,’(Eliade 1964) through multiple psychic
territories, and extraterrestrial regions. Often the shaman’s body is a
‘temple or tabernacle for the spirits, a vehicle or receptacle,’ that allows
the passage of knowledge and mystical power. This suggests one of the
fundamental operating logics is ‘ecstasis’ or the notion of ‘standing
outside,’ moving from the space of the body to a space outside it. The
shaman’s body remains in the physical world while his or her spirit takes
flight and affiliates with the metaphysical territory, but eventually returns to
the body. Thus, the shamanic portal is also bi-directional. Whereas the gothic
portal works from metaphor and allegory, the shamanic portal acts as a true
transformative portal; it isolates a shaman’s spirit as she or he enters and
performs the inverse transformation, reuniting the spirit and body, upon her or
his return. The transformative nature of the shamanic portal, and removal from
purely physical constraints, places it closer towards the conceptual end within
the portal system hierarchy.
Literary
Portals
One
of Lewis Carroll’s greatest literary concepts, the inverted world beyond the
looking glass, represents a fictional portal system examining different logical
paradoxes. Not surprisingly a logician and creator of mathematical puzzles,
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, employs mythologies
of mirrors, and the science of optics and light to construct his portal logic.
Carroll creates a visual concept that allows an array of logical inversions both
pictorially and linguistically. Carroll’s literary concept derives from the
‘mirror puzzle’ or the paradoxical logic and optical depth-reversal involved
in the perception of the mirror image. (Gregory 1997) Lewis Carroll’s Alice
Through the Looking Glass, (1872) conveys the fictional story of Alice, who,
fascinated with the inverted world in the mirror, is able to pass between the
drawing room and the ‘Looking-Glass room’ via the mirror that separates
them. Appealing to the ambiguous perceptual phenomena of the mirror and the
deep-rooted chimerical desire to enter into the illusory space of the second
dimension, Carroll creates a space consumed with logical potentiality. This
literary portal is also bi-directional, like the previous examples, however it
possesses a transformative capacity through its logical inversion. Originating
from the mirror illusion, the portal to the ‘Looking-Glass land’ does not
maintain real-world logic; much like the shamanic portal transforms the shaman
into a disembodied spirit, the mirror portal inverts Alice. Also important is
that the portal appears to link physically adjacent space, as witnessed in John
Tenniel’s illustration of Alice traversing the two spaces. However, it
actually acts as a conduit to a parallel world rather than to the physical space
behind the mirror. This represents a physical impossibility and positions the
mirror portal away from the purely physical end of the portal hierarchy.
Postmodern
Portals
In
the late twentieth century, through the effects of popular techno-science
writings, the portal is conceptualised as a conduit, a channel or pipe that
carries or conveys data. In science fiction the portal manifests in terms of a
‘Star Gate,’ theorising the entrance to a wormhole. This form of
space-portal provides linkage through space-time from one black hole to another,
and for the theoretical hyperspace engineer traversable wormholes have the
potential for time travel. In this way the portal is understood as a conduit
linking different physical and temporal worlds, which are not distinctly
bi-directional or rely on physically adjacent spaces. One such portal system
that exhibits these different logical formations is expressed in the film Being
John Malkovich (1999), written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike
Jonze. This film directly deals with the possibilities of a portal giving access
to another person’s conscious state. Working against the notion that
consciousness is intrinsically unobservable the film portrays characters
accessing the visual and conscious experience of another. This particular portal
allows passage from a small doorway in an office building to John Malkovich’s
mind for a period of fifteen minutes, after this time the person falls from the
sky metres from the New Jersey Turnpike. The portal allows Malkovich’s mind to
be visible and tangible to a subjective perceiver. Like the Cartesian theatre
there is a regress of observers positioned somewhere in Malkovich’s head.
As the narrative progresses the character Craig Schwartz shifts from a
third-person to a first-person point of view through his puppetry skills that
allow him to physically control Malkovich’s body. Although working against
Cartesianism the portal derides the self-assured certitude of consciousness.
Like the other models this portal acts as a conduit. In this case, social
relations and agents pass through the portal, and are influenced by the passage.
Unlike other models, the portals are not bi-directional. Once a person enters
the portal into Malkovich’s head they cannot return to the physical world
through the same portal, or in the same manner. Likewise, once expelled from
Malkovich’s head the exiting portal never allows re-entry. The film utilises
two uni-directional portals: one into Malkovich’s head and one out. The
complete removal of bi-directional and physical constraints elevates the
postmodern portal towards the top of the portal hierarchy.
Portal
systems that model and represent physical spaces already exist within the field
of computer graphics. These systems have been used for architectural rendering
and model only the purely physical end of the portal system hierarchy. Jones’
(1971) implemented a portal system representative of a geometric world. His
system restricted portals in such a way that they were not transformative and
only connected spaces modelled as physically adjacent. More recently, Luebke
(1995) relaxed Jones’ rigid portal system to efficiently render mirrors. A
‘mirror portal’ within his framework is a transformative portal that links a
space back into itself with a reflective transformation. Unlike the physical
world, in which a mirror reflects light, Luebke’s ‘mirror portal’ is a
conduit to the reflected source space. Much like Carroll’s mirror, the portal
breaks physical laws and indicates that digital portal systems can utilise a
greater range of portal models. Further relaxation of constraints, such as
portal bi-directionality, and perversion of conventional technology to model
non-physical spaces would facilitate the realisation of an interactive,
transformative portal system capable of modelling a wide spectrum of
configurations under the universal portal schema.
The
universal portal schema dictates that a portal system comprises spaces connected
by transformative portals, which create a seamless interactive realm that may be
representative of a physical, non-physical, or composite world. Previous
non-digital portal systems have extended basic physical portals to include
transformative features and non-physical directionality. However, restrictions
imposed by conventions or media has meant that the pure concept of portal
systems has never been realised. The digital apparatus provides a sphere in
which to institute any number of logical mechanisms into the portal model,
possibly enabling the pure concept of a portal-based environment and potentially
extending this construction to a psychic experience through existing interactive
fields. Seaman (1999) recognises that the digital mechanism, formulated in
logic, can be used to explore ‘illogical and elusive resonant artistic
content.’ One aspect raised by Campbell (1999) is a hybrid in which ‘the
mimicking of the physical at one end and the mathematical spatial array at the
other—there lies an infinite possibility of exciting combinations.’ We can
architect a purely digital space offering an array of different experiences
dynamically connected in unique ways via transformative portals. With the added
possibility of immersion the digital medium offers an exploration to the
‘metaphysics of presence’ through gaining a certain psychic interiority.
Along with removal of constraints, development of new technology necessary to
resolve possible complications, would result in a digital portal system capable
of modelling and rendering at any level within the entire portal hierarchy.
Digital Spectres
By
realising the potential of portal rendering, the immaterial worlds usually
depicted in a static pictorial manner can be created, maintained, and evolved
within a computer system. In essence, our portal model would provide an
interpreter for a metaphysical logic that can be used to model portal systems
impossible to fully represent in other forms or media. In fact the portals are
the space-establishing elements within the model. A portal system built upon our
digital model would give participants the ability to experience a journey
through a web of spaces and portals in a transformative and generative
continuum. By subverting the hierarchical logic found in previous portal systems
new relations can be identified through displacement. The design would create
expanded forms of consciousness through anomalous states and multidimensional
awareness. Ascott has already pointed to the parallel between the psychic space
of mysticism and that of cyberspace, and the possibility of a ‘double
consciousness’ (1999) that gives access to distinctly different fields of
experience. We hope to mirror the perceptual egression through different
physical and transcendental states, as witnessed in gothic, shamanistic,
literary and postmodern portals, by immersion within diverse spatial matrices
only possible within the digital medium. We envisage engaged participants
forming an immaterial presence, becoming psychic spectres in a dynamic disparate
world.
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R. 1999. ‘Seeing Double: Art and the Technology of Transcendence’, in Ascott,
R. eds. Reframing Consciousness.
Exeter: Intellect Books, p. 67
Campbell,
D. A. ‘Virtual Architecture as Hybrid: Conditions of Virtuality vs.
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L. 1937. The Complete Works of Lewis
Carroll. New York: Random House.
Eliade,
M. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of
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259
Gregory,
R. 1997. Mirrors in Mind. New York:
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Jones,
C.B. 1971. A New Approach to the `Hidden Line' Problem. The Computer Journal, vol. 14 no. 3 (August), p. 232
Luebke,
D. & Georges, C. 1995. Portals and Mirrors: Simple, Fast Evaluation of
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Interactive 3D Graphics, pp. 105-106
Seaman,
B. 1999. ‘Nonsense Logic and Re-embodied Intelligence’, in Ascott, R. eds. Reframing
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