Why do we need a chair in the virtual world?

Haewon Jeon

March 25th, 2022 4:41 min read 1289 words

Here is a chair which I brought from 3D Warehouse1. The 3D Warehouse is a fantastic free storage in which everything has been virtualised, but realised simultaneously. It displays simulacrum not mimesis, or the content which professes a three-dimensional basis. Hence, the things within the warehouse are placed in a state of non-gravitation. Wandering objects demolish the horizon, and their shadow is another fantasy that we can switch off. I go back to the primary question: why do we need a chair in the virtual world, although we are never able to sit? What the chair symbolises is the ideology of a fictional stability in free-fall. It might be built in order to uphold a ground that can be imagined as stable, even if the stable horizon remains a projected illusion in cyberspace1. As everyone knows, cyberspace is beyond all the computational, exploratory, and predictable moments. Free-falling content has as much chaotic potential as the removal of gravity, triggering a shock of the ubiquitous open. Being able to access, download and remix it all signifies the formation of a heterogeneous spectrum, which is the object rather than the subject and a curvature rather than a horizon. If so, is the chair the content or the modern ideology? What is the chair representing, the free-fall of content or the hypothesis of ground?