10.54103/ai/15441



This article discusses the following points: 
• The analogies which can be identified between Virtual Reality (VR) and the hallucinatory aspects of dream activity make sense within a network of relations characterised by certain important cognitive performances (in particular inferential performances) which can be attributed to the work of the imagination; 
• To assure the plasticity of these performances, the imagination seems to have to distance itself somewhat from linguistic thought and in dreams this is achieved regressively via the hallucinatory state. Various authoritative neuroscientific approaches to dreams significantly substantiate this theory. 
• At the time when its correlation with linguistic thought is deactivated, the imagination does not, however, surrender itself to the hallucinatory event but elaborates it with recourse to practices similar to those of syncretic writing – a Bilderschrift or “pictographic script” as defined by Freud;
• It is significant that very early cinema also addressed the quasi-hallucinatory aspects of films, practising an “intermedial” Bilderschrift, i.e. a treatment of the images that is attentive to the comparison and integration of the different levels of expression which work together in the composition of a film;
• Digital images seem to revive this production model in several ways and I will offer two examples highlighting their affinity with syncretic and intermedial writing. 



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Intermediality
The hallucinatory aspect of virtual reality and the Image as a "Bilderschrift"
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Pietro Montani
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Intermediality
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The hallucinatory aspect of virtual reality and the Image as a "Bilderschrift"
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1
               The hallucinatory
               aspect of virtual
reality and the Image
as a Bilderschrift
by Pietro Montani
          Virtual Reality
                    Imagination
                    Hallucination
                    Dream
                    Regression
                    Intermediality




                                     Issue №1 Year 2022
                                     → Altered states
                                     Edited by Giancarlo Grossi
                                     and Andrea Pinotti
The hallucinatory aspect
of virtual reality and the 1
Image as a Bilderschrift
by Pietro Montani
Abstract                     This article discusses the following points:
        ■      The analogies which can be identified between Virtual Reali-
        ty (VR) and the hallucinatory aspects of dream activity make sense
        within a network of relations characterised by certain important
        cognitive performances (in particular inferential performances)
        which can be attributed to the work of the imagination;
        ■      To assure the plasticity of these performances, the imagi-
        nation seems to have to distance itself somewhat from linguistic
        thought and in dreams this is achieved regressively via the hallu-
        cinatory state. Various authoritative neuroscientific approaches
        to dreams significantly substantiate this theory.
        ■      At the time when its correlation with linguistic thought is
        deactivated, the imagination does not, however, surrender it-
        self to the hallucinatory event but elaborates it with recourse to
        practices similar to those of syncretic writing – a Bilderschrift or
       “pictographic script” as defined by Freud;
        ■      It is significant that very early cinema also addressed the
        quasi-hallucinatory aspects of films, practising an “intermedial”
        Bilderschrift, i.e. a treatment of the images that is attentive to the
        comparison and integration of the different levels of expression
        which work together in the composition of a film;
        ■      Digital images seem to revive this production model in sev-
        eral ways and I will offer two examples highlighting their affinity
        with syncretic and intermedial writing.
Virtual Reality           Imagination            Hallucination           Dream          Regression
Intermediality
To quote this essay: P. Montani, “The hallucinatory aspect of virtual reality and the image
as a Bilderschrift”, AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images, no. 1 (2022): 153-171

PIETRO MONTANI                                     154                                        AN-ICON
                                Virtual reality, hallucination
                                and the dream-imagination

                            The hallucinatory aspect of VR is obvious to
              those who have experienced or wish to study it. However,
              not everyone hallucinates and so the hallucinatory nature
              of dreams offers the most immediate and comprehensible
              parallel – an experience we undergo during sleep with a
              frequency and regularity familiar to all.2
                            VR and dreams cannot be treated as entirely
              identical phenomena, indeed there are many and signifi-
              cant differences as we shall see shortly. However we can
              immediately highlight at least two essential parallels. The
              first is the compelling illusion of reality that differentiates
              hallucinatory dreams and VR images from other types of
              internal and external images processed by the imagination.
              This leads to the second parallel, regarding the unalterable
              nature of what is perceived. Apart from some exception-
              al cases (e.g. “lucid dreaming”), we cannot intervene in
              dream images, the realism of which is experienced as both
              convincingly plausible and undeniably objective. The same
              applies to the fundamentally hallucinatory nature of VR
              images (although there are clearly many potential excep-
              tions, to which I shall return in the final section). I would
              happily add a further property in the presence of sufficient
              evidence and that is how easily we forget dreams, which
              corresponds – although this is a totally subjective obser-
              vation – to the ease with which we discard large portions
              of our VR experiences.
                            I must stress that the two aforementioned prop-
              erties are linked to the particular realism of dream and VR

      1 This article refers to the European research project “The Future of Humanity: New
      Scenarios of Imagination” (Vilnius University). This research is funded by the European Social
      Fund (project no. 09.3.3-LMTK-712-01-0078).
      2 The analogy between VR and dreaming has already been explored. See for example R.
      Diodato, Estetica del virtuale (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2005), which, however, chooses a
      different approach from the one I will propose here.

PIETRO MONTANI                                 155                                          AN-ICON
               images. So, although the latter come in several interactive
               forms (e.g. immersive installations) that can alter the per-
               ceived environment, this does not impact on the funda-
               mentally hallucinatory state of the images delivered. On the
               contrary, the degree of interactivity in dreams is limited to
               the activation of cognitive processes internal to the dream
               event such as the linguistic formulation of judgements and
               inferences, and an evaluation of the emotions experienced.
               But here, too, these processes are dependent on the objec-
               tivity of the images experienced. I shall provide a personal
               example: the night before starting this article I dreamt that I
               encountered a stranger in the street and sensed with great
               pity and concern that he clearly felt ashamed, although
               there was no indication as to why. Without entering into
               more detailed analysis, what I have described was clearly
               a hallucinatory event accompanied by a congruent judge-
               ment explicitly formulated in the dreamer’s inner discourse,
               and which included the word “ashamed”. But it was not
               a “lucid dream”. A Freudian analyst would say that the
               dream was mine so the pity and concern were directed
               at a part of me. This may be so, but this split within the
               dreamer reinforces rather than diminishes the objectivity of
               the sentiment I felt and the congruence of the judgement
               I associated with it (i.e. that the human condition is truly
               compassionate – and mysterious – if someone can show
               shame for no apparent reason). Ultimately, it is the radically
                immersive state of the two traits shared by VR and dreams
                that should be underscored:3 we become caught up in a


      3 For a helpful classification of all the VR forms see V. Catricalà, R. Eugeni, “Technologically
      modified self-centred worlds. Modes of presence as effects of sense in virtual, augmented,
      mixed and extended reality”, in F. Biggio, V. dos Santos, G. Tyerry Giuliana, eds., Meaning-
      Making in Extended Reality (Rome: Aracne, 2020): 63-90. According to the accurate schema
      divided into four categories discussed in the article, the type on which these considerations
      focus occupies the second level of the third type (“Advanced cinematic VR”). However, the
      authors describe “radical immersive media” as a broad category of devices (which can be
      further divided into two subgroups) designed to interact in different ways with the real world.
      For reasons that will become clear later, I shall limit my considerations to a very general
      analogy between VR and dreams.

PIETRO MONTANI                                  156                                          AN-ICON
               simulated environment featuring images that coercively
               force their presence on us.
                            And now for the equally significant differences.
               What I have described – and why I was able to describe
               it – was clearly a dream occurring in a REM sleep phase. It
               was one of those dreams availing of closer integration with
               Freud’s “secondary process” and the ones we remember
               (or reorganise) with greater satisfaction. The neurophys-
               iological processes at work in all sleep phases are fairly
               well known today, although the scientific community has
               reached no full agreement on the functional meaning to
               attribute to the incoherence and transience of their dream
               products. We do not know exactly what purpose is served
               by the low structural level of dreams but there appears to
               be good support for the theory – adopted here – accord-
               ing to which their principal function is to increase the “fit-
               ness” of some processes of the imagination conducted in
               a wakeful state (particularly inferential ones) by reducing
               their redundancy and complexity in several ways.4
                            What does this strange neural work look like?
               Some have likened it to the wandering undertaken by our
               vigilant imagination5. Dreams (REM and NREM) also seem-
               ingly implement a momentary state of generally indeter-
               minate, organised and specialised cognitive function (e.g.
               intentionality and attention) to maintain the brain-mind for
               periods of varying length in the purely virtual phase effec-
               tively described as the “default mode network”. This is a
               typically “experimental” phase as both the dream and the
               wandering explore numerous potential configurations of

       4 Here and elsewhere I refer in particular to an important essay by J.A. Hobson et al.,
      “Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming”, Frontiers in Psychology 5, no. 1133
       (2014) https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01133. Hobson is an undisputed authority on dream
       studies and shares the theory (see in particular the works by G. Tononi) that dreams optimise
       some wakeful cognitive processes by alleviating and “pruning” the synapses in excess.
       5 See M. Corballis, The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You’re Not Looking
       (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2014). Corballis is a psychologist who mainly
       studies language but his book is up-to-date on the most accredited developments of the
       neurosciences regarding the dream phenomenon.

PIETRO MONTANI                                 157                                         AN-ICON
              well-defined or simply hypothetical situations and problems,
              often varied or even disparate. In this sense, the “default
              mode network” active in dreams in the hallucinatory form
              familiar to us prompts the entire neuronal apparatus to enter
              into free flow with no fixed objectives, allowing the “innate
              generator of virtual reality” in our brains to behave as a
             “free-running inference machine”.6 This machine – and we
              shall return to this – benefits from a “synaptic regression”7,
              a temporary reinstatement of extremely primitive neural
              circuits not used in the wakeful state.
                            In other words, our brain seemingly needs to
              suspend dealings with the real world (and its complexity)
              at regular intervals and start dialoguing with itself, gener-
              ating simplified and incoherent simulacra of a world so as
              to optimise, on reawakening, the performances that will
              enable it to cope once again with the complex (and harsh)
              reality. The autopoietic and virtualising nature of this work8
              offers a simple explanation for the fact that the foetus falls
              into full REM sleep in the thirtieth week of life.9 This is pure
              cognitive and proprioceptive training in VR as, at that stage,
              its only experience of the world is intrauterine. Hobson,
              Hong and Friston astutely likened this surprising evolution-
              al phase to an insurgence and initial coordination of the a




      6 J.A. Hobson et al., “Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming”: 22. As better
      clarified below, I shall here intend the concept or “regression” also in the specifically Freudian
      sense.
      7 Ibid.: 15.
      8 I discuss this point in P. Montani, Tre forme di creatività. Tecnica, arte, politica (Napoli:
      Cronopio, 2017).
      9 See J.A. Hobson, “REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness”,
      Nature Review Neurosciences 10 (2020): 803-813 10.1038/nrn2716.

PIETRO MONTANI                                  158                                           AN-ICON
               priori (intuitive and intellectual) forms discussed by Kant10
               (to whom we shall return).
                              What temporary conclusions can we draw from
               the parallel between the dream hallucination and VR? A cru-
               cial point regarding both the analogies and the differences
               seems to require critical attention. The neurophysiological
               study of dreams shows that a significant relationship can
               form between the sometimes hallucinatory and incoher-
               ent nature of images and the emergence of our cognitive
               strategies in the broad sense (e.g. the inferential activity
               attributable to the imagination).11 The emphasis should fall
               on both requisites – the incoherence and the hallucinatory
               nature – although, for obvious reasons, VR seems keen to
               focus primarily on the latter. To address this problem prop-
               erly, we should refer to Freud’s great work on the mental
               significance of dreams12, starting from a fairly solid point of
               contact between the neurophysiological model with which
               he worked and the very different ones we work with today.
               This point of contact consists in the specific importance
               of regression in hallucinatory and incoherent processes
               managed by the dream-imagination.

                                 Regression and “Bilderschrift” in dreams

                           When referring to Freud I shall totally disre-
               gard the aspect dearest to his heart, that dreams are in-
               terpretable and that this very interpretability defines their
      10 J.A. Hobson et al., “Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming”: 19. I. Kant,
      Critique of Pure Reason (1787), trans. P. Guyer, A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University
      Press, 1998). In a very important book, Before Tomorrow. Epigenesis and Rationality (Polity
      Press: Cambridge, 2016), Catherine Malabou argued in favor of an “epigenetic” interpretation
      of the development of Kantian a priori forms. I have developed a similar approach to Kant’s
      critical philosophy in P. Montani, “Imagination and its technological destiny”, Open Philosophy
      3 (2020): 187-201.
      11 The “judgement” I formulated during the described dream is typically inferential in form.
      For the Kant of the third Critique, it is the Urteilskraft, i.e. the “power of judgement”, that is
      essentially inferential and abductive in nature. See I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
      (1790), trans. P. Guyer, E. Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
      12 See S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), trans. J. Strachey, in The Standard
      Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vols. 4-5, (London: The
      Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1955).

PIETRO MONTANI                                  159                                            AN-ICON
              immensely important metapsychological condition. Is this
              approach justifiable? Yes if we refer to the last chapter of
              Traumdeutung, “The psychology of Dream Processes”. A
              footnote added in 1925 at the end of the previous chapter
              (VI, “Dream-work”) introduces its objectives significantly,
              saying that the particular nature of the dream-work should
              be studied as such, over and above the fact that this form
              of working is used by the unconscious in a hallucinatory
              and disguised mode to achieve its drives. Freud writes

At bottom dreams are nothing other than a particular form of think-
ing, made possible by the conditions of the state of sleep. It is the
dream-work which creates that form, and it alone is the essence
of dreaming - the explanation of its peculiar nature.13
                            The peculiarities of the dream-work – brilliantly
              studied by Freud in Chapter VI – are well known: conden-
              sation, displacement and considerations of representability.
              But the common trait is regression, intended by the author
              in a strictly topical sense. Explained as simply as possible
              (and in non-Freudian language), during dreams our mind-
              brain reconnects with a very primitive prelinguistic and
              preconceptual stage of its memory store. Or rather, it is a
              phase in which a profoundly embodied imagination (think
              of a baby just a few months old) has also had to perform
              the work (e.g. inferential) that would subsequently be del-
              egated to linguistic thought.14
                            The phenomenon of regression does not only
              belong to dreams, observes Freud, although in dreams it
              produces a particular “vividness”, a hallucinatory Belebung.
              That this is, in other respects, a somewhat paradoxical
              process emerges from the fact that “a particular form of

      13 Ibid.: 510. My italics.
      14 Using the terminology of Deleuze and Guattari, we could say that here the imagination
      adopts a predominately “striated” manner of proceeding. See G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, A Thousand
      Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980), trans. B. Massumi (London: Athlone, 1988).

PIETRO MONTANI                                 160                                         AN-ICON
              thinking” is entrusted to the process of regression in which
             “the fabric of the dream-thoughts is resolved [aufgelöst: dis-
              rupted] into its raw material”.15 But, we must add, it is dis-
              rupted as far as is possible for, although the archaic zone
              of the memory store in question dates from an evolutionary
              phase when linguistic thought did not yet exist, the latter
              will leave a trace in the regressive path implemented by the
              dream state in adulthood.16 As demonstrated, for example,
              by perhaps the most surprising requisite of the dream-
              work: the ability to treat words as if they were objects and
              play with their signifying matter. Further on, with regard
              to dream-hallucinations, Freud speaks of a “transvalua-
              tion” of thought into images; thought is drawn towards
              the most archaic memory store, to be seen specifically as
              a disabling of its logical and linguistic relations in favour
              of the earliest work of a totally embodied imagination. But
              these remain transvaluated thoughts and are by no means
              a reinstatement of a prelinguistic condition. Rather, it is a
              new reorganisation of the relationship between image and
              word, a radical renegotiation of their “normal” bond (I shall
              return to this key point later).
                            This brings fresh relevance to the factor of
              dream-work that Freud called “regard for representability”

What we have described, in our analysis of dream-work, as ‘re-
gard for representability’ might be brought into connection with the
selective attraction exercised by the visually recollected scenes
touched upon by the dream-thoughts (...) [So that] dreaming is
on the whole an example of regression to the dreamer’s earliest
condition, a revival (ein Wiederbeleben) of his childhood, of the



      15 Ibid.: 545. My italics.
      16 This is the theory developed by J. Derrida in Writing and Difference (1967), trans. A. Bass
      (London: Routledge, 2001).

PIETRO MONTANI                                 161                                         AN-ICON
instinctual impulses which dominated it and of the methods of
expression which were then available to him.17
                            Freud appears to refer to non-elaborated (or
              semi-elaborated) nuclei linked to powerful emotional in-
              vestments, such as the “internal objects” Melanie Klein and
              her followers later discussed when re-elaborating Freudian
              dream theory in broader and more flexible terms, and today
              considered widely reliable and compatible with neurosci-
              entific findings.18 The last lines of the citation (from a 1919
              addition) allow us to conclude that the regressive move-
              ment Freud attributed to the physiology of dreams can be
              acquired as a structural requisite of the dream-imagination
              without necessarily attributing it to instinctual motivation.
              In other words, if dream-work is rooted in the condition
              of very early infancy – the condition of being “in-fans” i.e.
              not yet capable of speech – this means that the regressive
              movement of the dream reaches and revives not only the
              desiring aspects but the concomitant inferential process-
              es too. Thus, these processes take place in the absence
              of language and make predominant use of prelinguistic
              images and schema. We could call it an imagination that
             “schematises without any concept” as Kant said regarding
             “reflective judgement”, highlighting its exceptional episte-
              mological significance.19 This further Kantian indication is
              by no means casual20 and should be paralleled with the
             “free-running inference machine” discussed by Hobson,
              Hong and Friston. Preliminary and free imaginative train-
              ing is required, hypothetical and exempted from defined

      17 Ibid.: 549-550. My italics.
      18 This is the theory persuasively argued by M. Mancia, Il sogno e la sua storia. (Venice:
      Marsilio, 2004); and Sonno & sogno. (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2006).
      19 See E. Garroni, Estetica ed epistemologia (Milan: Unicopli 2003); P. Montani, “The
      Imagination and Its Technological Destiny”: 3; L. Palmer, “Schematizzare senza concetti e
      senso comune”, in D. Cecchi, M. Feyles, P. Montani (eds.), Ambienti mediali (Milan: Meltemi
      2018): 39-56. Significantly, Palmer accompanies his rethinking of the Kantian concept with
      experimental evidence.
      20 See Montani, Tre forme di creatività; and “The Imagination and Its Technological Destiny”.

PIETRO MONTANI                                162                                        AN-ICON
                tasks, simplified and experimental, not only (as is obvious)
                before cognition can start to be deployed but also so that
                it can function constantly – e.g. (Tononi’s proposal largely
                endorsed by Hobson) in terms of synaptic pruning, simpli-
                fication and resetting of the inferential device.21
                               Before leaving Freud we must adopt another
                of his valuable indications. Above, I linked dreams to a
                particular way of reorganising the image-word relationship.
                I will specify that Freud clearly sees them, ultimately, as a
                relationship guided by a principle of reversibility. Not only
                are words used as if things, images also display a key trait of
                discursive convention. This trait is also fully comprehensible
                in intuitive terms: both ontogenetically and phylogenetically,
                the human imagination must have performed a major work
                of segmentation, classification and organisation (e.g. in-
                ferential) on the experience, valorising a certain intelligible
                profile of the images – precisely that which language will
                later formalise. Freud calls this property, reactivated by the
                dream-imagination, a Bilderschrift, a picture writing:

The dream-content (...) is expressed as it were in a pictographic
script [Bilderschrift], the characters of which have to be trans-
posed individually into the language of the dream-thoughts. If we
attempted to read these characters according to their pictorial
value instead of according to their symbolic relation [Zeichenbezie-
hung], we should clearly be led into error.22
                              Freud speaks here from the standpoint of inter-
                pretability (not relevant for us) but the observation can of
                course be generalised. Products of the dream-imagination

       21 See G. Tononi, C. Cirelli, Sleep function and synaptic homeostasis, Sleep Medicine
       Reviews 10 (2006): 49-62. In this sense and precisely because of its hallucinatory
      “resuscitation”, the dream-work restores not so much the contents of the oldest inferences
       but the earliest manner of that performance (i.e. “schematises without any concept”) which
       conduct precious selective functions for pruning purposes.
       22 Ibid.: 296. The translation of Bilderschrift as “pictographic script” is highly questionable;
       and that of Zeichenbeziehung as “symbolic relation” is frankly erroneous as the “symbolism”
       of dreams is not involved here but only the more general sign profile of dream-images.

PIETRO MONTANI                                   163                                          AN-ICON
               should above all be observed in terms of their Zeichen-
               beziehung, their singular and archaic relationship with the
               semiotic order. In other words, despite being hallucinatory,
               dream-images should also be appreciated for their ability
               to reactivate a condition in which the imagination has also
               processed them as the signs of a particular Bilderschrift.23
                            Our Freudian journey has taken us another
               major step forward: the relational aspect –stressed in the
               conclusions of the first section – can now avail of a specif-
               ic and significant reference to a scriptural element within
               the work of the imagination. This element can be linked to
               the radical regressive condition in which the imagination
               behaves literally as a VR generator. We can now try to better
               understand how this correlation works.

                                 Bilderschrift in very early cinema
                                 and in the digital age: the syncretism
                                 and intermediality of images

                            Interestingly, in its very early days, and roughly
               when Freud was developing his Traumdeutung and subse-
               quent metapsychological additions, the cinema was seen
               (or conceived) by some film-makers and theoreticians as
               closely resembling the device of image-word reversibility
               highlighted at the end of the previous section. This means
               that the birth of the cinema also featured a major focus on
               the network of relationships which the powerful illusion of
               reality produced by the cinematographic image was clearly
               keen to unite. In some cases, in particular, that image was
               seen as a syncretic form of expression: a space of compar-
               ison and integration between different levels of expression.
               This section dwells briefly on two significant examples of


       23 On the image-word connection and its meaning for an appropriate understanding of a
      “history” of the arts, C. Brandi’s observations in Segno e immagine (Palermo: Aesthetica, 2002)
       are valuable, not coincidentally introduced by a discussion on Kant’s schematism,

PIETRO MONTANI                                  164                                         AN-ICON
              this understanding of the image – which I call “intermedi-
              al”24: a reflection on the cinema of the “Russian Formalists”
              and Sergei M. Eisenstein’s first cinematographic theory
              centred on the project of an “intellectual cinema”.25 I shall
              conclude with some comments on VR installations and
              their inclusion in the intermedial paradigm of the image.
                            The Formalists felt strongly that the emergence
              of the cinema gave their era the privilege of observing a
              form of art in its nascent state. Cinema brought a brand-new
              addition to the technically reproduced image – the ability to
              move in time. Boris Eikhenbaum, for instance, argued that
              with cinema “for the first time in history, an art which was
             ‘depictive’ by its very nature became capable of evolving
              in time and proved to be beyond any comparison, classi-
              fication or analogy”.26 He was struck in particular by the
              fact that, in cinema, the image medium adopted an original
              condition because the reception of the film has to develop
              with a time sequence typical of other media (e.g. writing).
                            To better use these peculiarities, thought Eikhen-
              baum, the structural principles of the cinematographic
              text would have to comply with two preferential options,
              one paradigmatic and the other syntagmatic. The paradig-
              matic option consisted in asserting the conventionality of
              the image (its Zeichenbeziehung as Freud would say) in a
              head-on contrast with the naturalistic values of photograph-
              ic reproduction; the syntagmatic option consisted in em-
              phasising the discrete (or potentially discrete) nature of the
              formal unities placed in a reciprocal relationship following
              a short, markedly divided montage. These two requisites
              are therefore totally comparable to Freud’s Bilderschrift.
              But Eikhenbaum underscored another aspect concerning

      24 On this concept, see P. Montani, L’immaginazione intermediale (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010).
      25 See R. Taylor, ed., Russian Poetics in Translation, vol. 9: The Poetics of Cinema.
      (Department of Language & Linguistics: University of Essex, 1982); S.M. Eisenstein, Towards a
      Theory of Montage (London-New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010).
      26 B. Eikhenbaum, “Problems of cine-stylistics”, trans. R. Sherwood, in R. Taylor, ed., The
      Poetics of Cinema (Oxford: RTP, 1982): 10-21. My italics.

PIETRO MONTANI                                165                                        AN-ICON
               not the construction options but the structural conditions
               of understanding a film, arguing that the image plane in the
               cinema is always accompanied by the articulation of “inner
               speech” in the spectator’s mind. So, the cinematic experi-
               ence has to proceed via a constant integration of image and
               language planes, more akin to a process of reading than a
               prolonged and guided form of contemplation.27 Returning
               to the parallel with Freud’s reflection on the figures of the
               dream-work, we could say that, in films, the autonomous
               expressive and pathemic resources of the image come to-
               gether in a constant relationship with the broader cognitive
               resources accessed by linguistic thought.
                             Remaining largely on the wavelength of Eikhen-
               baum’s theories, Sergei Eisenstein pushed himself even
               further forward in the same 1920s’ time-frame, especially
               from a design perspective. In short, he believed that the
               discursiveness of cinema could function as a device that
               takes the spectator into close contact with the semiotic op-
               erations that enable the imagination to give sensible content
               to concepts. That is, it could explore the key imaginative
               performance that Kant called “schematism”. A performance
               that, unsurprisingly, we have already referred to regard-
               ing its relationship with dream-work. Eisenstein called this
               cinema “intellectual” because, from the political perspec-
               tive that excited him at the time, the cinematic experience
               promised to considerably alter the spectators’ “power of
               judgment” (to use another Kantian term), training them, for
               instance, in dialectical thinking, as we read in one of his
               notes for the planned film adaptation of Marx’s Capital.28
                             Although Eikhenbaum and Eisenstein’s the-
               ories cannot be generalised, we can agree on the fact


       27 On the complex intermedial nature of reading, see S.B. Trasmundi, S.C. Cowley,
      “Reading: how readers beget imagining”, Frontiers in Psychology 11: 531682 (2020), doi:
       10.3389/fpsyg.2020.531682.
       28 On this subject, see an important work by E. Vogman, Dance of Values. Sergei
       Eisenstein’s Capital project (Zurich-Berlin: Diaphanes, 2019).

PIETRO MONTANI                                 166                                        AN-ICON
              that, throughout the silent film period, the treatment of
              cinematographic images largely adhered to the general
              Bilderschrift principles discussed here, and often invented
              new figures of them. We can also agree that, whatever its
              strengths and weaknesses, this trend was destined to un-
              dergo a marked shift after the introduction of sound, which
              could inevitably be expected to produce – and Eisenstein
              was one of the first to denounce this29 – a strengthening of
              the reproductive and illusionistic effects of the film image
              and an ensuing increase in the naturalistic understanding
              of the film. From that moment on, the cinema pursued
              different paths which we cannot follow here although it
              may be interesting to ask what transformations would have
              been seen in the “scriptural” direction I discussed briefly at
              the start of this section.30 We must instead ask ourselves,
              and I shall do so rapidly below, whether the fundamental
              principle embraced by this direction, namely the activation
              of a critical countermovement physiologically correlated to
              the regressive nature of the image, reappeared elsewhere.
              And how it could also concern VR where the regressive
              movement, as mentioned at the beginning, reaches the
              extreme condition of a hallucinatory event.
                             Before proceeding we should again stress the
              relational, and more precisely intermedial, nature of the
              critical countermovement which accompanies the regres-
              sive process of the imagination – and thus also presumably
              its extreme outcomes in the hallucinatory version of VR.
              Against this backdrop, I shall conclude by touching on two
              different spheres of exemplification. The first concerns the
              spontaneous practices of syncretic writing in use on the
              Web for about 20 years now and which are increasingly
              widespread among its users. In the second, I shall pres-
              ent some brief comments on how the intermedial device
      29 See S.M. Eisenstein, “Buduščee zvukovoj fil’my. Zajavka”, in Id., Izbrannye Proizvedenija
      v šesti tomach. II (Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1963-1979): 15-16.
      30 I have done so partially in P. Montani, Emozioni dell’intelligenza (Milan: Meltemi, 2020).

PIETRO MONTANI                                167                                         AN-ICON
               has been managed in two remarkable recent installations:
               Carne y arena by Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu (2017) and
               VR_I by Jilles Jobin (2018).31
                            It is a fact that the birth of the interactive Web
               supported the emergence of a form of syncretic writing
               that does not merely combine image, word and sound
               but also very frequently exploits their reciprocal relations
               to obtain significant effects of meaning from this interme-
               dial confrontation – for the moment predominantly tuned
               into a playful, ironic and paradoxical register (I am thinking
               of all the “meme” forms). As well as not excluding signifi-
               cant evolutions and further differentiations, this aspect in
               itself already guarantees great (and spontaneous) reflexive
               control of the semiotic material manipulated.32 I have sug-
               gested calling this practice “extended writing”, adding that
               significant innovation might develop in the technologies of
               human expression. Indeed, the first thing to do is to study
               the internalisation processes and feedback on the imag-
               inative and cognitive conduct of those using it (but it is a
               mass phenomenon).33 I am keen to stress here that the
               regressive values linked to the image in extended writing
               are placed in a constant, systematic and plastic relationship
               with several critical and intellectual distancing practices,
               often of a distinctly intermedial nature. That is to say, they
               are conceived to exploit the effects of meaning ensuing
               from the re-mediation and comparison of different media.
                            The two installations mentioned above are im-
               portant not only for their uncommon design complexity but
               also and primarily for their intermedial tone (i.e. distanced
               and reflexive), albeit diversely interpreted in the two cases. In

      31 The two installations could be visited at the Fondazione Prada in Milan (2017) and the
      Istituto Svizzero di Roma (2018), respectively.
      32 See P. Montani, “Materialità del virtuale”, Agalma. Rivista di studi culturali e di estetica 40,
      no. 2 (2020): 11-18; and “Apology for technical distancing. But beware the feedback!”, IMG:
      Interdisciplinary journal on image, imagery and imagination 3 (2020): 264-281.
      33 The issue of “extended writing” should be included in an extensive case study of
      technological aesthetics, as well illustrated recently by V. Gallese, “The aesthetic world in the digital
      era. A call to arms for experimental aesthetics”, Reti, saperi, linguaggi 9, no. 17 (2020): 55-84.

PIETRO MONTANI                                     168                                              AN-ICON
               both, visitors realise that the VR is simply a part of a broader
               experience that can internally implement in various ways
               what I have just described as a critical countermovement. I
               shall conclude by indicating the essential coordinates below.
                              Carne y arena is a journey in four stages, the
               second of which contains a VR installation. Here, the visitor
              – alone and free to move around – finds him/herself spend-
               ing six minutes in a desert zone with a group of Mexican
               refugees trying to cross the US border but being violently
               driven back by an American army patrol.34 In the first space,
               visitors are asked to remove their shoes and socks and
               place them in a locker from which they will collect them later.
              This is a key strategic move because during their mobile
               permanence in the virtual environment their bare feet will
               make them constantly proprioceptively aware of an essen-
               tial split (Virtually Present, Physically Invisible is the instal-
               lation’s astute subtitle). A walkway awaits when they exit
               the “arena”, after retrieving shoes and socks, from where
               the visitors can catch a glimpse of what is happening in
               the semi-dark space of the virtual simulation by looking, if
               they so wish, through the gaps between the wooden planks
               of a wall. This is a further distancing from the powerful en-
               gagement just experienced. The walkway leads to a final
               room where, free to decide how long to stop at each one,
               they can watch video clips of the migrants narrating details
               of the episode to which the visitors have been invisible
               witnesses and what happened to them afterwards. Their


      34 I dwelled more analytically on the Iñarritu installation in P. Montani, Tre forme di creatività.
      See also F. Casetti, A. Pinotti, “Post–cinema ecology”, in D. Chateau, J. Moure, eds., Post–
      cinema. Cinema in the Post-Art Era (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020): 193-
      217; A. D’Aloia “Virtually present, physically invisible: virtual reality immersion and emersion
      in Alejandro González Iñarritu’s Carne y Arena”, Senses of Cinema 87 (2018) http://www.
      sensesofcinema.com/2018/feature-articles/virtually-present-physically-invisible-virtual-reality-
      immersion-and-emersion-in-alejandro-gonzalez-inarritus-carne-y-arena/. For an important
      discussion of the “empathic” effects attributable to experiences in VR see A. Pinotti, “Autopsia
      in 360°. Il rigor mortis dell’empatia nel fuori-cornice del virtuale”, Fata Morgana 39 (2019):
      17-32. On the aesthetics of’ “unframed” images see P. Conte, Unframing Aesthetics (Milan-
      London: Mimesis International, 2020).

PIETRO MONTANI                                   169                                           AN-ICON
             faces appear in high definition on small screens placed in
             niches around the walls of the room.
                            The important point here is that the VR is just
             one of the many elements in the installation and the overall
             experience stimulates visitors to engage in an intermedial
             reflection that invests them literally from head (equipped
             with visor and headphones) to toe (bare). The truly striking
             and forceful realism of the simulation thus finds its meaning
             within a complex narrative device. I shall add that even the
             patchy recollection of the six-minute VR simulation men-
             tioned at the start of this article finds interesting justification
             within the context of this complex cognitive and pathemic
             experience.
                            VR_I is an all-VR installation and far more playful
             than Carne y arena. The artist is primarily a choreographer
             and paid particular attention to the fluidity of movement of
             the five dancers who inhabit the virtual space and define
             it with their performance. They take on very different sizes
             in the various phases of the event: gigantic and objectively
             threatening at the start but miniaturised and observable later
             on, almost as if in a lab experiment on a small quadrangular
             platform, and finally life-size. Five people enter the virtual
             space and each visitor’s avatar can interact with the other
             four, not only on a haptic and sensorimotorial level (the hands
             have sensors) but also linguistically thanks to phono-acoustic
             equipment. The visitors find themselves in a metamorphic
             space resembling that of dreams: sometimes a boundless
             desert, at other times an urban landscape or a mountain-top
             loft with sweeping views down over a wide valley. The envi-
             ronments are always clearly identifiable and their subsequent
             development follows the rhythm of the dancers and the spa-
             tial harmony created by their movements. It is also significant
             that famous paintings (Matisse, Bacon) are hung on the walls
             of the loft interiors. Basically, the whole encourages visitors to
             let themselves go in an experience constantly tuned to a free

PIETRO MONTANI                       170                                AN-ICON
              reflexive register and they quickly realise that the rhythmic
              play between the different spatial dimensions is one of the
              core themes of the choreographic flow they are engaged in,
              as too is the doubling of the performance (the dancers giant
              or miniaturised, the paintings), the comparison between the
              dimensions and the free exchange of dialogue about what
              is seen and happening. We could perhaps describe VR_I as
              a lucid intermedial dream which can be realised without any
              forcing by an embodied imagination fundamentally recon-
              ciled with its less docile partner: language.

                                Conclusions

      ■       The hallucinatory immersiveness of VR must, just like that
      of dreams, be understood and studied against the backdrop of
      the network of significant relations it can entertain with other per-
      formances, for example inferential, of an embodied imagination.
      It seems inadvisable to isolate it from this broader context.35
      ■       The regressive aspect characterising the specific halluci-
      natory immersiveness of dreams must be understood primarily in
      terms of the neurophysiological functions (synaptic pruning, plas-
      ticity, resetting of inferential devices) attributable to the movement
      which allows the brain-mind to return to the situation in which
      the work of the imagination autonomously conducted cognitive
      performances that would, in a subsequent phase, be guided by
      linguistic thought.
      ■        It is in this regressive sphere36 that, remaining with Freud,
      we see the particular resources of a significant link between im-
      age and writing (a Bilderschrift). It is a link that very early cinema

      35 A critical-genealogical investigation into the life of media conducted in terms of the
      assemblages or true ecosystems, in which each time they assume a structural positioning and
      a cultural meaning, characterises the work of Francesco Casetti. See lastly and also for some
      significant analogies with the issue of immersiveness, “The Phantasmagoria: an enclosure and
      three worlds” (forthcoming).
      36 A “regression in the service of the ego” we could say, using a fine expression introduced
      by E. Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), but the issue
      should also be addressed from a broader disciplinary perspective in terms of the adaptive and
      evolutionary advantages ascribable to the work of the dream imagination.

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      interpreted predominantly as an intermedial comparison, i.e. a
      comparison-integration of different media (starting with image
      and verbal discourse) such as to combine a critical and reflexive
      countermovement constantly and systematically with the natu-
      ralistic and quasi-hallucinatory reception of the film.
      ■      This same countermovement is perceived today in the
      spontaneous phenomenon of extended writing which can be re-
      corded on the Web and in the design of some major installations
      in which VR features, in various ways, as a component of a more
      complex and “scriptural” narrative device in the broadest sense.




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AN-ICON has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No. 834033 AN-ICON.
The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” – Department of Excellence at the State University of Milan.



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