THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

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VIRTUALITY
EDITED BY MARK GRIMSHAW

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY P RESS
 C H APTER 3
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ENVISIONING THE
VIRTUAL

BRIAN MASSUM I

TIIE word "virtua.l"came into everyday use in the 1990s, as a rider on "reality."'füe
rider overrode: the connotation was unreality. In the phrase "virtual reality," the
adjective virtual stood as a synonym for art ificial. Artificial, in this context, meant
illusionary.The context, of course, was the dramatic registering in the popular imagi-
nary that enormous changes were on the hor izon with the dawning of the digital age.
The first tentat ive steps toward the construction of interactive immers ive environ-
ments had triggered hyperbolic worries-or hopes-that the fabled "cyberspace" of
1980sfuturist fiction was on its way to supplanting "actual" reality. The world would
be swallowed in its own artifice. Synthetic imagery, anirnated with simulated events,
would morph into an all-encompassi ng virtual habitat, somnabu list Matrix of the
illusionoflife.
The word virtual had a prehistory before its apocalypticcoming out into popular use.
1thad long existed as a specialist term in philosophy,where the noun form look prece-
dence: tlzevirtual. Almos! synchronously with the sudden popularity of its adjectival
incarnation, efforts began to bring the philosophical force of the virtual into evidence.
These efforts built in particular on Gilles Deleuze'slate-twentieth-centuq, reinvention
of the concept, working in the lineage of Henri Bergson.' As a philosophical concept,
the virtual has precisely to do with force. Derived from the Latin word for strength or
potency, the base deftnition of the virtual in philosophy is "potentiality:•What is in
potentia.litymay corne to be; and what has been, already was in potential. The virtual
must thus be understood as a dimension of reality,not its illusionary opponcnt or artifi·
cial overcoming.The virtual, as allied to potential, belongs specifically to the fon native
dimension of the real. lt concerns the potency in what is, by virtue of which it really
cornesto be. In other words, it connotes aforccof existence:the pressof the next, coming
to pass.The virtual pertains to the power to be, pressing, passing,eventuating into ever
new forms, in a cavalcade of emergence. For Deleuze, the question is then not "virtual
reality:'but the realityof tl,e virtual. Far from dcsignating a sterile replica of the real, the
56 THE FOUNDA T IONS OF VIRTUALITY

virtual is the very motor ofits continued becoming.Attributing such a moving charge of
realityto the virtual leads to a conundrurn, but also to an opportunity.
The conundrum is that potential never appears as such. What appears is that to
which it gives rise-wh ich is precisely not it, but its fulfillment Potential's fulfillment
is unJikeit: newlyarisen but fullydetermined; a closedcase.The openness of potential's
coming to pass passes into the over-and-doneness of what cornes. Potential effectively
disappears into what determinately emerges from its movement. It is recessive. And
rc-arising: no sooner has it disappeared into its own fulfillmentthan it makes itself felt
again in the press toward a next. Potential is abstract: never actually present as such. Tt
is as evasiveof the present as it is effective in its formation. Tue question of the reality of
the virtual is that of the realityof the abstract,as forceof existence that never is itself;as
formative movement with no proper form of its own. But then what can it mean to say
that it "makesitself felt"? It is no accident that Deleuze reinvents the concept of the vir-
tual working from Bergson,whose philosophy revolved around the rethinking of per-
ception. The virtual c:rnnot be separated from the question of perception. If the virtual
is rea1as charged, then it must in some way bear witness to its own force. For it is the
very definitionof"real" to make a forcefuldifference.That which is real is effective/yreal.
The differencemade cannot but be apparent, somewhere, somehow, really, in effect. But
how does an abstract realityeffectivelyappear?How does what cannot appear by nature
nevertheless appear, in effect?In what way is the imperceptibleforce of the virtual still
really perceived?
The opportunity is that the question of the virtual, connected in this wayto the ques-
tion of perception, encourages a reconsideration of the place of abstraction in our lives.
Tt forbids placing the abstract in simple opposition to the concreteness of experience,
or plotting it mechanically into an alternative between the artificial and the real-as if
the artificial did not have its own mode of reality. The issue becomes, not an epochal
struggle between the artificial and the real, but more positively the formative relation
between the virtual and what actualJyappears. The issue becomes the relation of the
virtual to the actual,as pertains to perception.This question addresses itself as much to
naturaJ perception as it does to synthetic imagesor simulated events in a crafted domain
such as that of the digital. lt raises the possibilitythat we might find no less artifice in
"natural" perception as reality on-screen. The question of perception is no longer one
of truth or illusion, but of differing modes of reality, in the movement of emergence
through which the forms of experience corne to pass.
The answer to the question of the realityof the virtual-or how that which is abstract
really appears-will necessarily remain as paradoxicalas the question itself. Jf potcntial
is about-to-be or already-fulfilled, still-to-come or just-past, then however it appears,
it will alwayscorne too earlyor too Late (perhaps even both at once). As a fonction of
this untimeliness, it will alwaysalso corne across as too little or too nmch: in excess of
or superfluous to the being of the actual whose force of existence it always still will
have been.
The only way to proceed is by exarnple, catching the virtual in the act, then looking
closely at how it works, and working from there to pr~ss its paradox lnto conceptual
 ENVISIONING T H E VIRTUAl, 57

service in order to see what difference might be made in how we think about percep-
tion. In other words: to reaJizethe virtual in thought, from and for experience, through
exemplification. ·
What better place to begin than the species of example that would seem least ame-
nable:opticaJ"illusions."The very name miUtates against taking what appears under the
perceptualconditions in question as real. Take the classic case of the Kanizsatriangle.
In its simplest presentation, it consists of three black circles out of each of which an
angular bite has been taken, yielding a little companyof what look like Pac-Man figures.
But what grabs your attention is not the Pac-Mans.The bites face each other in a con-
figurt\tionthat suggests the three aplces of a triangle. What grabs you is that, although
the triangleis not filledin by actually drawn lines, you see it as clearlyas the Pac-Mans.
To say that the triangle is "suggested" is an understatement. You aot onl)' see it-you
cannot not see it. lt jumps out at you so vividly that it backgrounds the figures that are
"actually" there. It shimm'e rs forth from their configuration to take center stage. lt is
what this occasion of perception is ail about. It is whnt givesthe experienceits dominant
character.
Now it may seem reasonable to call seeing something that isn't actuaJlythere an illu-
sion. But what do you call an illusion that you cannot 11otsee? And not just you, but
anyone who cares to look? What do you call an illusion that insistently refuses not to
appear?Something thnt jumps out unrefusably is certainly exhibiting an effectiveness.
The triangle appears, in effect.And it makes a difference.Its effectivelyappearing in this
waydetermines what this experience is actuaJlyfelt to be about. Lookedat this way,the
"illusion"robustlysatisfiesthe criteria for being reaJ. The question is, what mode of real-
ity are we,seers of triangles that are not thcre, commonly engagedin unrefusing?
An immediate response is: a relatio11al reality. The triangle emerges from the way
in which the Pac-Man figures corne together, separated from each other just so. Had
the figuresbeea too close or farther apart, the effect would have failed to take. Neither
would the effect have corne about had their configuration been skewed.TI1ereare con-
ditions:a critical distance and a requisite configu,ration. When the three figures appear
together under these conditions, the triangle appears, fillingthe distancebetween them.
The figuresare actually separated and rcmain so. No actual lines everjoin them. They
are and remain disjunctive:countable one by one, no one accountableto any other. They
are a disjunctive plurality, together in the mutual separation of their indifference to
each other, just being what they are, where they are, in their individual Pac-Manliness.
When the triangle cornes to take the angle of their open mouths for its own corners,
aJI of that changes. The figures instantly enter into relation, across their separation,
because their separationhas fulfilJedcertain conditions. The triangle takes them up
separately-togetherinto its own ability to appear. The Pnc-Men now figure conjointly
as requisiteelements for the triangle'semergence.They count for the triangle,conjuac-
tively.But still at a distance. In virtue of their conjunctivelyconcerning the triangle,they
remotelybut effectivelyconcern each other. They concern each other tliro11gl1 it. across
their separation, as a taken effect of their disjunctive plurallty.The effected triangle is
their concern for each other. It is their coming to be in relation,in visibleform. 1'

1
H
58 THEFOU NDATIONS OF VIRTUALITY

Tue triangle ls a coming into relation coming into sight-a beingof relationtaking
perceptible effect. The effective seeing of the being of the relation does not replace or
contradict tJ1e disjunctive plurality of the elements providing the conditions for its
appearance. It cornes in addition to their plurality , The oneness of the triangle superadds
itself to the Pac-Men's beingjust what they are individually, plurally one-by-one, each in
its own disjunctive corner. The supervening triangle is the emergent unity ofits requisite
elements' diversity . lt unitarily occupies their disjunctive in-between, taking their dis-
tance from each other as its own locus .
Of course, it is artificial to speak as if the Pac-Men came first and then in a sec-
ond moment a triangle took advantage of their separateness to add its alien unity to
them. The triangle and the elements conditioning its appearance corne strictly at the
same time. They enjoy equal immediacy. They are equaJly insistent in their refusa! not
to be seen. But of course, there is a difference . The company of Pac-Men are "actually''
seen: they correspond to regions of ink on the page, or arrays of pixels on the screen,
whose presence strikes our eyes in the form of reflected rays oflight. 2 The triangle perse,
however, corresponds to no such sensuous input. It corresponds, as such, to no material
presence. And yet it shinuners. lt is really seen, wiiliout "actually" being seen. It appears
nonseosuously, in excess over the actual conditions ofits appearance. lt is a visibly real,
virtual triangle.
This way of expressing Ùle difference between the triangle and its matetial conditions
creates a vocabulary problem. If we cal! something we really see without "actually" see-
ing it virtuaJ, it sounds as if we are defining the virtual as the oppositeof ilie actuaJ, when
we have just established iliat in this case the virtual effect and the actual elements condi-
tioning its appearance corne to perception strictly at the same time, with equal immedi-
acy, and are equally insistent in their really being seen. A shift in vocabulary resolves this
problem. If we work in the distinction between senst1ousand nonsensuous(Whitehead
1967, 180-183) , it becomes easier to articulate how the Pac-Men and the triangle through
which they relate are equally reaJ, in different modes.The distinction between the actual
and virtual shifts accordingly.
We already have the basis on which to build an understanding of ilie difference in
their mode of reality: the individual Pac-Men, as such, figure as a disjunctive plural-
ity. This means you can count them singly, taking each separately from the others in
tum, wiiliout it making any difference in what they are understood to be. Each is still
a Pac-Man. A disjunctive plurality is a set whose members corne separately together,
countable one by one. They cou nt singJy.Together, the y are an aggregate of singles. The
triangle, for its part, appears as a unitary figure, directly and in alJ immediacy. It doesn 't
count one by one. It counts, in ail immediacy, as one. It is a si11g ularity.Since this singu-
larity corresponds to nothing outside îtself on a material plane where elements of sets
can be understood to figure separately, strictly speaking ît has no parts. It cornes as a
unity in additionto the divers•ity of the elements conditioning it. It is a whole apart from
that diversity, singularly occupying the distance between the elements. It dodges their
plurality, making its locus precisely where they are not. Yes, a triangle bas three sides.
This is undeniable. Just count them. But: in counting, you are no longer deaJing directly
 ENVISIONING THE VlRTUAL 59

with the triangle as the unitary figure it is in all immecliacy.Youar.edealing with a set of
lines, taken individuaUyone after the other. Youcannot analyzethe unity of the triangle
into constituent parts without changingits nature:without resolving it into a plurality
that it singularly isn't in the immediacy ofits effectiveappearance.
There is a mode of reality that is countableone by one, and there is a mode of reaHty
that counts-as-one.These modes corne together, as coïncident dimensions of the sarne
occasionof experience, with equal immed.iacyand insistence. Wbat we actuallyeicperi-
enceis this insistent coïncidence. What we actuallysee is the concernful binding of the
differentmodes, effectivelyexpressedin the appearance of a unitary form taking singu-
lar effectas the visible being of a relation. The relation is the tak.ing-upof the disjunct
elementsin emergent form. What we see most saliently is that supervening form. The
salienceof the form is the product of the d.ifferentmodes' coinciding.It is also theirrela-
tion, made visible.The emergent triangle is what singularly cornes of the modal differ-
encebetween d.isjunctiveplurallty and singularity.
Wecan now take the word "actual" in its etymologicalsense: "in act." The salient unity
of the triangle and the disjunctive plurality of its conditions of emergence are in on the
act of perception. They are constitutive dimensions of its coming to pass. They bclong
equallyto the event tbat is this occasion of experience. From this point of view,they are
dimensions of the actual.
This might seem like a counterproductive move. It now seerns as if the virtual has
been swallowedby the actuaJ, when the whole point was to respect the reality of their
difference.But progress has been made. We now can understand their differencecliffer-
ently,by returning to the distinction between the sensuous and the nonsensuous. We
can understand it, precisely,in modal terms. Not as different"spaces"that are in opposi-
tion to each other. Not as real versus unreal. Butas different manners of really belonging
to the same event:different ways of being in the act, effectivelybound in a relation of
concern,to saliently figurai effect.
The sensuous elements in the event do involve a necessary reference to space. To
say that they are countable is to say that we can point to them "over there" one by
one. Tue sequence of the counting corresponds to the sequential progression of our
painting from one "over there" to another. The demonstrative over-thereness of the
countableelements locates them as projectivespace. It is important to be clear that it is
not the space that is projected; rather, it is our counting that projects itself. Our activ-
ity projects itself. It is executed here, for counting over there. Stretching from here to
there, it is self-distancing.This stretch of activity constitutesthe "space"of our experi-
ence. Space is now in scare quotes because a "space" of experieoce is not just made of
over-thereness.lt is also made of a sequential progressionthat takes time to unfold In
other words, the space of experience includes a time factor. 1tis a space-timeof experi-
ence. That which is sensuously real {i.e., the reality of which corresponds to physical
impingements upon our body, as for example, and lt is just one example, light upon
the retlna) belongs to a projective space-time of experience actively constituted by a
counting of-or more generally and significantly,an accoimtingfor-a plurality of dis-
junct elements,3
60 THE FOUNDATIONS OF VIRTUA.L!TY

Compare thfa to the triangle. It jumps out at us, into our vision, bypassing any cor-
responding physical impingement upon our eyes.lt dodges the plurality of the sensuous
elements in play in eager display of its own nondecomposable unity, in ail immediacy.
If we treat it as though it were "overthere" in the same mode as the Pac-Men and try to
straddle it with our activity,the singularity of its appearance evaporates. For example, if
we trace its nonsensuous form by passing our fingersalong one sicle,then another, we
have replaced the singularity of the triangle by a set of lines counting one by one. We
have accounted for it by transposing it into another mode of existence, translating it in
terms of figures it is not Caress it with your well-considered thoughts, and you've clone
it again. Judge its geometry; likewise.
The triangle only appears as the singular figure it is as a unitary pop-out effect, in
immediate offset from its conditioning elements' disjunctive plurality.To experience it
as it is, and for what it is, we must simply leave it be. There is nothlng to be done with it
that won't change its nature. In ils simplicity,it has a strangely compelling,shimmering
sterility. It is simply there ln excessover the disjunctive plurality that sensuously con-
ditions its appearance- as well as any actively constituted space-time of experiential
accounting for that plurality. The visibly appearing being of the relation that it is, is a
dodge of sensuous experience. Tt is unitarily ail and only a nonsensuous appearance.
Lacking sensuous correlates, it has a spectral quality to it. lt is a pure appearance.But
once again appearance is used here in the strong sense: as that which effectivelyappears,
regardless.The triangle effectivelyappears, in a dodgy, unrefusably nonsensuous mode
of offset, pop-out reality.The mode of reality of the triangle is not projective but super-
jective,in the etymologicaJsense of that word: "thrown over,""goingbeyond;' "exceed-
ing:' The virtual is the pop-out dimension of the actualwhereby it really, appearingly,
exceedsitself. The virtual is the excessivedimension of the in-actas it throws itself into
experience over and above its sensuous conditions. lt is the dodgy, supervenient manner
in which the actuaJeffectivelyappears to include moretliancan be sensuouslyaccounted
for: a reality of the abstract. The appearance of an abstract locus nonsensuously filled
with a spectral being of relation.
Time is a factor in a much more primordial way than the discussion of counting let
on. We don't have to start counting the Pac-Men to constitute the space of projective
experience to whlch they belong. Too late-we already have an intuition of their num -
ber and their mode of spatiotemporaJexistencebefore it even occurs tous to count them
or ask ourselves about their status. This is because we have encountered many sets of
sensuous elements in the past, counted many an element, activelyaccounted for many
a configuration. The "intuition" we have of what might be done with their pluraJityand
spatiotemporaJity is a habit we have contracted. The experience cornes with the poten-
t'ialfor us to account for them disjunctively in the same mode we have countless times
before. This potential experience presents itself in the immediacy of experience, flush
with the just-occurring of this event of vision. We alreadyseethepotentialwithout hav-
ing to activelyplumb it, as if we had alreadygone through the motions-it has corne toô
early for that. 'flre1mfoldingofsensuousexperienceprecedesitselfin potentialasa directly
livedhypothesis-an "as if" directly experienced in an immediacy of seeing, too early
 ENVISIONINGTHE VIRTUAL •61

for the hypothetical judgment to have actually occurred. That is why there was a cer-
tain circularity in our explanation. We began by remarking the distance separating the
pac-Menas agive11,when in the theoretical termsset in place here that distancecan only
ligureas constitutedby activity in a spatiotemporal thickness of experience coming too
earlyand too late. The circularity is real: what is givcn is a recursiveness
of actuai experi-
encewhereby it precedes itselfin potential, alreadygMng itselffor the future.
Fundamentally,what is given is the tJ1icknessof potential. The given potential that
theevent is thick with is past activity ma.kingitselfprcsent in visibleform, for the future.
Neither the future, nor the past thickening the present for it, is sensuous. TI1esensu-
ous elements in play envelopthe nonsensuo11s past and future in the materiality of their
impingingon the body. They are the leading edge of the formiog event, bringing past
:1ndfuture together in the present of theirbodily impingement (Whitehead 1967,189). At
the dawning of a perception, in the flush of its first occurring, we alreadyfind ourselves.,
too early, too late, in a being of relation in which sensuous and nonsensuous, material
and immaterial realities,past and future, presentlycoïncide, in act.
When we say that the presence of the Pac-Men is "sensuous" we really mean that the
nonsensuous dimension of future-past recursivity is recessive.lt is enveloped in the
nrnterialactivity of impingement that strikes as the leading edge of the event's occur-
rence. The event is finally characterized at a second nonsensuous level: that of the
superveoing appearance of an abstract and immaterial pop-out reality, in this case an
all-too-present triangle-form. That which is recessivein the act, enveloped in its taking
effect,is "infra" toit. The enveloped nonsensuous reality of the past and future is infra-
ceptive(etyrnologically,"seized within"). The sensuous is thus sandwiched between two
virtualities,two ways in which sensuous experience exceeds itself. One is recessive,the
other pop-out. One is infraceptive, the other superjective.One hits with the present of
appearance, seized recursively within; the other doubles that sensuous impact, show-
ilyjumping out. One is enveloped, the other supervenient. One is thick with potential,
the other superfluously ashimmer with sterile impassivity.Both aspects of virtuality are
"immanent'' (to the in-act; to the event of perception's occurring). They corne together
in the recursivityof that event, across their infra-super difference.
Ail of this invites the introduction of a further term. There is a tension between the
unrefusablejust being-there of the Pac-Men on the one hand, and on the other the as-if
of their appearing in ail irnmediacy as a countable plurality, without actually having
been counted. There is tension between the disjunctive pluralityof the elements count-
able one by one, and the nondecomposability of the emergent figure that dodges them
to count-as-one. TI1ereis a tension between the single and singular.There is a tension
between the backgrounded impact of sensuous impingement and the impassivity of
nonsensuous salience. There is a tension between the splay of space given "out there:·
and the dynamic stretch of experiential space-time constitutive of it. There is a tension
between the infraception and supervention.
TI1etensions are between modes of existence proposing themselves to the expe•
rience. The tensions corne with the simultaneous contrast betweeo the sensuous and
the nonsensuous (Pac-Men/triangle, coinciding in vision). And they come recursively

L
 -
61 THE FOUNDATIONS OF VIRTUALlTY

between aspec ts of the nonsensuous in contrast with itself (infraceptive/superjec tive

in different tenses, future-past and present). The modes do not add up to a fonn. They
are tensely, incommensu rably ctifferent Their incommensurability exerts a differential
pressure. The pressure is unsustainable. Something has to give. What gives ls a triangle.
TI1eappearance of the triangle resolves the tensions into its own emergence. And it is an
"emergenc e," even if we canno t place the triangle's appearance after tbat of the plural-
ity of elements conditioning it in chronological time. The order is logical, not chrono-
logical. ~ The superjective figure of the triangle pops ou t from the tensional field, refusing
to restrlct itself to its sensuous dimensions. The dodgy supe rject is "new" vis-à-vis the
sensuous elements in play in the sense of being beyond them, in excess of their figur-
ing, singularly superadded to their plurality. By their sensuous logic, it is a supervening
alien being (the being of a relation that does not concern them individuall y, but only
as taken together, abducted, in the emergent interests of an added appearance "thrown
over" theirdisjunctive plurality).
If we ask what the "cause" of the experience is, the only answer is: the nonform of the
differential tensions between modes. Although without form, this is not nothing. The
pressure is intense. This is afield of intensity for something to give. The pressure for reso-
lution is a formative force.The "cause" is a force field of emergence resolving itself into
the appearance of a superject. 5 The Pac-Man configuration does not causethat event
in any linear sense: the superjective appearance of the nonsensuous figure of the trian-
gle dodgily liftso.fffrom them. It throws itself over their distance, rather than following
closely upon them. It does not follow through with them in like manner, as in contin ulty
witb their mode of existence. It supervenes upon them, jumping singular ly out into its
own mode. At the same time, the Pac-Men are required for the triangle's appearance.
Without them, it would not occur. They provide it the propi tious conditions. That is
exactly what these sensuous elements are: not causes, but conditions.Leading-edge con-
ditions for an event that exceeds them.
Causes suborctinate (the what-may-co me to their own mode, asserting itself in the
imperative). Co nditions are jump ing-off points (for the emergence of the new). Causes
command follow-through in their own mode: they are conformai.To take a clas-
sic Newtonian example, if the impetus is a collision, the causal impact wiU govern an
equal if opposite movement, accoun table in likc terms. Co nditions do not command
follow-th rough . They propitiate liftoff. The impetus is a d.isjunctive plurality, and what
gives is a supernumerary unity counting immediately as one in its own singular way.
Condi tions are not conformai. They areformative field factors, giving figure to the new.
Formation, in this emergent sense, is a conditional field pheoomenon, energized by
differential inten sity. "Eoergy" here does not refer to malter alone. It refers to the ten-
sion between on the one hand the sensuous reality we associate with materiality, and on
the other the nonsensuous reality of the abstract that sensuous reality envelops and by
which, with equal immediacy, it is supervened (Whitehead 1967,182-183).
There is one more term that needs to be added to tensio n: tendency.The role of
acquired habit in the immediacy of experience was discussed earlier. Habit brought the
future-past of potential intraceptively into the occasion of experience as a perceptual
 ENVISIONINGTHE VIRTUAL 63

"judgment" occurring flush with the event.The "judgment"cornes"as if"-as ifan act of
judg!Ilent,likecounting, had actually been performed when the knowingcornesso flush
that there is no way that it could have been. Perceptua.1judgments are neither deductions
nor inferences, but deserve a logical category ail their own: "abductions" (Peirce 1997,
93-94, 242-147). In addition to acquired habits, there are also arguably innate "hab-
its:•arrlving from the genetic past of the species, that predispose perception toward the
isolationof Platonic forms like the triangle. Howeverthey are contracted, at whatever
scale of the past, habits are formative vectors: they exert a formative pressure in a cer-
tain direction, toward a certain outcorne. They are one of the formativefactors that give
aim to the experience (Whitehead 1978, 15, 17, 69). Of course, the fieldconditions have
everything to say about this. If they are propitious, the aim will culminate in a "new"
emergence along habitua! lines. Sorneconditions might throw the aim off,so that it will
not reach its end. In stiUother conditions, the field may resolveitselfin the direction of
an emergencein a stronger sense of "new": nota new iteration along the same lines, but
a superveningappearance of something unprefigured that has never been seen before.
It is ail a question of technique.The element of technique is how the experiential lead-
ingedgeof the sensuous elements are disposed toward a nonsensuous outcome, how the
conditionsconfigure. This dispositional configuring of conditions may occur in a way
wetend to call "-natural."Or they may be "artificiaJ:' as in the settiag in placeof the con-
ditions for an optical «illusion"to appear. ln fact, it is ahvaysboth. Producing an optical
illusiondepends as much on the human body's "natural" propensities (its innate pre-
dispositions)as it does on artifice (such as the body's acquired predispositions and the
craftof configuring Pac-Men). lt is entirely conceivablethat under certain conditions a
pop-outnonsensuous triangle might occur entirely "naturallY:'There is nothing to say
thata nonsensuous triangle could not pop out from a disjunctivepluraHtyencountered
in the woods,just as well as from a sheet of paper or a computer screen. Everything
about the virtual is a question of technique. But the question of technique is not limita-
tive, in the sense of being restricted to a given domain of activity.Nor is it categorical,
in the sense of pertaining to the artificial as opposed to the natural. Techniqueslending
themselves to aonsensuous emergences are transducibleto dlfferentdomnins of activity
(Simondon 2005), where they corne to operate to new effect.In whateverdomain, they
alwaysinvolvea mixed regimeof factors categorizableas natural and artificial.
If this is the case, then nonsensuous "artifice"must be found in even the most "natu-
ral"of experiences. Take the experience of depth in everydaylife.There is a disjunctive
pluralitybuiJt into the human body: our two offset eyes.1l1eoffset creates a tension-
the binocular disparity of two images that do not coïncide, The tension is unsustain-
able. Something has to give. From the differential between the two, a singular image
emergesto resolvethe tension. What arises is not only a new image over and above the
two built into our sensuous body's apparatus. An entirely new quality of experience
emerges:depth. Depth is an emergent property possessedby neither of the imagescon-
ditioning its appearance. A new dimension, a third dimension, is thrown over binocular
disparity.People who Jackdepth perception then have it restored describe the incred-
iblenoveltyof seeing objects "pop out" into a shimmering salienceof stereoscopic relief
64 THE FOUNOATIONS or VIRTUALITY

(Sacks 2011, 130). The abjects of our experience as we ''naturally" perceive them in ail
their 3D glory is a really appearing optica l "illusion": a really abstract, superjective emer-
gence conditioned by our body's innate ''habit" of growing two offset eyes.
Acqui red pred ispos itions also play an essentia l role. lt is well known that even with
a well-functioni ng visual apparatu s, depth percept ion cnnnot develop without move-
ment. Movement indexes the reachfag of our hands for things "over there" with our
accounting for them visuaUy "here." It similarly indexes the expe rien ce of the steps
we may take to reach them. We are seeing "as if" we were moving. Seeing an object's
three-dimensionality is seeing the movement without its actually having occurred. We
are seeing in the "as if " of movement. In other words, we are seeing the potential stretch
of ou.rexperience, in all the immediacyof an event of vision. We are seeing the stretch of
ou.r bodily potential in the pop-out form of the object. The differential tension between
vision, touch, and proprioception (the disjunctive plurality of our separate sense chnn-
nels) is resolved into the supe rjective unity of the object.h Such is ou r perceptual ten-
dency: to aim for the superaddition of objects to our lives.
The natural objectsof ourperceptionarevirt11al appea.rances (Noë 2004). Their arising
is cond itioned by the cofunctioning of the separate senses, and of innate and acqui red
predispositions, taking aim. The bodily artifice of binocular d isparity is just the most
proxima te conditioning factor (being right in front of our nose). Other techniques
involved in making abjects appear may be artistic, craftsman-like, or techn ologica l.
Whe n innovations in art or craft or technology elaborate upon ou r "naturaJ" talents for
object perception to invent new experientia l effects that have never seen before, they
a.re not "extending'' our bodies away from its natura l condit ions into the reaJm of the
artificial (the "prosthetic" theory inherited from Marshall McLuhan). Ourexperience is
already a stretch of potential. lt is self-prosthetic. What art nnd technology do is extend
the body's existing regime of natural and acqu ired artifice,already long in active duty
in producing the uvirtual reality'' of ou r everyday lives. The life of the body is naturally
crafty.
There is an odclity in the emergence of 3D vision that adds an important tesson to how
we understand the concept of the virt ual. Jf the two images belong ing to ou.r respec-
tive offset eyes were act11ally seen, then there would be no pop-out stereoscopic vision.
The disparity of the images would interfere with the emergence of the resolving image.
They would conspi re plura lly agalnst its uni ty, in competition with it We a.rein the as-if
again: it is as if the images were actually produced, when they can't have been. The emer -
gence of the 3D vision does not just resolve the disparity between the disjun ct images. Jt
makes as if they never happened. It offers its own emergence in thei.r stead. lt takes their
place for its own locus, th rowing itself over thei r conditioning differential. The contribu-
tory images are virtualizedby the emergence of depth perception. They are recurslvely
determined by the emergence of the new image never actually to have occurred.
But at the same time, the dispa rate images and their interference cannot not have
occurred, being requisite cond itions for the experience that did effectively came to pass.
If the images cannot not have occurred, but didn 't actua lly occur, the only opt ion is that
they occ urred virt11ally. They contributed their potential interference to the 3D image.'
 ENVISIONINGTHE VIRTUAL 6S

'fhe emergence of the 3D image resolved the potential conflict into its own effective
appearance.The interference of the two ingredient images that did not occur figures, in
3Deffect,as a virtualevent.
The oddity is that events ù1at do not actually occur can be requisite conditions for
whatdoes eventuate. To translate this example back into the distinction between the sen-
suousand the nonsensuous, in this case the sensuous elements (the imagescorrespond-
ing ro the disparate physical impingement of light rays upon h\'O retinas} are resolved
by the superjective experience to have been virtual. They are, in effcct,rendered non-
sensuous.They are infracepted.This happens recursively. The superjective emergcnce
backcastsits resolve into an imperative for its own conditions to have been otherwise.
(Parenthetically,Lhiscou Id form the basis of a superjectivetheory of the will:an effective
rcsolvelacking a subject separate from its own emergent pop-out cffect,appearing as
superject;the will as a really appearing "opticalillusion" of abstract agency;in the terms
ofthe concepts developedhere, this amounts to a formativejie/dingofthewill.)8
Nonser1Suo11s rendering-the infraception of sensuous elements-is a necessary part
of any theory of the virtual. The reality of the virtual is not only coextensive with the
potentialstretch and superjective resolveof our lives.The formativefactorsof tbat real-
ityvary widely,even wildly.TI1ereis no once-and-for-all,jack-of-all-trades description
oftheir role.They remobilize under continuai transformation. The roies iliey play effec-
tivelyvary,especiallyas techniques for the emergenceof virtual realitiestransduce from
fieldto field. Not only can they vary. As nonsensuous rendcrlng shows, they can trans-
mute,changing their very natures, as if by an alchemy of experience.This means that
the account of the virtual, and the rote it itself plays, must be contlnually renegotiated
forevery exampleconsidered. The virtual is ail about creativity:potential and the emer-
genceof the new. Its conceptualization cannot fail to be equallycreative,at the price of
failingto be true to the protean realityof nature'sartifice(and the nature of the artificial).
ln the course of iliis account, we have "seen"the emergenceof virtualfigures,strenu-
ouslyexemplified by a now very tired triangle. We have seen, more brieflybut also more
suggestively,that objectsthemselves are similarly emergent virtual forrns (Massumi
2011, 6, 41-43). We have also seen iliat there are virtual eventsupon which perception
depends (no relation to the cyberspatial notion of simulated events; or rather, related,
but in wayswe can only reallyunderstand thorough an exemplaryrethinking of the arti-
ficialand of abstraction in terms of nonsensuous realityand its sensuous conditions).
One last form of virtuality must be mentioned to do justice to the full stretch of the
virtual'sreality: value.A crawling baby, whose predisposltion to continue in existence
is not yet finely honed, advances wormlike toward a cliffedge.9 Its deficit of depth per-
ception,and its lack of ability to "judge" with all immediacy,flush with perception, the
hypotheticaloutcomes envelopedin locomotor experience,conspire to endanger its life.
Not yet profident in the perceptual judgment of the "as if;' it failsto register the "what
if" of its crawl Not so the distracted parent. No sooner has attention turned back to
the child Ù1anthe parent is launched into action, without pausing to think, too fast to
haveactually sized up the danger. The "what if " came immediately,in a blink, and was
directly transduced into action. What the parent "saw" was not just a baby crawling.
66 THE l'OUNDATlONS O F VIRTUALITY

The parent saw a set of dijjerentials:a gravitation al differential between the top of the
cliff and the bottom, coincident with the existential differentlal between life and death.
The interference pattern of these differentials produced an unsustainab le tension that
resolved ltself into immediate action.
Here, the experiential pop-out effect is nota figure or an abject, althoug h these also
appear (the baby's advance is perce ived nonsensuously as an abstr act line [Massumi
2011, 17, 106] of future-pastness; 3D abjects of ail manner populate the field). The
launching-into -action effect may be conditioned by virtual events (including
the usual tricks of our two not always watchful enoug h eyes), but these were back-
grounded. What singularly came into saJience, thrown over the plurality of the ingre-
dient figurai, objective, and eventaJ factors, characterizing what this expe rience is ail
about, was a value. A life value. An existential value. What the parent "saw, in the
blink of the forming ex:perience, was the life value of the child's continued existence.
This is a maximally abstract virtual reality. Toere is nothing "over there" to which it
correspo nds. The great "out there" is utterly indifferent to one infan t more or less. It
is only out of the tension al field of the parent's love and desires, stretching their salva-
tional potential over to the child's oblivious locomotio n, taking into that stretch the
energizing motive force of the differential between up and down, life and death, that
this singu lar expe riencin g of existential value emerges. Existential value is a virtu-
aUy occurring added-value: a surplus vaille of perception (as are figures and abjects,
in their ow n virtual way). It is a really appearing, abstractly real superaddition of and
to experience. Unlike the virtual figure of the triangle and th e virtu al forms objects,
value is invisible. It is imperceptible by nature. 10 Even so, lilœ them its supe radditioo
reallymakes a difference.It is what transmutes the world's indifference into concern,
for t his event. As this happen s, nothing of indifference subsists. The ingredient ele-
meot s of the event, of whatever nature, are integraUy bound togethe r in the form of
the emergent concern . The conditi ooing differentials and d isjun ctive pluralities are
thrown over into this value integration (in much the same way our Pac-Men came to
conce rn each other in the figure of the triangle, overcoming the separateness of their
counti ng one by one in its relationaJ counting -as-one). Value is the ultimate way in
whicb the world's actuality lncludes that which exceeds the just-being -there of the
disjunctive plurality of its element s.
The virtual reality of the superadded value is immediately doubledby an action path.
The perception of value and the path of action are in the closest of eventfu l embraces,
but occur as on parallel tracks . The perception of value is nonsensuous and impassive,
in the sense that it figures as something that will not change, and cannot change if it
reaUybe what it is (once a value, always a value). The perception of value is oondecom-
posable. This time, for all time, it is an existential value enveloping love and desire. Its
nonde compo sable ooce-and-for-all does not rnake it simple. It is singular, yet complexly
conditioned: not simple, simplex.The other track, the causal path of action, is also com-
plex, but in a different mode. It is sensuous, physically charged, and decomposable into
separate steps: composite,emphasizing tbat word's base connotation of disjonctive plu-
rality ("made up of distinct parts "). In more inclusive examples, where virtual figures,
 ENVISIONINGTHE VIRTUAL 67

objects,events, and values co-occur, the situation 1salways marked by this doubleness
of conditioning and causality (of conditioned nonsensuous emergence and the con-
formai physical/sensuous causality; Deleuze 1990a, 4-11, 94-99). The sensuous and
the nonsensuous, the simplex and the complex, the actual and the surplus values of its
various ways of cxceeding itsclf, arc everywhere in the closest of embrace, and interlace
(Deleuze2002; Massumi 2002, 133-143). Even the run to the edge of the clifftakes effect
in its pop-out way,as a dynamic unity of forward rush across the steps, filling the dis-
tance between them with itsoverarchi ng oftheir separateness.
·n1e reallty of the matter is: virtual forms (figures, objects), events, and values always
co-occur.Lifecomes in situations, and situations are complex-which is to say,simplex
1oo.The diffèrent species ofvirtuality alwaysoccur together as part of a virt11nlecologyof
sensuous and nonsensuous embracings and interlacings (Guattari 1995, 88-97, 109 - 110).
The point of this final exarnple with which this account is crawling toi ts end is that tbe
axiological di111cnsio11of our ùnme<liate experience- the value dimension-ca nnot be
adequately described without recourse to a theory of the virtual. At its farthest stretch,
as Félix Guattari reminds us (1989; 1995), the ultimate sign ificanceof the virtual resides
in "universes of value" that are "incorpo real" in nature ( nonsensuously real). ln this axi-
ological dimension, a.srelating to universes of value, the theory of the virtual is directJy
ethical:it immediately pertains to courses of action that make a dynamic life difference.
Whatqualifies action as ethical is the cloublingof its causal efficacyby a virtual transmu-
tation ofindifference into real concern for the event. The transmutation runs parallel to
the action, in anothe r mode of being, effectivelyon another track. lt is singularly condi-
tioned, arising as a simplexity of immediate experience superveniently overstretching
the compositing of eau.ses.Where we corne to is a situational ethics- redefined as the
axiologicalalchemy of the virtual.

N OTES

1. Morerecently,this Bergsonian/Dcleuzianlineofthinkingonthevirtualhascross-fertilized
with Alfred North Whltehead'swork, in parlicular his concept of "pure potcutiality"
(Massumi2011). What followsis stronglyaccentedby this cncounter. Dcleuze'ssometime
coauthor, Félix Guattari, develops in his solo writing his own account of the virtual,
whoseinfluenceis also strongly felt here, particularlyin the final sections.The key texts
areBergson(2004) , Deleuze(1986, 1989, 1990a, 1994,2002), Deleuzeand Guattari(1987),
Guattari(1989, 1995), and Whitehead(1978).
2. Althoughblack is clefinedin optics as the absorptionof all light waves,1mder reaJ-world
conditionsthcre is never cor-np
letcabsorption. Tobe prccisc,"beingcoloredblack or white
dependson the contrasts in the light intensity betwcenadjacentareas.. .. An increasein
the brigbtnessof the surround can drive a whitearea to grey or black"(Thompson2005,
46-47). Thisrelationalfactof perceptionisoffundamentalimportance,but isnot essential
to emphasizefor the purposes of this stage of the current account, wherc the operative
distinctionis betwecnperceptualeffectsthat are objectively plottableto the optical array
and those that are not (developcdbelow into the distinction between"sensuous" and
"nonsensuous"perception).
68 THE FOUNDATIONS OF VIRTUALITY

3. On counting. space, and the space-lime e.xperieoce,and the relation between multiplicity
and its unification,see Bergson2001,73-87.Bergsoncapturesthe "stretch"of the projective
space-time of experience in the phrase ''the object is where il is perceived"(2004, 3u).
4. See Deleuzeon "staticlogicalgenesis" (1990b,118-11.6).
5. The field intensity of the scnsuous array-thc relationnlnature of its elements as discussed
in note 2-is what links the levelof physicalcausalityto the cmcrgent liftorTsit conditions.
Inte11sityis the only common factor bctween the sensuous and the nonsensuous. Its
transverality-its double featuring in both dimensions-is what binds thcm together as
belonging to the same event. Of course, intensity featuresdüferently in each dimension.
This difference marks the tension that registers the differential between them. This
differentialis discussed below as itselfbeing the condition of emergence of value.
6. On stereoscopic vision interpreted along lines similar to this account (in terms of a
integrativeemergence resolvinga constitutivetension of a differentialfield),see Simondon
2005,208-209. 223-224.
7. ln other words, the offset "images" contributed their differential-their dispnrity-as
potential. They figure purely as nonsensuous differentinls.This is an example of why the
intertwining of the scnsuous and the nonsensuous discussed below is necessnry to the
theory of perception. Thnt intertwining can be carried to the sensuous levcl below that
of the eyes as a whole. The retina, composed of a disjunctive plurality of rods and cones,
is riddled with resident disparities. This all-the-way-d0\"11gappiness of the perception
apparatus is what led cognitivescientist AlvaNoë (2004) to argue that all vision is actually
virtual. See also Massumi2011, 94-97.On generativeforceof pure differentials,see Deleuze
1994,170-182.
8. This reqwres a thorough rethinking of what constitutes the subject of experience. As
Nietzsche famously stated, there is no doer separate from the deed (1967,45). There is a
multimodal fieldingof activityculminating in the appearanceofa superject. The arc of the
fielding resolving itself in the superject is the subject of the experience (Whitehead 1978,
27-28, 166).ln the triangle example, the triangleis finallythe subject of the experience.
"We"who corne to daim it-that is, our bodies, our senses, our habits, our inheritances,
our tendencies-are a plurallydisjunctiveset offormativeelements in differentialtension,
whose rolesare not so fundarnentallydifferentfrom tbat of the Pac-Men. The conventions
of language make it difficultto speak without smudging this fact:"we"are the superjective
perspectiveof the evcnt's culmination, recursiveJythrowing itselfback over to the cusp of
its beginning, to daim the arising as ail ils own. lt is more of a stretch to say 'T' than one
Hkesto acknowledge.The sense of selfis an emergent nonsensuous effectwhose reiterative
rearising in the stream of experience is a renewed achievement. full of artifice and high
craft. lt is only the habit of saying"1'1 that mnkesil corne as natural.
9. I have to say that this sndistic exaritpleis not my own (only the worm is mine). 1tcornes
from Raymond Ruyer(1956).
10. The really imperceptibly-abstractis a mode of the reality of the virtunl that is of utmost
importance. All virtualities that appear, as if in vision or other sense modes, whether they
be figures, objects, or events (the kind that are not recessivebut which we fcel we directly
perceive),are seized with relation(as we saw in the case of the virtual figuresof the triangle
as weJIas that of the objcct). Relation is by nature imperceptible.It is the ultimate really
abstract mode of reaHty.It cornes infraceptivelyin ail experience. Value is imperceptible
relation with the element of concem in relief, marked by a salient affectivetonaüty that
makes itselfwhat the occasion is actually ail about.
 ENVISIONJNG THE VIRTUAL 69

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