By interacting with scattered tape-recorders they hear parts of Virginia’s recordings, as well as an recorded interview with Oh. These fragments, and the contents of the letters strewn about the floors, put together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, slowly give a picture of Virginia’s life. The reality she inhabits is different than that of other people. And even awareness of that difference can’t keep her from losing those she knows and cares about, one by one--husband, children, relatives, friends and neighbours. She is unfailingly pleasant, but her words and actions, which others around her can’t understand, make it impossible for them to get along with her. She understands that. She says in one of the recordings that she repeatedly tried to fix things around her, but failed. She talks of things and people appearing and disappearing mysteriously. She tries to explain these phenomena by concluding that she must have multiple personalities. When Oh, in her interview, tells Virginia about Second Life and virtual worlds, she compares her perception of reality to a virtual world.
haunting and disturbing portrait of a world where nothing can be taken for granted, and where sooner or later everyone goes away. One gets a great respect for this woman, who tries to cope with her condition and unhappy life with humour and optimism. Residents of a virtual world may be closer than others to the understanding that virtual realities…things we feel and experience, although they may not “exist”…are “real” as modern neuroscience tells us. All of our experience is virtual, in the sense that that our brains create coherent images from our sensory impressions. Our experiences in SL are real, even if we’ve learnt not to talk about them outside it…because we expect others to look at us as though we’re slightly mad. That’s how Virginia must have felt all her life. See Bryn Oh’s “Virginia Alone“ at Immersiva [141.146.33].
The meanings in this installation only become apparent to visitors if they’re prepared to explore and patiently browse the scattered bits of Virginia’s life. The reward is a
A