At the end of 2021, whether it is the "Top Ten Internet Terms in 2021" released by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, the "Top Ten Internet Hot Words" in 2021 released by the editorial board of Shanghai Language and Character Weekly, or the "Top Ten Hot Words of the Year" in 2021 released by China News Weekly, "Metacosm" are among them. Internet companies, science and technology fields, and capital markets have invested in the construction of the meta-universe, and the national hot discussion of the meta-universe has made the meta-universe successfully stand on the cusp and become a full "hit" at the end of 2021. However, the term metacosm first came from literature and art.
The existence of the meta-universe relies on many scientific and technological breakthroughs, applications and integrations, such as AR, VR, XR, blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, 5G, 6G, social networks, etc., and these have just attracted the attention of many commercial capital groups at present: domestic Baidu, Netease, Ali, Tencent, ByteDance and other Internet giants have laid out places, foreign Microsoft, Nvidia and other software and hardware companies have also entered the game, Facebook (Facebook) announced the renaming of "Meta", Native metaverse concept stock Roblox goes public... The concept of metacosmology spreads in circles under the wrapping of capital, and is even hyped and profit-making. At a time when there are many opinions and disagreements, we try to "take home" this hot word that came out of the literary and art circles, return to the field of literature and art, and use the method of literary and art criticism to objectively and rationally analyze and discuss.
The "metacosm" of art: from virtual reality to virtual reality
What exactly is the metacosm? Thirty years ago, in 1992, Neil Stephenson's science fiction novel Avalanche was published, which described a virtual world called Metavalse, which was parallel to the real world, and people geographically isolated from each other in the real world could connect through public entrances, enter it as a virtual "avatar", communicate and entertain, and open another life different from the real world, this fictional space is translated as "hyper-metaverse" in fiction, which is what we call the metaverse today.
Zhou Zhiqiang, a professor at the College of Liberal Arts of Nankai University, explained: The metacosm is a digital space that allows people to immerse themselves in the virtual reality situation in a way that integrates the body and mind through the combination of human perception technology and digital Internet, and people use various technologies to get together to play, socialize and trade, forming a relatively stable virtual reality living space, which is currently called the metaverse. It is precisely because of its virtual, immersive, interactive and other qualities that the metacosm has created a completely different aesthetic landscape in the field of artistic activities, reversed the traditional relationship between art and people, completely transformed the old rules, forms, theories and evaluation methods of artistic activities, and brought visible new changes to art. In the end, "'virtual reality' here will bid farewell to its 'imitation of reality form': through digital technology to establish a high-fidelity presentation of reality, imitation or splicing, superposition; instead to the future of virtual reality 'creative reality form': virtual is no longer a simple technological illusion, but also into human life experience and perceptual memory, becoming a 'nother reality' of human beings." From virtual reality to virtual reality, the metacosm reverses the relationship between art and reality and reshapes the aesthetic paradigm of art. ”
In fact, the imagination of "living in a virtual world" has long appeared in science fiction literature, film and television, and video games. Science fiction novels "Real Name", "Neuromancer", the movie "The Matrix", "Ready Player One", the TV series "Black Mirror", "Westworld" and multiple video games have created a virtual space that is detached from reality.
Zhou Wen, a professor at the School of Art and Media of Beijing Normal University, believes that the metacosm is a media and mediatized social form based on the integration of virtual and reality based on the Internet, which is bound to contain a large amount of media content, and image content is one of them, which mainly enters the metaverse through digital twins, virtual native, virtual and real mixing, and gradually realizes the integration of virtual and reality, with "interactive interface and system", "immersive scene" and "digital person", which are the key elements of the three metaverse image content forms. Finally, image content types such as emotional immersion, story experience, interactive participation, and social linkage are produced. It is foreseeable that image content will be an important field in the literature and art of the metaverse. In addition, installation art, performance art, and video games known as the "Ninth Art" using video media have also been sucked into this all-encompassing metaverse.
Literature and the Metaverse: Expropriation or Intervention?
In the face of the powerful momentum and fierce attack of the virtual world, the human world can be described as mixed. Xia Lie, a professor at the School of Culture, Creativity and Media of Hangzhou Normal University, pointed out that many new concepts are often proposed in the name of science and technology, but behind them are economic purposes and commercial capital groups at work, which are often intertwined with traces of cross-border literature and art (creativity and entertainment), and this time the meta-universe is directly requisitioning the concept of science fiction literature, which lays a blueprint for the power of capital, stimulates capital to pour into it, and worries also follow. He argues that the metacosm "strategically ignores the alienation of man from natural space and the authenticity of offline life." ...... Imitating the principles of 'creation' and 'creation', using people's current technology to recreate a 'dimension', and involving a large number of users through the new economic rules of the network economy, etc., it is fully 'materialized' and infrastructureized. There is a connotation of progress and multiplication in this, but in the final analysis, the picture he describes and promises is disconnected from real life, the struggle of real life and its seriousness, and it is not the "world" (dimension) of Marxism's "understanding and transformation of the world". At the same time, the private use of the commons or the "capital" of the commons in the metaverse makes it likely that the people in the metacosm are only "working" for the capitalists, accepting the exploitation of their rules of the game. In addition, when the meta-universe literature and art inevitably arise, is literature and art requisitioned? Or is literature and art involved in the metacosm? This has also become an inevitable problem.
Yang Guang, a professor at the College of Literature at Shandong Normal University, also expressed this concern. He believes that "the courage of literature and art to chase new technologies is commendable, but if in the process of chasing by technology to deviate from their own rhythm, its aesthetics, ethics, sociology, culture and many other value dimensions are reduced to invisible by the single standard of technology, then it has to be said that this chase is completely blind obedience." The order of literature and art is by no means generalized by the categories of economic order with strong capital colors such as property rights, copyrights, and money, and its "uniqueness" is not the "uniqueness" of cultural assets that can be monopolized based on the new order of digital technology. Therefore, he said, "Literature and art can and should reverse the law order of beauty that enlightens the truth and the good to the 'vientiane' in the 'metaverse.'" In this way, he can seize this new opportunity to truly open up a new space for literature and art, and create a new cosmic realm of literature and art--Vientiane in the beauty order. ”
Tomorrow in the Metacosm: Tomorrow's Yellow Flowers or The Sea of Stars?
Standing in the present, the emergence of the concept of metaverse has pulled a kind of future to our eyes, and we can't help but ask: Is this really the ultimate tomorrow of our human beings? Jiang Yuhui, a professor at the Department of Philosophy at East China Normal University, said: "At this inflection point of turning from novelty to boredom, at a time when the metaverse is increasingly becoming a yellow flower of tomorrow, in fact, it is more important to deeply reflect on where it should go. Or more importantly, where it comes from, and how much unexhaustible potential it hides. In addition to desperately trying to grasp the future, it is not a good idea to go back a little backwards, and he proposes that it may be a feasible way to draw inspiration from the recent archaeology of the medium, to break free from the metaverse of this "ultimate algorithm" in an archaeological way, to return to the tension and source of the difference and pluralism of the medium, and to return it to the fresh and unknown state of its birth and germination.
In fact, for science fiction literature, the heat of the metacosm did not bring more energy. Chen Tao, a doctoral student at the School of Letters of Wuhan University, believes that in this hot discussion of the metaverse, some science fiction observers and commentators have maintained a valuable sobriety, saying that the metacosm is an "old concept" that has long been repeatedly discussed and studied, and it is only a form of cyberspace. Although the emergence of cyberpunk once enriched the connotation of science fiction, it has increasingly become an obstacle to the diversified development of science fiction, making today's science fiction motif more single, science fiction to reality is also trending, and the hot speculation of the metaverse has become a representation of the "virtual fire" of information technology. Therefore, he proposed that science fiction literature and art should play its critical role and lead human society to shift its attention from the cyberspace and throw it into a broader sea of stars; only in this way can science fiction literature and art regain its source of living water and create a new golden age.
The future is coming, whether the metaverse will become our tomorrow, whether the metaverse will create a new space for literature and art, and time will finally give the answer. But no matter what, we should be happy to see the future and embrace tomorrow full of infinite possibilities. As pointed out at the opening ceremony of the Eleventh National Congress of the China Federation of Literary and Literary Circles and the Tenth National Congress of the China Writers Association: "Scientific and technological development and technological innovation can bring new ways of artistic expression and rendering, but the abundance of art always depends on life." It is necessary to correctly use new technologies and new means to stimulate creative inspiration, enrich cultural connotations, and express ideas and emotions, so that literary and artistic creation can present a new realm with more connotation and more potential. "Let us look forward to the new space for the future development of literature and art to be broader and more colorful."
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