On the Fantastic Aspect in Electronic Media Art : A Preliminary Approach by Way of Barthes, Freud and Lyotard

전자매체예술에서의 '환상적' 측면에 대하여: 바르트, 프로이트, 리오타르를 경유한 접근

'Fantasy', the central notion of this essay, is discussed here more as a new paradigm in order to describe the structure of a work of art than as a stylistic characteristic proper to a specific genre of art. It means the whole situation and experience produced by two connected terms 'corporeal subject - screen'. Roland Barthes explained the 'semiographic painting' by Andre Masson as a field in which happens a certain connexion between the impulse of subject and the image, which views the painting not as a physical object but as a 'cinematic screen' ; painting may be redefined as a dream or a fantasy of the corporeal subject. And such an idea of 'art as fantasy' is closely related to the recent theoretical attempts consisting in abolishing the vision-centered conception of art since Renaissance. In this essay, the notion of fantasy as an aesthetic model is sketched by means of the Freud's notes on the fantasy 'A child is being beaten' and Lyotard's more advanced analyse on its attributes and operations. In Lyotard's analysis, fantasy is defined as a 'bloc' or a 'matrix-figure' featuring simultaneous conversion between the active and the passive, sadism and masochism, and coexistence of imcompossible meanings. In this sense, fantasy may be given to us as an analogical model from which we can outline the aesthetic characteristics of electronic media art involving virtual reality and interactivity.