Georges Bataille burst onto the French scene with the 1928 release of The Story of the Eye - a vivid work of eroticism and desire following the lead of de Sade. Bataille's thoughts and actions were thoroughly ensconced in the surrealistic tradition. His relentless examinations into the sacred and profane set him apart from, and often at odds with, his fellow surrealists. This eventually led to his denounciation by André Breton in his Second Manifesto of Surrealism of 1929.

Later theoretical works such as On Nietzsche (1945), The Impossible (1952), The Inner Experience (1954), and Guilty (1961) as well as his work with the journals Documents, Acéphale and Critique solidified his place as one of the more influential thinkers of post-structuralist France. His influence can be found in the thinking of such heavyweights as Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva and Baudrillard. Though known primarily for his works dealing with eroticism and self, his importance and contribution has been recognized in areas as diverse as economics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy.

Carl DiSalvo's piece Blinded.... as I stared into the Heavens concerns itself primarily with Bataille's notion of "The Impossible" - the indefinite reality of actions taken to the extreme: sacrifice, pornography, death.

DiSalvo creates visualizations of these highly metaphysical acts; such as that of staring into the sun, that fall into the alchemical paradigm of materials (ideas) transmuted into (virtual) artifacts that move beyond the physical excesses and banality of the gnostic Demiurge. This virtual exploration acts as a hermetic interpretation of humanistic theories, much in the same way Mandelbrot's fractal discoveries illuminated mathematical and physical theorems, providing a sensory manner of understanding complexity.

DiSalvo asks us, the viewer, how we can become engaged with these difficult theories of the humanities through technological mediation, most importantly, that of the internet. For DiSalvo, it is through these new technologies that the impossible, the abstract, the divine spark of light of these aesthetic experiences can be attained. The video screen allows us to stare at the sun, the nebulous web of the Internet forces us to question the totality of the real, thus the pixel becomes that obscure object of desire.

Carl Francis DiSalvo is an artist, designer, and theorist interested in technological mediation of identity and being. He was a featured presenter at the 1997 ISEA where he delivered a paper entitled VRML: Writing The Space Of Identity on The WWW. He is currently working as a Senior Designer and Consultant for Bitstream Underground, Inc., in Minneapolis.

Carl can be reached at disalvo@bitstream.net. His paper Philosophy and Visualization: Imaging The Impossible is forthcoming in Leonardo.

Patrick Maun 1998