Emanations, Spectralizations, Obsessions Between Real and Virtual

Abstract

The relationship between the real and the virtual is increasingly central in defining narrative worlds in contemporary culture. On one hand, the rise of digital and immersive technologies seems to reignite easy apocalyptic temptations in critical thought; on the other, it offers new modes of writing and techniques for the materialization and dissemination of narrative worlds. In this interview, Mirko Lino, Associate Professor of Cinema, Television, and Photography at the University of L'Aquila, provides an overview and brief assessment of the dialectic between the real and the virtual. Ranging across various fields of artistic and media production (cinema, serials, literature, video games, comics), he describes some transmedia strategies for constructing storyworlds, while also exploring contemporary imagination's obsessions, such as illusion, dreams, and spectrality.