Abstract
Societies construct explicit forms of knowledge through images and through virtual realities (VRs) in head-mounted displays (HMDs). Both forms of knowledge must be recognized and stabilized in societies within communication as being “true.” The article shows how the knowledge of images differs from the knowledge of VR. A significant difference is that images show their knowledge as a medium of communication, whereas VRs communicate their knowledge multimodally as a medium of interaction. The VR in the HMD explicates knowledge of how to deal with something—for example, how to control a helicopter in the virtual helicopter simulator. As in architecture, the storytelling of the VR consists in staging a dramaturgy of the path. In a movie, viewers see the pictures approaching. In virtual “architecture,” the observer moves toward the “spaces.” In interaction media, the dramaturgy therefore develops through the virtual “resistance” of the signs, which provide a path through virtual “spaces.” Because of this dramaturgy of the path, the VR produces a surplus of possible views, whose information should occupy a recipient. The information of an image exists in the surplus of possible interpretations. This informational content distinguishes the knowledge of the VR as an interaction medium from the knowledge of images as a communication medium. Neither the image nor VR has grammar. Consequently, images and VRs present a knowledge without logic and without negation in positive presence.