Vana Tentokali School of Architecture. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Greece 79
problem to be solved: “Actualization breaks with resemblance as a process no less than
it does with identity as a principle...In this sense, actualization or dif ferentiation is
always a genuine creation...For a potential or virtual object, to be actualized is to cre-
ate divergent lines which correspond to – without resembling – a virtual multiplicity.
The virtual processes the reality of a task to be performed or a problem to be solved”
(Deleuze 199, 212).
Some other aspects of the virtual seem to be its relations with the real and the
possible. Studying the relation of the virtual with the real, or more correctly with the
unreal, Picon defines that the virtual has nothing to do with the unreal: “Virtual reality
is by no means unreal, but its full effect is not yet in evidence...Virtual reality can be
interpreted as a germ, as a starting point of a dynamic evolution” (Picon 2003, 295).
Studying the relation of the virtual with the possible this time, Zaera-Polo & Moussavi
argue that virtual has always a multiplicity of possible actualizations: “The fact that the
word virtual signifies the capacity to actualization does not mean that it is identified
with the word possible, which signif ies the same capacity...The actualization of the
virtual is not the same as the realization of the possible. Where the realization of the
possible is a process of achievement, a development of an existing model, the actualiza-
tion of the virtual can never reach a state of closure. The virtual has always a multiplicity
of possible actualizations and is always the origin or the limit of a new lineage rather than
the exhaustion of the possible” (Zaera-Polo & Moussavi 1997, 103). Unlocking further this
aspect of virtual, Zaire-Polo and Moussavi extend their thought to a kind of projection,
or not expectation, that “virtual looks like nothing we already know or can see”.
The notion of the “other” within the experimental educational process
Now in the end of the description of two main paths of philosophical and interdis-
ciplinary perspectives (the “textual” and the “differentiating”), the intention of the
presented paper is more ambiguous than it was in the beginning. The only clear option
of the paper’s intention is the option concerning the possible meeting point of the two
perspectives: Whether or not they interact each other; or more specif ically, whether
the “textual” perspective can absorb the “dif ferentiating” one; or more specif ically,
whether the “textual” perspective can absorb the “virtual” and the “topological” as a
whole perspective or as a technique.
In the end of the previous chapter concerning the “differentiating” perspective, it is
argued: “The virtual has always a multiplicity of possible actualizations and is always the
origin or the limit of a new lineage rather than the exhaustion of the possible” (Zaera-
Polo & Moussavi 1997, 103). In the end of the chapter concerning the “textual” per-
spective, it is argued: (In contrast with the traditional method)...the transformational
method instead of narrowing at each step in the process, in fact widens the range of
possibilities because it does not move toward any preconceived image” (Eisenman 1982,
36). With a kind of skepticism, I can leave both statements in the sphere of imaginary
and instead of following any kind of certainty, I would rather point out a meeting point
between them: “the widened range of possibilities”.
Both presented perspectives are led to a meeting point of “the widened range of
possibilities”. Of course both perspectives pertain arguments that are not identical. Of