subject’s field of vision and perception to be completely involved in the system. [10]

VR, AI and AL: Aesthetics of simulation as endo-systems The «TV-Helm» represents an attempt to implement in practice the convergence of the image-reproduction system and the observer-centered perspective in a single, artificial and comprehensive (closed) space. The fusion ultimately succeeded with the development of interactive computer-graphics programs that are visualized on monitors, with the optimization of stereoscopic data helmets—such as the «Head-Mounted Display » of Ivan Sutherland—as well as with the «VIEW-System» [11] (Virtual Interface Environment Workstation), on which research took place from 1985 on. Due to these technologies, the idea of external audience participation gave way to the concept of interactivity or internal cooperation: work and interactor enter into an interdependent relationship.

The approach of allowing the internal interactor to participate in an artificially generated model world takes into consideration the possibility of moving beyond the human-machine interface (which Rössler

interprets as a «peek behind the curtains,» and Scott Fisher as a «door to other worlds»). In this kind of simulated world or endosystem the internal observers move within two kinds of reality: that of their consciousness of acting within a simulation, and that of their perception, which suggests that their presence and their actions exercise an active influence on the artificial world, with the result that the distortions peculiar to their own observing are reflected in the virtual environment. In interactive works of this kind the aesthetics of simulation is closely related to endo-aesthetics: the interactor fulfils a function within the work; he shares a spatio-temporal experience in the system ‹interior›; the work manifests itself as a simulation of a special world, as an ‹endo-system.› Depending on the degree to which the interactor identifies with and feels a connection with the system, one can speak of soft interactivity or simulation—as for instance in the case of fictive images of games, in which the interactor retains an awareness of non-reality—or of hard simulations or unconscious fictions in which experiences are made in isolation, or together with others in the same fictional realm. Every