confused, thus supplementing the ‘objectivity’ of the text with a personal
and abstract perspective.
Crucially, the intention of this study is not to distinguish reality and
unreality, to separate them, or indeed to ultimately join them as a desperate
measure, but to understand the technologically mediated characteristic of
the confusion between them. It is not possible or, indeed, useful to define
these concepts as ‘static’, as this would only serve to both limit and
undermine the research. Instead, it is argued that we need to understand
reality and unreality as dynamic, fluid, and shifting concepts. Therefore, this
research does not intend to uncover what is real or what reality is, but may
be understood as a useful guide to approach and dissect the social and
psychological circumstances that we are living in today, and to consider these
concepts in and through cinema. In other words, the goal is an understanding
of these ‘new’ notions of reality and unreality, rather than obtaining an
accurate definition of them.
The first chapter provides a brief background to the confusion between
reality and unreality, and proceeds to contextualize this confusion in visual
technological terms. The second chapter analyzes the crucial role of new
technologies such as media, digital imagery, videogames, Virtual Reality and
particularly visual and cinematographic techniques in today’s society.
Specifically, it examines the protagonist’s/user’s participation in two
interconnected elements: cinema and the confusion of reality and unreality.
The third chapter examines the connections and relationship of cinema and
(un)reality in both directions, that is how cinema intercedes in the confusion
between reality and unreality and how this disorientation affects cinema’s
themes and forms. Finally, the fourth chapter, through the analysis of Luna,
connects film practice with the theoretical discourse, showing the links, the
invisible bridge that connects images with words. This thesis as a whole will
thus demonstrate new perspectives, an original approach to the
understanding and analysis of the confusion between reality and unreality
provoked by technology.