Theoretical Afterthought said:
Is it real in whose eyes?
I do believe we have revisited this concept before, haven’t we? You ask if what we view in our monitors is real art as mediated through the eyes of Vaneeesa Blaylock, Gracie Kendal, and co-constructed by the rest of us actors in her performance pieces. Whatever response I give will not be received satisfactorily because I do not have a blanket answer that can encompass the meaning of something as seen through many people. Now for some out there, that may appear at a glance to be ridding myself of any responsibility for any response I may give will be relative. But my truth, as far as I can tell, is that nothing exists in a vacuum. Whether the context is arbitrary or misaligned or purposeful, it remains a useful backdrop for producing and enacting multiple ways of being and performing. Now, is what we do real, with regard to VB? I say yes. We dedicate at minimum two hours of our lives to the performance to merely see if anyone decides to show up and partake in our “visual” discussion. Understanding that we cannot talk openly to the audience, for we are performing, we still listen to their goings-on, to the chatter that is in turn the background music to our more intimate in-group IMs. Now, many other things are happening in concurrence with our private chat, including the public/audience chat, and then the occasional private IM from friends. It is here where I would like to pause and focus my attention in attempting to answer the question “is it real?” This last performance, given that we were asked to use Gracie Kendal’s premade avatars, disabled our capacity to be inworld and maintain our own identities and hence our own inventories and our ability to use our contact lists as usual. I would go as far as characterizing my feelings akin to withdrawal symptoms for the ability to see who was online and speak to them was suddenly taken away in our use of Gracie’s avatars. I don’t need to emphasize the feeling of helplessness that overcame me for I believe it to be obvious. Forget the art! I want my interpersonal connections. Give me my identity back! So in answering the question, “is it real?,” my response is a resounding “yes.” Is it real because someone else deemed it an art production? Is the whole spectacle real because we are there standing at attention in neat little rows? Is it real because some pretentious art critic says it is so? Well, I will be honest with you in defining what is real to me. I say it was real because I felt it. Something in me changed, whether it was the intention or not of the artist, I felt something. Whether it was the stated or intended purpose of the piece itself, I don’t care.
The piece dealt with multiple identities and the flexibility we posses to enact a variety of them. To me it spoke about my desire to keep the identity I have for so long constructed as an avatar in SL within arm’s reach in SL. Is this identity an extension of my reality? I would say it depends, but not entirely in a way not further problematized. There are no quick responses I can give. It is not a matter of SL being a clear cut appendage to my RL, because I don’t see it that way. But if I feel it, and here I am aggrandizing myself to be judge and jury of my own definitions, then I will say it is real. Whether the reality comes as an extension of something we readily call RL, or if it is a new way of approaching ourselves, which is more akin to my beliefs with regard to SL, remains the question you and everyone else could now pose and attempt to answer. I don’t believe SL to be an extension of my reality at all, it may have stemmed from it, for that is all I knew when I started, but that did not remain intact in SL. In SL, we have the ability to create in ways not available to us in RL. If it were merely an extension, I would be constrained by those laws of gravity that stop me from flying in RL (but I am not), I would not be able to befriend the people I now call friends for the sociocultural constraints that guide my existence in RL, I would not be able to visit and revisit the conditions of my existence and change them as I wish. I would not be able to proclaim “this is my SL” and live it as I see it needs to be lived. So, while I see SL as an alternate virtual reality, albeit one which must depend on the RL to exist at all, it nevertheless remains one that can function without much intervention from the rules and laws that govern our RL. Save for the physical sustenance required for our avatar handlers/animators, applicable only in our reality-based life, in SL we are free to fly. Let’s not confuse an echo, a reverberation, with a clone for SL is but an echo of our RL existence but never a replica. It is real for I feel it, but for me, SL is not an extension as much as a new articulation of identity which once firmly established and rooted, allows me a new formulation of my previous, and very limited, view of existence.
The funny thing is that it has taken me so long to understand this because I insisted on prescribed and very dichotomized forms of being: extension or not extension, real or not real….remember my stance on that prescribed fence? Thinking I could only go one way or the other? My present state refuses to dichotomize the situation any more for I believe that multiple possibilities, which I can’t even fathom at the moment, do exist.
