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.
Ahhhh, James Paul Gee!
So he writes how in video games
stories are embodied in the player’s own choices and actions in a way they cannot be in books and movies. Let’s just call them, for short, “embodied stories.” When I use the term “embodied,” I mean to include the mind as a part of the body. So “embodied” means for me, “in the body” and/or “in the mind.” It is too bad there is no word “emminded” to go alongside “embodied.” When I talk about a person’s embodied experiences in the world (virtual or real), I mean to cover all the perceptions, actions, choices, and mental stimulations of action or dialogue (Gee, 2003, p. 82).
As the mind becomes engaged, as we become “emminded,” so do other aspects of ourselves. With familiarity comes a lowering of the affective filter and we begin to do more than embody or emmind, we become engaged participants. I was talking to a group of Ph.D. students last week about gaming and simulators. Being that most of them were neither actively involved with either formats, they could not readily comprehend the phenomenon of embodiment. What do you mean? How can you do that? Isn’t that just playing/pretending? Most had never heard of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and they could certainly not understand the role of embodiment as becomes necessary to inhabit a virtual environment such as SL. But to my surprise, amidst the occasional laughs, they learned something new and intriguing. I would not be surprised to run into some inworld.
To be continued…..
Regarding the Facebook avacides/murders...
What the hell is going on?
I can't help but laugh it out, and be happy I have been oblivious to all the drama involved in partaking of social networking sites as my avatar (who is real, btw).
This is all so fascinating, I wonder where I have been without a Facebook for my avatar! Oh dear me...As aptly put by Prokofy Neva here, SL should be fun and freeing. Once that changes based on self-imposed constraints for the sake of linking with others, it becomes work. For me at least, having a blog and a Flickr account is more than enough, particularly when multiplied by two, for my real avi, and coupled with all her other time consuming online/techie pastimes.
I just need a little respite, therefore my life as an avatar, but no drama nor complications resembling those encountered in a real life existence.
PART I: This one’s for you my friends.
(Originally published in another now defunct blog...consolidation is a good thing)
There are several components to friendship in virtual environments. While it remains true that people form friendships that are bound by affective layers in SL, there are huge differences in the evolution of trust based on whether the individual participants had some previous knowledge of each other in RL, on whether their technical abilities are up to par with the demands of life inworld, and on the social/cultural capital they may be able to translate onto their life on the grid. My RL friend Zola (all SL names henceforth) and I have an almost linear development of engagement in SL (we grew to like it for similar reasons and in similar ways) as well as an equally straightforward evolution to our SL friendship. In our particular case, we share a repertoire of likes and dislikes, are technologically savvy to different degrees, have command of different language registers to utilize in different contexts, academic and otherwise, and have shared goals which include seeing ourselves as lifelong learners and scaffolding those around us to become productive residents of this virtual environment. Rather than viewing things as impossible, we approach them as challenges to be overcome, step by step, and get on with life, both RL and SL.
As inworld life would have it, in my brief stay in SL I have been fortunate to have met real men and women, in a wide variety of avatar shapes and sizes, with whom I have made acquaintances and developed friendships. As any lifelong learner will know, we learn through interaction with each other, through the socialization we receive from one another, in learning to do things by doing them, and without exception, always with the help of a more knowledgeable other who is there to scaffold our growth within this context. I have yet to meet someone who has actually accomplished anything without tutelage from some kind from a helper. One day, feeling confident enough to answer a question posed on the NCI chat line by a fellow NCI member, I responded to a building querie posed by a relatively new resident named Dave. Earlier that same day, I had been engaged in a conversation with a very wise and helpful Seshat Czeret from NCI, so herein I figured I should put to good use my belief in the circularity of life and go on to help someone else in turn. Dave replied in kind, and soon a dialogue was started, and calling cards were exchanged. Talk about serendipitous…Dave had come in to SL the same way I had, through a class, hoping to find educational implications for SL, and found himself becoming a resident through a form of participatory engagement with the community he found there. His RL professor had incorporated SL as component of the classroom, and the students’ task reverted to simply talking to people. And in talking we became friends. But here, too, is where the differences emerge when establishing a foundation for SL friendships. However much I may have learned from our conversations, I don’t know Dave like I know Zola, and every so often, assisted by a lack of verbal and visual cues readily available in RL conversations, we fell back into “distrust” mode. Why should I trust what this person is saying, why take him at his word? Well, because of that shared repertoire of things in common that has enabled me to talk to him like I talk to Zola. As one whose ontological beliefs dictate the continuation of anonymity as part and parcel of my entry into SL, I still have to wonder if friendships in the RL sense of the word can ever develop in an environment mediated by servers and the use of written chat in lieu of spoken language (no, voice is not always an option). These friendships, however, thrive under the threat that Linden Labs could potentially go down and with it take SL, as well as under the ubiquitous and quite frequent opportunities for misunderstanding.
We recently had a RL meeting in SL for our group aptly titled the SL Team. We had a visitor from a neighboring sim who has befriended us and whose work we greatly admire. But we know nothing about him other than his SL persona, and the work he has done in SL. We genuinely like him, and we even think of him as a friend. But there always remain lingering doubts, that while in RL he probably is much more than what we know him as in SL, that part which we don’t know we may not necessarily approve of. But who cares if we are to remain anonymous? I have had this conversation with my fellow SL Team members, and we agree that SL friendships carry weight in their own right. There is an emotional connection you make to fellow human beings that occurs when we are sharing ideas, ideals, goals, and visions. We reveal our inner selves as we reference our conceptualizations of what is tasteful, vulgar, ordinary, or brilliant. When we share stories and turn them into testimonials, when we explore the limits of our imaginations as we attempt to build something meaningful we reveal and transform each other…and well, how do we make our work meaningful? How do we contextualize anything without first obtaining those additional bits of information that will serve as mortar to our building blocks? What will be our background story to build upon if we don’t actively construct it with other human beings?
When I distance myself from the grid, I pretend it is all just a game of role play: go inworld, do my work, do a little exploration of the magnificent work people create there, chat a little with my buddies, attend a concert, dance a little, and return to RL unscathed, uninvolved, uninterested. However, when I find myself engaged in long conversations with some of the rather brilliant people I have met in SL, I don’t feel that way at all. This creates for a constant state of metaphysical flux, but one which fuels my creativity and makes me think of possibilities not available outside of virtual worlds. Ironically, this is a place so outside the proverbial box that we must access it through one. All I can do is laugh about it with my friends, whoever and where ever they happen to be, and see if together we can come up with ways of reconciling what we learn from each other’s shared set of tools.
See you soon….inworld! (/me winks)
Previous comments:
Teny Eurdekian // April 21, 2009 at 6:24 pm |Reply (edit)
Excellent post!
/me needs to get back to RL, outside this “box” (yet still confined)
Zola // April 23, 2009 at 12:04 pm | Reply (edit)
It is the overlap!
My vision is of two circles that overlap. Remember the three circles of Thomas Harris’s I’m okay Your Okay? Parent/child/adult overlapping and the overlap was the external perception of the person and of the person’s perception of themselves. Each circle exhibits it’s own unique characteristics coming together to make a relatively unstable –in the sense of variations in our behavior and emotions–embodiment of one whole person.
That is the way I often feel in SL. Like I am layered. Each layer reacting to the other layer. In SL I am two things. Some researchers suggest that when inhabiting a virtual environment we are inhabiting three layers of self. The physical, the virtual, and the mental perception of self.
I too, ponder the differences between SL friends I have met only on SL and those with whom I have real life relationships. My friendship with Theoretical was accelerated in the beginning by the cyber buffer of the computer interface, even though we knew we would soon meet in real life. In fact our friendship has grown more as Zola and Theoretical than their real life counterparts due to real life schedule differences. On the other hand, speaking with a friend I had met briefly on SL, but had a very long conversation with, as Theo says, it is different, but nevertheless real in its own way. A friendship in SL is centered within the context of the layers, and we initially meet but one layer of the other person in the virtual, although peeks into the mental body become more abundant if discussion continues. And within the virtual we never see through all the layers. In effect, exclusively SL friends as well as the avatar I am in SL–Zola– exist only within the confines of the pixelated universe.
Of course there is always the discussion involving how real are the personas we present in the “real world?” That is another blog for you Theo.
I see the skin and read its label. Photorealistic. Free. Nice tan, with facial (as well as cranial) hair conveniently prepackaged. Perfect for the builder avatar I am creating for my RL work in SL. So I come up with a genderless moniker, proceed to my local sandbox to try the skin on, much as one would go to a RL dressing room to try a pair of pants, and immediately get complimented by a woman I know, but who obviously does not recognize me under my assumed name. Self-consciousness creeps in as I realize I’ve just assumed more than a male skin, but have been attributed doses of testosterone-induced characteristics which will now define my existence as a man. “Looking good, babe” I read in my chat line. I shift my camera’s perspective repeatedly still trying find out if the comment is meant for my eyes, and then I see it: it is a private IM. There is no mistaking the intention of the speaker; the message was for me. A simple thank you will have to serve as the coda to wrap-up the ten lines of chat the woman had already sent me. At this point, I think to myself, I’m not quite ready to talk or act like a man otherwise why would I feel blood rushing to my face? Did I just blush in RL about an episode in SL?
Having gained the courage to move ahead, as a “looking good, babe”, I went in search of a sim affiliated with the institution I work for in RL. Serious RL business in SL. When I got there I realized the place was deserted except for one pink, Muppet-resembling avatar whose gender I suspected to be male. I circled around him finally stopping in mid-air to inquire about his presence on this island. As a researcher, I have no problem posing questions to my interlocutors. As a man, with a perfectly symmetrical goatee on my sculpted chin, and whose profile contains no link to my academic work, I was suddenly inquisitorial and rude. “Are you my inquisitioner?” the Muppet asked. The conversation, if it can be construed as such, quickly deteriorated to the point where I was dodging derogatory terms accusing me of being sexist against pink Muppets, as ignorant about the semiotic elements of color, as racist for not embracing avatar difference, even if only in cartoon form, as intolerant for presumably not wanting him/her there. And just as fast, being a man became a deficit. I could no longer hide under the “babe” label given to me thirty minutes earlier at the Hamnida sandbox. I was presumably now a male with insecurity issues. And while the Muppet’s intentions remained unclear, once again I felt the blood rushing to my face, albeit for a different reason. At that moment I thought of slapping this Muppet with the knowledge that I am a woman (of color) who asks questions as part of her academic training.
