Derridada

This is Derridada Mimiteh who, in the parlance of this era, is a steampunk – or – to be more specific – he is dressed as a steampunk aspiring to be one. Why steampunk? To begin with his creator likes hybrids - any mashing together of two ideas he find supremely satisfying. Postmodern, postdigital, praxis (theory and practice) top the list. This is akin to what Lewis Carroll referred to as portmanteau words like snark (snake + shark) in which a new idea, creature, identity, etc is formed by the collision of two or more ideas (Derridada is one such example perhaps pointing to possible anarchistic or at least play-full SL activity. Derrida was a brilliant post-structuralist French thinker who developed the idea of deconstruction while the dadaists, as imagined by Hugo Ball, saw their activities as a farce of nothingness in which all higher questions were involved). Spending hours haunting the SL marketplace and shops the creator discarded one identity after another – goth, furry, vampire, punk, tiny, fantasy – all seemed too limited, too focused. The idea of mashing up industrial revolution technology with today seemed like a nice place to start. He began his infatuation with the form in New Babbage – a steampunk city complete with shops, dirigibles, and other steampunks. Since this initial commitment to steampunk Derridada has undergone a number of metamorphoses – including a 19^th century wardrobe offset by 21^st century accessories like steam boots, tattoos, tinted glasses, and a Reboot pin which firmly places one foot in the future and one in the past. The most recent addition is the golden metallic skin. Derridada is in the process of evolving into a clockwork man – one who’s outward appearance suggests human, but the inner workings are run on industrial age gears and cogs. The new skin is a start, but the creator knows that in order to fully complete the transition he will need to learn about modifying or creating skins. As an “intentional body” the creator knows that it is possible to tinker with Derridada in drastic and subtle ways without the need to explain to anyone why his skin is green one day and metallic the next. The future may hold another form, but for now the project is underway and the creator would hate not to see it to its conclusion – or at least its next iteration.