Tuesday, April 19, 2011

What I have learned from my Avatars (so far)

I figure the first avatar I ever had – if it can be called that – was a tiny white rectangle of light. Granted I had limited control over what I could make this little thing do – mainly move up and down on the screen and alter the speed at which it moved in a futile attempt to bounce the tinier dot of light back across the screen. But – it responded to my commands and represented me inside the TV screen. I would inhabit a host of other similarly benign images from tanks to spaceships, missile towers, aliens, and race cars – but it wasn’t until Mario that I would have a fully 2 dimensional humanoid shape to jostle around the cybersphere. Even here though, there was little choice as to look or action, but it was great leap from the tiny bar of light.


My first “fleshed” out avatar came with Dungeons and Dragons. A group of us would play once or twice a year from the early to mid 80s. Like any well-oiled orc killing machine each of us had different roles to play. My character was a thief - largely distrusted by my companions and mainly into the adventure for personal gain. I had a few secrets worked out with the dungeon master if I ever needed to double cross anyone. I skulked in the shadows as part of a larger group, but was also separate. Although we “travelled” together, I pretty much kept to myself.


My next major avi was an un-named character in the Myst franchise. This was really the first digital body that would respond to my commands to walk or run, stop, and investigate. Like most people, I assume, I made the image look quite a bit like me, only perhaps a bit more rugged – a bit more of an adventurer. But the thing with Myst is that you explore the worlds alone – combing through the ruins of a once proud civilization. This means that – like my Thief – I was really the only one who saw my avatar since there is no socialization in an abandoned culture.


Recently – in preparation for the class on Virtual Worlds – I went into World of Warcraft to get a sense of the game. Looking over all of the character choices I opted for a Female Rogue Night Elf – something about the loner quality of this character appealed to me. Plus – it came with the added bonus of invisibility. Employing the stealth feature I could creep around largely unnoticed. I played the game for about 30 hours or so – long enough that I reached quests that were becoming harder and harder to complete on my own. Once the necessity of companions arose – I was out.


Derridada was my next avatar – a work in progress that continues to slowly evolve. It is also with this character that I think I am beginning to understand the nature of digital representation. When I first entered SL I decided that I really didn’t want to have a “human” skin tone – so I opted for green – which seemed to satisfy me for a while. Then came the steampunk wardrobe, tattoos, glasses, painted nails and many of the other elements that I use to define this character. A more recent addition was the gold metallic skin – which – as I understand – reads sometimes yellow, sometimes green – depending on who is looking and what kind of monitor they have. While I see avatars that have any number of unique and complex looks, I rarely see another one that looks like mine. I like that – it sets me apart. (I discuss this in more detail in Stinalina Dreamscape’s wonderful blog on “Endless Possibilities” http://stinalinadreamscape.wordpress.com/page/3/).



And it is this idea of being set apart that caused me to review my avatar choices. Setting aside the bars of light, spaceships, cars and aliens along with the Myst critter I realize that the Thief, the Night Elf and Derridada all share two major traits – they are loners – they are outsiders. The first two deliberately creeping around the edges of their environments, and the third, Derridada – a social creature that slinks to the edge of any dance club he wanders into. He is not a “joiner,” and I find that I do not change his clothes for “theme” nights at the clubs, nor do I tend to partake of the group dances but prefer to modify my dances based on each song. So – I think it is safe to say that – with my avatars at least - I like the margins and not the center.


Hmmmm (this is the sound of me wondering about stuff) I’m concerned that without consciously thinking about these choices these avatars reveal a great deal about who I am in RL. I do not like to be the center of attention and feel much more comfortable in the shadows. This sounds even odder when I reveal that I have spent a great deal of time on stage as a performer and even in my current profession (teacher) I find that I am often in front of a crowd. But – I do have a number of techniques to deflect this position and minimize my centeredness. I must admit though, that I am surprised by this avatar revelation. I mean - they are just avatar’s right – just fictional beings put together often in haste to get on with the game at hand.



But I can see that there is more to them – quite a bit more. They are – as I have said before – highly charged semiotic images in which every little detail speaks volumes. But not just things like clothes and accessories, but the animations we choose or the way we drive these critters says something – consciously or not – about who we are. For example, I have found that in SL I really like falling and I do it every chance I get. I like the flailing, the out of control feeling and the final thud as I hit the virtual earth. This is something that I really can't experience in RL and so I am drawn to it in SL. I’m sure some shrink somewhere could sort all of this out and tell me about the need for margins and the desire to be out of control– but in the meantime I remain fascinated that these representations we build in cyberspace can actually tell us a great deal about ourselves. I can only imagine what will happen when we can fully enter these spaces with our nervous systems plugged in.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

I think SL is causing me to have an existential crisis

Let me preface this entry by saying that in RL I pride myself on being a “postmodernist” or “poststructuralist” or something like that. I preach simultaneity descended from the Futurists in which awareness is always stranded between multiple thoughts and things can be both right and wrong at the same time. I think that the only real truth is that there is no such thing as truth and that everything we say, do, or think is filtered through our language, culture, and education. When I first encountered this way of looking at the world right before grad school (the second time) I had a bit of a melt-down. I have grown more comfortable with these ideas over time, so much so that I like being challenged by students if for no other reason than it erodes my authority and points out that there are always other ways to look at things.


So it is with this mindset that I enter SL. This space should be a wonderland, a playground, a space of multiple truths simultaneously – the virtual and the real – but for some reason I am obsessed with the real behind the virtual. I don’t actually want to know this real, but I know it is there, nagging me with every interaction in this space. Knowing that each avatar I meet has a secret self stashed away behind the ones and zeros is both fascinating and a bit unnerving. I avoid things like the voice feature when I can because part of me doesn’t want something this specific in this imaginary space. And yet, I dwell on the unknown behind the visible. And yet I project a kind of reality onto the virtual without completely understanding it.


Ok – so some of this current thinking was generated from dancing. I know I obsess over the dancing – I like it, its fun, and I don’t do it in RL – so this is a kind of fantasy outlet. Plus I get to listen to music. Bla, bla, bla. So the other night I go to visit a friend of mine in SL. I met her at a club where one of the DJs I follow plays. She follows the same DJ. We chatted, IM’d and became SL friends. “She” is pleasant, friendly, always says “Hi” and often invites me to come hang out in the clubs where she works (I still find the concept of working in here odd – but I do get that the lindens earned offset SL costs). So – she was hosting the other night and I showed up to do my dance thing. About a half an hour in she asks me if I would like to dance. This is the first time I have been asked and while in RL I would most likely deflect this with a joke or tales of awful dancing in here I say “yes.” As the gender roles are relatively clear I click on the blue ball she the pink. And we dance. Or rather our avatars dance. But that is the problem – it doesn’t feel like the avis dancing it feels like us dancing. “Us” two people who have absolutely no idea who or what is behind the other avatar. The dances cycle though ballroom stuff and occasionally hit on a slow dance pose. I do not feel comfortable with this. Why? I have no idea – projecting a reality into this space? I don’t know. So I ask if we can switch balls. I click pink she blue. Now “she” is leading and I get to play along. She lifts me and dips me – it feels like a joke, like a dance deferred and somehow I am more comfortable with this.

What I find so vexing about this experience is that I do think of this person, or this avatar, or this representation in SL as a friend, only I have no idea why. I really don’t know the person behind the avatar at all. And yet, I feel like I know that avatar and I do enjoy their company. It is an odd connection, but one that seems somewhat familiar from RL. When I was a kid I had friends that I rode the bus with. I didn’t have classes with them, I didn’t hang out with them, and while I knew approximately where they lived, in most cases, I didn’t even know what their names were. And yet, I considered them my friend. I still do even though I have not seen them in decades. SL feels a bit like this. A friendship built out of proximity, filling time while we ride the bus.