Art 2.0: Identity, Role Play and Performance in Virtual Worlds

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Art 2.0: Identity, Role Play and Performance in Virtual Worlds

Georgie Roxby Smith

Master of Fine Art (by Research)

VCA Art The Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Music

The University of Melbourne

November 2011

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Abstract

Art 2.0 – Identity, Role Play and Performance in Virtual Worlds is a studio based research

project positioned within the virtual world of Second Life. Focusing on identity as a key

provocation, the project explores new possibilities of the use of virtual reality software in

contemporary art through repositioning “in world” performances into physical installations

to create mixed reality video and installations. The key difference in methodology is my

approach to the work from an installation paradigm rather than code or script based models

used by new media artists. The work breaks with traditional forms of visual arts practice -

installation, new media art, video art, and performance - and attempts to bring them

together in one "event". This exploration not only questions the “bastard space”1 in which

this work exists but also the nature of identity in the virtual realm and how the image of

identity affects the nature of contemporary art and performance in this new frontier. The

project is supported by research on role play and identity and the work of artists and

theorists who utilise Second Life as a primary medium.

Beginning with an examination of how role play and identity have been explored by

contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, Mariko Mori and Cindy Sherman and drawing on

virtual world theorists such as Patrick Lichty, the creative component of this project includes

installation, mixed reality performance and machinima.

Your Clothing is Still Downloading is a multi dimensional installation which includes a live

performance by the real life performers and Second Life avatar performers, pre-recorded

machinima and video, a live video stream into Second Life, a virtual build of the gallery in

Second Life and live projections within the gallery space. This work – which explores identity

and desire - is accessible both in the gallery and via a Second Life portal. The technical

demands of this work on the system often results in a major crash, negating the work in its

process.

/<exquisite corpse> dead daddy explores themes of identity and death in virtual worlds. The

work is a four video horizontal projection composed of Second Life and re-photographed

images of my dead father in a 21st Century “exquisite corpse.”

The final work iObject is a four video machinima where the identity of my Second Life self

portrait avatar is completely negated.

1 DOESINGER, S. 2007. Bastard/Alien Spaces and SL Based Art. Empyre - Missive 2 [Online]. Available

from: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2007-august/msg00034.html 2011].

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Certification

This is to certify that(i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the Masters ,(ii)

due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used,(iii) the thesis is

12,555 words In length, Inclusive of footnotes, but exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies

and appendices.

…………………………………………………

Georgie Roxby Smith

/ /2011

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Acknowledgements

I would firstly like to acknowledge my supervisor Dr. Edward Colless for his invaluable

feedback and support.

Dr. Christiane Paul, Professor of Visual Arts at The New School and author of the seminal

book Digital Art for her generosity of time, knowledge and for sharing her expertise.

Robert Wilson, Sherry Dobbin, Nixon Beltran and staff at the Watermill Center, New York,

for providing creative support and guidance during my residency to develop the creative

component of this project and beyond.

Paula van Beek, Oberon Onmura and Fernando Ariel Gallardo for sharing their wonderful

creativity in collaborating on ‘Reality Bytes’ at the Watermill Center in 2010.

Daniel Mounsey AKA Pyewacket Kazyanenko for his for the generosity of his time given to

reading and offering insightful feedback on this thesis.

Dr. Sonja Pedell and Peter Benda for their support, feedback and for allowing me to present

my research to the Interaction Design Group, Department of Information Systems, University

of Melbourne.

Norbert Loeffler for his expertise and time.

Associate Professor Barbara Bolt, Dr. Stephen Haley and the staff at the Victorian College of

the Arts.

The American Australian Artists Alliance, Ian Potter Cultural Trust and The University of

Melbourne for their financial support.

Margie Mackay for her wisdom and advice.

Nettrice Gaskins for her interest in this project and inclusion on the Art21 blog.

My family and friends – Rosemary Smith, Dan Smith, Rebekah Burgess-Smith, Annie Helps,

Mo Smith and all at Blender Studios - for their ongoing support.

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Chapter Outline

Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................2

Certification.................................................................................................................................3

Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................................4

Chapter Outline ...........................................................................................................................5

Illustrations .............................................................................................................................6

Introduction: ........................................................................................................................ 10

Chapter 1 Why virtual art? ................................................................................................... 12

Chapter 2 - On Role Play ...................................................................................................... 14

Role Play in Contemporary Art ........................................................................................ 14

Role Play – Gender and the Self ....................................................................................... 18

Re-enactment................................................................................................................... 21

Chapter 3 - On Being Virtually Human ................................................................................. 22

The Avatar Self ................................................................................................................. 23

Digital Identity and Desire................................................................................................ 28

Digital Identity and Death ................................................................................................ 30

Chapter 4 - On Mixing Realities ........................................................................................... 31

Sculpture and Installation ................................................................................................ 32

Performance .................................................................................................................... 34

Chapter 5 – On Real and Virtual Audiences ......................................................................... 36

Conclusion Identity download – negating the self .............................................................. 40

Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 42

APPENDIX 1 .......................................................................................................................... 46

APPENDIX 2 – Reality Bytes Narrative/Synopsis distributed to audience ........................... 49

APPENDIX 3 – Reality Bytes planning email examples indicating technical issues related to

the work ............................................................................................................................... 51

APPENDIX 4 ByteN Score ..................................................................................................... 55

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Illustrations

Fig 1

Screen shot from Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG Re-enactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay's Imponderabilia, Synthetic Performance, Second Life, 2007. Source: http://0100101110101101.org/home/reenactments/performance-abramovic.html

Fig 2

Kristine Schomaker and her avatar Gracie Kendal from The Grace Kendal Project, Second

Life screenshot, 2011. Source: http://graciekendal.wordpress.com/

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Fig 3

Reality Bytes Performance Still, Watermill Center New York, Georgie Roxby Smith, April 2010. Source: Personal documentation, image credit Paula van Beek

Fig 3

Byte<N> Installation Still, Georgie Roxby Smith, Rear View Gallery, Melbourne, 2010. Source: Personal documentation, image credit Georgie Roxby Smith

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Fig 4

Byte<N> Performance Still, Georgie Roxby Smith, Rear View Gallery, Melbourne, 2010. Source: Personal documentation, image credit Paula van Beek.

Fig 5

/<exquisite corpse> dead daddy Installation Still, Georgie Roxby Smith, 2011. Source: Personal documentation, image credit Georgie Roxby Smith

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Fig 6

iObject Video Still, Georgie Roxby Smith, 2011 Source: Personal documentation, image credit Georgie Roxby Smith

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Introduction

Free and available to anyone with an internet connection, the accessibility of the most

popular virtual world, Second Life, makes it a perfect vehicle for new media and

contemporary artists to explore and question virtuality whilst remaining relevant to the

contemporary audiences. As technology advances, this world and others like it will become

more commonplace. Most likely elements of these virtual worlds will make their way into

our everyday communication systems such as email and mobile devices. Artists have always

been the pioneers in pushing the boundaries of new technology and humankind has always

inhabited a conceptual universe that is every bit as important as the physical world. Justin

Clemens who, along with Adam Nash and Chistopher Dodds, received the inaugural Second

Life Residency Grant from the Australia Council of the Arts stated “Every era has a form that

exemplifies it: In Shakespeare’s time it was theatre, today it is Second Life. It’s a question of

trying to meet the new challenges of a new time – and the new space that it generates.

Second Life epitomises the innovations of contemporary technology and culture: an entirely

virtual world that has entirely real effects.”

I first explored Second Life in 2009 whilst investigating global and digital cities during my

Master of Visual Art (by Coursework) at the Victorian College of the Arts. The process of

creating an avatar – a digital representation of myself – was flawed from the beginning.

Being new to the software it was impossible to achieve the desired results to create a striking

avatar being amongst a sea of perfectly rendered avatar peers. Moving my virtual body

through this digital environment had a strange and unexpected physical effect. Immersing

myself in the screen by day, each I night I dreamt in a “Second Life” world – trees, people

and buildings streaming past me in a nauseous wave of dizziness. Secondly, when objects or

other avatars made digital contact with me, I noted an odd physical reaction in my own

body. I was quick to discover there was a “gut reaction ….there is reality in virtual reality.”2

The brain seemed somewhat confused between these two physical planes.

Exploring this notion, I set about creating what are termed “mixed reality” installations,

blurring the lines between the real and the virtual. My initial objectives were to question the

idea of materiality through the creation of objects and situations of indistinct form and

2 LICHTY, P. 2009c. She[s] Got A Hammer : Hammering the Void. Not Possible in Real Life [Online].

Available from: npirl.blogspot.com/2009/05/shes-got-hammer-hammering-void.html [Accessed 22/9 2009].

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reality, to explore the position of audience by creating a space where viewers are in multiple

realities at once and to break with traditional forms of visual arts practice, installation, new

media art, video art and performance to bring them together in one "event". By extracting

and re-injecting my Second Life avatar into physical space, the work existed on a

kaleidoscope of planes: in world, within a body of physical sculptures, as ephemeral

projections in space; and as recreated performances by both humans and avatars. My work

Reality Bytes attempted to bring these multiple realities together in the one event. Gallery

visitors were able to experience reality cross-overs in all elements of the installation –

whether in objects within the room or the way they could access the work, through virtual

reality, a physical reality or both simultaneously. The work was also a play on the

combination of utopian and dystopian characteristics, crossing over between the slum like

dystopia of the physical space and the excessive consumption and hyper sexuality of the

parallel world. In addition, the more I worked with Second Life the more it became apparent

that this work centred around identity. In Second Life “everything is there to play a role”3 –

including ourselves.

Beginning with an examination of how role play and identity have been explored by

contemporary artists such as Tracey Emin, Mariko Mori and Cindy Sherman and drawing on

virtual world theorists such as Patrick Lichty, the creative component of this project includes

installation, mixed reality performance and machinima.

Body of Works

Your Clothing is Still Downloading is a multi dimensional installation which includes a live

performance by the real life performers and Second Life avatar performers, pre-recorded

machinima and video, a live video stream into Second Life, a virtual build of the gallery in

Second Life and live projections within the gallery space. This work – which explores identity

and desire – is accessible both in the gallery and via a Second Life portal. The technical

demands of this work on the system often results in a major crash, negating the work in its

process.

/<exquisite corpse> dead daddy explores themes of identity and death in virtual worlds. The

work is a four video horizontal projection composed of Second Life and re-photographed

images of my dead father in a 21st Century “exquisite corpse.”

3 DOESINGER, S. 2008. Space Between People: How the Virtual Changes Physical Architecture, Prestel,

USA. p 14

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The final work iObject is a four video machinima where the identity of my Second Life self-

portrait avatar is completely negated.

Chapter 1 Why virtual art?

“From now on humankind will have to act in two worlds at once.”

Marie Louise Angerer, The Making of …Desire, Digital4

Since the rise of virtual reality in the 1990s and the early pioneering work of artists such as

Myron Krueger, contemporary artists have been exploring and extending the boundaries of

cyberspace and the virtual worlds that exist within it. Art 2.0 – Identity, Role Play and

Performance in Virtual Worlds is a studio based research project positioned within the virtual

world of Second Life. Chapter 1 introduces virtual reality and the emergence of the virtual

world of Second Life and affirms its selection for a creative research project.

Leading theorist Michael Heim defined virtual reality as “an immersive, interactive system

based on computable information” (Heim, 1998). Virtual worlds are defined as “a spatially

based depiction of a persistent virtual environment, which can be experienced by numerous

participants at once who are represented within the space by avatars.” 5 These virtual worlds

have three fundamental elements – they are i) places, ii) inhabited by persons and iii)

enabled by online technologies.6 Beginning with the hooded and gloved immersions of early

virtual environments, these technologies have developed through chat rooms, Multi- User

Domains (MUD) and MUD Object Orientated virtual rooms and online environments which

worked like collaboratively authored text books, evolving from games such as Dungeons and

Dragons.7 It was only a matter of time until technology advanced enough to allow high end

3D graphical forms of these virtual realities to be available on personal computers, accessible

to anyone with an internet connection.8 It was at this point that Second Life emerged.

4 ANGERER, M.-L. 2003. The Making of…Desire, Digital [Online]. Available:

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/postsexual_bodies/3/ [Accessed 11/08 2011]. 5 KOSTER 2009 via MARK W. BELL, I. U. 2008. Toward a Definition of Virtual Worlds. Journal of Virtual

Worlds Research -Virtual Worlds Research: Past, Present & Future, 1, 5. 2009 p 2 6 BOELLSTORFF, T. 2009. Coming of Age in Second Life An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human,

Princeton, Princeton University Press. p 17 7 LUNENFELD, P. 2000. The digital dialectic : new essays on new media, Cambridge, Mass. ; London,

MIT., p 18 8 AU, W. J. 2008. The making of Second Life : notes from the new world, New York, Collins. p 8

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Launched in 2003 by Linden Lab, Second Life is accessible to users or “residents” by

downloading a free program called the Second Life Viewer. Residents create a fully

customised avatar which they operate as a virtual human to explore, meet other residents,

socialise, participate in individual or group activities, create and trade virtual property, or

travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Central to Second Life’s

uniqueness is that 1) it is not a game and 2) the world is completely user driven. Second Life

is not defined as a game as there are no rules and no activities avatars must perform in order

to access special areas, own objects or advance to other levels. There is no overriding

infrastructure imposed by a master creator. All lands, buildings, clothing and every other

imaginable object are created through online scripts and building tools by the users

themselves (of which there are to date a staggering 24 million).9 These lands and objects are

often positioned as hyper utopias or anarchistic dystopias, the latter most often in role

playing sims. Second Life users spend a large amount of time online, with figures from 2009

showing 38% of users had been engaged with Second Life for over a year and 31% of users

spent 16 hours or more a week logged in to the virtual world.10

The fact that Second Life is not a game is a leading factor in its selection as a subject of

creative research. The software is based around a recreation of reality itself, with the main

aim of many users being social interaction – hence, whilst many of the issues of role and

identity play are relevant to other virtual worlds and online games, I have chosen to focus

solely on Second Life. Free and available to anyone with an internet connection, the

accessibility of Second Life makes it a perfect vehicle for new media and contemporary

artists to explore and question virtual worlds whilst remaining relevant to the contemporary

audiences. In the future, the virtual world of Second Life and others like it will become more

commonplace as they are increasingly accessed by mobile devices, rather than desk-bound

terminals. Most likely elements of these virtual worlds will make their way into our everyday

communication systems such as email and mobile devices. Arguably, artists have always

been the pioneers in pushing the boundaries of new technology and humankind has always

inhabited a conceptual universe that is every bit as important as the physical world.11 Justin

9 LINDEN, B. 2011. Q1 2011 Linden Dollar Economy Metrics Up, Users and Usage Unchanged [Online].

Available: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Q1-2011-Linden-Dollar-Economy-Metrics-Up-Users-and-Usage/ba-p/856693 [Accessed 7/7/2011 2011]. 10

LOUREIRO, A., DEPT COMMUNICATION AND ART, UNIVERSITY OF AVEIRO, PORTUGUL 2010. Buidling Knowledge in the Virtual World - Influence of Real Life Relationships. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - The Metaverse Assembled, 2, 12. 11

Myron Krueger Live, Jeremy Turner from Live in the Wires:the C Theory Reader, edited by Arthur & Marylouise Kroker, New World Perspectives, Canada, 1994. p 376

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Clemens who, along with Adam Nash and Christopher Dodds, received the inaugural Second

Life Residency Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts states, “Every era has a form that

exemplifies it: In Shakespeare’s time it was theatre, today it is Second Life. It’s a question of

trying to meet the new challenges of a new time – and the new space that it generates.

Second Life epitomises the innovations of contemporary technology and culture: an entirely

virtual world that has entirely real effects.”12

Where there is social currency, simultaneously a high value is placed on identity and

persona. Contemporary artists are embracing Second Life in increasing numbers not only to

explore new media art within the virtual realm, but also question what it means to be

virtually human and to explore materiality and the boundaries of the space itself. This project

is an augmentation to these investigations by exploring the nature of the performing self,

performing surrogates of itself through role play.

Chapter 2 - On Role Play

The malleable nature of digital identity within virtual worlds and the unique methods by

which users create and manipulate their avatars invites the question of role play – how much

of our virtual selves is pretence/play and how much of our true selves are we investing in our

online personas? Cyberspace being a multilayered material space – bringing “a physical

elsewhere into the physical presence of the user”13 - means our avatars simultaneously hide

and reveal aspects of the self. As this project explores these questions through the paradigm

of contemporary art, Chapter 2 will investigate the nature of identity of role play in the

history of art as a prelude to the discussion surrounding the different ways these roles are

questioned by artists with emphasis on of self, identity and how these concepts translate to

the current practice of artists working in virtual worlds.

Role Play in Contemporary Art

The term role play has many different connotations in contemporary art, from an artist’s role

in society, the conscious and subconscious roles artists undertake and the different

methodologies that contemporary artists embrace to explore the concept of role play within

their practice. The role of artists in society has a long and varied history, from the

Renaissance - when the role of artist changed from that of modest craftsman to the level of

12

Australia’s first Second Life arts residency, Australia Council Media Release. http://www.austrlaliacouncil.gov.au/the_arts/features Accessed 24/04/09 13

NUSSELDER, A. 2009a. Interface fantasy : a Lacanian cyborg ontology, Cambridge, Mass. ; London, MIT Press. p 50

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philosophers and poets - to today’s commonly defined role of contemporary artist as social

watchdog and commentator on cultural values. Many of these interpretations stem from

Rimbaud’s idea of the role of seer –one who must descend into madness and re-enter the

world with a new vision of experience. This idea is reflected in Herbert Read’s book Art and

Alienation – The Role of Artist in Society (1967). Read states that art is “eternally disturbing,

permanently revolutionary” because the artist “ always confronts the unknown, and what he

brings back from that confrontation is a novelty, a new symbol, a new vision of life, the outer

images of inward things, ”14 perhaps in the same way that artists are now exploring the new

digital frontier. Such an asocial if Messianic image of the artist has been criticised by artists

as well as by theorists since Read’s time. In Sculpture Projects (1987) 15 Kasper Koenig

investigated both the relationship between art and artists and the public as well as the social,

political and economic dimensions of this relationship.16 Artist, director and curator Pablo

Helguera challenged the preconceived roles of the artist in his address to the Apexpert

conference Inside Out: Reassessing International Cultural Influence held in 2001. Helguera

questioned the need to label artists as “outcasts, educators, missionaries, social workers,

political activists, or movie stars” 17 and stressed the need for artists to remain focussed on

their role as contributors to culture. The myth of the romanticised role of artist as

adventurer, as outcast and “untamed genius” has existed since Picasso, Pollock and - with

the emergence of the post war consumer culture - Warhol and his contemporaries.18 More

recently we have seen the increasing role of artist to that of star or celebrity. Since the art

boom of the later eighties and early nineties artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons,

Matthew Barney have become resonant brand names – with art collectors eager to buy into

the status surrounding these names at a staggering cost. Although perhaps evoked by

market savvy artists themselves, this new role of artist as superstar also reflects the mass

cultures embrace of celebrity culture19 and increasing focus on “the self” manifested by an

aggressive marketing culture and a digital generation seeking instant gratification.

14

READ, H. 1967. Art and Alienation: The Role of the Artist in Society, London, Thames and Hudson., London 1967 p 24 11 KÖNIG, C. T. I. C. K. 1997. Münster '97 Sculpture Projects : Carolee Thea Interviews Curator Kasper König. Sculpture Magazine, November 1997, GRAW, I. April 2008. Art and its Markets: A Round Table Discussion. Artforum International,. 16

SMOLIK, N. 1994. The show man - interview with artist Kasper Koenig. ArtForum, 1994. 17

HELGUERA, P. July 2001. Inside Out: Reassessing International Cultural Influence. Programmable Revolutions: A Binational Interpretration of the Modernist Dream. Rio de Janiero, Brazil. [Accessed 5 January 2011] 18

COLLINGS, M. 2000. This is modern art, New York, Watson-Guptill Publications. p 26 19

GRAW, I. April 2008. Art and its Markets: A Round Table Discussion. Artforum International,. p 294

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One artist who both embraces this new celebrity role and simultaneously turns the

traditional role of artist on its head is Tracey Emin. This hyper identity “all-singing, all-

dancing, all-crying”20 art star’s antics are constant fodder for the tabloids - polarising both art

critics and the general public. Playing with the traditional role of women, her sculpture My

Bed (1998) “turned the image of a woman-as-harlot into harlot-as-heroine.”21 Her

confessional style of art, often including themes such as abortion, depression and sex,

overflows into her day to day living and vice versa. Emin’s art is a direct reflection of the role

she has cast in her own persona – Emin literally is the art she creates. Is Emin’s work role

play or merely the act of the artist holding a mirror to her life, fascinating to outsiders in all

its drama, vulgarity and rawness? The context of the gallery is the crack in this mirror’s

reflection as the computer screen is to Second Life artists. As with today’s media savvy

reality show contestants, through the act of exhibiting her personal history she is at the same

time cleverly editing it for maximum impact, as we when we edit our digital selves –

constructing our own reality performances through Facebook, Myspace and YouTube videos.

And by simultaneously living her life through the media she is concurrently playing out

another role – that of emotionally disturbed artist and ‘party-hard’ celebrity playing to the

camera, with all the self-awareness that act entails.

Joseph Beuys famously appropriated Novalis quoting “everyone is an artist,” originating

from his concept of social sculpture in which society as a whole was to be regarded as one

great work of art, offers a strong framework for Emin’s work. Like Emin, Beuys performances

were framed within an emerging culture of the spectacle and were a direct play on the

“spectacularisation of the artist as ‘star’ and the social role ensuing from that.”22 Bruce

Nauman has also questioned the role of artist through works such as Art Make Up 1 – 4

(1967 – 1968), Performance Box and Walk with Contrapposto (1968). Nauman’s work

fluctuates between impressions of action and acting and questions whether the artist is actor

or performing self. The four video installation Art Make Up shows Nauman preparing his face

with makeup in the style of a stage actor. This action not only teases the audience with the

idea of artist as actor but also references more traditional art forms by implying painting (this

time of self) and the idea of “masking one’s identity”.23 Researchers findings show “that

20

GARGETT, A. October 2001. Going Down - The Art of Tracey Enim,. 3AM Magazine. 21

LEWIS, B. 28.05.09. Tracey Emin's really done it this time [Online]. Available: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/arts/review-23700768-tracey-emins-really-done-it-this-time.doc [Accessed]. 22

FOSTER, H. 2005. Art since 1900 : modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism, London, Thames & Hudson. p 482 23

CROSS, S. 2003. Bruce Nauman Theatres of Experience. In: GUGGENHEIM, D. (ed.).p 15

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users in online worlds masqueraded or enjoyed playing roles that they did not have in

reality.”24 Artist Jeffrey Lipsky has built a painting practice on recreating virtual scenes in

real life works, painted “live” from the screen, commissioned for online friends and

celebrated at mixed reality art openings in his CounterPART gallery which exists in

Massachusetts and in Second Life. His alter ego as celebrity avatar artist “Filthy Fluno”

has made him an art star in Second Life and boosted his real life art sales and career

standing.25 Lipsky has since gone on to write a guide for other artists to succeed in

Second Life including how to ‘deck out’ your artist avatar, create a virtual promo book

and create your own scene.26 “Every SL artist is a budding Darko Maver – a “fictitious’

character waiting to be acknowledged as “real” confirms art critic and curator Domenico

Quaranta. 27 Role play as artist exists two fold in Second Life – the user as artist and the

avatar persona as artist. Many Second Life artists make a conceptual decision to do away

with the former altogether, existing only in Second Life, for example Gazira Babelli “a

deconstructed artist-construct”28

who will be discussed further in Chapter 3 – Being Virtually

Human.

The conceptual bridge between Emin and the avatar artist is Mariko Mori who also depicts

herself in her early work but rather than a flawed self, focuses on contemporary archetypes

of the feminine in Japanese culture including manga and anime. Most notably, Mori’s

depictions have a digital twist – she morphs and “reanimates”29 herself “as a post-human

cyborg girl, a stranger that seemed to have leapt into real life from a manga comic or a video

game thereby creating an irritation about the future” 30 . Mori’s constructed self contains

elements of shojo culture and cosplay – a reinterpretation of a virtual, comic book or manga

characters. Her embodied depictions are detached however – unlike the engaged role play of

many real life cosplayers. Her eyes stare out blankly, often disguised with mirrored contact

24

BANAKOU, D. C., K 2010. The Effects of Avatars' Gender and Appearance on Social Behaviour in Virtual Worlds. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2.p 6 25

CORBETT, S. 2009. Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar. New York Times Magazine. New York. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/magazine] Accessed 1/7/2010 26

LIPSKY, J. 2009. Streamline Your Time in Second Life - An Introductory Guide for Artists. Art Calendar - the business magazine for visual artists. Florida: David Trask. p 26 27

QUARANTA, D. 2007. Remediations. Art in Second Life. Hz, 11. 28

LICHTY, P. 2008. I Know Gaz Babelli [Online]. Available: http://gazirababeli.com/TEXTS.php?t=iknowgazbabeli [Accessed 3/8 2010]. 29

KUNI, V. 2004. Mythical Bodies II. Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-)creation in the imagination space of technological (re)production (II): The promises of monsters and posthuman anthropomorphisms [Online]. Available: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/mythical_bodies_II/11/ [Accessed]. 30

VOLKART, Y. 2010. Media Art Net [Online]. Available: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/play-with-me/ [Accessed 8/9 2011].

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lenses, whilst those in the scenes around her are seemingly oblivious to her presence. There

is isolation within the digital utopia. In her early Tokyo photos (for example Play With Me or

Subway) her re-presented gaming characters “lack agency—appearing to be controlled by an

unseen game player.”31 Like her virtual counterparts, her skin is smooth and unflawed, her

gaze vacant – yet she extrudes a kind of untouchable feminine power, particularly present in

her work “Love Hotel”. The work deconstructs reality by injecting elements of the unreal

within it. Mori herself states “I'm interested in the relationship between fantasy and reality,

and how they co-exist ... it's about fantasy created by technology which is turning into

reality.”32 Throughout Mori's work “the repetition of self-portraits, as well as the digital

insertion of the avatars and cyborgs, addresses these issues of how technology may be

utilized to locate, dislocate and relocate identity.”33In her later work Mori transcends body to

consciousness, perhaps embracing the true meaning of the word avatar as a manifested

spirit. In a commentary on global technological connectedness and ‘oneness’ Mori began

portraying herself as a digital Buddha-like character (Pureland 1996) perhaps transcending

her identity from the body, digital body and technology itself.

Role Play – Gender and the Self

Mori’s portrayal of the digital self as a fetishised character reflects the nature of the

constructed avatar identities of Second Life users as “embodied self-portraits”.34

Researchers Domna Banakou and Konstantinos Chorianopoulos found “users with a more

elaborate avatar had a higher success rate in their social interactions than those with the

default avatar.”35 Attractive avatars interacted more frequently with others due to a carry

on effect between their appearance and the self-confidence of their operator. Research also

showed that avatars were mostly designed to reflect either their own appearance or

fantasised appearance.36 Appearance in online games does not advance a user’s position but

socially in Second Life, as in real life, attractiveness has currency.

31

HOLLAND, A. 2009. Mori Mariko and the Art of Global Connectedness. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 32

SCHREIBER, R. 1999. Cyborgs, Avatars, Laa-laa and Po:Exhibitions of Mariko Mori. Afterimage, March April 1999. p 16 33

Ibid. p 14 34

HEINRICH, F. 2009. The Performative Portrait: Iconic Embodiment in Ubiquitous Computing. Embodiment and Context, Digital Arts and Culture 2009. Arts Computation Engineering, UC Irvine. p 3 35

BANAKOU, D. C., K 2010. The Effects of Avatars' Gender and Appearance on Social Behaviour in Virtual Worlds. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 2. p 1 36

Ibid. p 5

19 | P a g e

In their paper “Knee High Boots and Six-Pack Abs: Auto ethnographic Reflections on Gender

and Technology in Second Life” researchers Dumitirica and Gaden - who immersed

themselves in the virtual world to explore the online performance of gender - diarised

feelings of self-doubt when not reflecting the standard body of perfection in Second Life, “I

didn’t belong in my free/mismatched/un-‘sexy’ clothes… I felt like such a loser. In a virtual

world.”37 Second Life’s purchasable gestures and body parts further entrench the signs of

man or woman on our digital selves by enforcing ‘giggles for the girls’ and ‘swaggers for the

men’. Gender roles in Second Life are easily transferable in a form of digital drag38 provoking

“a framework for experimentation – trying out various gender roles in specific social

contexts” 39 where “gender becomes a site of performance and play”. 40

Artists throughout history have been acting out the idealised gender roles of male and

female. The masculine identity was embraced by the Viennese Actionists who embodied the

role of shaman through the ritual elements of their work. Hermann Nitsch described the

group’s work as ‘an aesthetic form of praying’ and maintained that it could bring liberation

from violence through catharsis: ‘All torment and lust, combined in a single state of

unburdened intoxication, will pervade me and therefore YOU. The play-acting will be a

means of gaining access to the most “profound” and “holy” symbols through blasphemy and

desecration.’41 The notion of role play did not always take on such serious god-like

permutations however. The work of Fluxus artists put more emphasis on the word “play” in

this term. Seeing no distinction between art and life, the artists associated with the group

Fluxus combined theatre, music, sculpture and installation - playing with roles and

boundaries within and between the structures of the art world and the broader culture. The

Fluxus manifesto has been embraced by pioneering Second Life performance group Second

Front. Virtual world commentator Nettrice Gaskins referred to the Fluxus influence on

Second Life performance artists saying “Fluxus artists challenged audiences to think in new

37

GADEN, G. 2009. Knee High Boots and Six-Pack Abs:Autoethnographic Reflections on Gender and Technology in Second Life. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Cultures of Virtual Worlds, 1. p 11 38

KUNI, V. Mythical Bodies II - Cyborg configurations as formations of (self-) creation in the imagination space of technological (re) production (II): The promises of monsters and posthuman anthropomorphisms [Online]. Available: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/mythical_bodies_II/ [Accessed 1/7 2011]. 39

JANINE FRON, T. F., JACQUELYN FORD MORI, CELIA PEARCE 2007. Playing Dress-Up: Costumes, roleplay and imagination. Philosophy of Computer Games. Department of Social, Quantitative and Cognitive Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. p 13 40

Ibid. p 16 41

CHILVERS, I. 1998. A dictionary of twentieth-century art, Oxford, Oxford University Press.p 482

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and unconventional ways. In Second Life art continues to break down conventional ideas

about what art is.”42

But what of the gendered self? Alongside Mariko Mori, American photographer Cindy

Sherman subverts the self-portrait through role play by casting her own body in her work in a

form of analogue cosplay and, at the same time, negating her everyday objects, persona and

gestures. Much like the process of constructing an avatar, Sherman fractures the image of

the author and self by implicating the portrait and the construction of our individual

personas with a conglomeration of images from the mass media through employing

references to film, celebrity and pop culture.43 In her early series Untitled Film Stills (1977 –

1980), Sherman transforms herself into projected archetypes, primarily of society’s

preconceived roles of women - from prostitute to housewife – reflecting the gender roles

and symbols that transcend the physical world and cross over seamlessly, and seemingly

unquestioned, into the virtual. These works were directly informed by artist VALE EXPORT’s

earlier works, Identity Transfer 1 – 4 (1968) which were a gentler play on the androgynous

identities of the time. The Identity Transfer series were “self-portraits in different characters

... in which I communicate my identity.”44 Export’s identity role play was famously enacted in

a reclamation performance by the feminist artist in her 1969 work Aktionshose:Genitalpanik

(1969). A dishevelled Export wearing leathers, crotch-less pants and bearing a machine gun,

charged into a porn cinema in Germany, confronting the passive male gaze head on and

challenging the cinema goers to look at the ‘real thing’. EXPORT’s body was the unpackaged

version of Cindy Sherman’s constructed identities and, confrontingly, this version crashed

through the screen not only returning the gaze, but threatening it with deadly fire.

Interestingly EXPORT was also an early exponent of ‘artist as brand’, dropping both her

father’s and husband’s name to take on the VALE EXPORT identity from a packet of

cigarettes. EXPORT’s Aktionshose: Genitalpanik was re-enacted by Marina Abramovic at the

Guggenheim New York in 2000 in Seven Easy Pieces, a consecutive series of events in which

Abramovic restaged significant performance works, casting herself in the role of artist (two

of these works being her own).

42

GASKINS, N. 2009. Performative Interventions: The Progression of 4D Art in a Virtual 3D World. Art21 [Online]. Available from: http://blog.art21.org/2009/12/31/performative-interventions-the-progression-of-4d-art-in-a-virtual-3d-world/]. 43

FOSTER, H. 2005. Art since 1900 : modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism, London, Thames & Hudson. p 582 44

Quoted in Ob/De+Con(Struction), p.24). EXPORT, V. 2000. Ob/De+Con(Struction), exhibition catalogu [Online]. Available: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=88980&searchid=10121&tabview=text [Accessed 03/03 2011].

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Re-enactment

There have been a number of exhibitions in the last ten years that have explored the idea of

artists role playing artists through the re-enactment of historical performance works. In 2001

Jens Hoffman curated A Little Bit of History Repeated (Berlin, Kunst-Werke 2001). This

exhibition featured performances by artists from across the world including John

Bock (Germany), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Trisha Donnelly (USA), Ingar Drangset & Michael

Elmgreen (Denmark/Norway), Karl Holmqvist (Sweden) and Takehito Koganezawa (Japan).

The process of re-enactment poses interesting questions around authorship, originality and

the very nature of performance art. A Little Bit of History Repeated was staged in three

forms – painstakingly recreated events, interpretations of the original events and completely

new works that were based on the original conceptual idea of these performances.45

Interestingly these re-enactments are further dissipated through the employment of actors

to ‘role play’ Abramovic herself. Whitechapel Gallery has staged a series of annual exhibition

in this format since 2002 entitled “A Short History of Performance”, which began with

recreations of seminal works form the 1960’s and 70’s and has since explored “history,

politics feminism and art itself.”46

In Second Life we role play ourselves constantly. The work of Abramovic, who once decried

she was doomed to re-perform her work her whole life,47 leads us into the question of

re-enactment (or what Lichty terms remediation) in virtual worlds. Perhaps the most

interesting re-enactment piece in recent years was Synthetic Performances staged at

Performa 07 by Eva and Franco Mattes. The two artists ‘role played role playing’ by

recreating avatars based in their real life identities then using those avatars to recreate

performances by Abramovic, Acconci, Burden, Gilbert, EXPORT, Beuys and Gilbert & George.

In using Second Life as a medium the artists completely negated any spontaneity in the

performance itself as every movement had to be recreated in script prior to the event.48 This

re-enactment precluded a work by Second Front in which they performed a work by Fluxus

member Al Hansen Car Bibbe - an unrealised car symphony ‘not possible in real life’ due to

45

Wizya Video Art Action Archive [Online]. Available: http://www.wizya.net/info/berlin/alittlebit.htm [Accessed 02/03 2011]. 46

MATTES, E. A. F. A Short History of Performance Press Release [Online]. Available: http://www.undo.net/cgi-bin/undo/pressrelease/pressrelease.pl?id=1069092743&day=1069110000 [Accessed 1/5 2011]. 47

LICHTY, P. 2007a. Dancing in the minefield of virtual embodiment. CIAC's Electronic Magazine. 48

MATTES, E. A. F. 2007. Nothing is real, everything is possible - Excerpt from interview on Synthetic Performances with Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG [Online]. Available: http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/performances/index.html [Accessed 16/11 2010].

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liability issues in the work.49 Interestingly, this was enacted by Hansen’s real life daughter

Bibbe Hansen’s avatar Bibbe Oh alongside other Second Front members.

Re-enactment can be seen as a regurgitation of art history but utilising these new virtual

media, which permeate more and more into our daily screen, it becomes “less a clinging to

the past, as perhaps paving the way for history.”50

Following in this line of thought, my own studio work for this project utilises re-enactment of

the self and spaces – both real and virtual). In my own practice I aim to fracture the self /

performer / avatar through multiple re-enactments including:

The real artist as performer;

The self-portrait avatar Diogenes Wylder;

Multiple representations of the avatar operated by Second Life performers, real life

performers and audience members in the Watermill space in avatar costume;

In this way, not only the self is fractured, but also the position and role of the audience who

are at once caught between realities, identities, and their roles as spectator or

performer/actor by interacting with a digital avatar and appearing within the work on a live

screen feed as themselves.

Chapter 3 - On Being Virtually Human

Before we can explore what it means to perform in virtual space we need to further examine

our role as virtual humans. Traversing the virtual land of Second Life, the first thing that

strikes a visitor is that ninety five percent of avatars represent an extreme model of 21st

century fantasised beauty. Tiny waists, large buoyant breasts, huge open eyes, flowing hair,

rippling muscles and staggeringly high cheekbones. Identity – age, race, sex – becomes

fluid.51 On questioning these virtual humans, the theory of the post-human is immediately

brought to the fore. Are these digitally constructed bodies an example of the emergence of

the post human, where finally the human being is displaced by another? Tom Boellstroff

who conducted an anthropological study of Second Life argues that real life has been virtual

49

LICHTY, P. 2009b. SF's Car Bibbe II [Online]. Available: http://www.voyd.com/bibbe.html [Accessed 23/07 2011]. 50

LICHTY, P. 2009a. Lightning Rod:Second Front, Reemergence of the Happening and the Integration of History. CIAC's Electronronic Magazine. 51

BOELLSTORFF, T. 2009. Coming of Age in Second Life An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, Princeton, Princeton University Press. p 56

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life all along.52 There is no “post” relationship, where one form is replaced by another, but a

merging of the two. It is human nature to explore nature through culture; therefore we have

always been virtual. “Culture is our killer app”, he says, “we are all virtually human”.

Australian artist Stelarc has questioned the post human and obsolete body for decades.

Stelarc has embraced Second Life technologies, setting up The Virtual Stelarc Initiative on

RMIT Island, in collaboration with the Creative Media department at the university.

Constructed as a traditional gallery or museum, the initiative showcases a retrospective of

his previous work through performance stills and blueprints. Several works are also

recreated virtually such as Stel-Bot, which was shown at the Australian Centre for

Contemporary Art, and the Prosthetic Head, as well as several other interactive installations.

It is an ideal environment for Stelarc’s work, for as Stelarc states, “the body is not an object

of desire, but an object for designing53...the body needs to be repositioned from the psycho

realm of the biological to the cyber zone of the interface and extension.” 54 The digital body

is “only partly individual, it is also a collective body…a disassembled and reassembled,

postmodern collective and personal self.”55Like much of the work on Second Life, Stelarc’s

art is “post-convergent”, containing a range of media elements including sound, vision,

architecture, coding and networking56 where the final element is supplied by the interaction

of the user. In Second Life this user is not the real life gallery visitor found in installation work

we are more familiar with but the ‘avatar’ - the virtual human. Thus Stelarc forces his

audience to step into his realm as an equal to the work – the viewer’s body becomes

fractured as the work is experienced by a pixelated digital version of themselves.

The Avatar Self

What exactly is an avatar and how do we relate this to our own identity? How much is

invested in our virtual selves when “all it takes to disappear is a mouse click”57 – does this

encourage us to take more risk with our online personas? This project’s ‘mascot’ - Diogenes

Wylder - was “born” into Second Life some 2 years ago – a perfected recreation or self

52

Ibid.pg 29 53

STELARC 1998. From Psycho-Body to Cyber-Systems: Images as Post-Human Entities / London, Routledge. p 117 54

Ibid.p 116 55

HARAWAY, D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York, Routelage.p 163 56

NASH, A. 2007. Art Stops For Second Life Tour. Available from: Https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2007-August/msg00161 [Accessed 24/4 2010]. 57

AAS, M., EMMELKAMP 2010. Who am I - and if so, where? A Study on Personality in Virtual Realities. journal of Virtual Worlds Research - The Metaverse Assembled, 2. p 4

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portrait of the author and artist. The name Diogenes was inspired by Ricardo Dominguez’s

paper Diogenes On-Line: Gestures against the Virtual Republic which positions Diogenes 2.0

as one who “refuses to be reduced to physiognomic silence before the endless onslaught of

digital perfection.”58 Diogenes’ flawless skin was at first a product of the software itself – as,

being a ‘noob’ and without any technical ‘know how’ in the system, I could not hack into the

plethora of polished, young identities available for selection. Despite many early efforts, I

found it almost impossible to age my avatar to reflect a true portrait of myself. Critic

Domenico Quaranta quotes G. H. Hovagimyan, one of the pioneers of Net art, "When you

allow an engineer to dictate how you are creative and what form that takes then you have

given up your artistic freedom. This is the case in SL."59 While this may be the case in terms

how we control how our avatar looks – it paves the way for ‘code breakers’ and other artists

to question this imposed ideal.

Artist Kristine Shomaker recently completed her thesis on digital identity in virtual worlds.

Shomaker created an avatar based on her own fantasised identity and explored the avatars’

relationship to herself and the media projected ideas of the ideal body. She describes her

project as a “close-up daily view of a personal, social and psychological co-existence with my

virtual persona…I project myself onto another form and confront my own imperfections”.

Through ‘The Gracie Kendal Project’ Shomaker “explores the “realism” of her physical

persona and the “romanticism” of her virtual self-identity”60 and at once reveals her own

intimate fears of inadequacy in a truly personal expose’ – much like an inverted Emin

persona. The most well known Second Life artist exploring what it means to be virtually

human is Gazira Babelli. Heralded as the ultimate glitch or “ghost in the machine” Gazira’s

work questions the body, identity, space and time. She uses very specific language around

her work such as “sculpture” performance” and “painting” to disassociate herself from new

media artists – a point she makes with one of her works called Don’t Say New Media. Gazira

references historical artists such as Duchamp, Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and

Modernist art movements of Cubism and Dadaism. Gazira has termed herself a “code

performer” – she has an immense knowledge of SL scripting and uses this to create tongue-

in-cheek artistic interventions in Second Life, often at online events such as art openings to

disturb and question the values and of other avatars, their ownership, and the social

58

DOMINGUEZ, R. Diogenes On-line:Gestures against the Virtual Republic. S W I T C H Network Art, 4.p 2 59

QUARANTA, D. 2007. Remediations. Art in Second Life. Hz, 11. 60

SHOMAKER, K. 2010. MEDIA RELEASE: ARTIST GRACIE KENDAL AND THE VANEEESA BLAYLOCK COMPANY EXPLORE A WOMAN’S RELATIONSHIP WITH HER AVATAR [Online]. Available: http://graciekendal.wordpress.com/ [Accessed 1/8/11 2011].

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conventions61 of the virtual world they are living in. She explores “the limits of the machine,

as Nam June Paik did and as Dutch duo Jodi do.”62 By controlling and manipulating the

virtual body of herself and others, Gazira reminds us that although we may be connected to

our virtual selves we remain distinct and are not fully in control of our personal bundle of

pixels.

“ Gaz uses a recursive modernism, deconstructing her identity with every work like a

set of Matroshka dolls while making no illusions that there the last doll is ostensibly

empty; a dead end at the end of Carroll's rabbit hole. As such, I believe that she is a sort

of "critical readymade", slamming Duchamp through Nauman's lens of life-as-art, and

expressing it as a living, breathing body of code”(Lichty, 2008)

Although her real life persona remains anonymous, Gazira herself has succeeded in moving

‘beyond the pixels’. Thousands of real life gallery visitors experienced Gazira’s work in her

exhibition [Collateral Damage] in 2007. Gazira has also taken part in various festivals and

events outside Second Life, including: Peam2006 (Pescara), DEAF07 (Rotterdam), Fabio Paris

Art Gallery (Brescia and art fairs), iMAL (Brussels) and PERFORMA 07 NYC (with Second

Front). Her work has attracted the attention of publications such as El Pais, La Stampa,

Liberazione, SPIEGEL ONLINE, Exibart, Kunstzeitung, CIAC, Flash Art, eXtrart and FMR White

Edition.63

By creating an avatar or virtual self we create a strange balance between the level of

investment and exposure of ourselves and role play. I am compelled by the general use of

the “idealised body” by many users of virtual worlds and the desire to create utopian selves

and environments in their blandest possible form. A cerebral longing to create a perfect self

and life. My early forays into Second Life revolved around constructed utopias, fantasy lives

and hyper-real bodies. I was fascinated by the use of Second Life by the majority of users,

who - given the tools to create any world they desired – chose to build a romanticised

‘McMansion’ version of life. Testament to these strong ties to the mundane is the fact that,

despite given the ability to fly, users were creating flying machines within 3 hours of the

software being launched. Second Life executive John Lester commented, “When presented

61

QUARANTA, D. 2008. Gaz me two times, baby (Gaz me twice today) [Online]. Available: http://gazirababeli.com/TEXTS.php?t=gazmetwotimes [Accessed 1/8 2010]. 62

QUARANTA, D. February 2008. Gaz me two times, baby (Gaz me twice today) [Online]. Available: http://gazirababeli.com/TEXTS.php?t=gazmetwotimes [Accessed 4/3 2011]. 63

BABELLI, G. 2008. Biography [Online]. Available: www.gazirababelli.com [Accessed 8/6 2010].

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with new mediums, human beings tend to first replicate what is already known” 64 (before

pushing new boundaries). Having had explored digital glitches in many previous works, I

tackled this strange psychology – to highlight the inherent glitches evident in this imagined

life that were ignored by these users in their quest to ‘live the dream’.

Denise Doyle refers to the avatar as a “third body, neither human nor non-human, neither

here-body nor image-body.” 65 Wanting to explore the boundaries of the avatar self, its

representation and relationship with myself further , I allowed Diogenes to symbolically

break through the screen and into my world - recreating a disembodied virtual avatar by re-

performing her in real life as myself – a ‘fourth body’ as such. These live performances are

layered into subsequent installations through their reinjection back into the screen alongside

recreated live performances in the gallery. The performing “real life” Diogenes can never

live up to the perfect world of avatar Diogenes. She becomes clown-like, desperate – stuck

between two realities. My work also includes films and performances of the avatar – trying

as desperately to be real as her counterpart tries to be virtual. These elements – live

performance, virtual performance, mirroring, re-enactment, identity play and role play -

come together in a real world installation often alongside other performers who mimic both

my performance and the avatar’s on screen presence. Pre-determined personality traits

were imposed on both the performing real life Diogenes and avatar Diogenes, and

somewhere in between lays the self – the artist. In the process of developing this

performative avatar during a residency to develop my work Reality Bytes with actors and a

dramaturge the following characteristics were determined in order to give both the

performative and avatar Diogenes a “presence”:

Diogenes – The Avatar

Virtual Diogenes is empty

An LA blond – all smiles and tits and good times

Everything she needs is at her fingertips

Life is easy, carefree

She can add friends and delete them in a nano second

64

LESTER, J. 2009. Artistic Expression in Second Life: What can we learn from creative pioneers of new mediums? Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1, 5. 65

DOYLE, D. 2009. Embodied Presence: The Imaginary in Virtual Worlds. Embodiment and Performativity, Digital Arts and Culture. Arts Computation Engineering, UC Irvine. p 2

27 | P a g e

Love is always there or just around the corner

Her bed is made

She is eternal

The grass is green green and the trees sway the same way in the same wind every day. The

sun rises and sets every 4 hours – her days are short and joyful.

But she is empty. Hollow. She is the scarecrow, the lion and the tinman all rolled into one. If

she could feel envy, then it would be there as she waits silently in the darkness of the

powered down computer, for RL DW, her heart, her brain, to reactivate her very special life.

Diogenes in Real Life

Real Life Diogenes has no beauty

Real Life Diogenes is desperate

She is clown like. Laughable. So wrongtown, she’s funny.

She is stuck between realities.

She has put everything she has into buying her lifestyle – apartment, clothes - to try to keep

up with the life avatar DW is living. She prostituted herself to get there. Brain fucked.

She can’t keep up. Everything she buys disintegrates eventually and cannot be afforded to be

replaced. She is washed up. No one would fuck her for money now –no one would fuck her at

all.

She is disease ridden.

She is absurd.

Grotesque.

Distorted.

Deformed in her obsession with trying to replicate the life that DW is living.

She doesn’t realise DW is empty – a bunch of pixels.

She has bought into the Second Life dream completely.

She is lost between what is real and what isn’t.

She scrubs herself clean.

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She is obsessive compulsive.

She had botched backyard surgery to replicate Diogenes’ looks.

She damns her own ageing, her mortality.

She calls out to her virtual self nightly, lamenting – she knows though, that she is only a

mouse click away but sometimes - when she won’t answer - and her love turns to hate. Real

Diogenes does not realise she is talking to herself.

She is confused, dazed – her relationship between her body and the objects around her is

glitched – she fucks the chair, stands on the bed, and cleans her body with her toothbrush,

her hair brush in her mouth. There are moments of clarity – when her and her digital self-

sync / connect– it is in these moments only when a slight fleeting beauty can be seen in her

movements. When she is still, contemplating lost – we feel empathy towards her. We see

her humanity.

Digital Identity and Desire

The interfaces that lead us into cyberspace prove that one cannot detach technology from

desire. Digital technologies promise to transcend familiar reality and to connect us to the

paradise that reality has taken from us. Down with the detours and delays of reality: let us

have instant gratification! What we cannot have in reality, we can have via the fantasy

screen. As a “consensual hallucination” cyberspace would be the utopic, new ideal world.

Interface Fantasy: A Lananian Cyborg Ontology – Andre Nusselder66

In a world where “status is…often accrued by having the best collection of sexually appealing

avatars,”,67desire and- its ultimate physical endpoint – sex, or in this case cybersex, prevail.

Cybersex is “more than role play it is the creation of a shared fantasy.”68 Avatars are hollow –

avatars are pure, avatars are clean, avatars have no orifices. They do not leak, shit, sweat,

rot – there is no inconvenience to their bodies. And if an avatar has no orifices then sex in

Second Life is safer than in real life – the user is “freed from the burden of the body.”69

66

NUSSELDER, A. 2009b. Interface Fantasy : A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology, Cambridge, MIT Press. p 11 67

GADEN, G. 2009. Knee High Boots and Six-Pack Abs:Autoethnographic Reflections on Gender and Technology in Second Life. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Cultures of Virtual Worlds, 1. p 13 68

SIXMA, T. 2009. The Gorean Community in Second Life - Rules of Sexual Inspired Role Play. journal of Virtual Worlds Research - Cultures of Virtual Worlds, 1. p 5 69

MATVIYENKO, S. 2009. Sensuous Extimacy: Sexuation and Virtual Reality. Taking on a Gender Identity in Second Life. Sex and Sexuality, Digital Arts and Culture 2009. Arts Computation Engineering, UC Irvine. p 2

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Many criticisms have been levelled at Second Life for its high number of sex, porn and exotic

dance Sims. Contemporary art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta said of in world

existence, “life revolves around the banal repetition of real-life rituals (having sex, going

dancing, and attending parties, openings and conferences) and the same principles: private

property, wealth and consumption.”70 As the promotional video for dedicated cybersex

virtual world “The Red Light Center” attests, “Be who you want to be…without the hassle”.

Cybersex or getting off online, in Second Life is a form of immersive role play – a mixed

reality happening in that it more often than not, one could imagine, elicits physical action in

its users offline.

My work Byte<N> 2010 (Fig.2 & 3) explored digital desire and cybersex through a

performative installation at RearView Gallery, Melbourne. The work encompassed the

sexuality and identity of both myself as artist and performer and as an avatar self. In the

performative installation, situated on a stylised bed, I perform as both myself and my avatar

whilst operating my on screen avatar simultaneously, walking her around a mirrored

environment created in Second Life. Projected upon me is a never-ending loop of two virtual

bodies, one my own, having sex in endless positions. A seemingly random male from the

gallery audience, situates himself on the bed within the performance space and begins

operating a second laptop controlling a male avatar. The two avatars then proceed to fuck in

the virtual world as the human operators remain back to back, completely disengaged and

seemingly unaware of each other – despite the object of their digital desire being physically

present. This mirrors the sometime disengagement experienced when enacting cyber-sex –

one may be getting carnal on one window, whilst checking their emails on another…or even

wandering off to get a cup of tea before returning to the act unbeknown to their virtual

partner. The performing artist finally becomes aware of her physical partner and proceeds

to undress him seductively – only to promptly re-dress him in her avatar costume of red

heels, black jeans and blonde wig. Seemingly satisfied that the real object of her virtual

desire – her idealised avatar self - has been materialised and, unlike Lynn Herhman’s “Lorna”,

she departs, freed. Whilst filming the “sex-scene” for this work my mind flickered between

the ridiculousness of two digital bodies’ glitching against each other and the surreal feeling

that behind that bunch of pixels a real person is operating and text chatting and perhaps

even masturbating. In the end I created two avatars – one Diogenes and one idealised male

and operated them both simultaneously using two computers to create the desired film

70

QUARANTA, D. 2007. Remediations. Art in Second Life. Hz, 11.

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output for projection – it was quite fitting as in the end, playing dolls, are we not just

virtually fucking ourselves anyway? Can we really create intimacy in this manufactured

space?

Digital Identity and Death

In working through these ideas of identity and desire I began thinking about Second Life and

the people who utilise the technology as being in some kind of perpetual movement away

from death: a denial as such. In Second Life, there is no ageing, no rotting of the flesh.

Secondarily there exists an eternal life in these new technologies – from forever live

Facebook memorials frozen in time to the gravesites, the dead celebrity avatars that still

walk this virtual land and the pun of the program name itself. Despite this, every time I log

out of Second Life my avatar dies – dissolution of pixels disappearing into the black – only to

be reborn, unchanged, at the click of a button. When I die, or kill my Second Life, she will

remain a cyber-ghost, forever condemned to the black. Statistics show 85% of Second Life

users have abandoned their avatars to the virtual world.71 Thirdly, when using digital

identities we are somehow detached, separated by the false sense of security the safety of

the screen gives us. The studio explorations of these provocations began with the stimulus of

the death of hyper celebrity Michael Jackson. Time Magazine opened their tribute to the star

in their July 2009 edition:

“Michael Jackson kept his most stunning performance for the very end. Always

able to command an audience, he knew how to bring whole arenas to fits of

exultation with his moves and then silence them to the point of tears with his

poetry. He was brilliant, excessive, maudlin, tacky and possibly criminal, but you

could never ignore him. So it was fitting that in death, he momentarily silenced

the largest arena humanity has ever known, the Internet.”72

My ensuing work Forever Michael the Revolution will not be Televised 2010 was designed

around the spontaneous memorials that are erected around key sites at the time of celebrity

deaths, and both pays tribute to and comments in the mass digital hysteria surrounding

Michael Jackson’s passing. First reported on celebrity gossip site TMZ.com, Michael’s death

sparked an unprecedented internet frenzy, with Twitter recording over 5000 Jackson Tweets

a minute. Over 11 million people watched his memorial live on the web and tributes,

71

ROSE, F qted in DREYFUS, H. 2008. On the Internet, London, Routeledge. p 90 72

CLOUD, J. 2009. With a Dramatic Pause, the World Mourned the Death of a Brilliant but Troubling Idol. TIME. p 10

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traditionally found on the street, were springing up all over Second Life. The work

reconfigured the traditional tribute memorial combining both the physical and virtual with a

7 minute video touring some of the hundreds of Second Life tributes to Michael Jackson.

Streaming along the bottom of the screen were the sensationalised headlines that appeared,

and continue to appear, onTMZ.com. Ending with YouTube sourced paparazzi footage of

Michael in the last month of his life, we are both voyeur and sympathiser as we watch a

lonely figure being hunted and trapped by a mob of ever-persistent cameramen who feed

the frenzy that surrounded him in life, and now in death. Whilst exploring the Second Life

tributes to Michael I came across numerous “walking dead” Jackson avatars, role playing the

celebrity through dances and vocal mimicry using sound embedded gestures. Turning on my

video screen capture software I filmed the ever increasing number of ‘Michaels’ – dancing

and cajoling with them in front of in world streams of real life Michael video clips. The hours

of footage were worked into a playful video clip of my own “Michael and Me” to the

soundtrack “Rock With You” by Jackson. Like the recreation of actors who have died mid

film, with digital technology, death is no barrier.

Bringing the idea of resurrecting the dead in virtual worlds to a more personal space, I began

creating an intimate 3D rebuild of my own dead father on Second Life. My own self portrait

avatar then tried to recreate lived experiences or dreamed experiences with my father. Like

the avatars themselves though, these experiences were hollow, as it was always me

operating my father’s avatar – making him speak and move like some sad puppet. Humorous

and horrific at once. The work was complemented with a reworking of Ron Mueck’s

installation Dead Dad but instead of a figurative body, the work is constructed from four LED

screens laid face up each with the animated Second Life and static re-photographed real life

body parts of my father interchanging in a 21st Century technological “exquisite corpse” (Fig

4). Installed in a gallery space, the exposure of the work in the “real world” evokes the

question of materiality and where this work actually exists – in cyberspace, in real space or in

a merged reality of the two.

Chapter 4 - On Mixing Realities

Mixed reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds “to produce new environments where

physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time” (Gaskins 2009) in a “doubled

environment.”73 Chapter 4 explores mixed reality art works and happenings and the

73

DOESINGER, S. 2007. Bastard/Alien Spaces and SL Based Art. Empyre - Missive 2 [Online]. Available from: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2007-august/msg00034.html 2011].

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implications these new works have on the materiality and position of installation and

performance. James Morgan (avatar name Rubaiyat Shatner), a lecturer at CADRE -

Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University (Silicon Valley USA) and Director of

Ars Virtua New Media Centre in Second Life - “The first show that we did in Ars Virtua was

titled "The Real." I curated this show and was deep in the process of patting myself on the

back for coming up with something so clever as a “real" show in a “virtual" environment

when in the process of collecting the work and laying out the gallery I realized that despite

my desire to see the work as "virtual" it was in fact as real as any other art that I had

experienced. That is to say that the experience was real, the objects had reality, and the

engagement and writing about the work were also real. The simulation had become the

simulated…. when the human perceptual frame gets its supports knocked out from under it,

leaving a sort of existential limbo.”74 When much of the work relies on the physical

interaction of the avatar through the computer keyboard and cannot even translate to a

present viewer who witnesses the interaction but does not operate the avatar - how material

is this work and what is its value when extracted from the “ in world” environment of

Second Life?

Sculpture and Installation

In 2007 an international exhibition called “Mixed Realities” was curated by Net Art group

Turbulence in Boston to explore these issues and to challenge viewer’s conceptions of what

constitutes reality in these virtual worlds. Artists created environments that invited

participants to perform in multiple spaces, blurring the boundaries between real and virtual

space. Melbourne artist Pierre Proske contributed with his work Caber WAUL – a mixed

reality installation in Huret & Spector Gallery in Boston - a wailing wall on which members of

the public could vent their lament of the departure of their human community who have

crossed over into virtual worlds. The wall is reproduced in virtual scale in Second Life gallery

Ars Virtua, but it is a one way portal. It gives voice to those left in the material, with no right

of reply from their virtual counterparts. In his proposal for the work the artist asks how

those of us too firmly rooted on the physical world can join those who have sought refuge in

the imagined utopia of Second Life - “How shall we communicate with them? In what way

shall we lament their departure? It is a wailing wall through which to mourn the loss of our

74

MORGAN, J. 2007. Welcome to the Bastard Space! Empyre [Online]. Available from: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2007-August/msg00039.html [Accessed 5/6 2010].

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humanity to the virtual network.”75 By both rejecting and exploiting modern techno-utopian

trends Proske exposes the unspoken relationship we have with technology.

Another work in the show entitled “No Matter” by Scott Kildall & Victoria Scott explodes the

virtual economy in Second Life of dematerialised products that are bought and sold for

artificial currency. The work questions the crossover of virtual currency into the real

economy through the Second Life exchange where Linden dollars are traded into real dollars

and sites such as EBay. The work involved commissioning the creation of imaginary objects

in Second Life, inviting viewers to re-construct these immaterial 3D objects in physical space.

The ‘workers’ were paid Second Life wages (which are a fraction of real life money) and the

‘works’ or replica objects were resold on eBay. The work also questioned the nature of

commodity, labour and production. The Second Life viewers of the objects in Ars Virtua must

consider their worth as physical manifestations and the gallery visitors become artisans or

labourers, producing the replica objects.

There are several gallery projects where real life crosses over with virtual life. This blurring

between real and virtual life is known as “boundary” or “bleed through” work. The now

closed Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn had a virtual space called Brooklyn is Watching

which streamed live into the gallery 24 hours a day. Second Life artists flocked to the space

to build virtual installation works and create performances which are viewed by gallery

visitors and critiqued by artists and curators on the Jack the Pelican website. Founder Jay

Van Buren commented, “There are things that people are clearly just randomly putting there

— like hey, what would those art critics think of this? And then there are things where the

craftsmanship is very high, where someone has great command of the techniques of building

things in Second Life, but they have no conceptual depth. And then there’s stuff that is both

incredibly beautifully created in terms of techniques and skill and they’re incredibly deep

conceptually. That’s what tends to excite us.” 76 Another Ars Virtua show, “@”, specifically

examined the nature of space, place and the observer, the interplay between the observer

and the observed. Exploring the way location and ‘placeness’ defines experience, the work

occupied three ‘vantage points’: the material/physical, the digital/virtual, and the hybrid,

where physical and virtual overlap or intersect.77 Visitors to the real life gallery and Second

Life gallery were able to see each other through an aquarium like screen but were not able to

75

http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/caterwaul/description.html 76

CORBETT, S. 2009. Portrait of an Artist as an Avatar. New York Times Magazine. New York.p 22 77

2009. Ars Virtua Location, place, position, @ [Online]. Available: http://arsvirtua.com/more.php?p=115 [Accessed 5/8 2010].

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interact through the digital/material divide. Playing with the notion of observer and

observed, the show was created to always give the privileged view to the weightier reality of

the physical space. On 30 April 2009 the DSL Collection of Contemporary Chinese Art

teamed up with new media artists from Beijing to open the DSL Cyber Museum of

Contemporary Art in Second Life. Representing over 90 of the leading Chinese avant-garde

artists, DSL’s MoCA provides access to a large collection of works from these artists as well as

original multimedia pieces created specifically for this virtual environment. They follow in the

steps of artist Cao Fei who represented China in the 2007 Venice Biennale with her Second

Life work “The China Tracy Pavilion”78 which operated as a mirror between the real world

and the virtual world.79 Even the users of Second Life are existing in two worlds. New media

artist Adam Nash refers to the exacerbated complexities of space in his paper accompanying

Babelstorm, the Ozco funded Second Life Project. “Whenever one enters an environment

such as Second Life, one is simultaneously in: ‘first life’, at a keyboard, probably in a room of

some kind, in some kind of urban space, and in a particular ‘space’ in Second Life itself’.”80 It

is a virtual hall of mirrors.

Performance

All of my Second Life work contains elements of performance whether it is “she” performing,

the avatar, which is me really, or myself performing her as a re-enacted work. With

customizable avatars, adjustable camera positions and easily accessible video capturing

software, much of Second Life’s art is performance based. The pioneering performance art

group in Second Life is Second Front. Founded in 2006, Second Front is associated with real

life artist run initiative Western Front in Canada. Taking their influences from numerous

sources, including Dada, Fluxus, Futurist Syntesi, the Situationist International and

contemporary performance artists like Laurie Anderson and Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Second

Front creates theatres of the absurd that challenge notions of virtual embodiment, online

performance and the formation of virtual narrative.81 Their performances are both

interventionist and based around more traditional theatre forms. Founding member and

academic Patrick Lichty identifies three main issues of performance in Second Life – context,

history and embodiment and the “ironic tension between the physical and the virtual.”82 He

78

Rhizome at The New Museum, http://rhizome.org/editorial/tag.php?tag=secondlife 79

http://virtualartistsalliance.blogspot.com/2007/06/cao-fei-china-tracy-at-52nd-venice.html 80

Babel storm, Adam Nash, Christopher Dodd, Justin Clemens. Sourced from Ozco website. 81

Inworld reference from Odyssey director, Helfe Inhen, during a discussion with the authors’ avatar Diogenes Wylder. Second Life 21/04/09. 82

LICHTY, P. 2007b. The Issue of Remediation. Empyre - Missive 3 [Online]. Available from: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2007-August/msg35.html [Accessed 5/6 2011].

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argues that while the form is recreated it could be seen as wholly symbolic. The Mattes

re-performances for example negate risk and pain as “each work is stripped of its original

context (moving to the virtual), of its identity (by their adoption of their own avatars) and of

risk (by distancing the body from physicality).”83 Does Second Life performance lose the

sense of ritual in Real Life performance art? What engages the viewer through mediated

embodiment? Lichty states that art in virtual worlds is “less object- or event - driven and

resembles the type of process art epitomized by the Happening.”84 The original meaning of

the performance itself is reconceptualised, Mattes recreation of Beuys’ 7000 Oaks turned

the work into a “conceptual virus” for example rather than an environmental piece.

My performances extract and re-inject my Second Life avatar into physical space so that the

work exists on a kaleidoscope of planes: “in world”, within a body of physical sculptures, as

ephemeral projections in space; and as recreated performances by both humans and

avatars. My work Reality Bytes attempted to bring multiple realities together in the one

event. Gallery visitors were able to experience reality cross-overs in all elements of this

installation - whether it be in objects within the room or the way they could access the work,

through virtual reality, a physical reality or both simultaneously. The work was also a play on

the utopian / dystopian duality crossing over between the slum like dystopia of the physical

space and the excessive consumption and hyper sexuality of the parallel world.

As part of my research I took part in a residency at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center New

York which positions itself as a laboratory for performance. Interestingly, in this collaboration

I was working with a Second Life artist who I had never met in real life, avatar Oberon

Onmura. Recommended to me by Brooklyn gallery Jack the Pelican Presents, Oberon and I

spent months meeting in up in the virtual world to discuss the work and commence the build

of a 3D interactive version of the Watermill Center. On arriving in New York we met and paid

a site visit to the centre, where he introduced himself to the staff by his avatar name –

Oberon. It was at the end of the residency that I learnt his real name – which he gave to me

with much reluctance, and only because I had to pay him an artist’s fee. Like many Second

Life artists, he chose only to exist in the virtual world. Two other artists joined me to push

this work into a more performative space, performer Fernando Ariel Gallardo and

dramaturge Paula Van Beek, both of whom I had worked with in real life on a collaboration

called Navigators for the Melbourne International Arts Festival. As an installation artist the

act of applying a time based narrative to my work was challenging. We slogged it out daily, 83

LICHTY, P. 2007a. Dancing in the minefield of virtual embodiment. CIAC's Electronic Magazine. 84

LICHTY, P. 2009a. Lightning Rod:Second Front, Reemergence of the Happening and the Integration of History. CIAC's Electronronic Magazine.

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often sitting in the real life Watermill talking to Oberon in Second Life who was sitting in the

same room in virtual Watermill. Realities were starting to mash even before the

performance had started.

Appendix 1 shows the final score for this performance and demonstrates the complexity,

simultaneous multi-layering required to achieve a fully immersive mixed reality work.

Chapter 5 – On Real and Virtual Audiences

Chapter 5 explores the experiences and reactions of real and virtual audiences in these new

mixed reality spaces. If the artists and users simultaneously exist in several realities where

does this leave the audience? Artist Jill Scott speaks of wanting to shift the somatic and

interactive roles of the audience in new ways….”to try to re-define the body by immersing

the audience inside hybrid environments, where they can in turn, interact with questions

about body transformation.”85

Theatre and performance art are transitory and ephemeral by nature. Due to server

restrictions on Second Life, only a maximum of 100 people86 can be in one place at one time,

therefore restricting the audience exposure of these events two-fold – not only to those

within Second Life, but those who are aware of the event and are fortunate enough to

witness it. An interesting paradox is created. Although the majority of Second Life art work

relies on the interactivity of the user to fully experience its affects, the majority of users are

only able to experience this work through a multi-tiered documentation. You Tube clips,

projections, Flickr photos, blogs and websites serve as the main avenue for interaction with

this work. Second Front founder Patrick Lichty states that the art makers in Second Life need

to consider their primary audiences when planning or creating work – if the work created for

Second Life users alone or whether the documentation will be the work itself and, if so, what

form will this documentation take? 87 Artists need to consider how the work in this form will

engage audience outside of Second Life. It is impossible to recreate the dynamic, multi

viewpoint and interactive nature of this work when it is represented in the “real world.” In

85

VOLKART, Y. 2004. Interview with media artist and theorist Jill Scott about fantasies of the extensive body as a morphological and relational body [Online]. Available: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/cyborg_bodies/extensive_bodies%20/ [Accessed 3/7 2011]. 86

LICHTY, P. 2009d. The Translationof Art in Virtual Worlds. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 16, 12. p 4 87

Empyre

37 | P a g e

Second Life artwork the audience is no longer passive, “a pair of eyes staring in the dark.”88

The viewer breaks through the screen, becoming at once spectator and part of the action

within time and space as both character and narrator.89 The ‘fourth wall’ of the theatre is

truly demolished. As a long established performance group (in the Second Life timeline),

Second Front are perhaps the most adept at recreating engaging documentation of their

performances to expose their work to “multiple audiences from the viral/machinima,

blogosphere and Second Life art cultures.”90 A combination of carefully re-edited video,

filmed by 2 – 3 participants of the original event, is re-contextualised within the Second Front

blog which narrates and gives body to the work. It is still though, a much poorer experience

than being involved in the work itself – much like real life witnesses to the performance work

of contemporary artists such as Timothy Kendell Esther might lament to others who were

not present. As always, it’s a case of “you just had to be there,” even if ‘there’ does not exist

in the physical world. The spatial and material problems being these performances are

“perceived by those who operate in them as settings for real action, and by those who

merely passively observe them as a flow of moving images on a screen.” 91

In describing the reaction to the recreated Abramovic/Ulay work Imponderabilia critic Rachel

Wolfe said, “Some avatars stripped naked before squeezing between Eva and Franco Mattes,

while others, who didn’t understand the interaction mechanism, took up position in front of

the door, and still others exploited the situation to give rise to new performances of their

own.”92 This heightened role of audience reinforces Bourriaud’s idea of transitivity, without

it, he says “the work is nothing other than a dead object, crushed by contemplation.”93

In my work Reality Bytes the idea was to create a happening where both audience and

performer were in multiple realities at once. We would have a real life performance and

audience at the Watermill Center, a virtual performance and audience in the Second Life

rebuild of Watermill (which also included a live video stream of the real life performance), a

real life audience in Melbourne watching a live stream of the Second Life performance and a

global audience of Second Life avatars. Further complicating the collaboration, we were

88

The Lord and the New Creatures, Jim Morrison 89

Nature Morte: Landscapes and Narratives in Virtual Environments Margaret Morese from Immersed in Technology:Art and Virtual Environments, Edited by Mary Anne Moser, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1996. p 199 90

LICHTY, P. 2009d. The Translationof Art in Virtual Worlds. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 16, 12. p 10 91

LICHTY, P. 2011. Lichty & Babeli’s “7UP” at BGSU 100×100 Alumni show. patrick lichty's art, research, and polemics [Online]. Available from: http://patricklichty.wordpress.com/page/3/ [Accessed 23/9 2011]. 92

All the Web’s a Stage Rachel Wolff http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2443 93

BOURRIAUD, N. 2002. Relational aesthetics, [France], Les presses du réel., p 27

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directing two Second Life performers through virtual cues and trying to simultaneously

engage three separate audiences. The unpredictability was transferred to the Second Life

avatar audience, who would comment and interrupt these performances.

As I began to fracture out identity and realities – the logistics became almost overwhelming.

Reality cross-overs were created using the following methods:

1. Real life (RL) performance space at The Watermill Center

2. Mirrored virtual performance set built in Second Life (SL)

3. Multiple audience access points

a. Real life audience in Watermill (live physical)

b. Second Life audience

c. Melbourne event audience

d. Infinite global audience accessing Second Life

4. Real life performers

a. Georgie Roxby Smith as herself, operating her SL avatar

b. Georgie Roxby Smith re-enacting live avatar onscreen action

c. Georgie Roxby Smith as a real life person obsessed with being a “perfect” avatar

d. Georgie Roxby Smith re-enacting and watching pre-recorded mixed realty

performances of herself and her avatar

e. Fernando Ariel Gallardo further fracturing out the avatar and RL performer by

performing as a glitched Diogenes in drag

5. Second Life performers

6. Live access to Second Life space from Watermill accessed by RL Watermill audience and RL

performers

7. Live access to Second Life space for remote audiences (Melbourne and global)

8. Mixed reality real life and Second Life pre-recorded and live footage in both RL and SL spaces

9. Multi layered real time interaction between real life performers, Second Life performers, real

life audience and Second Life audience

10. Fractured self/performer through multiple reproductions of the artist in both spaces

11. The artist – Georgie Roxby Smith – as RL performer in avatar costume

12. Georgie Roxby Smith’s avatar Diogenes Wylder as SL performer

13. Multiple representations of her avatar Diogenes (glitched doppelgangers) operated by

Second Life performers, real life performers in the Watermill space and audience members in

the Watermill space and Melbourne event space

a. Diogenes Warrhol - oversized boobs

b. Diogenes Windstorm - wearing a real life mask - half her face is a real photo of the

artist Georgie Roxby Smith

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c. Diogenes Werefox - original SL prototype (Linden Labs Ruth avatar) with Diogenes

Wylder wig - an in joke for SL users

d. Diogenes Wizardly - a walking blonde Diogenes wig

e. Diogenes Waddington - zombie Diogenes

f. Diogenes Wendel - obese Diogenes

14. Real Life performer in Diogenes Wylder avatar costume (played by a male performer –

grotesque/fractured)

15. All Second Life avatar audience given a Diogenes Wylder avatar skin and outfit to be worn

during the performance

16. All real life audience members offered Diogenes wigs and masks

17. A mannequin representation of the avatar in the real life performance space replicated in

Second Life space as a ‘bot”

18. Life size projections of animated avatar onto real life objects/furniture in the Watermill

performance space

19. Mixed reality objects within the performance space constructed from print outs of SL objects

and made functional where possible (eg operating radio)

20. Multiple control and operation points of the avatars within the physical performance space

PC Where Operator Function

1 Watermill - Bed and desk GS then audience SL to projector and access point

2 Watermill - On desk Audience Ustream and access point

3 Watermill - Floor Audience SL access point

4 Watermill - Make up desk Audience SL access point

5 Watermill - Entrance room Audience Ustream live from perf room

6 Watermill - bedside table NA Playing SL machinima

7 Watermill - Entrance room Audience SL access point

8 Melbourne Audience 2 SL access point

The number of cross reality moments attempted in this performative installation and the

new nature of the piece made it difficult for the audience to fully comprehend the multiple

layering at work. The imposition of a narrative also pushed the work into a more theatrical

space than originally desired (see Appendix 3 for narrative). An hour-long audience

discussion and Q & A was held post performance and the audience (mainly 50+) were both

embracing and intrigued – although without the post-performance session, many elements

would have been left uncomprehended. These discoveries assisted in refining the piece

when this work was reconfigured for Byte<N> at RearView Gallery (see Chapter 3 – Digital

Identity and Desire and Appendix 4). The performative elements were stripped back to four

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main actions and positioned with more focus on the installation and interactive elements.

After the performance I was able to again reconfigure the work into a standalone

installation, which – more refined in its elements – was able to achieve similar objectives to

the previous versions. The final project to be submitted draws on this experience. Elements

of live performance and re-enactment will remain – as the dispersed identity of the artist as

real life persona, role playing as real life performer and Second Life performer sits as a key

component of the research. To minimise confusion Second Life access points will be reduced

to two, one for the performer/s and one for the audience. Pre-recorded mixed reality videos

and a live UStream feed into Second Life will remain. In a further fracturing of the self and of

enactment, I will no longer perform as my avatar, instead employing an actor who I will

direct by operating my Second Life avatar which she is forced to mimic.

These new spaces for audiences are still being comprehended by both artist and viewer and

as Fee Plumley from the Australia Council points out, perhaps some re-education is required,

“You can’t just throw out a web cast and expect people to know how to access it…there is a

need to produce the framework so that audiences are equipped to engage with the

performances.”94

Conclusion - Identity download – negating the self

Each of the main studio works in this research project – Reality Bytes, Byten I –III, Exquisite

Corpse, iObject and the Jackson works teased out the nature of identity, role play, desire and

death through performance, installation, machinima and re-enactment in Second Life. In the

process of performing or displaying these works, the relationship of these new virtual worlds

and mixed realities to an art audience was examined and refined. By commencing with the

most complex work, Reality Bytes, I was able to test the limits of technology and audience

comprehension and engagement and then work backwards to strip down the work to its key

elements. The final work in the research project iObject removes the live element completely

and explores my digital identity through the negation of self in a virtual world. By completely

stripping my self-portrait avatar of all identifiable features and symbols of desire and ego,

she is voided and challenges the position of identity in this hyper real world. This

deconstructed avatar staged a number of sit ins as a three dimensional shadow in the

consumer, social and sexual constructions of Second Life – provoking reactions of scorn,

threat and complete disregard by observing avatars. Silent in her commodified

94

Author. 2010. Digital Stage is No Geek Tragedy. The Australian, LICHTY, P. 2001. Incident Bodies: Virtual Humans, Avatars, and Popular Culture. Arion Institute for media and performance studies.

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surroundings, the death of her virtual ego and loss of virtual currency is underscored by the

evocative sounds of a Buddhist chant – creating a blur between an act of holiness or menace.

It is the artist role playing herself into a ghost in the machine. This work, shown on public

screens at Melbourne’s Propaganda Window, annuls the need for audience knowledge of its

medium as the image of a shadow self within a rich virtual environment speaks clearly in its

symbols across the void between the real and the virtual. Whilst works like iObject challenge

the notion of digital identity, the multi-planed mixed reality performances challenge

audiences further via their forced interaction across platforms and into worlds and screens

that they may be unfamiliar with. Each time these mixed reality performances have been

undertaken in this project – the limitations of the system have been tested to its extremities.

Internet connection, computer graphic capabilities, institutional blocks on Second Life,

multiple avatars in the space affecting rezzing and lag (transforming avatars into faceless

jerking grey beings) – the act of the performance breaks the technology itself – hence

negating not only the self and the avatar self but also the system we are channelling them

through. A catastrophe of digital proportions. This disruption becomes the measure of the

limits of data flow and real time. In an over populated virtual world, the real art of Second

Life exists when the world or its limitations are approached critically by its real life

provocateurs.

As technology advances and elements of these virtual worlds work their way into our

everyday interfaces, the barriers to entry will be streamlined and, for artists and audiences

alike, role play will extend into new realms, identities will blur and we will ultimately be

“relegated to the flesh dump as our data bodies live in the digital ether.”95

95

LICHTY, P. 2001. Incident Bodies: Virtual Humans, Avatars, and Popular Culture. Arion Institute for media and performance studies. www.voyd.com/texts/PLichtyEssayIncidentBodies.doc

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45 | P a g e

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NOTES

46 | P a g e

APPENDIX 1 Reality Bytes Performance Score Version 26A 4.30pm SLT 29 April 2010 TIME

STILL ACTION Action to Still to Action

STILL ACTION

ACTION ACTION ACTION TO NOTHINGNESS

Duration 5 - 10 mins 5 - 10 mins 5 mins 5 mins 2 - 5mins??? 5 mins

Performance point

Intro/Arrival

Installaton Connection

Changeover

Loss of RL control

audience interaction

Desire Distortion Fracture

Isolation

The Grotesque

Desperation Death/escape

RL Audience in RL Watermill

Staff or Paula to lead thru Watermill to room 1 (table room)

Explore table room, randoms may move into main performance -look at installation, play on laptops

Looking, interacting with laptops connected to DW wrongtown dopelgangers

invited (how??) to go to costume box and put on wigs

If activating DW then effecting Ferns

encrouged to control DW and Dwarhol

Possibly flabbergasted!

Possibly still flabbergasted!!!

Watching - WM staff to start clapping to signify end at finish off actions

RL TVscreens Static noise all on (expect 'real' apartment TV)

"" RL/SL mash up screen on

SL porn projection on - projected onto RL bed

Off

RL PC screens SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL SL Off

RL sound Discordant tech sounds - silent moments

tech sounds and typing

tech sounds and typing

Breath - Human sounds distorted - Action sounds

White noise builds. Density builds

Breathing, gorging,

Starts to peak - porn sounds, white noise, machine hum

Distorting - uncomfortable for audience, chaos

Silence

RL Fernando (male performer playing DW)

On metal walkway

on walkway. Moves to table room - lie on table between laptops

Model AO in table room

Moving around table room

Moving down corridor to main performance space

Ferns enters and starts AO model girl loop x 3

loop, in main performance space

if/ when audience control DW - Ferns reacts: choice to follow movemnt or gestures

if activated or bumped try to follow on screen movemnts, if DW av out of room - return to loop

Start Food loop Glitching plastic food, , eat plastic, rub with apple

Glitching Put on DW mask Glitching - Sex loop

Fucking, convulsing, on the bed, breath, extreme

Ferns off bed - glitch agaist wall / window

Stillness stillness after GS - leave the room. Lights on

RL Georgie - playing a desperate RL DW wanna be.

On bed (main performance space)

On Bed G wakes up. Gasp, Breath, restless, can't sleep

activates laptop. Telports DW home -Walk thru WM Set 'home to here'

Off bed. Wander stretch, look out windows - put laptop on 'desk' table

go to 'costume bo'x in the room - put wig on

Turns on TV in space showing RL/SL mash up footage. Alternates between watching and away mode

Away / watching

watching Goes to Ustream camera - eats an apple

Eat food - real but rotten .- start to distort. Find bood around bed - stand on bed eat. Stare at SL projection

Off bed - look at yourself in the SL mirror - put on DW mask

show mask in Ustream feed - desperate walk around room, frantic cleaning, escape - breathing heavily

Shower in full DW costume and wig

Splays on bed Gasps- wakes up from the nightmare

has a moment in the projection screen - wig and mask off

goes to desk - sleep whole computer - disengage, leave the room

SL DW - this laptop is connected to the projector in the main performance space

On bed in SL performance space - in Chill mode

On Bed On Bed DW 'home' walks through WaterMIill - end by sitting at desk - open SL

Walk to window. Sit at desk w\ laptop. Turn av viewpoint to face live

waiting until activated by audience

activated by audience

Oberon gains control?!?! Eating

Eating Fucking Fucking Fucking Paula or Oberon to op laptop - spinning screen

Spinning screen

Spinning screen

BLANK

A

C

T

I

O

N

47 | P a g e

laptop Set 'home to here'

screen

SL performer MAB in Mab av

Outside virtual Watermill Intro and Instructional - lead SL audience into SL table room. Boss em round! LOL!

Activating objects in SL performance space (table room and main performance space) chatting with audience

""""" Try to interact with RL audience " SHOUTS"

Interact with SL audience. Mimic DW

open costume box - put on DW skin - encrouge all SL audience to put on DW skin

Interact with DW - text to RL audience to encrouge them to opp the laptop

can 'bump' DW and Dwarhol if audience aren’t interacting

Invites everyone to a feast on the bed - Rez

Eating Invite everyone for a 4some on the bed

Fucking raining roses (command /3) - repeat several times

Pushing audience, glitch, dance - move manically around space

quit 'poof'

SL performer MAYA performing as Diogenes Windstorm (password Melbourne)

Waiting on metal walkway in SL Watermill

On walkway """" waiting on walkway , follow DW as she passes

walk around apartment room. Mimic DW

Mimic same pathways as RL Fernando (loops)

loops of apartment and table room -

can 'bump' DW and her "clones" if RL audience aren’t interacting

Feast - gives DW food

Eating. join in! Fucking End raining roses - throw giant rose on bed

Glitching or running through all emotion gestures AKA Gazira work (ref).

Start throwing DW wigs every where

quit 'poof'

SL Sound Streamed live.

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

Live from RL performance space and SL voice chat

""""" (audience clapping then silence)

SL Text Intro and Instructional -Mab

SL audience chat

SL performer 1 - repetive

Text to audience to activate DW -

Something indicating they are in control temporarily???

EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

Whatver feels appropriate! LOL!

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE (FUCK!)

END END END END END END END

END END END END END END END

END END END END END END END

Interactive SL audience

Following Mab through WaterMill

Enter table room then follow Mab to main performance space

Randoming around space, interacting with objects, chatting

put skins on Something indicating they are in control temporarily???

Feast Fasting joining the sex party on the bed

Left abandoned in space

Mob of distorted Diogene Wylder clone avs .....SL Diogenes Warrhol (boobs), Windstorm (mask) Werefox (ruth) Wizardly (hair) Waddington (zombie) Wendel (fat) all logged on to laptops at Melbourne

All in SL table room

All in SL table room. Wendel lying on table as per Fernando

Audience - or Paula, Oberon - start to move into perf room

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

Operated by RL audience

48 | P a g e

event or RL Watermill

SL Media Screen on wall in SL performance space showing live stream of RL performance space

Streaming - Mac angled to show bed only

Ustream live

Ustream live

Ustream live Ustream live

Ustream live

Ustream live

Ustream live Ustream live Ustream live

Ustream live Ustream live

Ustream live

Ustream live

Ustream live Ustream live Ustream live

Leave on to indicate perforers out and space clearing for Mel audience

Screen table space,projector 3

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

Ustream live from main performance room

SL TV screen SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

SL advertising / DW images / RL images cycle

REAL LIFE - operation OO

REAL LIFE - operation PVB

PVB to reposition MAC to now show projection (hall of mirrors)

Playing with another PC to cue audience that they can keep exploring

Porn projection on -

Spinning screen

49 | P a g e

APPENDIX 2 – Reality Bytes Narrative/Synopsis distributed to

audience

Starting with calm and ending in chaos, Reality Bytes moves through moments of stillness (installation)

and movement (performance).

The narrative is expressed through an accumulation of ideas and images that will be experienced and

interpreted differently depending on each individual audience member’s point of view and interaction

with the work.

The thematic pulse of the work centres around a real life person (the artist, Georgie Roxby Smith) who

is obsessed with her Second Life avatar Diogenes Wylder.

Her obsession with the avatar’s idealised body and utopian life style drives her to desperately try to

recreate Diogenes’ perfect life in the real world. She is having some kind of waking nightmare and is

losing touch between the two realities and identities.

In Second Life Diogenes’ bed is always made. The grass is always green and the trees sway the same

way, in the same wind, every day. The sun rises and sets every four hours – her days are short and

joyful.

In the real world, casting herself as A Real Life Diogenes Wylder, everything has been invested into

buying the lifestyle – the apartment, the clothes – buying into the Second Life dream, this consumer’s

paradise. Yet everything she buys disintegrates and she cannot afford to replace it. Food rots, her face

wrinkles. She has prostituted herself to get there... but can’t keep up.

In acting out the pleasures of everyday human existence, the physical sensations of food and sex, both

Diogenes’; ‘in world’ and in the real world strive for satisfaction, for love, the desire for human

connection, to feel, feel real.

Avatars are pure, avatars have no organs, no orifices. They are clean, they do not leak, sweat, or smell

– there is no inconvenience to their bodies nor consequences to their actions.

But avatars are hollow. For this Second Life Diogenes food and sex bring her no taste or pleasure, no

sensations. But the real life body becomes deformed and diseased in her obsession with trying to

replicate the uncontaminated life that her avatar is living.

This fractured and grotesque new reality bleeds between desperation and isolation, connection and

loss of control. What is the escape when you don’t know who or where you are?

Calling out to her virtual self nightly, lamenting, – she knows she is only a mouse click away but

sometimes - when she won’t answer - and her love turns to hate. Real Diogenes does not realise she

is talking to herself.

50 | P a g e

Concept

Diogenes Wylder AKA Georgie Roxby-Smith (in real life) is an Australian artist currently in New York to

complete a residency and mixed reality performance at the Watermill Center. Roxby Smith uses the

virtual reality program Second Life to deconstruct layers of reality and fragment identity through both

in-world work and through recreations in real life.

By creating an avatar – self-portrait or otherwise – Second Life users create a strange balance

between the level of investment and exposure of themselves and role-play. Roxby Smith is compelled

by the general use of the “idealised body” by many users of Second Life and the desire to create

utopian selves and environments in their blandest possible form. Avatars are hollow – avatars are

pure, avatars are clean, avatars have no orifices. They do not leak, sweat, smell – there is no

inconvenience to their bodies. In exploring these ideas, Roxby Smith extracts her self-portrait avatar,

Diogenes Wylder, from the screen, re-enacting her movements, wants, and needs in a distorted and

grotesque version of herself (in what has been referred to as eccentric figuration).

Diogenes/Georgie aims to fracture the self / performer / avatar through multiple reproductions

including:

The real artist as performer;

The self-portrait avatar Diogenes Wylder;

Multiple representations of the avatar operated by Second Life performers, real life performers and audience members in the Watermill space in avatar costume;

Second Life avatars (in-world) to be given a Diogenes Wylder avatar skin; and

A mannequin representation of the avatar in the material performance space also replicated in the Second Life as a “bot.”

In this way, not only the self will be fractured but also the position and role of the audience who are at

once caught between realities, identities and their roles as spectator or performer/actor.

The main objectives in developing Reality Bytes are:-

To explore new possibilities of virtual reality media in contemporary art practice, focusing on the use of the program ‘Second Life’

To question the notions of materiality through the creation of objects and situations of indistinct form and reality

To explore the position of audience, artist and performer by creating a space where viewers are in multiple realities at once

To break with traditional forms of visual arts practice, installation, new media art, video art, theatre and performance to bring them together in one "event"

51 | P a g e

APPENDIX 3 – Reality Bytes planning email examples indicating

technical issues related to the work

On 27/4/10 08:07, "Georgie Roxby Smith" <[email protected]> wrote:

Hello fabulous SL performers!

Once again - sorry for the delay. I knew this was ambitious project - yet I still didn't really fathom

how intensely difficult it would be to entertain three different audiences at once (static audience at a live event in

Australia, SL audience and RL audience at Watermill) and to coordinate simultaneous SL and RL performances!

Jees!

Anyway we have divided the performance "score" into segments - starting with calm and ending in chaos. The

performance moves through moments of stillness (installation) and movement (proper performance!). There is

no story as such - more a set of ideas and images. It is based on the fact that a real life person is obsessed with

her SL avatar (Diogenes Wylder) and tries desperately to recreate DW's life in RL - which of course is unachievable

- particularly the physical sensations of food, sex etc (which is why we feature them in the piece). She is having

some kind of waking nightmare and is losing touch between the two realities and identities (hence all the

fracturing of DW's you will see).

I have attached our score and I hope it makes some kind of sense. Things may change a wee bit tomorrow but the

majority is locked in - we had a really successful rehearsal today led by our awesome dramaturg Paula Van Beek!

Let me know if you would like to do a run through. It would defeinately be worth meeting on line to walk through

the space etc at least. I know it looks tight on the score but we can be loose! There will be a few cues but - really

it is about what happens when we open up all these performer / audience / reality blurs - which may well be

chaos. LOL!

I wouldn't dream of not warming your virtual pockets for your generosity in being Reality Bytes stars, especially at

such short notice - without you two it really wouldn't work! I hope you will accept a fee of $10,000 lindens each

to use towards your SL practices or new clothes!!!! - I only wish it could be $10,000 RL dollars!

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions and look forward to chatting tomorrow some time

Thanks again

:-)

from Georgie Roxby Smith [email protected] to Sherry Dobbin <[email protected]>

cc Paula van Beek <[email protected]>

date 29 April 2010 18:41

subject Second Life grid down mailed-by gmail.com

Hi Sherry,

Just to give you a heads up, the Second Life servers are currently down for the first time. I assume hacked as there

has been an "SL outrage" over the new viewer which was launched 2 weeks ago and a protest meeting was

planned for tomorrow. This has never happened before to such an extent. See current updates below (4.30am

NYT - we are all up doing final touches for the show).

Obviously Linden Labs (who run Second Life) will have a team of people on this and it will be fixed by the time we

wake up. Fingers crossed.

52 | P a g e

Just thought I would let you know in case we need to have a last minute brainstorm on the event if this issue

continues.

Grid status can be checked at http://status.secondlifegrid.net/

Cheers

G

[UPDATED] Logins and other services disabled

Posted by Status Desk on April 28th, 2010 at 11:23 pm PDT

[1:23am PDT] [UPDATE] We are continuing our work to bring our services back online and will keep you updated

here.

[29th April 2010 - 12:30am PDT] [UPDATE] We are continuing to investigate current issues and will post updates

here as we have them.

[11:23pm PDT] [UPDATE] Logins, the Land Store, the LindeX, XstreetSL.com and registrations have been disabled

as we continue to work on these issues.

[10:45pm PDT] [UPDATE] Logins are currently still down. The website and support portal have come back online,

though they may be slow to load or experience errors. XstreetSL.com is inaccessible as well. We’re working to

resolve this as quickly as we can - please continue to check back for updates.

[9:45pm PDT] [UPDATE] Logins and secondlife.com, including the support portal, continue to be inaccessible as

we work to resolve this issue. Please check back here for updates.

[9:15pm PDT] [UPDATE] Secondlife.com and access to live chat and support tickets are also currently affected,

and unavailable for the time being.

*9pm PDT+ We’re currently experiencing login and inworld issues. We’re investigating the cause and scope of this

issue and will post here when we have more information. Please do not rez no-copy objects or make transactions

from Georgie Roxby Smith [email protected]

to Sonja Pedell <[email protected]>

cc Paula van Beek <[email protected]>

date 29 April 2010 03:57

subject Re: Tomorrow and Friday

Hi Sonja

Thanks heaps - and a big thanks to Pete for sorting that out last night.

Two computers would be great - one running Second Life off prepaid, or hopefully network (macs seem to run SL

Viewer 2 better than PC's if you have one) and one running a just the ustream (fullscreen)

from www.ustream.tv/channel/gstst

53 | P a g e

The sound will only come out of the Ustream computer.

I can do a test run tonight anytime from 1.00am here (we have a dress rehearsal before incl SL performers) which

is 3pm your time - is this OK?

Name of your supervisor

Dr Stephen Haley, Graduate Research Coordinator (MFA)

Dr Edward Colless, Senior Lecturer, Critical and Theoretical Studies

Any idea about numbers?

No - not really - sorry. Stephen has asked that the MFA cohort come - but any art event in the morning is not very

popular! I wuld assume a few VCA staff and a few friends/fellow artists. I am going to say 10 -15 but it is a guess

Press confirmed or unsure - if yes who?

All I know is it has been through UniNews and VCA - here in New York it is through the local press

How sexual or violent will content be (just incase there are kids or so I have to say beforehand or make a sign)

There will be virtual sex and simulated sex. I have attached our script for you. There will also be language but no

violence. I would suggest a sign saying "This performance may contain material that is offensive to some viewers"

What will the content be (or is this a secret?)

See attached script

What time do you want to set up on Friday for pretest (we want to try to avoid that the advertising is running

in the show time)?

I will sign up for Ustream today which will hopefully block the advertising. We can do a test at 6.30pm (so 8.30am

your time)

Is it a probelm if people go in and out and don't stay for the whole hour (won't be able to really prevent

anyway)?

Please encourage people to come and go as they please and to interact with the laptop

Length -

7.30pm - 7.45pm

Guests arrive NY - intro from Watermill program director. Lead to space 7.40pm. Performance commences

Melbourne audience arrives. Talk by Dr Sonja Pedell. (volume off on both screens). After talk - turn on volume Ustream. Performance commences.

Second Life audience arrives. Intro from SL performer Mab (text chat). SL audience will already be all over the virtual Watermill

7.45pm Performance approx 30 minutes

Is there anything specifically re interactions that should be performed with the avatar that helps you (I have to

check on Warrhal as I didn't try that login yet) - I will hope fully have a few people who are a bit better with the

interacitons in SL as I am?

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No that's fine. Just wander around and look at things. Inteact if you can with whatever is in the room. and any

audience member is encouraged to get up and play with the laptop (so perhaps it is in a position where it is

accessible )

Can you do a brief test Thursday 12.45 pm (midday) Melbourne time - shoudl be 10.45 pm your time.

3pm would be perfect

What shall I do with questions? Maybe you can give me simple heads up on the overall concept (just 2-3

sentences). For the more complex questions I will refer back to you - or your supervisor if he is there?

Yes if Ted or Edward come - I will ask them to introduce themselves to you when they arrive. It would be great if I

could do a skype but I can't as I am answering questions in real life! Feel free to give out my email/we address

Am I meant to say anything at the beginning - is there a distinct starting point?

Yes - I will send you notes shortly. 7.45pm we will start the performance proper.

Shall I take photographs?

That would be great and some video would be even better! (as I will be putting an edited video together of all the

event)

I assume both projections need sound?

Just Ustream (but keep it ff while you are talking as we may be making set up sounds in the space)

Anything else?

Please use Diogenes Warrhol (PASSWORD ********* ) to log in and start her standing outside the Watermill

building. At 7.40pm walk her through to the performance space we were in last night. Walk them via the room on

the right before youtake them into the main space and pause to look at the images on the wall.

Yay - think that is all for now ! lol!

Next email will be talk / intro notes

XXXXXX

G

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APPENDIX 4 ByteN Score

Synopsis – Chapter 2 Despite a near breakdown in the Hamptons, RLDW continues to desperately live as her virtual counterpart SLDW. She has a new apartment in Melbourne – in uptown Collingwood. She spends her days lamenting at images she has recorded of herself as RL and SL DW – trying to perfect herself to match up to her virtual counterpart. At night she pours herself a drink and goes to bed. But she cannot keep herself away from her utopic virtual world. Sleepless, she amuses herself touring virtual destinations and having virtual sex. She is totally disengaged with any RL partner that may be in her life. They simple cannot live up to her virtual ideals. One night (or is it every night?), a man joins her in bed – is it her lover, husband or stranger? No one would know. While she has him virtually, physically he doesn’t exist to her. After her virtual partner terminates their fucking sesson prematurely, RL DW turns to see a RL man beside her. She lights a cigarette and examines him. An idea strikes her – perhaps HE could be the physical manifestation of SLDW. Slowly she dresses him as he sleeps – transforming him into her real life Diogenes ideal. He wakes and is embodied. Rising from the bed he responds to RLDW’s controls as if there was an umbilical cord between him and the computer she operates. From cautious baby steps he begins to imitate SLDW perfectly. But to RLDW, it isn’t good enough. If she can’t be her – why would someone else be able to? She becomes bored, rips out his umbilical cord, switches off SL and leaves. With his creator gone, this new DW goes wild running from screen to screen, trying to find and re engage with his creator. He glitches out, exhausted, and collapses on the bed END DRAFT SCORE 6.00pm G on floor in front of screens (full mask etc) 6.20pm G to walk to bed, take off mask, wig etc. Pour drink, light cigarette, go to bed and start playing on SL (PC) walk around virtual Rearview...then to mac ...explore SL world(alternate). (PC is on projector) <Fernando and other clued up audience members playing on live SL, walking around virtual Rearview> 6.40pm (when other performer finishes) Fernando to bed – ignores G – starts fucking on SL, removes RL clothes G‘s av to join ferns avatar on bed – virtually fuck each other while disengaged physically. Do we use porn text??? 6.55pm ish (whenever we “feel it”) Fern stops SL fucking (SL Stand) Sleeps G to notice Ferns once he has disengaged Lights post virtual coital smoke Investigates Ferns Starts to dress Ferns Mask ferns Wig ferns 7.10pm ish As soon as Ferns wigged up, he activates Moves to front of projector screen Does some DW imitations. G moves DW around and watches Ferns. F starts off awkwardly then starts really embodying the perfect DW – struttin it out ! 7.20pm G becomes bored. Or is she jealous?? Changes audio track? Or silence???? Turns off SL (this shows on projector) Picks up smokes, drink Leaves room Fern WIGS OUT! His creator is gone – SL is down....manic, out of control. Glitches and runs between screens in space looking for his life line Finally collapses on bed, replacing his creators position END disengage . leave space.

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Appendix 5 – Gallery Sheet

Masters Exhibition, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA School of Art 6-11 December 2011

</Your Clothing is Still Downloading>

The interfaces that lead us into cyberspace prove that one cannot detach technology from desire. Digital technologies promise to transcend familiar reality and to connect us to the paradise that reality has taken from us. Down with the detours and delays of reality: let us have instant gratification! What we cannot have in reality, we can have via the fantasy screen. As a “consensual hallucination” cyberspace would be the utopic, new ideal world.

Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology – Andre Nusselder

In the virtual world of Second Life, where status is often accrued by having the best collection of sexually appealing avatars, desire and its ultimate physical endpoint, sex (or in this case cybersex), prevails. Cybersex is “more than role play it is the creation of a shared fantasy.” Avatars are hollow – avatars are pure, avatars are clean, avatars have no orifices. They do not leak, shit, sweat, rot – there is no inconvenience to their bodies. And if an avatar has no orifices then sex in Second Life is safer than in real life – the user is “freed from the burden of the body.” Many criticisms have been levelled at Second Life for its high number of sex, porn and exotic dance Sims. Contemporary art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta said of in world existence, “life revolves around the banal repetition of real-life rituals (having sex, going dancing, and attending parties, openings and conferences) and the same principles: private property, wealth and consumption.” As the promotional video for dedicated cybersex virtual world “The Red Light Center” attests, “Be who you want to be…without the hassle”. Cybersex or ‘getting off online’, in Second Life is a form of immersive role play – a mixed reality happening in that it more often than not, one could imagine, elicits physical action in its users offline. Whilst filming the “sex-scene” for this work my mind flickered between the ridiculousness of two digital bodies’ glitching against each other and the surreal feeling that behind that bunch of pixels a real person is operating and text chatting or, somewhat disturbingly, perhaps even masturbating. In the end I created two avatars – one my own and one an idealised male – and operated them both simultaneously using two computers to create the desired film output for projection. It was quite fitting as in the end, playing dolls, are we not just virtually fucking ourselves anyway? Can we really create intimacy in these new manufactured spaces?

</exquisite corpse> dead daddy

av•a•tar/ˈavəˌtär/ Noun: A manifestation of a deity in bodily form on earth An incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user In exploring digital identity and desire, I began thinking about Second Life and the people who utilise the technology as being in some kind of perpetual movement away from death: a denial as such. In Second Life, there is no ageing, no rotting of the flesh. Secondarily there exists an eternal life in these new technologies – from forever live Facebook memorials frozen in time, the gravesites and dead celebrity avatars that still walk this virtual land and the pun of the program name itself. Despite this, every time I log out of Second Life my avatar dies – dissolution of pixels disappearing into the black – only to be reborn, unchanged, at the click of a button. When I die, or kill my Second Life, she will remain a cyber-ghost, forever condemned to the black. Thirdly, when using digital identities we are somehow detached, separated by the false sense of security the safety of the screen gives us. After working with a number of deceased doppelganger avatars roaming Second Life, </exquisite corpse>dead daddy brings the idea of resurrecting the dead into a more personal space. Commencing with an intimate 3D rebuild of my own dead father, I used my self-portrait avatar to recreate lived or dreamed experiences from my childhood alongside him. Like the avatars themselves though, these experiences were hollow – it was always me operating my father’s avatar, making him speak and move like some sad puppet. Humorous and horrific at once. Merging rephotographed real life images and Second Life footage of my father’s avatar in a 21st Century ‘exquisite corpse’, this work plays on death, desire, memory, loss and the materiality of the body.

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iObject iObject explores my digital identity through the negation of self in a virtual world. By completely stripping my self-portrait avatar of all identifiable features and symbols of desire and ego, she is voided – challenging the position of identity in this hyper real world. This deconstructed avatar staged a number of sit ins as a three dimensional shadow in the consumer, social and sexual constructions of Second Life – provoking reactions of scorn, threat and complete disregard by observing avatars. Silent in her commodified surroundings, the death of her virtual ego and loss of virtual currency is underscored by the evocative sounds of a Buddhist chant – creating a blur between an act of holiness or menace. It is the artist role playing herself into a ghost in the machine.

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Appendix 6 – Technical Specifications

Masters Exhibition, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA School of Art 6-11 December 2011

</Your Clothing is Still Downloading> Margaret Lawrence Rear Gallery

Live Second Life feed, live webcam feed, 4 eMacs, 3 SL machinima, 2 webcam videos, projection, laptop

Materials Bed base 1.6m x 2.3m min One white plinth Projector mounts AV 4 white eMacs playing DVDS Two DVD players Two projectors roof mounted (one to project on bed from DVD– one to project on entire rear wall from laptop) Two laptops Speakers Three prerecorded Second Life machinima DVDS IT Melbourne Uni IT department to unblock access to Second Life and UStream/live video streaming 28 November to 12 December Main operating computer to preferably be cabled into ML gallery office as it is streaming video and SL and can crash easily on wireless Software Second Life, Ustream, Fraps, Photoshop, Adobe Sound Booth CS5, Adobe Premiere CS5

</exquisite Corpse> dead daddy Margaret Lawrence Video Space

Materials

One black plinth/platform 1.2m H x 0.6m W x 1.75m L approx Top painted grey

Projection onto plinth top or 4 TV screens laid flat

AV

DVD player

Projector, roof mounted

One DVD of four vertically aligned videos of Second Life machinima and rephotographed family snapshots with

soundscape

Speakers

Software

Second Life, Fraps, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere CS5, Adobe Sound Booth CS5

iObject Margaret Lawrence Gallery stairwell

One projector, one DVD player, Second Life performance machinima with soundscape, speakers

Software

Second Life, Fraps, Photoshop, Adobe Premiere CS5, Adobe Sound Booth CS5

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</Your Clothing is Still Downloading> Flowchart

Live Second Life stream 1, virtual rebuild of

installation and gallery

One avatar

Laptop 1

Audience Virtual Interaction Point

Live Webcam (Ustream) of audience operating

laptop

Live Second Life stream 2, virtual rebuild of

installation and gallery

Two avatars

Laptop 2

Locked / hidden from view

Projector to rear wall

Pre-filmed SL machinima (cybersex aerial view)

on DVD

Mounted projector, projecting down to white

"bed" plinth

Two pre-filmed SL machinima (female and

male). Two pre-recorded webcam videos (male and female. On 4 DVD's with

soundscape

4 white e-macs placed on white bed plinth