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The Ontology of Digital Life: Art and Healing in Second Life

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Rob Harle, Independent Artist and Writer, Australia

Abstract

This paper is an introduction to the virtual 3D computer simulation world known as Second Life. It discusses specifically two important aspects of interaction and participation in this world – Art and the Therapeutic Benefits of spending time in SL. The brief introduction is enough to orientate and get started those not familiar with SL. Suggestions for further research and SL project developments are discussed throughout.


Keywords: Second Life, virtual reality, avatar, digital art, computer simulation, linden, Freedom Project, social interaction.

 

I walked through an enchanting garden, cobble stone path beneath my feet, the strange birds chirping and flying through the flowering plants led me towards a building of stone and light. Bindu Gallery bid me, Enter.

I stood in amazement as sculptures revolved and pulsated, I noticed a 3D spherical mandala near the stairs, I approached, stepped inside and sat on a red velvet cushion. I was looking out through the iridescent, geometric light patterns of the mandala. An indescribable mystical experience followed as the mandala energy flowed through me.

No, I had not died! No, I was not under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs! I had logged on to Second Life and visited a friend’s Virtual Gallery Exhibition.

 

Bindu Gallery is the virtual personal gallery of Second Life artist Sheba Blitz. Her original hand painted mandalas are uploaded from real life, manipulated in Second Life then displayed in this gallery.
Bindu Gallery is the virtual personal gallery of Second Life artist Sheba Blitz. Her original hand painted mandalas are uploaded from real life, manipulated in Second Life then displayed in this gallery.

Second Life (SL) [1] is a virtual (digital) 3D computer based world – it is not a game, not a social media app, but a digital version of real life (RL). Like the fragrance of coffee brewing it is a difficult thing to describe, immersion and participation is the best way to understand SL. As with most things the press and television media have also distorted and misrepresented SL, with claims of ruined lives, sexual abduction, huge costs, death and so on. Untrue!

Any individual adult, anywhere in the world may join the SL community for free, create their own avatar – the entity which allows you to live, work and play in SL – then create art, build astonishing architecture, create bizarre fashion or fly on a magic carpet. Flying or teleportation is the standard way to move around the various regions (sims) of SL. If you wish to buy your own land you must become a premium member which costs approximately $70 USD per year, this returns a stipend paid to you of 300 Linden dollars a week. If you do not like flying you may use some of your Lindens to buy a car to drive around in, or perhaps catch a train!

Why Lindens? Philip Linden (Rosedale) was the creator and brainchild of SL. He attended the Burning Man event in the desert of Nevada, USA many years ago, this enormously influenced the already nascent digital, virtual version of SL. Linden Labs own SL, but the actual community is created by the residents with very few rules or regulations. So the basic currency of trading is called a Linden. SL is not the only virtual 3D community some others are; Blue Mars; InWorldz; OS Grid (presently with problems); Twinity; and Onverse.

Screen shot of part of an art exhibition at the virtual SL version of Burning Man Festival.
Screen shot of part of an art exhibition at the virtual SL version of Burning Man Festival.

This is probably enough basic information to orientate those not familiar with SL. As with most digital software and applications, things evolve and become more sophisticated and ‘mostly’ user friendly. Remember Unix/Dos command line communication via AARNet prior to the WWW? Perhaps not, but for those who do, how could we ever have imagined such a sophisticated and virtually real ‘thing’ as SL would develop?

This paper is mainly concerned with a general discussion of two important areas of SL – Art, and the possible Therapeutic benefits of spending time in SL. For those interested in a highly detailed investigation of all aspects of SL, one of the best studies I have found is Coming Of Age In Second Life. This book is a scholarly, anthropologically based study which dispels most “urban” myths and sensationalised nonsense concerning SL.[2]

Before looking at art and healing in detail, I should refute the notion that some techno-luddites hold; they argue that a virtual world such as SL is simply specks of light (pixels) on a computer monitor – nothing more, not “real” reality! This ignorance apart from ignoring the very real psychological impact, for good or ill, of interaction with others in a virtual world is that at a deep ontological level it can be argued that all “realities”, including humans, are simply complex conglomerates of light specks (photons). Detailed discussion of this concept/theory, which includes, but goes beyond quantum mechanics, is clearly beyond the scope of this paper. However, there is ample evidence to support this ontology, just one example is my paper published in Ylem Journal, 2007. [3]…Access Full Text of the Article

[1] Read about the Second Life community and download the required Viewer which installs on your computer from www.secondlife.com

[2] Boellstorff, T. Coming Of Age In Second Life. 2008 Princeton University Press. NJ. Also my review of this book: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4435&cn=396

[3] The Dichotomy of Reality YLEM Journal. Harle, R.F. (Guest Editor) vol.27 Nos. 10 & 12 Sept/Dec 2007. Journal of YLEM Society, Artists Using Science & Technology. San Francisco, CA.

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History First-hand: Memory, the Player and the Video Game Narrative in the Assassin’s Creed Games

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Lakshmi Menon, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Abstract

This paper will look at the convergence of the interactive free flow of video games and the questioning and revisioning of historical continuity using the example of the Assassin’s Creed series by Ubisoft. With a story that exists simultaneously in the modern day and the 15th century, the games allow the player to take control of characters and alter, or make possible, events recognisable as historical fact. It plays with both history and memory and history as memory, as the life of the primary player character is being relived through the genetic memories of one of his descendants. Being highly narrative-bound, the Assassin’s Creed games use, via the medium of the screen, the rift between history and memory as a central element of narrative, theme, and game design, which this paper will explore. Furthermore, using theories of convergence this paper will examine how video games provide a new, interactive mode of storytelling that is rapidly becoming representative of our age.

 

There was a time when video games were merely considered to be base forms of indoor entertainment, with early games like Pong or Pacman which had simple objectives and no discernible plot or structure. With time, however, games have evolved from these simplistic origins to complex narratives, containing driven, well constructed characters, complex plot (or plots), and involving a greater involvement from the players than mere accurate button-pushing. Games today, with advancements in graphic design and capability of the platforms on which they can be played, are almost akin to interactive films– in which the player not only consumes the movie-like storyline, but becomes an active participant in the narrative and its outcomes.

This interactivity is, as pop culture theorist Henry Jenkins would put it, a marker of the media convergence that is so significant to our age. Ours is an era in which there is an increasing participation of the consumer of a popular cultural text with the text itself- whether as the voting audience of a reality television show, or the creators of fan-art and fiction. Video games therefore become one of the most significant examples of this participatory culture. Technologies have advanced to make this convergence even more possible, and along with that, have intensified how far reaching the effects of convergence can be. Older regimes of knowledge are called into question, and the dimensions of time and space can be compressed into a completely different format. Games in recent times have developed complex narratives that create alternative realities and histories: they find new methods of storytelling through a synthesis of textual and cinematic media, bound only by the rules that bind gameplay. We have come a long way from games in which the only objective was ‘don’t die’.

In this paper, I will look at the convergence of the interactive free flow of video games and the questioning and revisioning of historical continuity using the example of the Assassin’s Creed series by Ubisoft: open-world, action adventure stealth historical fiction games, consisting of nine main games and a number of supporting materials on multiple platforms. I will focus particularly on the games that follow the adventures of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, and Edward Kenway – in Renaissance Italy and the Caribbean respectively. The games in the Assassin’s Creed series exist in two time frames, and a basic understanding of the story is necessary in order to theorise fully its implications with regards to my arguments on history and memory. The games revolve around the rivalry between two ancient secret societies: the Assassins and the Knights Templar.

The real-world chronological setting of the first three games in the series feature Desmond Miles, who is forced into the Animus, a device that allows him to experience his ancestral memories. Desmond explores the memories of a number of Assassins; including, in Assassin’s Creed II, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Assassin in Italy during the late 15th and early 16th centuries of the Italian Renaissance. Assassin’s Creed IV puts the player in control of an employee of a company developing games based on the now deceased Desmond’s genetic memory, with the pirate Edward Kenway being the first of his ancestors to be used for this purpose. Throughout the games, there is a constant switching of the gameplay between the characters in the present, trying to solve Abstergo’s mysteries, and the ancestral Assassin who is – in effect – playing out incidents that form part of the history that we know and recognise, only with differences that are important to the plot structure of the games.

While the premise of Assassins and Templars is fictitious, the events that Ezio and Edward participate in are true, as are many of the characters they interact with, such as Leonardo da Vinci in Ezio’s case and Blackbeard in Edward’s. The mythology of the games suggest that it has been the actions of the two rival factions that have affected many of the events in history; for instance, Rodrigo Borgia is a member of the Templars, and is part of the conspiracy to bring down the Medici family in Florence, and it is suggested that the first Templar was the Biblical betrayer Cain….Access Full Text of the Article

Digitalizing the Narratives: Structural Analysis of Far Cry 3

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Eeshan Ali , Indian School of Mines, Jharkhand, India

Arijit Karati, Indian School of Mines, Jharkhand, India

Abstract

Every form has its own structure. Technically, though there is a difference between computer games and literature, but structurally both reflect same modes of the presentation which is carried out by certain codes. The present paper looks into the structural analysis of computer games with technical aspect as well as literature aspect with special reference to Far Cry 3, a first person action adventure computer game which received several awards and critically acclaimed for its graphics, story line, features etc. Besides this paper relocate Vladimir Propp’s theory of narrative function in Far Cry 3 and decode how the computer game with the help of certain binary opposition and codes have become one of the fundamental tools of getting entertained in the popular imagination.

[Keywords: Vladimir Propp’s theory, Computer Game, Structural analysis of adventure game, Far Cry 3]

In the twenty first century, technology has gripped every aspect of the society with the increment of the influence of technology, people started seeking the pleasure and even consolation from the digital world. Earlier, when the technology was in developing phase people gratified from folk tale, short stories, fiction and moreover from literature. But now people get his ultimate satisfaction from the digital world. This digital world comprises all sorts of genre which have been carried out by the people till now. It has started pampering the mind of the people. Computer game is one of those thousand technologies on which todays’ teen get much pleasure than reading a book or fiction. It has become a kind of addiction to the young generation. But a close and critical observation of the recent computer game also offers a way out to the narrative structure which is there in any literary work.

Before we go deep into the article, there are some points which are quite necessary to clear. There are various genres in literature, like poetry, fiction, short story, drama etc. The computer game also bears the same quality of having various types, for example action game, strategy game, adventure game, racing game etc. Like any literary text where literariness is necessary, the computer game also bears some kind of reflection of the literariness, which bears the plot and a specific storyline. Moreover, like any literary text the computer game can analyze from any theoretical point of view. Let’s analyze how the narratives have been given a digital frame with special reference to Far Cry 3.

 Storyline

Far Cry 3 is a game about the exploration, exploitation and experimentation. It is an advanced action-adventure first person game, which is set on the Rook Island between the Indian and Pacific Ocean. This game has earned the fame for its storyline and its presentation throughout the world. It was honored with the several awards, including British Academy Video games Award and National Academy of Video game Trade Reviewers Award in 2013. According to Jeffrey Yohalem, the writer of the game the plot is about “what shooting means and what it does to humanity” (Far Cry 3, 2014). The protagonist of the game is Jason Brody, who, along with his elder and younger brothers Grant and Riley and some of his friends, come to Bangkok on vacation to celebrate Riley’s getting license. They come down to the Rook Island, during their skydiving. Rook Island is captured and controlled by the pirates under the control of Vass, one of the most notorious antagonists in the game world. Vass imprisons all of them and tortures them brutally. Jason and Grant are kept in the same cell when the others are taken for the ransom. Grant, the elder brother of Jason, makes a plan to escape and finally they manage to free themselves, but unfortunately Grant is killed by Vass and somehow Jason successfully escapes from that place and takes shelter in the jungle. Shortly thereafter, Jason meets a member of the Rakyat tribe named Dennis, who wanted to help him as he finds Jason has the ability to obey the “path of the warrior”. Rakyat tribe also wanted to take over Vass as they are also exploited and tortured by that psychopathetic villain. Citra, the leader of the Rakyat tribe and the sister of Vass, is agreed to help Jason in rescuing his friends, but in a condition, i.e., if he can manage Silver Dragon, a knife which the Rakyat tribe revered. Buck Huges buys Keith, one of the friends of Jason as a human slave but he promises to give him back to Jason if he is able to manage the Silver Dragon. The Silver Dragon is managed but Buck refuses to give Keith back, so the fight takes place and Jason kills Buck. Jason manages to rescue Lize, Keith and Oliver to Dr. Earnhardt, who helps them a lot in that island. They have been given a boat to escape from that island, but Jason refused to leave as he wants to free his younger brother Riley from Vass. Keith tries to convince him that Riley has been shot dead by Vass and he witnessed it. Still Jason wants to take revenge on that and wants to kill Vass.

               Jason hands over the Silver Dragon to Citra. Citra helps Jason to kill Vass after getting that Silver Dragon. Sam Becker, a CIA agent who is working undercover in Hoyt’s island, helps Jason to find Riley. There Jason, with the help of Sam, wins the trust of Hoyt and later through a poker game Jason kills Hoyt and successfully rescues Riley with the loss of Sam, who is killed during the game by Hoyt. Jason and Riley escape from the island to Dr. Eanhardt after seizing a helicopter from Hoyt. On the other hand, Citra kidnaps all the friends of Jason and kills Dr. Earnhardt. Citra gives two choices to Jason, one is to complete his path of the warrior by killing all his friends and allowing her to be his partner, or to abandon it and return to the life he is craving for. The choice of the player affects the mode and tone of the game. If the player chose to play as a warrior and kills the friends to be the king of the Rakyat tribe, then Jason after having sex with Citra, is killed by her with an assurance that the child which she will carry will be the new king of the tribe in the future. And if the player goes for the second option that is to deny to kill the friends and to take over the throne, then Dennis with the fury tries to kill Jason but by mistake he kills Citra. While Dennis regrets at his deed, Jason and his friends escape from that place and at last they manage to escape from the Island….Access Full Text of the Article

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

An Unfinished Perfection: The Unfinished Swan Examined Phenomenologically

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Soham Ganguly, Independent Scholar, Kolkata

Abstract

This paper critically examines The Unfinished Swan, a videogame released for the Play Station 3 platform by Giant Sparrow Entertainment, as an existentialist narrative. With this aim in mind, the various devices used in the game for the purpose of narration and virtually representing the imaginary world in which the story takes place, i.e, within the fairytale world of an unfinished painting, are studied. Their cumulative effect is considered through the lenses of existentialism as laid down by Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Whether a virtual representation of an existential quest for meaning is possible is at first examined, after which, the focus is shifted to how far this is realized in the game.

Right from its outset, in terms of its title as well as its back-story, The Unfinished Swan harps incessantly on the fundamental problem that carries the narrative of the game forward, that in it, there is something dominant that remains unfinished, namely the world of the painting that the protagonist enters, and the player plays in. As part of its back-story, we find that the protagonist, Monroe is left with one of many paintings that his mother created, all of them left unfinished. The one left to Monroe is that of a swan, unfinished as well. The game begins with Monroe following the footprints of the aforementioned swan through a magical door in the wall.

The property of the painting of the swan being unfinished gives the protagonist the reason to proceed to do so. We may define this as a fundamental lack at the heart of Monroe’s being and hence, fuelling his eternal striving towards the goal of solving the enigma latent in the narrative-

We must further understand that the intentions aim at appearances which are never to be given at one time. It is an impossibility on principle for the terms of an infinite series to exist all at the same time before consciousness, along with the real absence of all these terms except for the one which is the foundation of objectivity. If present these impressions even in infinite number-would dissolve in the subjective; it is their absence which gives them objective being. Thus the being of the object is pure non-being. It is defined as a lack. It is that which escapes, that which by definition will never be given, that which offers itself only in fleeting and successive profiles (Sartre, 1966, p.28).

Indeed a phenomenological study of The Unfinished Swan demands that the portrait be unfinished in order to provide the protagonist the reason to set out into the world of the painting. The game is replete with existential symbols, apart from being, in the ludological sense, full of possibilities and paths of action.

The goal of the boy is to follow the trail of the swan. The swan embodies a primary existential symbol in the course of the game. Having its origin as a creation of the boy’s mother, the swan stands for the past, and in the life that the boy lived prior to setting out in the game’s central quest of the swan hunt, it formed his present, and as he seeks to find the swan it becomes his future possibilities all put together.

A fresh, white slate of a world is given to the player, which forms the “ground of experience” (Sartre, 1966, p.73), and the matter of Dasein or “being in the world,” as conceptually laid down by Martin Heidegger and examined by Sartre, immediately comes into play (Heidegger, 1962).

To start with, hence, we need take a look at Being, and how it stands in this context- “’Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.’ Being includes both Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself, but the latter is the nihilation of the former. As contrasted with Existence, Being is all-embracing and objective rather than individual and subjective” (Sartre, 1966, p. 592).

The white world which greets Monroe upon first starting the game, or even at the beginning of each chapter or level, may be likened to a state of pure being, because it is, and no more may be said about it. Though there might be scruples of it not entirely being Being because it can stand by its chromatic, visual properties as being not-black on not any other colour, one may reason that since it is a visual approximation of the principle of Being-in-Itself, this is pretty much the nearest the game designers could get to it….Access Full Text of the Article

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Playing with Boundaries: Posthuman Digital Narratives in RealSelf.com

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Sucharita Sarkar, D.T.S.S College of Commerce, Mumbai

 

Abstract

Studies in digital humanities are often embedded in the theory of posthumanism. N. Katherine Hayles described the posthuman as “an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (Hayles, 1999, p. 3). Enmeshed in scientific advancements in communication technology and bio-technology, this posthuman body or cyborg is always in a state of perpetual becoming, with or without its own agency. Donna Harraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” (1991) celebrated the un-gendering potential of human-machine couplings. Internet theorists like Sherry Turkle (1997) have also expressed optimism about the self-changing capacity of digital communication.

In this context, the paper interrogates, through a posthumanist lens, the digital narratives constructed through text and images on RealSelf.com, which is an online social media forum for those seeking (and finding) the correct cosmetic surgical treatment for human-enhancement or metamorphosis. The paper will attempt to read the website, especially selected transformation-stories from the “Reviews” section, where those who are undergoing/will undergo/have undergone cosmetic surgical procedures post their experiential narratives and photographs before, during and after the procedure in a blog-timeline format, often eliciting comments by supporting readers. These diverse narratives on the site may be unpacked to see how posthumans are playing with the boundaries of their bodies to reconstruct their selves, and whether these transformation-stories break away from earlier gender stereotypes, or whether they replicate them: old wine in a new, virtual, surgically-enhanced bottle?

Keywords: Cosmetic surgery, cyborg, digital, human-enhancement, narratives, posthuman, social media.

 

Introduction: Becoming Posthuman

“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Braidotti,2013, The Posthuman, “Introduction”, p.1).

“As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens,…you have already become posthuman …. thehuman is giving way to a different construction called the posthuman” (Hayles, 1999, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, p. 2).

 

Posthumanism is not a deferred state or a science-fictional concept. The ubiquitous presence of the internet in our lives makes us live through posthumanism. If I confess that I am in a committed relationship with my laptop, or that my mobile phone is a prosthetic extension of my arm, I am articulating my posthuman becoming. N. Katherine Hayles described the posthuman as “an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction” (Hayles, 1999, p.3). As we enmesh our offline and online existences in more and more imbricated ways, we can witness our own continuing self-construction and reconstruction.

Posthuman theories and praxis are embedded not only in cyber-technology but also in recent developments in biotechnology. The scientific advances in biotechnology has enabled humans to reconstruct the biological human body into bionic bodies with artificial insertions and additions. Biotechnology also engages with other practices like neo-eugenics, artificial reproductive techniques and surrogacy. By fracturing long-entrenched binaries like nature/culture, biotechnology ventures into terrains that have evoked mixed responses, especially from critical posthumanists. Francis Fukuyama, for instance, controversially advocated state control of biotechnology, although one defining feature of these new participatory and/or embodied posthuman technologies is democratization of access (Fukuyama, 2002, p.181).

In this paper, I will attempt a posthumanist interrogation of RealSelf.com, which is an online social media website for those seeking (and finding) the correct cosmetic surgical treatment for human-enhancement. Located at the intersection of cyber-technology and biotechnology, the website archives multiple transformatory self-narratives that are communicated and shared. The paper aims to read the website as text and to focus on randomly selected transformation-stories published in the “Reviews” section, where those who are undergoing/will undergo/have undergone cosmetic surgical procedures post their experiential narratives and photographs before, during and after the procedure in a blog-timeline format, often eliciting comments from empathetic and presumably similarly-intentioned readers. Many of these narratives intersect and reify each other’s, and the paper will attempt to unpack these diverse narratives to see how posthumans are playing with the boundaries of their offline bodies and online subjectivities to reconstruct their selves. Grounded on posthuman and feminist theories of Donna Harraway, RosiBraidotti, N. Katherine Hayles and others, the paper will interrogate these digital narratives to find out whether they resist or reify earlier gender stereotypes, and also explore the issues of agency and anxiety that are performed through these transformation-stories….Access Full Text of the Article

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Selfie and the experience of the virtual image

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Gabriela Farías , Puebla, Mexico

 

 Don’t cry, I’m sorry to have deceived you so much, but that’s how life is.

—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Abstract

People know the world through images; new realities are created and new identities are developed. Consequently, portraits may become a representation of one’s personality and a reflection of the society of spectacle. These digital pictures change the experience of memory and inherently trace back to photographs. Thus, the “screen” mediates the relations among people and the information flow carrying different meanings. In this way, the photographic material and the virtual image will be analyzed, and distinctions will be noted regarding the aesthetic experience, specifically regarding the self-portrait and the selfie.

Keywords: Photography, virtual image, selfie, self-portrait, and aesthetic experience.

The photographic image

Images are the core of society today; they have become the means of massive communication and, therefore, the essence of daily life. Humans have become homus photographicus. Almost every person has a camera, whether it is in a cellphone, iPad, tablet, point and shoot or any other device. People have learned to express emotions, ideas and concepts through images regardless of its complexity.

Photos may be digital images but not every image is a photograph. In this section, the photographic image will be considered as a print, different from the virtual image, based on their structure, materiality and distribution.

In general, the image is defined as a figure, the representation of something. That is, the copy of an object, a mental representation subject to cognition and interpretation. In that regard, Flusser (2001) writes about images as containers of signified meaning, as an abstraction of something projected into time and space. From ancient cultures and civilizations, the copy made of an object represents that entity along with other attributions given by individuals or a group. In that way, a symbol is created.

Pictures are a means to transmit ideas and even knowledge, since they are the bases of visual communication and they are also a cultural product.

When an artistic representation (drawing, painting, engraving) of an object is made, there is a certain distance between the copy and the original due to skills and techniques used by the author. This is what makes the art unique and provides an aura as Benjamin stated in 1936. However, upon the arrival of photography and the reproducibility of images, this gap is reduced to such an extent that the object depicted may be taken as the object itself conveying its authenticity. In this way, sight is the preferred sense emphasizing that seeing is believing. The image is proof of the subject’s existence, “it has been” as Barthes affirms, undeniably in a specific time and space.

However, the object portrayed no longer subsists, the photograph becomes a testimony, an index of a former event. Then, the picture has a diachronic relationship with the beholder, who has a memory and builds an emotional connection based on something that only exists in the past. In that regard, the image retains significance over time as if it were a ghost, the meaning remains on the surface. In fact, Brea argues that it (the material-image) remains static as a result of their production process in which there is a specific and unique time lapse (Brea, 2010; 113). The material photograph is always in delay, “it has been” and the significance is retrieved through diachronic memories.

Before the appearance of the virtual image, photographs (and previously painted portraits) were consumed, generally in a more intimate context, for example in a private album or they were displayed in the family room. The aesthetic experience was closer to a painting and according to Moxey (2013), the meaning was clear, that is, the viewers easily appreciated the significance since the portrait was conceived for a particular audience in a certain time. In contrast, virtual pictures are distributed in a different way and have diverse spectators.

Fig.1 Hippolyte Bayard, 1840
Fig.1 Hippolyte Bayard, 1840

The material images, under their production scheme, are prone to depict the world as a canvas, the medium determines how people look, read sings and tell stories. Additionally, the narratives are considered to be truthful because, in order to photograph an object, it has to exist; it has a referent, contrary to painting, where the artist may create chimeras based on imagination.

Nonetheless, the veracity of a picture may be questioned since it could be staged or transformed into something else, even something that is not as it appears in reality. For example, a portrait may be an idealistic version of a person, an alter ego or simply not the subject as known in daily life. To illustrate further, the case of Hippolyte Bayard becomes interesting to mention. In 1840, Bayard photographed himself as a drowned man, and people who saw the picture believed it was real. At the time, these images were believed to be real because a mechanic device, a camera, had taken them. In this way, Bayard created an alternative reality, where he was found dead.

In the 19th century people may have been keener to be deceived, but what happens when images are mass created? Presently, the sense of unreality is inherent and it is harder to believe that the subject “has been” the way it is portrayed….Access Full Text of the Article

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CRBTs, LMAOs, ROFLs: Curtailing emotions through cyber-acronyms

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Arafat Mohammad Noman, East West University, Bangladesh

Abstract

Cultural symbols- such as arts, music, literature, movies, novels, history- when shared by the members of a particular culture, remain as dormant in them until and unless they get in contact with a different culture. The exposure to a different culture gives a scope to distinguish between one’s own culture and another. Similarly the technological advancement (basically in the field of communication) has gradually created two types of culture within a particular community/nation/group: a ‘real’ culture which is the embodied experience of a particular group of people or a community and the ‘cyber’ culture which is the result (or experience) of extensive consumption of computer mediated communication (CMC). This exposure in the computer-mediated area (basically known as cyberspace) creates a different level of behavioural pattern in human. By inviting the body and the senses into our dance with our tools, it has extended the landscape of interaction, to new topologies of pleasure, emotion and passion. Thus the current paper tries to discuss the rechanneled emotions through technossories and investigate if it is making us techno-bodies or tech-nobodies. The study is about differentiating emotions at two levels: the embodied emotion and the disembodied emotion. The paper deals with the issue that how far the technological adherence marks the alienation of long nurtured social bond that we used to know.

 

Emotion or e-motion?

 

Our passionate response to VR [virtual reality] mirrors the nature of the medium itself. By inviting the body and the senses into our dance with our tools, it has extended the landscape of interaction, to new topologies of pleasure, emotion and passion (Laurel, 1993).

-Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre

The proximity between technosorries (technological accessories) and human marked a new epoch in the language system. Besides oral and written form of language, a third type has evolved with its revolutionary image: electronic or computer-mediated language. Computer-mediated communication systems are believed to have powerful implications on social life. This system of communication transgresses what is collective and what is individual. Hence, a tension is created with identity: an offline identity and an online identity. The confusion, tension, imbalance whatever we like to tag it with the focus supposedly remains in the arena of how we are dealing with this self-anticipated duality.

Repudiated Self?

Marshall Mcluhan in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McLuhan 1994) gives an interesting idea about technology. He shows how we are becoming maimed while superficially being extended by the boon of technology. And my current paper somehow follows Mcluhan’s idea of amputation of human agencies while there is propinquity between technology and human. Interestingly we think ourselves as techno-bodies while there is a chance of being tech-nobodies in dealing with the items we are bestowed with. Every extensions of mankind, especially the technological extensions, have also the flipping side of amputating or modifying some other extensions. Just as the development of gunpowder maimed or curtailed the skill of archery or the invention of telephone extends the voice but maimed the penmanship, similarly the overwhelming usage of cyber technology curtailing our emotional expressions. Let us consider the chat history below:

Rachel: Dude m got fished up

Macklin: sup

Rachel: Moms gonna ban my going to gaming zone

Macklin: LOL

Rachel: CID

Macklin: Let’s see wat happens…FC Dude

Rachel: CRBT L

Definitely one would get confused after going through above chat history. Yes, this is the case when we are too much accustomed to online behaviour. Let me clarify some of the above acronyms: CRBT means Crying Real Big Tears; CID means Crying in Disgrace; FC means Finger crossed and I hope LOL need not to be abbreviated!

Let us try some theoretic consideration in depicting the relationship between human and technology. As structuralism tends to bind us in a structure we human habitually try to breach it and this is the result of breaching: avoiding the structured grammatical rules and way of addressing. The psychoanalytical explanation seems more interesting. Why do we think this virtual entity seems to be more exciting for us? What if I say this is the way of personality formation: an introvert turning out to be an extrovert and vice versa. The outcome of this online interaction is a formation of an e-identity, a virtual whole which is greater than its part and that not being real, is full of life and vitality. In seeking impunity from the age old norms and rules, the “self” gets its virtual identity as unrestrained, less accountable, a little bit on the dark side and unknowingly sexier. This e-personality can act as a liberating force for the real life individual, allowing the person to transcend debilitating shyness, let go of the stultifying and suffocating inhibition and forge him/her into new arena of expression which in real life would seem impossible. It is in many cases complements the real life persona and acts as an extension serving him with vitality, promptness and efficiency. It covers the instant hi hello area to the more vigorous forces that culminates in Revolution 2.0 in Egypt. Disdaining the implicit inertia it helps breaking ice with the significant other over e-mail and also let go of an awkward situation just by blocking and hiding which in real life seems embarrassing. And to sum up we can say having a virtual persona can be like having a proverbial third hand.

But are we so sure of the fact that this cyber world not creating an anarchy itself? Are we not fetishisized by its enticing ingredients? So, if we flip the other side of the coin we find desperation, confusion, pain, disorientation in real life. That is because the online persona is dangerous and irresponsible; making the “self” rough and reckless in its move and encourage attaining unrealistic and unhealthy goals. It nourishes selfishness and creates a sense of isolation yet lingering in a community. The other day I came across a facebook status and that provoked my thought. Here is the status:

Life is like Facebook… people will like your problems and comment on it.. but no one gonna solve them..coz everyone is busy updating their own

This status reminds me of the famous poem Leisure by William Henry Davies. We are too busy and indulged in maintaining “self” that we almost forgot we are in close tie with our surroundings. Wordsworth tripartite relationship seems to dissolve amidst this technocratic modification of us. We rely on technology to fill up our fellow-feeling and texting, chatting, messaging are a good source of marking our presence when needed. We just let our sympathy or empathy limited to GWS Bro (Get well soon brother), It’s K (it’s Okay), CRBT (Crying real big tears) etc. The online arena serves double edged effect here: I) It makes easier to cooperate II) It also make easier to behave selfishly; and not acknowledging our gradual transformation we deliberately lenient of the latter one. The reason behind this let go attitude, what I presume, is that the disembodied interaction does not allow us to get the gesture and posture of the person we are interacting and hence neglecting is easier. We are also in a constant better to say IM communication that allows us to meet more than one person at a time. We tend to forget what we have interacted a moment ago. I have named it as overshadowing effect: the previous condition or interaction is being over shadowed by the present one and it is in a perpetual state of changing, impeding us to focus on a single issue which is possible in real life interaction….Access Full Text of the Article

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The Schizoids and Daydreamers in Cyberspace

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Azam Dashti Khavidaki, Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract

This paper embarks on an interdisciplinary study of the novel A Scanner Darkly and cyberspace to explain the human tendency for the realm of dream and imagination. It draws upon Ernest Becker’s death terror theory and discusses human’s basic fear of death and his seeking and clinging to various means to overcome it. One of the human’s mechanisms for self-defense to get over the reality of death is plunging into the realm of imagination and that of infinite fantasy; cyberspace is a systematic form of day dreaming and fantasy. The article shows how characters in the death-stricken world of A Scanner Darkly marred by the presence of computers, scramble suits and scanners manifest a strong tendency for the realm of fantasy and active daydreaming; in addition, it explains that this tendency exists to overcome their basic disguised anxiety, i.e. the fear of death. It draws an analogy between characters and Internet users’ behavior in the novel and cyberspace; and discusses how infinite realms of daydreaming and fantasy evoked by virtual reality touch a latent tendency of schizoid characteristics in humans.

Keywords: A Scanner Darkly, Becker, Cyberspace, Death terror, Daydreaming, Infinitude, Schizoid characteristic.

 

“There is no point identifying the world. Things have to be grasped in their sleep, or in any other circumstance where they are absent from themselves.”

(Baudrillard, 2002, p. 6)

The contemporary world is the age of simulated realities extended to everyday life (Baudrillard, 1988). The online and offline worlds have merged and add to the slippery quality of reality. Hardly can one estimate their impact on a new generation of lifestyle and perception; one can only make concessions that the digital age is unpredictable and still unexplored.

Philip K Dick, the canonical writer of the digital age, is the creator of alternative forms of realities (Kucukalic, 2006, p.1).Dick’s concerns in all his novels revolve around one issue, the question of reality; in his search for “alternative mental life”, he develops schizophrenic characters in his novels and “re-considers the labels and attitudes toward alternative perceptions of reality (Kucukalic, 2006, p.49).

In the novel A Scanner Darkly, he draws the reader’s attention to the role of technology and its effects on the protagonist’s mentality. He envisages a human being whose perception and sense of integrity are shattered by his digital sides, the multitude of faces and of appearances. The altered mentality is the quality that all characters perceive. Characters suffer from anxiety, depression and hallucination; they often lose the sense of time and place, and in the search for improvement in their condition, they manifest active daydreaming. In fact, characters partly intentionally and partly unwittingly, leave the realm of reality and find some sort of abandon and release in the realm of dreams.

Ernest Becker believes that these behavioral tendencies are more or less universal human problems, and that they are part of a massive disguise of humans’ fundamental fear and anxiety (Becker, 1973, p.8). He calls human beings animals with instincts and gods with power of perception and imagination. Sartre ascribes a “useless passion” to man since “he hopelessly always bungles up, so deluded about his true condition”. He continues to say about man that “he wants to be a god with only the equipment of an animal and so he thrives on fantasies” (Becker, 1973, p.59).

Thus, humans with such power and the ability to predict the inevitable death have to find some way out, anxious about this imminent fate, suffering from the overhanging black cloud of death constantly. The realm of dreams is a way out of this reality. Daydreaming is a way out, and nowadays cyberspace has provided systematic grounds for daydreaming and fantasy in a world with the quality of infinitude, free of time, place, gender and aging, and all other offline world limitations, but infinite possibility is dangerous and opens a threshold to low or medium levels of schizoid characteristics.

This anxiety later in life finds manifold manifestations and is the cause of other psychological ills. Humans suppress this sense of insecurity and apparently get over it, otherwise they cannot keep on with normal life; however, the truth keeps lurking vividly behind the scenes. Man, meanwhile, unconsciously employs various means such as accumulating wealth, striving to stand out, seeking a wide net of protections and joining groups to think no more of this insecurity; the realm of dream and imagination is also one of these ways out, and perhaps a related one.

Bob Arctor, the protagonist, is a narcotic agent who has to put on the Scramble suit, an inventive piece of clothing which hides the wearer’s appearance entirely, the color of his hair and eyes, and even his voice; he gets the code name Fred for his new appearance. Other police members also have to use this suit to hide their identity and protect themselves against drug dealers. But this digital suit, apart from other evils, inflicts serious damage to Bob Arctor’s perception of reality and leads him to confuse reality with unreality.

During the course of the novel, Bob Arctor, the protagonist in the scramble suits or digital dresses, manifests a range of schizoid traits. Scramble suits which change the character’s appearance altogether and give him a virtual identity unwittingly affect this mentality. Holo-scanners, computer-like high techs, affect the protagonist’s mentality even further and change the atmosphere of the novel into more of a simulated reality….Access Full Text of the Article

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Infinite Ways to Make Profit: Digital Labour and Surveillance on Social Networking Sites

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Rianka Roy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Abstract

Social Networking Sites involve users’ exploitation as digital labourers whose online activities generate a huge amount of data that are sold to various advertisers. The paper discusses the various patterns of exploitation of digital labour in the system of digital capitalism and argues that digital surveillance, following the omniopticon model in SNSs sustains this new kind of capitalist economy, based on the creation and distribution of digital data.

[Keywords: digital labour, digital capitalism, informationalism, exploitation, panopticon, omniopticon, surveillance, prosumers, social networking sites, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin.]

Introduction: Prosumers and Digital Labour in Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites (SNSs) make enormous monetary profit, as seen in various news reports.[1] Sites like Facebook and Twitter have been churning billion dollar revenues. Dan Schiller claims that the Internet and its technology of easy global connectivity have broadened the scope of globally-spread capitalism, as “networks are directly generalizing the social and cultural range of the capitalist economy as never before”.[2] He calls this “digital capitalism”.[3] Manuel Castells identifies this trait as a “new brand of capitalism”[4] and ‘informationalism’[5], which “depends on innovation as the source of productivity growth, on computer-networked global financial markets, whose criteria for valuation are influenced by information turbulences, on the networking of production and management, internally and externally, locally and globally, and on labor that is flexible and adaptable in all cases.”[6] SNSs have particularly increased the impact of digital networks on economy as they have thrown the gates of digital access wide open to a large number of individual users.

Media researchers like Christian Fuchs find that SNS users have a particular role in the labour that sustains the new type of capitalist economy. They voluntarily put in ‘digital labour’, as they upload data—in the form of messages, images, videos, audio files; consume as well as circulate the data in SNSs.[7] Without the data, the networks would merely have been empty structures. Following Raymond Williams’s concept, the means of digital communication thus become the means of production,[8] as users double as producers, and use the networks of communication to produce data commodities. On the one hand, these users consume the facilities of communication that are provided by the SNSs; on the other hand, they generate data and produce “data commodities”[9] required for targeted advertising. The “distinction between production and consumption” is blurred[10] as users turn into “prosumers”.[11] Fuchs claims that users churn data that facilitate targeted advertising; but the users themselves, too, perhaps are sold to prospective advertisers for targeted advertising. The prosumers, thus, are also commodities themselves as the popularity of a site is determined by the online activities and the log-in time of the users.

Users’ tripartite role of users—as prosumers, website users, and as commodities—sold to capitalist sponsors of SNSs, minimises the temporal gap between production and consumption, by producing merchandise through the process of consumption of the same and thus unifying two different processes. This conflates two kinds of consumption—the consumption of consumers or Marx’s individual consumption, and what Marx identifies as the labourers’ consumption or productive consumption, which indicates the consumption of labour and material conditions of production through the process of production.[12]
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[1] Mark McSherry, ‘Facebook revenue up 63 per cent thanks to massive increase in mobile advertising’, The Independent, January 29, 2014 [Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/facebook-revenue-up-63-per-cent-thanks-to-massive-increase-in-mobile-advertising-9094704.html on February 3, 2014 at 3:27 pm], and Hannah Kuchler, ‘Twitter still playing catch-up with Facebook’, FT.com, February 2, 2014 [Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/58d11c7c-8a91-11e3-9c29-00144feab7de.html#axzz2sFd3kQjn on February 3, 2014 at 3:32 pm]

[2] Dan Schiller, ‘Introduction: The Enchanted Network’, Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System, (Cambridge, Massachusettes: MIT Press, 1999), p.1.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Manuel Castells, ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’, The Network Society: A Cross Cultural Perspective, edited by Manuel Castells, (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004), p.29.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Manuel Castells, ‘Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint’, The Network Society: A Cross Cultural Perspective, edited by Manuel Castells, (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004), p.29.

[7] Christian Fuchs and Sebastian Sevignani,‘What is Digital Labour? What is Digital Work? What’s their Difference? And why do these Questions Matter for Understanding Social Media?’, Triple C, 11(2), 2013. pp.237-293. [Retrieved from http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/461 on October 24, 2013 at 5 p.m.]

[8] Raymond Williams, ‘Means of Communication as Means of Production’, Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays, London: Verso, 2005 (Originally published in 1978). Also see William Henning James Hebblewhite, ‘”Means of Communication as Means of Production” Revisited’, TripleC, 10(2), 2012, pp.203-213 [Retrieved from http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/download/424/387 on December 26, 2014 at 7:50 am]

[9] Ibid, p.259.

[10] Tiziana Terranova, ‘Free Labor: Producing Culture for Digital Economy’ [Retrieved from http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary on December 9, 2014 at 1:44pm]

[11] Jamie Skye Bianco, ‘Social Networking and Cloud Computing: Precarious Affordances for the “Prosumer”’, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly Vol. 37: Issues 1 & 2. pp. 303-312, p.306 (Spring/Summer 2009). [Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wsq/v037/37.1-2.bianco.html on April 23, 2011 at 1:27 pm.]

[12] “Labour uses up its material factors, its subject and its instruments, consumes them, and is therefore a process of consumption. Such productive consumption is distinguished from individual consumption by this, that the latter uses up products, as means of subsistence for the living individual; the former, as means whereby alone, labour, the labour-power of the living individual, is enabled to act. The product, therefore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the result of productive consumption, is a product distinct from the consumer.”—Karl Marx, ‘The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value’, Capital Vol1: Part III: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value, 1867.[Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm on 7 August, 2011 at 12:35 pm.]

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An Electronic Edition of Eighteenth-Century Drama Manuscripts: Performing for Editing

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Isabel Pinto, Catholic University of Portugal

Abstract

This article addresses a project of electronic edition of eighteenth-century drama manuscripts, introducing performance art as an active methodology. This was meant to isolate the specific features of eighteenth-century drama manuscripts, in order to assess their improved electronic edition. So, to fully grasp the distinctive features of these historical testimonies, performance art was used as a mediation process, and different interrelated performance initiatives took place. Through performance it was possible to restitute the “take place” (Kobialka, 2002) i.e. the eventful nature contained in the manuscripts, instead of searching for metadata innovations, or an ideal critical apparatus. The focus was laid on drama as a particular type of happening and accomplishment, silenced amidst the archive. The happening quality of the manuscripts was then put to proof through different contexts and practices of performance. The resultant digital edition reflects the “remains” of taking drama manuscripts into performance practice, allowing for a new format of reading material.

  1. Digital Edition: Concepts in Review

According to McGann (1997) the electronic environment of hyperediting overcomes the codex-based limits, as computerization can optimize the logical categories of traditional critical editing that can then acquire new functions. In fact, to work in a “hyper” mode, an editing project must use computerization in such a way as to get over the analytic limits of hardcopy text. Accordingly, hypertexts allow us to go through a large number of documents and to relate these documents, or parts of them, in complex varying ways.

He further recognizes the importance of organizing a hyperediting project in hypermedia form, since hypermedia editions can incorporate audial and/or visual elements that reflect the multimedia nature of literary works: “texts are language visible, auditional, and intellectual (gesture and (type)script, voice and instrumentation, syntax and usage)” (p. 33). One example of a hypermedia project is The Rossetti Hypermedia Archive. When presenting this particular project, McGann (1997) introduces a distinction between archive and edition:

It is important to realize that the Rossetti project is an archive rather than an edition. When a book is produced it literally closes its covers on itself. If its work is continued, a new edition, or other related books, have to be (similarly) produced. A work like the Rossetti hypermedia archive has escaped that bibliographical limitation. It has been built so that its contents and its webwork of relations (both internal and external) can be indefinitely expanded and developed (p. 40).

Curiously enough, the author explicitly links the term edition to a book format, with its specific categories of production and dissemination, and, at the same time, connects the archive with an ever-expanding webwork of relations.

However, Drucker (2009) calls attention to the way we have come to analyze, and see the book format. In fact, she claims that it is necessary to identify the specific features of a material form correctly before being able to envision its functionality in a new medial format. She further argues that by looking at all that has happened in the domain of the electronic book, one is prone to understand how the limited apprehension of the specific materiality of the book has originated inadequate digital models. In her opinion, until now the focus has been on the reproduction of the graphic and physical features of the book, while the expansion of bookish functionalities would have been a better tryout.

Deegan and Sutherland (2009) go as far as to consider that in face of the digital tools what is being revised is the concept of text itself and its defining features. Following on the topic, Dahlström (2009) contents idealistic notions of documents, texts and editions, claiming that the nature of editions is rhetorical, social and one that entails complex translation rather than simple transmission. By acknowledging this, scholars would be better prepared to deal with the purposes and critical contributions of their electronic editions.

In this context, a range of possibilities arise, going from the hypermedia multilayered archive, involving multiple research partnerships, to individual manuscript editions. According to Vanhoutte (2009) the audience for scholarly editions is small, specialized, and will scarcely outnumber the scholarly community engaged with the edited title. Hence, in his opinion, this type of editing goes against the importance of the scholarly edition as a cultural product. In fact, the qualifying characteristic of an edition lies in the status of its text, not its function, form of appearance, or method. The electronic edition is thus seen as the optimized medium for the promotion of the scholarly reading edition….Access Full Text of the Article

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