themes: spectatorship, the gaze, narrative, performance, spectacle, participatory culture, voyeurism, roleplay

In other words, “models of thinking that slide over the live surface of difference at work in the ordinary to bottom-line arguments about ‘bigger’ structures and underlying casues obscure the ways in which a reeling present is composed out of heterogeneous and noncoherent singularities. They miss how someone’s ordinary can endure or can sag defeated: how it can shift in the dace of events like a shift in the kid’s school schedule or the police at the door” (4).

For Stewart, ordinary affects are “public feelings…they give circuits and flows the form of life…they are a tangle of potential connections. Literally moving things–things that are in motion and that are defined bu their capacity to affect and to be affected.” As Brian Massumi says, affect is the margin of maneuverability in human agency, it is the “‘where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do’ in every present situation.’” Ordinary affects are the moments of encounters between people and forces.

Stewart’s work is great because while it speaks of resonance it resonates within the reader. When I read Stewart, I made the very same kind of connections and linkages that she speaks about. In “Cultural Poesis” discusses the affective dimension of the visual: the poetics of graffiti, the homeless man that you pass by holding a sign on the street, the visual media that is constantly the object of our glance. In looking, “a charge passes through the body and lodges in the person as an irritation, a confusion, an amusement, an ironic smirk, a thrill, a threat, or a source of musing” (1035). The idea that “sign that erupt as events” resonated with me. In this view, signs, images, texts are not representations but events, things that happen.

Just today I passed a homeless man in the subway. When I heard his request for change, the circuit was immediately set off in my mind. If I look into his eyes and do not give him money I am cruel and insensitive because I am acknowledging him. If I do not look at him I am hardened, arrogant, and worse- I am rendering him invisible, and object part of the landscape instead of a person. A momentary daily ethical struggle that most urban dwellers can relate to. Or we pass by a homeless person and are affected at that particular moment (by the sign s/he is holding, by his appearance, by his dog, by our mood at the time, by the kind of day we’ve had, by seeing someone reach into his wallet, by seeing no one reach into his wallet) and decide to give money. Each encounter is different both within and across individuals.

I averted his eyes and as I walked up the subway stairs a feeling a guilt surged through me. I should have given him a dollar. I am a bad person. I am a callous person. And worse, I have rendered another human invisible. (As I write this now, I imagine that a hidden camera had been filming me. The viewer would watch me pass by the man, avoiding his eyes. And what conclusions would the viewer come to about my character, my identity? The notion of ordinary affects does not allow for such a categorization of identity. That is why Stewart does not aim toward representation.)

A few moments later my attention is distracted by something else but my life trajectory has been altered in some small way. And now I write about it and will affect someone else’s life trajectory in some small way.

Cache is commentary on paranoia. Georges and Anne Laurent learn than they are being watched with a hidden camera. Their paranoia is subtly juxtaposed with a more global paranoia as we see and hear the television news reporting on the global war on terrorism. The personal is necessarily intertwined with the political as the 1961 massacre of Algerians comes into the plot. And paranoia is intertwined with race and ethnicity.

Cache is a film that plays on and subverts two fundamental human desires: the desire to know and the desire to see. Forgive me here, but I’m going to use annoying film theory terms now. Haneke reflexively calls attention and subverts the pleasures of scopophelia (looking) and epistophelia (knowledge). In most traditional films, these pleasures are satisfied through conventions of filmmaking–establishing shots, point-of-view shots etc–that align our gaze with that of the characters. When our gaze is not aligned with a character, it is placed in the omniscient privileged position of an all-knowing observer. In Cache, however, what we see is constantly being called into question. We think we are seeing one thing only to later learn that we had seen something else entirely. Take the opening scene for example. A long shot of a house that first appears to be an establishing shot cuts to a scene of a couple watching the very same footage that we had just seen. We learn that the characters are being watched with a hidden camera at the precise moment they do in the film’s narrative. The details of how Georges betrayed Majib, even as they become clarified, still remain sketchy at the film’s conclusion. Just as the viewer’s knowledge is incomplete, so are the characters’. When Anne scolds Georges for not telling her who he suspected was watching them, we see the effect of surveillance. Tensions rise as the couple knows they are being watched. But there is something else going on. Anne is frustrated by her incomplete knowledge, her inability to know the truth that her husband is keeping from her.

In Cache, the long shots are extreme. In some instances, these long establishing shots indicate the actual surveillance camera. But at other times, Haneke uses these shots to imitate the constant surveillance in a networked society. This stylistic choice forces the viewer to question who is doing the looking at the same time forcing the viewer into the role of voyeur as s/he scans the screen for important clues into the plot. But this voyeuristic position is not a pleasurable one (like that achieved by Reality TV). Voyeurism always requires a distance between the looker and the looked at. But Haneke uses distance as a tactic to confuse the viewer, not aimed at giving the spectator a sense of unmediated access to the truth. Take the final scene. When I first watched it, I knew that the location was Pierrot’s school and that Anne was there to pick him up so that’s what I was looking for. At one point, we see Anne’s back in the center of the frame. So naturally, my eye was drawn there. What I failed to notice was Pierrot and Majib’s son chatting in the side of the frame. (I learned this from reading Robert Ebert’s review of the film!) Here, we see the inability of an image to convey reality. Not only did my vision fail me, but after seeing the pair converse, my previous understanding of the film was called into question. Did they know each other before? Or was this the first time they were meeting? What was Hajib’s son telling Pierrot?

Another looming question remains unanswered: why surveillance? Whether or not the person responsible for the videos was Hajib, his son, or someone else, why did he choose the medium of video? Clearly the desired effect was the kind of paranoia mentioned above. And if the culprit was Hajib, the constant yet un-locatable eye of the camera on the Laurent’s might represent a comment on his own feeling of invisibility and powerlessness. Throughout the film, it was constantly re-iterated that the police would not act until their was physical danger. The tapes on their own were not enough. The hidden camera did not harm the Laurent’s physically, it did not restrict their freedom or action in any tangible way. Yet, the psychological awareness is a kind of force that is perhaps incipient to control.

I have resisted caring about my appearance on SL for quite some time. I mean, I cared in the sense that I wouldn’t wear clothing or have hair that I considered ugly but I didn’t really care in the sense of actually doing much about it. And doing something about it means being a consumer.

Jason gave me 100 linden dollars once and I quickly learned that 100 doesn’t go very far in the SL economy. A while ago, my friend Pannie commented on my “newbie” looks. This was when I had one of the standard “prim” skins and hair. She explained to me that I needed to get textured hair. So we went to the SL equivalent of Necessary Clothing and I bought me some real hair. Pannie also gave me some clothes. Some time after that I was sick of my wardrobe and went to one of the many free or 10L clothing stores and bought some more clothes. But the more I was on SL, the more I was unsatisfied with my appearance. Unsatisfied because I was not representing myself the way that I truly felt comfortable. “I would never wear that” I would think to myself. So why would my avatar wear it?

A few days ago I met up with Mirra and her friend Thanasi. They both had tattoo sleeves–something I had wanted to get on SL. And here are some snippets from what ensued:

[22:35] You: i want a tatoo sleeve
[22:35] Mirra Fredriksson: we need to get you one
[22:35] Mirra Fredriksson: like thanasis
[22:35] You: yeah
[22:35] You: although i dont have too much money
[22:35] Mirra Fredriksson: lol
[22:35] Thanasi: hehe
[22:35] Thanasi: yeah
[22:35] Thanasi: get some monies.
[22:35] You: lol
[22:36] Thanasi: mirra.. take loran to aitui

(I then told them that I only had 84 linden. Mirra only had 100.)

[22:38] Thanasi: okay.. tell ya what..
[22:38] Thanasi: mirra.. let me give you 1000L
[22:38] You: woah
[22:38] Thanasi: and get you and loran some tattoos
[22:38] Thanasi: and then give me whats left back
[22:38] Mirra Fredriksson: LOL
[22:39] Thanasi: but you gotta give loran whatever the amount that is needed for loran to buy the tattoo
[22:39] Mirra Fredriksson: yea
[22:39] Thanasi: cause i don’t think you can buy it for loran
[22:39] You: wow are you sure thanasi?
[22:39] You: that is really nice
[22:39] Thanasi: yeah.. it’s no big deal
[22:39] Mirra Fredriksson: whoa thanks thanasi
[22:39] Thanasi: it’s like $4 RL money
[22:39] You: thnx so much
[22:39] Thanasi: yea..
[22:39] You: still though
[22:39] Thanasi: no biggie..

[22:41] Mirra Fredriksson: i’ll send you the rest when we are done
[22:41] Mirra Fredriksson:
[22:41] Thanasi: yeah
[22:41] Thanasi: if there isn’t .. then don’t worry.
[22:41] Thanasi: wait.
[22:42] Thanasi: here’s another $500
[22:42] Thanasi: let loran get some clothes too
[22:42] You: yes!
[22:42] Mirra Fredriksson: LOL
[22:42] You: i hate my clothes so much
[22:42] Mirra Fredriksson: LORAN needs clothes
[22:42] Thanasi: yea..
[22:42] Thanasi: aye.
[22:42] Mirra Fredriksson: LOL
[22:42] You: they are heinous
[22:42] Thanasi: loran needs some nice threads.
[22:42] You: in a serious way
[22:42] Mirra Fredriksson: loran does
[22:42] Mirra Fredriksson: ok i will take her shopping
[22:42] You: where did you get your dress mirra?
[22:42] Mirra Fredriksson: at this vintage shop
[22:43] You: lets go there !
[22:43] Thanasi: later doods.

And after than Mirra and I went shopping like 2 RL girlfriends. I asked her which colors she liked, she told me which dresses would look hot on me. The vintage store was amazing and I bought an 80′s cocktail dress and and a 50′s waitress dress. I love them both. But I am still searching for the perfect hair.

In “Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy” Agre distinguishes between surveillance and capture as two ways of thinking about privacy. Under the capture model, “grammars of action” are linguistic metaphors used to specify “a set of unitary actions–the ‘words’ or ‘lexical items’ of action” which are to be tracked or recorded in various manifestations (746). This concept of “grammar of action” is applicable to ethnography as serves as a framework through which to define the choices or behaviors of the subjects of the study. Also applicable is Agre’s elucidation of the effect of imposing grammars of action on reorganizing human activity and capture is “never purely technical but always socio-political in nature” (748). Unlike the surveillance model, which is a “single-factor theory” that tends to promote oversimplification, the capture model allows for a more nuanced, multidimensional analysis (751). He emphasizes “understanding the social relations within which the sociotechnical phenomenon of computing is embedded” is fundamental

Crain’s article on the Mass-Observation movement was fascinating. The idea of plotting “weather maps of public feeling” is essentially an ethnographic practice. Their methodology: day-diaries, surveys, and journalistic coverage. In John Sommerfield’s (and Harrison’s) book The Pub and the People, “he interviewed no one formally but merely drank, watched and listened”–in other words he was a participant-observer.

In “Television: Set and Screen,” Weber attempts to define the specificity of the televisual medium. Frankly, I have read more successful explorations of the medium which might essentialize more than Weber but are clearer in their descriptions of the process of watching. Weber states the television is a stand-in for the individual body. Perhaps this is where TV can connect Second Life-another stand-in for the body. Also, television is simultaneously present and absent and attempts to transcend the limits of the human body. Reality TV is a genre that appeals to this claim as it provides the viewer what it purports to be a “direct” access to reality. As a potential ethnographic tool, reality TV is more useful in exploring the mediation of reality than reality itself.

While the purpose of doing this was to explore space, I ended up discovering some things that relate to my research for this course. After getting used to the camera controls (sort of) I was able to make a more cinematic recording. There is a pretty obvious break in the video when my avatar is no longer on the screen, and there are close ups and pans of female avatars dancing. When I was there in SL my focus was on controlling the camera. Actually, my avatar actually became a camera because I was in mouse view (or was I holding down the alt key?) But in the editing process, when I re-watched the event I felt very uncomfortable with it. The combination of the provocative dancing animations–very much like stripper dances–and my focusing in, zooming in on the female is me embodying the “male gaze.” The camera fetishized and objectified those avatars.

In the moment, as I mentioned, using camera controls change the focus of the SL experience. And recording these camera movements profoundly changes things. The act of recording changes the reality that the recording depicts.

This is an exchange I had over a week ago with Jason. He suggested that I post our discussion on my blog and so I am taking his advice.

SUBJECT: Research Woes
Nov. 5, 2007

Hi Jason,

I’m having a lot of trouble translating my theoretical ideas into a tangible plan of action (a problem that I seem to have quite a lot…).

Just to refresh your memory, in our last conversation I had expressed my initial interest in aesthetisization and specifically in the CSI cross-over to SL. After having visited the rez, I found it pretty boring and was completely uninspired… The other idea was to focus on the connection between reality TV and SL. Here my issue is not lack of inspiration. With this, I am just confused as to how I would connect the two and research.

In a nutshell, I know that I want to explore the concept of spectatorship in SL. As you said, “what does it mean to be a spectator of yourself?”

I found a great source by Michele White: “Television and Internet Differences by Design Rendering Liveness, Presence, and Lived Space.” She also has a book that I plan on going over The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship. She touches on some of the issues I have been thinking about- ego identification/mirror stage (psychoanalytic film theory), remediation, reality TV. In one passage, she says that in both television and SL, “there are multiple identifications rather than a coherent relationship between screen images, lived world, and temporal present.” Basically, I am thinking of exploring these multiple identifications- what are they? how are they produced? how does the system design produces a specific kind of embodiment? (And perhaps I could still incorporate reality tv in somewhere. comparing the pleasures obtained perhaps…there is an article by Justin Lewis that explores this “The Meaning of Real Life,” in Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture.)

And that is where I reach a plateau. I am completely unsure as to how, where and with who to research these phenomena. I know that the research doesn’t need to be completely predetermined, but I have no idea where to start. The one thing that I have though of is somehow exploring the various ways that the program allows the user to experience spectatorship- ie mouseview, cursors etc. I would appreciate any advice you could give me.

Thanks so much,
Lindsay

Subject: Re: Research Woes
Nov. 5, 2007

Lindsay, very nice ideas — I too will look into some of the works you reference. I think you can do two simultaneous things:
- look at micro practices and SL features (mouseview, photo and machinima, avatar-fashioning and avatar as middle voice alla Hillis, and other features that complicate the concept of self-spectatorship (use of voice feature, gesture scripts that make distantiation between user and avatar a messy situation (because the body, tactility, “chorographic” interaction with the avatar connect user to avatar in specific ways).

- look at specific ‘social’ practices that involve groups/communities of self-spectatorship — furries and/or sex (blurring of voyeurism and exhibitionism and narcissism), participatory culture – experience economy type constructed situations (CSI), what else…? many more choices — and you will determine how many are too many, or if you even just want one. If you do the sex thing, you could work together with Juan, in part, for example.

I think theoretically you are already there — maybe tracing a continuum between reality tv and this sort of phenomenon, keeping in mind experience/affect economies and participatory culture. Remediation can open up a lot, too (is a “real” embedded in layers of mediation? is mediation necessarily distantiation? Bolter insists that we are concerned with effacing every trace of the medium as we use it; therefore, is self-spectatorship actually about a new sense of and contact with the self rather than (merely) some split of the self…and remediation might run you off course. There are too many things to consider and get fascinated by, so beware.

concrete methodologies — you would need to construct lines of questioning to get at the experiences of users. Also to identify discrete situations where you can track choices made and actions taken. Participation is the primary act. spend time doing the things they do, with them. that will also help you develop appropriate questions. “embedded” questions are most effective; that is, questions that pertain to specific contexts of which you have significant knowledge (like them), rather than broad, abstract questions that only yield equally broad answers. A lot of this is intuitive and a moment-by-moment process. So I think participant observation (you can listen to the chat of others as well, while you do so), with some questioning, and also autoethnography will be sufficient for a short-term project. You could even use the class in some ways — ask us to participate in an experiment during one of our SL meetings. Or simply have us join you in an interview/inquiry into a situation, as we did last night with Ignatius and Waxakla and their research sites/subjects.

Just dive in with some of these things in mind and things develop. I think you should put your thoughts – and even our discussions, on your blog. I’ve posted your blog url’s on our SL group information tab in SL, so you may be getting some feedback.
Jason

Process
Shaviro articulates many of Castells assumptions using science fiction texts, artists, intellectuals and scientist as examples, manifestations, and metaphors. For Shaviro, “every individual brain is a miniaturized replica of the global communications network” and “self is information pattern rather than a material substance” (12, 13). Castells says that “because of the nature of the new society, based upon knowledge, organized around networks, and partly made up of flows, the informational city is not a form but a process, a process characterized by the space of flows” (429). Building on Shaviro’s statements, maybe the human mind is also a process. Because we are constantly absorbing media and information either actively or distractedly, and likewise we are constantly sending out messages, the mind is in the constant process of “exchange and interaction”. Like Shaviro says, “identity is implanted in me from without, not generated from within” (13).

Connected/Disconnected, Involved/Distracted
Another parallel between Castells at the macro level and Shaviro at the mico happens through Castells discussion of mega-cities where he says that a distinctive feature of network society is “being globally connected and locally disconnected, physically and socially” (436). Here is is talking about the increasing connectedness between global cities yet the simultaneous dislocation of marginalized populations within the cities themselves. This corresponds to what Shaviro deems the “terminal state of the networked consumer: to be intensely involved, and maximally distracted all at once” (26). Acknowledging local populations that are either “functionally unnecessary or socially disruptive” (436) would mean breaking the distraction that comes with connectedness.

• how does participation in the world compare with watching TV, watching a movie? what does it mean to be a spectator of yourself?
• how does participation engender voyeuristic and exhibitionist tendencies?

The reason I am calling this world a game is because there would be a series of “levels” that the user must “pass” before progressing. However, there is no skill involved in passing a level, only participation. Participation is measured in terms of time i.e. X hours in level 1 gets you to level 2.

Also, while many of the avatars would be controlled by human users, there would be some avatars that software controlled, yet indistinguishable from the human-controlled avatars. This aspect is inspired by the anti-social bot softward created at University College London, UK. These “bots” would engage in provocative acts (sexual, entertaining etc.) in order to arouse interest from other avatar. Like the SL-bot, these avatars would record everything going on around it.

Here is a possible way that the levels could progress:

LEVEL 1
User automatically starts off in something like mouse-view where s/he cannot see avatar but can see others. Unlike mouse view, in this level the user cannot zoom in on objects. It is designed to be a close as possible to the way the human eye sees.

Like in SL, user first “lands” on an orientation area, where s/he is required to spend a certain amount of time.

LEVEL 2
User switches to regular view. Now user can see his or her avatar. However, at this stage in the game, user is not permitted to change the appearance of his/her avatar. Gender is chosen before the game starts but the skin is randomly assigned from a database. So you might very well run into other avatars that look exactly like you.

New location.

LEVEL 3
User can choose to alternate between mouse (camera) view and regular view but cannot switch freely (e.g. has to spend a min. 10 in a mode before switching. User is allowed to change appearance.

User can choose location, but again cannot switch freely. Must spend minimum amount of time before changing location.

etc. etc.

The point here is to force the user to experience embodiment in a variety of different ways. The research tool would automatically record each users experiences as well as record from the POV of the bots. User would be encouraged to talk out loud and comment on his experience as it is happening (“This is weird.” “I don’t like this”) Also, as I learned over the weekend when I made my first machinima, the virtual experience is profoundly impacted by the act of recording. For this reason, the user would be forced to experience the world in a camera-like manner for an extended period of time.

It is kind of cheesy. I am not sure why that is. I am also not sure if this piece of writing qualifies as an autoethnography. And the ending doesn’t make sense. It did when I wrote it at 5:00 am. Oh well.

Oct. 11/2007
The Second Time Around

I am twenty-four years old but I was reborn three weeks and two days ago. My rebirth was not of the spiritual sort; I did not find Jesus, though that would be an interesting story. I did not really find anything. I was simply born for the second time in Second Life. This is my life story.

MISSING-BODIMENT
I descended from the material womb that is real life and was virtually reborn as an avatar named Loran Sirbu. Unlike my real birth, I did have some say in my arrival into the virtual world. For one thing, I was able to choose my name. After some consideration, my first decision was to make up a name that would be gender-neutral and I wanted my last name to be somewhat ethnically vague. And so I arrived at the name Loran Sirbu. I have no idea how I came up with Loran (pronounced low-ran) but that is what felt right at the time. My desire for gender ambiguity stemmed from an initial curiosity about the possibility of gender fluidity in Second Life and of embodying a gender other than that differs from one’s real life gender. I have yet to explore that. As of now I have always been female and always tried to make myself somewhat attractive by conventional standards.
Before continuing with my life story, I feel the need to confess something. I am, or was rather, physically disabled. Let us, for a moment, consider my laptop to be my body in the context of SL. (Momentarily because the notions of body and embodiment are complex in SL and I am reluctant to fully accept my own analogy). The genetic makeup of my computer impaired my ability to function relative to the standards of the group. For quite some time, I refused to accept my “nature,” I blamed the slow performance, constant lagging, freezing and ensuing frustration that I experienced on the program itself. “But I have a MacBook Pro!” I would say to myself, thinking that Pro was synonymous with fast, yet oblivious to the fact that my Pro had only 512 MB of memory. Yet stubbornness and ignorance aside, this technological disability had physical and psychological effects.
(“And laziness aside,” we might add. Some readers might be thinking that I could have easily used any one of the high-powered computers provided by my educational institution. And perhaps you are also thinking that this preventability not only undermines my analogy but makes it offensive and banal. I accept that.)

Navigating SL was difficult: move arrows and walk three steps…ten-second lag. An avatar strikes up a conversation (“hi. I’m new here”)…fifteen-second pause…my response (“me too”). Try to take off the rabbit hat that I now hate after thinking it was funny a few days ago …twenty-seconds. The spinning rainbow ball that might provoke a toddler to giggle and clap in delight actually infuriated me. It caused me to react with angry gesticulations and curse words. Impatient as this may seem, the time lapse between the mental synapse that willed my finger to click the mouse and the resulting computed action, resulted in the feeling of having no control over my physical actions in a way that I had never experienced. In a “field note” which I blogged directly after an SL visit, I tried to articulate the experience into words:
I must say, there were many moments when I was overcome with sheer technological frustration. Not only was my computer–a MacBook Pro–lagging quite a bit, I often found myself in ‘mouse mode’ unable to locate where my avatar even was. This feeling is very hard to explain but imagine those nightmares where you are unable to control your surroundings and the movement of your body… [emphasis added].
This attempt at capturing my feeling was mediocre at best, but perhaps exemplifies language’s inability to fully speak about embodied experience (and perhaps my own inabilities as a writer. Clearly, this description violates the cardinal rule of creative writing: “show don’t tell.”)

Despite my never-ending frustration, I stopped writing about it. Not only was the act of expression difficult, but the prospect of filling my blog with musings about computer lag and my hatred thereof provoked anxiety. I did not want to come across as whiny or trite. (“This is a graduate level class. I have to discuss serious matters like embodiment and identity, not technical woes.”) Yet in hindsight, and probably at the time, my virtual disability had an even greater effect. Second Life became a chore, something that I had to do but wanted to avoid at all costs. And so I treated it as such and did other things instead, made up excuses, or could not “find the time.” When I did go on, I would either walk around aimlessly or occupy my time by changing my appearance, carefully fine-tuning the length of my side fringe. (I always spent the most time on my hair for some reason, despite the fact that I do not consider myself hair-obsessed in real life.) Because of this artful dodging, I must now confess, I am not the experienced avatar that I should probably be in order write an autoethnography. But quantity does not necessarily affect quality. This is, after all, a qualitative analysis.

FINDING-EMBODIMENT
Today, the UPS worker delivered my liberation. The cure for my impairment arrived in a cardboard box. Until today, my interest in SL was only theoretical, but two Gigabytes of RAM would transform me into a true participant. The gigabyte was the symbol of virtual potential, of my new mode of embodiment. Sure I spent over an hour struggling with a miniature screwdriver in order to install the RAM, only to then spend another hour on the phone with Rodney, the Apple Care technician who assisted me after my computer mysteriously ceased to work. But no one said liberation is easy. Liberation is hard work; it takes faith in the face of adversity. I didn’t make it on to Second Life until the evening. I crossed my fingers as I clicked on the ‘connect’ button but quickly uncrossed them when I entered because I need them to move in what was now SL-on-speed compared to what it was. The material effects of this change were obvious. No longer would I avoid conversation with other avatars for fear that my computer would freeze at any moment. No longer would I walk around feeling lonely because of that. The rainbow ball became a thing of my past. I could actually walk around without looking like a squirrel in slow motion. I chose to begin this narrative with my being born into SL with a disabled body because of my newfound appreciation of the mechanical details that other avatars take for granted. I felt the same as I had when I was finally able to move my elbows again after having fractured them. The feelings were a gratitude and wonder at my own embodiment: my ability to feed myself, to extend my arm without excruciating pain, to do things on my own.
(I feel the need to acknowledge the inherent pro-consumerist stance that might come across in my equating a consumer good, technology or not, to an emancipatory symbol. I will leave that up to the reader. Perhaps it is better to discuss Marxist implications by looking at how lack of access to technology effectively renders individuals disabled, or invisible, in Second Life and therefore hinders its truly democratic potential.)

This is not to say that my initial encounter with SL was not one of bewilderment. Flying, for example, was and continues to be a surreal experience. It acts out our collective fantasy of flying, or being able to transcend the constraints of the human body (as does SL more generally). Wasn’t that the one of the joys of Peter Pan? I used to delight in the prospect that thinking “lovely thoughts” could enable flight. When our class met on SL we flew as a group and this excited me even more. We were like Peter, Wendy, Michael, John and Tinkerbell. But instead of flying to Never Never Land, we were flying to a tattoo parlor in Venice Beach. Peter Pan and Second Life have another commonality in their responses to our cultural fantasy of immortality. Avatars do not physically reflect their age. Furthermore, it seems difficult to discern people’s RL ages from their virtual personalities. Just this evening I was speaking to a woman who I will mention later. I first thought she was in her twenties but realized that I was mistaken when she told me that she has been married for eighteen years.

With my new technical capacity, I felt like I could do anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone. But where was I to go? I checked to see if any of my classmate’s avatars were online but none were. What would I do in real life in this situation, say if I had just moved to a new city and knew no one but wanted to go out? I decided to search for something going on, search being the SL equivalent to Time Out as an up-to-date directory of the who, what, and where of a city. I then narrowed the activity down to live music. I had read about this phenomenon of real live musicians streaming their music in real time in virtual music venues, but wanted to experience it first hand. I teleported (another feature of SL that transcends the limits of the human body) to a venue called “The Lounge” and it was completely desolate. I searched again and saw a listing for a place called “Pannies & Rosedrop Media Circus.” Sold. When I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to find a small crowd of avatars dancing. The musician, Randy, was playing acoustic guitar and had a blues-y sound. This was certainly not the kind of music, nor the kind of place that I would find myself in real life (nor would I wear a tutu). But I was in no position to be choosy. There were people there and that is what I was really searching for. I wanted to have a meaningful conversation with someone. My previous conversations in SL had consisted of small talk or eavesdropping. With my newfound abilities, I wanted to see what SL had to offer.

Almost immediately after I entered, a chat bubble appeared over one of the dancing avatars, “Helo Loran.” I immediately felt welcome there. The last club I had visited felt different. I remember feeling out of place there, like I was intruding somewhere uninvited, despite the fact that it was more akin to “my type of scene.” The simple gesture of welcoming me by name instantly set the tone. I accepted the animation and began to dance. The problem was that I could not hear any music. I wrote into the chat box “I can’t hear the music” hoping someone would answer. One avatar came to my rescue but after numerous exchanges and my sound still inaudible, I felt compelled to justify my lack of proficiency, “im still kind of new to this…” I type. Another avatar, Pannie Paperdoll, chimes in, “hi loran! Never fear, we were allll new once!” Pannie is one of the owners of the club. She instant messaged me and we began to chat privately. I think IM has a dual function in SL. First, it is a practical solution when there are many avatars speaking at once. Is it often difficult to know who is talking to whom and instant messaging focuses conversation. The second function of IM is to preserve privacy and create intimacy. (The practical downside of IM is that the text box prevents a full view of the screen. For me, this had the effect of taking me out of my immediate surroundings, making me focus on the text instead of my avatar.) Intimacy is probably a more useful term than privacy, for the effect of IM is more of an opening than a closing. The anonymity and the lack of physical presence create a space for an openness and honesty of communication that is not impossible in real life, but less common. At least this is what I learned from my conversation with Pannie. (Out of all my SL conversations thus far, the most profoundly informative was also the one that I did not save. I wanted to save it, and even asked Pannie’s permission to do so, but I got caught up and my computer froze prior to my having saved it. A fast computer does not make a perfect computer. I became overconfident in technology and learned my lesson. But the positive side is that now I will have to reconstruct the conversation, and the I segments that I remember might shed some light on the meaning it had for me—the heart of the autoethnographic project.)

My conversation with Pannie began as a technical tutorial. She was guiding me through the process of trying to get my sound back on. Yet it quickly turned. “What’s ethnography?” she asked. Not was I completely taken aback by her seemingly psychic power, I could not believe the serendipitous way our conversation turned to my research. I mentioned that I craved “meaningful conversation,” but how could I engage in such a dialogue without disclosing my identity as a student researcher or my logging of the chat. I was unsure as to how I broach this, but Pannie saved me the trouble. I explained the practice of ethnography. “Why do you ask?” I asked, too curious to let the question pass. She told me that it was one of my groups. Of course, the one group I belong to is the Institute for SL Ethnography. I then told her about this class. She was excited about it having herself suggested to Professors that Second Life should be the subject of a sociological study. Paddie then recommended that I read, Second Life(R): A Guide to Your Virtual World (2008) written by her SL friend Ansel Gaspirini (Brain White in real life). She told me that she is “in the book” and that Ansel “watched her grow up.” Again, I read this as another cue that she was a younger woman. I immediately enquired as to which life she was referring to, SL or RL when she said “grow up.” She explained that most ‘noobs’ (SL lingo for ‘newbies, or newcomers) go through certain rights of passage like falling in love, getting married and getting a job. This is part of the process of “growing up” on SL.
I asked Paddie how falling in love differs from its real life counterpart. She answered that the absence of physicality intensifies other aspects of the relationship. “Its like being blind,” she said, “the loss of one sense heightens the others.” I imagine that she has thought about this before. I cannot help but think wonder how my boyfriend would feel if I had a SL relationship. I also wonder about falling in love on SL. What would that be like? Weird, I would imagine. But why is it weird? The bias toward disembodiment prevalent in cultural theory (Hayles 1999) is reversed when it comes to cultural perceptions about relationships. To borrow Hayles’ phrasing, how did love lose its embodiment? Many people, and I am not fully excluding myself, associate SL love with perversion or pathology. “Normal people” do not need to seek out relationships in cyberspace. Though I am not in such an extreme camp, there is strangeness there. But I started reevaluating that concept before I met Paddie and will continue to do so.

Throughout my conversation with Paddie, our avatars were dancing up a storm. We were engaged in a pretty substantial conversation and our avatars were completely unaffected. Dancing is another physical element of the SL embodiment experience that excites me—the instant gratification of immediately “knowing” how to dance with the click of the button. Instant gratification is certainly one element of the pleasure of SL. But there is more to it. When I am dancing, (and especially when doing so with other avatars in sync) I feel like I am a character in a film. Cut to the prom scene or the local dancehall and all of a sudden a song comes on and all the characters in the room magically know the same choreographed dance. I always laughed at those kinds of movies, but perhaps I laughed because I was secretly envious of the characters, of the joy that occurs in us when bodies move in synchronicity. Another element to my enjoyment is the sheer novelty of the experience. While I can envision the enjoyment fading as my avatar “grows up,” at the moment there is pleasure in the newness of Second Life. Sure, we go dancing in New York but do people really let loose the way these avatars do? Sometimes. This is how avatars dance. They dance fully and completely. When the dance alone they embrace their solitude and when they dance together their simultaneity transforms them into pure movement. This novelty can also be phrased as possibility, or becoming. The disembodiment that constitutes SL, that is the absence of the physical materiality of the body, enables a new embodiment with different potentialities than RL. What are released are new possibilities of movement (such as flying, teleporting, and dancing) but also new relational possibilities. Avatars relate to one another in way that is both similar and entirely different to face-to-face life communication.

(I have decided to stop using quotation marks. They imply both a condescension and dismissal of the SL experience even if this is not what I mean they to be. I suppose I am using them as a protective device, as a kind of shield, as a way of warding off potential skeptics. “You can’t ‘grow up’ on Second Life. That is something humans do,” I imagine them saying. But after my earlier conversation, I realize that you can. Second Life can really be a second life, complete with all the complexities and milestones that constitute our real lives. And this second life does not exist in separation from the first. The are dialogically connected. As Paddie so aptly explained to me, “We are still human, just with pixel bodies.”)