Creating a Framework to Analyse the Perception of Selfhood in Artistic Practice within Second Life

This chapter draws upon existing identity theories to create a framework with which to examine the expression of self via avatars within Second Life. The framework is then applied to the practice of a number of artists working with themes relating to identity using avatars within Second Life, by drawing upon the author's own experience of these works and the artists comments taken from their writings and from discussions and correspondence with them, to examine the role their work plays in changing our understanding of the way that identity is expressed and perceived within virtual worlds.

Spacing and Displacing as Artistic Enquiry

This chapter presents a philosophical journey and practical piece of experimentation on spatiality, virtuality and displacement. A series of art practices using photography, installation and art writing form the trajectory for a sequence of conceptual maps. The discussion engages with spacing and displacing as an artistic enquiry on space. The chapter consists of an examination of the typology and meaning of displacement in its translation from Korean, and a discussion of the formation of a gendered and artistically constructed displacement by extending the scope of the theory to the displacement of women in a colonial situation. This chapter explores the way in which displaced women (in the very particular case of Korean “comfort women” during the colonial war with Japan, and through the case of the artist, Hyeseok Na) cannot belong in either their home or a foreign land. Virtual-ness, here, is approached with an artistic understanding, and is found to constitute an unreal living space rather than merely a virtual environment through technology.

“Follow Me, Comrades in Flight, into the Depths!”

The chapter discusses the changes the body has been subjected to in the 21st century and especially when it enters the digital worlds. The starting point for the reflection of the body today is its floating position in contemporary mixed and augmented reality. By deploying the notions of ‘body image' and ‘body schema,' elaborated by French phenomenologist M. Merleau-Ponty, various features of digital embodiment are discussed. After discussing several forms of the techno-modelled body (also mentioning the issue of life addressed in it), the chapter turns to the examples of body-related performance art in the virtual world of Second Life that explicitly raise questions about the body in the digital world, and within Second Life in particular (the examples discussed are: Synthetic Performances and I know that it's all a state of mind by 0100101110101101.ORG, Come to Heaven by Gazira Babeli and ZeroG SkyDancers by DanCoyote, etc.).

Moving Islands [Rafts]

This chapter will discuss the artistic processes and the related theoretical premises of a collaborative art undertaking that was displayed in Second Life® from Fall 2013 to Summer 2014. Despite the idiosyncratic, highly individualized nature of its components, the project nevertheless achieved a remarkable state of cohesion. What may have contributed to this unity will be one of the subjects under investigation at the core of this text. The text will commence with a survey of the creative mechanisms and strategies of the metaverse, after which a description of the project, its curatorial premises, including the usage of metaverse geography and climate as an agent of visual harmony will also be delivered. The chapter will then conclude with an examination of the collective art process within the context of the ‘unfinished artifact' and John Dewey's deliberations on the experiential nature of artwork/art process as a potential framework for metaverse artistic collaborations.

An Aesthetics of Digital Virtual Environments

This chapter examines digital virtual environments as a site for art and proposes a formal aesthetics for art in digital virtual environments. The study arises from the author's decades-long practice producing art in virtual environments and the related theoretical considerations that have arisen from that practice. The technical, conceptual and ontological status of virtual environments is examined in order to establish a base of intrinsic qualities that identify virtual environments as a medium for art. The philosophy of Gilbert Simondon is used to achieve this. The elements and principles the artist must employ to work with this medium are identified as data, display and modulation. The specificities of virtual environments as a medium for art are examined in order to establish a formal aesthetics. In particular, digital colour, visual opacity, digital sound, code, artificial intelligence, emergence and agency are identified as the primary qualities that the artist manipulates to bring forth art in a virtual environment.

Found Objects, Bought Selves

This chapter traces a process of creating using found object collage, through collecting/consuming practices and finally to the notion of the bought self, avatar representation through consumerist artistic practice in Second Life (SL) the online, user generated, virtual environment. Positioning collage as a reinvigorated current in art, the text couples this mode of making with shopping as found object. Collaboration is inherent in an online virtual world, where programmers, designers and other content providers determine the parameters of what is possible. Found object/shopping is a synergistic fit with the nature of predetermined boundaries coupled with late-stage capitalism. This mode of self-making encourages the idea of buying identification through the construction of an avatar. Through a review of the practices of the Situationists, an aesthetic turn in political tactics is revealed through contemporary art making. The text uses the author's own virtual/material practice as a case study for the theories explored.

Appearance, Absence, Art

This chapter suggests a model for reconceiving avatar in terms of desire and loss to reassess their role within creative practices and the construction of digital subjectivity. This focuses on the avatar as appearance, as a negotiation of presence and absence, and as a tool for critical art practice in Second Life. By placing the avatar as Lacan's objet petit a, the lost object cause of desire, the structure of the visual and cognitive gaze applies Žižek's concept of parallax to digital embodiment, reformulating a subjective position between physical and digital modes of being. Taking into account the position of the observer amidst the fluidity of contemporary identity, the manipulation of the structures of desire and control can create new experiences that alter our relation to presence and absence in the critical and creative mediation of avatars and its implications for embodiment as a function of consciousness.

Painting Machinima in Second Life

This chapter explores the technological and artistic revolution brought forth by machinima, particularly the rise among a community of filmmakers who would begin to express their stories and ideas through virtual worlds. Machinima has led to an emergence of scholarship on its aesthetics and cultural implications for digital society. The case of machinima as art is illustrated through a review of select works of virtual world filmmakers. This discussion also distinguishes the machinima concepts of game, virtual platform and more specifically virtual worlds to their varying degrees and relationships. It is here that one delineates the purpose of machinima within Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG) to that of virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL). In doing so, the author follows the innovation of machinima through the evolution of gaming and its extension to stand-alone ready-to-wear software to potentialities called forth by British filmmaker Peter Greenaway regarding Second Life.

Meta_Body

This chapter discusses the Meta_Body participatory art project. Initiated in a collaborative virtual environment and in a “real life” art exhibition, it now continues in the metaverse creative flux. Meta_Body focuses on two aspects: first, the avatar as body/language, open to experimentation and potency; second, avatar building as a shared creative process and as aesthetical experience. Through the practice of avatar creation, distribution, embodiment and transformation, the artists aim to understand the processes of virtual corporeality constitution: to question the role of the body in virtual environment, its importance in engaging with the world and in self-expression, and explore its metaphorical aspects. The method used to implement this project is a shared creative process, in which multiple subjects come to be authors along different phases of the project. Through the embodiment and transformation of avatars, the artwork's aesthetical experience becomes a creative process.

Digital Steps of Protest, Reenactment, and Networked Interaction

Joseph DeLappe is an American digital media artist whose creative work demonstrates unique intersections between analogue and digital creative processes. In 2008 he created the Salt Satyagraha project, a virtual and simultaneously physical reenactment of Mahatma Gandhi's 1930 Salt Satyagraha political march by using Second Life (SL) and a customized treadmill that corresponded to his avatar's movements. The project also included a blog, an exhibition, and numerous screenshots documenting the virtual events. This chapter explores the artist's intent and the impact of combining virtual and digital labor, performance, artistic intervention, play, and the role of the human agent in the human-computer relationship. DeLappe's project blog and two key philosophical theories – Walter Benjamin's concept of the spielraum, a playspace that allows for creative experimentation in advanced technologies; and Jacques Derrida's concept of the supplement, something added to an original that reinforces or changes its meaning – are used to frame this examination.