[-empyre-] RE: [-empyre-]::An Avatar Manifesto::response to Alan

["Gregory Little" <glittle@oberlin.net>]

Alan writes.....
>In my own work, 'Nikuko' is an avatar, but psychologically she 'takes
>over' in my work, as if she's speaking through me; the psychoanalytical
>processes of this internal ectoplasm are different from the usual
>projections (i.e. such as I might use in a conference or IRC chat).

wow, a fascinating form of transference/countertransference, what would
Freud think?

>- which I think is more-or-less what occurs with chatrooms, etc. But there
>are extensions which can be of incredible interest, at least to me. With
>Stelarc, for example, some of his recent work deals with an online avatar
>driven by expert systems that modifies Stelarc's stance/body itself -

I am aware of an "avatar" that Stelarc had online a few years ago, whose
morphology was driven by users interactions, numbers of hits; I am also
aware of his stunning "ping body" telematic performative piece; when you say
that Stelarc's body/stance itself is modified, are you describing a
performative work, like ping body?

>In other words, there's a tearing-away involved which is related to, but
>not the same as, the usual issues dealing with the future autonomy or not
>of virtual life and intelligence.

Yes, and fascinating journeys, but again, I am interested in what happens
when the tearing does not occur, at least from the individual...I am
interested in a tearing away of the avatar from Kapital.  I recall Simon
Penny's horror, recounted in his "The Virtualization of Artistic Practice",
of someone stating at ISEA, that they do not share his nostalgia for the
body.  At this point in my investigations, I try and focus on interactivity
and cybernetic systems of feedback, recursivity, and autopoesis from the
point of view of the human, not the machine, even on excursions into liminal
spaces.
I have found a couple of AI projects that involved a tearing away to be
really fascinating, most notably for me is Eric Mueller's Daydreamer
project:
http://www.panix.com/~erik/programs/daydreamer/
It is entirely text based, and very rich...

Alan, how does 'Nikuko' work, where can I find him/her?

Gregory





-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-admin@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-admin@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]On Behalf Of Alan Sondheim
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 12:52 AM
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Virtual Construction::An Avatar Manifesto




You write

 The avatar is essentially a
visual representation, a virtual instrument or imaged prosthesis of its
referent-the user, and so fundamentally related to linguistic signs and
representational icons.

- which I think is more-or-less what occurs with chatrooms, etc. But there
are extensions which can be of incredible interest, at least to me. With
Stelarc, for example, some of his recent work deals with an online avatar
driven by expert systems that modifies Stelarc's stance/body itself - a
not-so-distant Net will enable 'its' intelligence, of one form or another,
to be embodied, almost as a secondary or parasitic entity, in a living
person. Stelarc talks about remapping of the body in this regard.

There are also things like the wandering Julia bots, which can be consid-
ered software that has broken away.


In other words, there's a tearing-away involved which is related to, but
not the same as, the usual issues dealing with the future autonomy or not
of virtual life and intelligence.

Alan

_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre