Re: [-empyre-] Re:[-empyre-]:An Avatar Manifesto::final

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@unsw.edu.au>]

john ..
youve reemerged form the code swamp.. :)

re ken and barbi and fashion design..
seems in 3d space we are still working on the Snowcrash template of social
heirarchy :::

"Brandy and Clint are both popular off-the-shelf models. When white-trash
high school girls are going on a date in the Metaverse they invariably run
down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-mart and buy a copy of
Brandy. The user can select three breast sizes: improbable, impossible, and
ludicrous.  gestures are limited to "cute and pouty; cute and sulky; perky
and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacey. Her eyelashes are
half an inch long , and the soft ware is so cheap they are rendered as solid
ebony chips. Clint is the male counterpart of Brandy. He is craggy and
handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial gestures." (p35)

another  really easy off the shelf package is Avatar Lab  lets the user
create custom 3D avatars for Adobe Atmosphere worlds "in 5 easy steps"  You
select basic human, animal, or robot figures with the mandatory arms legs
and heads or "even mix-n-match to create wild combinations, there are over
200 million possible choices" The users is  then invited to "use photos of
yourself or any other face to create a unique and personalized avatar. Add
hair, accessories and props to complete the figures." its pretty basic but
it does allow completely non technical customisation but still with limits
to human type figures with i guess lots of j-lo faces wandering round....

i think perhaps the point of intervention here, and the point where the
avatar is "taken from us"  is in the software development stage  - rather
than talking about end user choices as greg does .... perhaps if  peopel
with different visoin for what online space is.. where employed to make
other body objects   maybe  biomechanial ones that reflect our post human
status.. so that users get more choices that they may not have even thought
about before..  eg maybe  they coudl crawl on the ground  al al  rodney
brooks robbots with 12 legs rather than walk etc.... then mayeb they would
make different choices..
 and shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to have sophisticated design
not just the elite artist/programmer/wealthy person who gets a professional
custom design job..?
(tho i learnt in american physco that limited choice of clothing does make
other life decisions easier)

melind a - cute and spacey today


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Klima" <klima@echonyc.com>
To: <empyre@imap.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 4:53 AM
Subject: [-empyre-] Re:[-empyre-]:An Avatar Manifesto::final


>
> gregory +,
>
> i took the time to read your complete paper online, and forgive me, but
> for the sake of expediency, i'm gonna be blunt. your basic assumption
> and "call to arms," being: "take back the avatar" is largely flawed. it
> assumes that the avatar has been taken from "us" in the first place and
> this is simply not the case.  in every online multi-user community i've
> ever participated in, from the palace, to ultima, everquest, and active
> worlds, a major component of the experience has been the customization
> (or creation from scratch), of an online visage -- one's avatar.  in the
> case of the palace, the user gets a complete avatar editing "suite." in
> online fantasy games one chooses a gender and basic body type
> *appropriate to the fantasy genre,* and can then decorate it in a manner
> they see fit. in active worlds, the avatar selection is limited, but
> one's avatar here becomes the very unique spaces and architectures one
> can build.  in all of these cases i have seen wildly imaginative
> manifestations of the avatar, considering the basic limitations of each
> platform or medium.
>
> also, you make the dangerous assumption that all users of online
> communities have the inclination, desire, time, and skills to create a
> wholly personal, "un-commodified" representation of themselves, in a
> sense you are saying that we all have to create our own, rather than use
> an "off-the-shelf," avatar. this is not, and should not be, the case.
> you draw a good parallel to the clothing industry where consumers buy
> the label and not the garment, but not all people in the real world wear
> tommy hilfiger sportswear, just as not all people in virtual worlds don
> a barbi or ken avatar. what you are suggesting is the equivalent to
> requiring people to design and sew their own clothes.
>
> suggesting that those who dont have the inclination to sew are somehow
> being brainwashed and manipulated is really unfair, which brings up the
> final point i take umbrage with -- the cliched and worn out argument
> that it's a global capital conspiracy at the root of all this evil.
> somehow, the egalitarian/utopian online world is insidiously under
> attack from right-wing sneaker manufacturers who force us all to become
> nike avat-isements as part of their ubiquitous brainwashing campaign.
> come now, there must be better targets for activism and manifestos than
> online chat rooms and fantasy games, and it has not been since junior
> high school that i cared if i was wearing the correct shoe.
>
> granted, for every creative and unique avatar i have seen, there are a
> dozen or more barbi and kens, but art and creativity are rare and
> beautiful things, just as they should be.
>
> no offense meant, just my opinion.
>
> best,
> j
>
>
> Gregory Little wrote:
> >
> > Here is the final post of the Avatar Manifesto:
> >
> > Also welcome are any comments on the current condition of the avatar,
online
> > identity, viractualism, etc. are welcome!
> > I will be on the road until Tuesday night, but at that point will catch
up
> > loose ends and respond to any new posts.
> >
> > Images of my early avatars (1991-1995) are available at:
> > http://art.bgsu.edu/~glittle/avamenu.html
> >
> > The VRML avatar generator (1996-7) at:
> > http://art.bgsu.edu/~glittle/idgene.wrl
> >
> > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> >
> > 5.0. Manifesto
> >
> > This Manifesto is a call to artists, netomanics, software, hardware, and
> > wetware designers, creative directors, teachers, scientists, slackers,
> > hackers, CEOs, students, cyborgs, zombies, vampires, working groups,
> > technology officers, specialists, politicians, surgeons, doctors,
rappers,
> > rockers, and clowns, a call to cast off the dumbing-down manacles of
> > wholistics, universals, boundaries, acceptablilities, salvations, moral
> > imperatives, family values, personal fantasies, dualisms, and "the God
> > trick" (Penley and Ross, 1991, 16). Let us make ourselves an
unconsumable,
> > signifying, body without organs. The partial, the schizoid, the nomadic
and
> > local are threats to the primacy of capital. Fragmentation,
irregularity,
> > dissolution, hybridity, swarming, and wandering stubbornly are lethal
> > weapons against globalization. The displacement of the self by the
commodity
> > insures the survival of the commodity and the perpetuation of the
processes
> > of accumulation. The movement of capital into the avatar is an
inevitable
> > part of capitalism's infinite return. It represents nothing less than
the
> > wholesale loss of the possibility of liberation and awareness of the
> > processes of production and accumulation. The dominant, "universal"
myths,
> > psychologies, sciences, philosophies, religions, and economies that form
the
> > New World Order perpetuate impulse disorder through the abhorrence of
> > partiality and the resultant movement outward toward the object of
capital
> > in the guise of the illusion of wholeness. We have come to believe that
we
> > are imperfect, incomplete creatures and that completion, oneness, and
> > wholeness is the Goal. It is this argument that permits the inscribing
of
> > production across consciousness at the expense of tolerance, difference,
and
> > free desire. We are partial, parts of a network of drifts. We slip
across a
> > curved matrix whose beginning is everywhere, whose center is nowhere,
and
> > whose diameter is infinite. We are unable to perceive a whole or
pattern, we
> > participate and form tendencies. We can connect and disconnect from
desire's
> > conduit without risk or loss, there is nothing to measure or acquire.
> > Through the dismantling of the neurosis of the individual, alienated
self,
> > the celebration of locality and partiality, and the unbinding of our
> > consciousness from dilemmas of bifurcation, the lust for uniformity, and
the
> > impulse disorders of lack-based desire; we can experience "a joy that is
> > immanent to desire as though desire were filled by itself and its
> > contemplations, a joy that implies no lack or impossibility and is not
> > measured by pleasure since it distributes intensities of pleasure and
> > prevents us from being suffused by anxiety, shame, and guilt" (Deleuze
and
> > Guattari , A Thousand Plateaus, 155). At present our collective social
body
> > is paralyzed by loss. Like an amputee dreaming about a phantom limb we
> > re-remember our irrevocable body, we hallucinate its presence, long for
its
> > return, wait to wake up from the nightmare. We must move on from the
> > bifurcating past and build a new body.
> >
> > 5.1. Imaging Wildcards
> > [Figure 2. Composite]
> > The avatar signifies through the visual as an image. As postmodern
artwork,
> > the avatar signifies in a public sphere (the Web), is a social
> > representation that can be both target and weapon. The postmodern artist
is
> > less a producer of rarified objects than a manipulator of visual codes,
> > social signs, and media images (Foster, 1985). Particular kinds of
marks,
> > styles, images, and forms have come to signify modes of expression or
> > feeling, like the spiritual, the personal, the expressive, the exotic,
and
> > high or low culture. These elements form a system of signs, tropes, or
codes
> > for the artist to manipulate and combine. The social and virtual context
of
> > the Web distances the artist entirely from the production of the
corporeal
> > art object and frees her for the activity of coding/recoding. This
activity
> > often gives attention to the particular institutional framework or site
in
> > order to reveal how an exhibition context participates in the
construction
> > of the meaning and audience of the art object. The signifying avatar
will
> > take a resistant, reactive position relative to its institutional
context,
> > the commodified Web. The strategies available to the avatar include: 1)
the
> > freedom of choice of self-image and the lack of need for consensus
relative
> > to self imaging; this frees the avatar from any singular representation
and
> > opens the individual to a plurality of possibilities; 2) an emphasis on
> > radical embodiment, on all that is the literal body, and on all that it
is
> > to be grounded in the body at the expense of social, biological,
cultural,
> > economic, psychoanalytic, and religious discourse; this can free the
> > individual from lack-based desire and myths of wholeness and
transcendence
> > that cause us to abandon the body to rehabitation by capital; and 3)
drawing
> > from various alternative narratives of abjection, the alien, and the
other;
> > this can offer us visual and procedural models for constructing
unconsumable
> > images.
> > To combine visual codes, signifying signs, and social images into
avatars
> > that take a combative stance toward the forces of capital:
> > 1. Seek, rarify, and valorize disintegration and instability
> > [Figure 3. Photoshop]
> > 2. Resist unified identity relative to race, gender, age, human, animal,
or
> > machine
> > [Figure 4. Satyr]
> > 3. Refuse participation in wholeness and actively dismantle myths of
> > transcendentalism
> > [Figure 5. Garth]
> > 4. Create tensions and conflicts through the simultaneous presentation
of
> > the desiring subject and the fetishized object of desire [Figure 6. The
> > Enforcer] 5. Draw from narratives of abjection, the alien, and the other
> > [Figure 7]
> > 6. Pierce the skin, do the taboo, show the insides, destroy the
> > internal/external binary
> > [Figure 8. The Clown]
> > 7. Refuse the temptation to succumb to the slick, seamless special
effects
> > of emergent technology
> > [Figure 9]
> > 8. Avoid personal or social fantasy, step out of bounds, lose your
> > boundaries altogether
> > [Figure 10. Dolly]
> > 9. Avoid mystery, make analysis of the unconscious impossible, be hyper
> > literal
> > [Figure 11]
> > 10. Use images that speak of hyperembodiment, of extremes of
physicality,
> > like the visceral, the abject, the defiled, and the horrific
> > [Figure 12]
> > The avatar offers a new territory for understanding ourselves. Let us
> > construct the avatar as a revolutionary site of resistance inside the
belly
> > of an armed-to-the-teeth multinational monster of exchange. Polymorphic,
> > bi-gendered, unstable nomadic, pained and maimed representations of the
self
> > as subject could act, in Donna Haraway's terms, as "trickster figures,"
> > "potent wild cards" to undermine, infect, and terrorize the monster from
the
> > inside out. The avatar is thus born of the dialectic of the body
> > simultaneously as the idealized, commodified body of capital; and as the
> > abject, transgressive, hyper-visceral embodied body. This is a call to
build
> > avatars, computers, images, discourses, and relationships that refuse
and
> > subvert the "self exterminating impulses of the discourses of
disembodiment"
> > (Sobchack 314). This is a call to joy, the joy of mortality, partiality,
and
> > finality; a call to the lived body of desire.
> >
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> > _______________________________________________
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