Re: [-empyre-] the Times and SL

[G.H.Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net>]

On Aug 17, 2007, at 12:54 PM, james wrote:

> I do not know how extensive your use of Second Life is, but it sounds 
> from your previous posts as though you were involved much earlier than 
> I was. I am given over to a curiosity about why you seem so down on 
> it.

G.H. comments:

I live in New York City. One of the most incredible social spaces in 
the world. If I want to meet people or have new experiences I walk out 
on the street.  I don't need an artificially constructed media space to 
do this. My experience with SL is that the amount of effort it takes to 
get oriented, understand how to move about and communicate in the SL 
world is not worth what you obtain. The truth of the matter is that all 
media replaces or deadens a part of the human physiology and psyche. 
McCluhan had posited that in the 1960's. It is an extension of the 
notion of the original alienation of a worker from their labor in 
Marx's Das Kapital and was further iterated in the 1960's by Guy Debord 
in his Society of the Spectacle.  If you trace the development of SL 
you will see that it is very close to the notion of The Matrix movies. 
I find that truly frightening. I also find it amusing that people in SL 
think the Postmaster's gallery show of the 14 most beautiful Avatars 
was somehow important and verified the importance of SL. Indeed, that 
particular show was a very wry comment on the private obsessions of 
people involved in virtual worlds. It was the closest thing I've seen 
to a serious critique. Losing touch with reality or creating another 
reality is not something I aspire to. Or let me put it another way, I 
am an artist, I disagree with the engineers notion of art and 
creativity. When you allow an engineer to dictate how  you are creative 
and what form that takes than you have given up your artistic freedom.  
This is the case in SL.

In SL there is the question of the cartoon and mask as a stand in for 
the archetypes of the human subconscious. On a certain level that is 
interesting but the playing out of archetypes in an artificially 
constructed space defeats the power of the symbol. This is because 
raising an archetype is one of the most powerful modes of expression 
and communication. There is a schizophrenia between the total dominance 
of the public sphere by corporate interests and the split of the public 
social and archetypal space into a virtual world. This is very bad. It 
is an expression of powerlessness and a concurrent move to balance the 
split.  That may be the core emotion that I find most distateful and 
depressing in SL. It is a sense of powerlessness. Or perhaps it is the 
illusion that you are somehow controlling your 
persona/archetype/body/space in SL.