[-empyre-] Re: empyre Digest, Vol 31, Issue 7

Lee Wells <lee@leewells.org> · Fri, 08 Jun 2007 03:05:02 -0400

For some the virtual is very much a reality.
In 2nd life the reality they lead is just as much an existence or more so
than the mundane lives that they lead in actual life. Is it any different
spending most of your day as a fox or alien while still communicating with
actual people in different places around the world.

I've questioned many in second life and if they had a choice they would much
prefer to only exist in second life.

Well you can fly I guess.

Cheers,
Lee

> From: "empyre-request@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au"
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> Date: Fri,  8 Jun 2007 12:00:04 +1000 (EST)
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> Subject: empyre Digest, Vol 31, Issue 7
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. text as virtual space: response to stacia (Barbara Campbell)
>    2. Forwarded from Jill Magid [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (Meziane, Tracey)
>    3. Forwarded from Andrew Burrell [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (Meziane, Tracey)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 19:36:49 +0200
> From: Barbara Campbell <barbara@1001.net.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] text as virtual space: response to stacia
> To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Message-ID: <dd6facada287ac54f612b8b3b375988f@1001.net.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
> 
>> 
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:37:26 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Stacia Yeapanis <stacialy@yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] FW: introduction [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Message-ID: <730082.27518.qm@web43138.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>> 
>> Jill,
>> I'm glad you brought up the point of the virtual as
>> fiction. The word has so many potential meanings. I
>> feel that it's useful to try and define it in a few
>> ways, for the sake of conversation and to clarify it
>> in my own head.
>> 
>> A quick Google search yielded this:
>> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&defl=en&q=define:
>> virtual&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
>> 
>> I've recently been thinking of the "virtual" as head
>> space. as psychological space, creative space, fantasy
>> space, emotional space, intellectual space. This fits
>> with your idea about fiction.
>> 
>> This brings me to thinking about performance in
>> general, and in virtual spaces, in particular. I tend
>> to use the word "performative" when I talk about my
>> own work. I don't consider myself a performance artist
>> in the sense that a text or idea is conceived of and
>> then acted out for an audience. (Yes, this is a very
>> restrictive definition which we can happily blow
>> apart.) "Performative" for me connotes an exageration
>> of the truth for an audience. For example, I make work
>> about fandom and that uses the idea of fandom as a
>> tool to explore meaning-making. It's important to me
>> that the work I make springs out of my own fandom. So,
>> I am a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. That exists
>> outside of my work as an artist, but I also
>> consciously emphasize that fact in my artistic persona
>> so my work will be framed in a certain way. Coming out
>> of a period of time and an art school, when and where
>> irony is a given, I feel I need to ground my work in
>> sincereity in order to say what I want to say. So my
>> fandom is both authentic and performed. Similar to
>> what Jill says about writing down a story that "did
>> happen."
>> 
>> This brings up the idea of text as a virtual space.
>> Books have always done what games and tv and movies do
>> now. (Makes me think of what mez said about World of
>> Warcraft- games just seem to embrace their lack of
>> control over the narrative.) Books as virtual spaces.
>> I'm curious what you think, Barbara, about this,
>> considering your use of narratives in your
>> performance.
> Yep - an interesting idea, text as virtual space. Certainly books (good
> ones) create a virtual space for the readers to share but it's
> distributed over time. Whereas, when you tell the story to an audience
> (which is what I do) the space is created in time. Yes, I think you're
> onto something here Stacia. It's not just the fact that I insist on
> these webcasts happening in shared "real" time - the creation of the
> space has to exist first in order for that to happen.
> 
> I was reading a recent posting by Tim Etchells (director of Forced
> Entertainment and one of the 1001 writers) on his not-quite-a-blog
> about re-presenting a piece called Dirty Work: "Back in 1998 it seemed
> like a big ask (or even a provocation or an affront) from us that an
> audience would just listen to a performance that consists of talking
> for an hour; that a piece would so self-consciously refuse to have any
> action, that it would instead conjure action virtually, through
> language alone... I was shocked by how *material* some of the text
> seems. How much really like an event in the room it can be..."
> http://www.timetchells.com/notebook/notebook/dirty-work/
> 
> Of course shared time AND space are givens in theatre but how often
> have we felt in theatre that we are NOT sharing the space with the
> performers precisely because they haven't been able to create another
> space for us all to inhabit? So here we are again, turning over the
> assumptions that often underpin such spurious opposites as real and
> virtual: where virtual space can create real experience and real space
> can create disengagement. I realise I've been using the word "share" a
> lot. Am I over-emphasising this as a value to be aspired to? Hmmm.
> Barbara
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 07:13:36 +1000
> From: "Meziane, Tracey" <Tracey.Meziane@environment.gov.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Forwarded from Jill Magid [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
> To: empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Message-ID:
> <081E89A0908CE745A2C99947329FECC704589FFF@ACT01VEXCCL01.internal.govt>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Could you please send your messages to the list in 'plain text'
> otherwise they bounce!
> 
> Cheers
> Tracey
> 
> Forwarded message from JM>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> 
> 
> Hi Stacia, 
> 
> 
> I liked this part of the virtual definition:
> "a practical failure"
> because without the in-context sentence (which was something like 'the
> once elegant temple
> is now in virtual ruin'), it leaves me to consider what a practical
> verses an impractical failure
> would be. Is an almost-failure simply a potential- not a potential
> failure but simply the potential
> of something next, something else. I think this may work well with the
> idea of virtual digital
> space. I wonder your thoughts on this. Do you see virtual spaces as
> transitional spaces- do
> they ever 'train' you for the real? or do you prefer them to be
> autonomous realities/ experiences?
> 
> 
> I still don't think for me it is the right definition for the fictional
> spaces I am working with, in that
> the events did happen in the real and now have gone through the filter
> of perception. For me,
> calling these observations and perceptions fiction is almost a disguise.
> 
> 
> 
> Jill
> Tracey Meziane 
> Centre for New Media Arts
> The Australian National University
> http://www.byte-time.net
> http://swipezone.blogspot.com
> http://www.anu.edu.au/newmedia/pages/postgrad.html
> skype: byte-time 
> 
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 10:27:45 +1000
> From: "Meziane, Tracey" <Tracey.Meziane@environment.gov.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Forwarded from Andrew Burrell [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
> To: empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Message-ID:
> <081E89A0908CE745A2C99947329FECC70458A004@ACT01VEXCCL01.internal.govt>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Message forwarded from Andrew Burrell
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
> 
> 
> Hi Stacia and all,
> 
> I am very much drawn to your statement that opens your 'everybody hurts'
> project site: "It's true. Everybody does hurt, at one point or another.
> And sometimes we need to know that other people feel what we feel. So
> what if those "people" are sometimes fictional characters from
> television. It doesn't make them any less real."
>  
> On the level where I interact with my own narrative (which is a
> construct of my own memory/imagination), there is really no discernable
> difference between my experience, of say, the death of Buffy Sommers (my
> narrative tells me that she dies three time) and the death of Dianna,
> Princess of Wales. Obviously I can use my intellect to deduce (from
> narratives outside of my own, that I then include in my own) that it is
> evidentially more likely that Dianna 'lived' her own narrative, while
> Buffy had hers limited by her writers. Then again, surly in the
> 'consensual hallucination' of millions of Buffy viewers provides Buffy -
> from within this collectively constructed narrative - with her own
> autonomous hopes, dreams and fears: as real (at least as far as my own
> deductive path allows) as those of Dianna. And I agree with you totally
> that the same thing goes for any text - this is not about a particular
> recent technological advancements, it is about narrative constructions,
> fiction or otherwise. (I would argue that Perec's 'Life A User's Manual'
> remains one of the most successful 'virtual' spaces ever created)
>  
> Anyway, I do have a question; in 'finding and creating meaning' through
> the construction of your alternate self-narrative in the sims, are you
> not only involved in an 'ongoing *negotiation* of the self' but also in
> an ongoing *construction* of the self?
> 
> 
> cheers
> andrew
> ___________________________________
> 
> Tracey Meziane 
> Centre for New Media Arts
> The Australian National University
> http://www.byte-time.net
> http://swipezone.blogspot.com
> http://www.anu.edu.au/newmedia/pages/postgrad.html
> skype: byte-time 
> 
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> End of empyre Digest, Vol 31, Issue 7
> *************************************