<nettime> Second Loop, the feedback between us and our avatars

["second loop" <secondloop@gmail.com>]

Second Loop, the feedback between us and our avatars
http://secondloop.wordpress.com/

"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."
- Marshall McLuhan

"[T]he mirror stage is a phenomenon to which I assign a twofold value.
In the first place, it has historical value as it marks a decisive
turning-point in the mental development of the child. In the second
place, it typifies an essential libidinal relationship with the
body-image"
- Jacques Lacan

Hi. I'm Azdel Slade. I wanted to call this blog dreams of life, but it
was taken. In a way, Second Life is a lot like a dream, an expression
of desires and fears, of the unconscious. It is also in a lot of ways
like a nightmare. And, the way we see ourselves in our dreams, in both
senses of sleeptime dreams and hopes and dreams, effects how we shape
ourselves. I'll be writing here about my explorations in Second Life.
There will be writing on lots of different topics such as identity,
avatars, economics, politics, gender, sex. Why here? When I started
thinking about blogging about SL, I quickly realized that I don't
necessarily want my avatar tied to my RL identity, at least not yet. I
still want to be able to play "in world" and write about it here
without everyone knowing all about my RL. You might have figured out
who I am, but maybe you can keep it to yourself for a bit while I use
this space for writing and experimenting.

What happens after Macluhan's quote, where our tools shape us? What
happens in the feedback loop where we shape our tools and our tools
shape us and then we shape our tools again? Or when we shape our
avatars and our avatars shape us and we keep shaping our avatars? What
does Second Life do to us? Lacan wrote about the Mirror Stage, which
he claimed was an important part of subjectivity itself. Basically the
idea is that a baby sees itself in a mirror, being held up by its
parents, and imagines that it knows how to walk. Then, when it tries
to walk, it fails, but it continues to hold that image of itself in
its head and work towards it. Can avatars work like that? Can
constructions of imagined social structures work like that?

Is SL merely escapism? Or is it an experiment that might lead to more
freedom? Is it just a bad copy of the worst parts of the "real" world,
sexism, western beauty standards, racism, exclusion? Or is it a
possible place to work out how we might envision the world we want to
see? To practice constructing utopias?

I'll be writing more on this blog a I go. I've only been "in world"
for a few months and have only really begun to learn how to use it
well enough to enjoy it for a few weeks. But here are some initial
notes I jotted down recently:

When I first told my housemates, and activist friends, about my idea
to use SL to make art, they said "why in SL?", and went on to say how
SL is just for rich white yuppies. which made me wonder, who really is
using second life? Now i think its more a mix of people who are
looking for social stimulation but find it hard to get in real life,
young people, geeks, queer people, disabled people. I'm sure there are
others there, but i suspect that a lot of the people in sl are people
who are targetsof some kind off discrimination in rl (real life). i
surely fit into that category. in a metafilter post, a lot of the
othered social categories and the animosity towards them was summed up
in this comment:

"People still use Second Life?

Serveral hundred overcredulous tech journalists, Warren Ellis,
assorted furries, trannies, and S&M enthusiasts and him off of Boing
Boing. " http://www.metafilter.com/71318/Second-Life-Twitter-Typewriter

Also, the stats that Linden Labs publish at
http://blog.secondlife.com/ show that US users are only about 25% of
people on SL and there are people from many, many other countries
outside of the US.

When I first bought a furry avatar, i still had to choose male or
female, they are still totally gendered… This brought me to thinking
about the limits of gender. Does gender have to contain some reference
to male and female? Or just to characteristics that people usually
consider male or female? How can we imagine new genders?

My first time having sex in sl involved me flirting with a woman av
who seemed to imply that she was no expert at sex in sl, but when we
went to her place, she owned a bed, tons of poseballs (none for sex,
actually, most for cuddling and kissing) and after hanging out for a
bit she "discovered" that she had an s&m cross and a whip. a few days
later when i learned to look at profiles, i found that she's part of
about 10 s&m groups and has places like lesbian sex clubs in her list
of favorite places in her profile.

Politics in SL are bubbling about prim limits, which may infringe on
number of prims in your avatar, licensing and land usage. one article
said something like "you can take my land before you take my [designer
name here] shoes!" SL dissention and the SL liberation army are very
active right now. also, someone supposedly hacked the SL atm system,
but i'm not sure what the ramifications were.


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org