The Identity Fix(ation)

One can scarcely encounter a blog on art in Second Life (or indeed many other blogs about SL) without coming across a discussion of identity in virtual worlds.  Many artworks focus on that theme; some artists, such as Gracie Kendal, Vaneeesa Blaylock (who recently said she's leaving SL) and Botgirl Questi, devote practically their entire oeuvre to it; and now we have the Caerleon Museum of Identity, an exhibition running through the end of October.

Commonplace topics on this theme for bloggers and artists include the question of whether the SL identity is "real," the possibility of confusion between SL and RL identities, the "ambiguity of identity" (the Caerleon exhibition originally used that phrase for its title), multiple identities and the possibility that they each have their own personalities, and attacks and/or celebrations of gender role play.

But I'm not going to examine those matters: my focus here is the "identity" theme itself.

There are two curious aspects of how the topic of identity tends to be addressed.  One is there is often slippage if not outright muddiness about concepts.  When someone takes on the theme of identity, often what they actually discuss is personality, social role, social category, personality, visual presentation, sense of self, individuality, psychology, sexuality, or some other concept.  But these are distinct ideas, or at least they can be distinguished.  For example, I have a pretty strong sense of self, but I don't have a strong sense of identity in the sense of membership in a category.  And designating an identity is often a way to safely pigeonhole someone, avoiding an actual encounter.  (Identity theft?  I'm tempted to say identity is theft.)

The other oddity is a certain, dare I say, narrowness.  One can tell a lot by what is and isn't at the Museum of Identity.  Lining the entry hallway and ringing the top of the central gallery, there's a cavalcade of avatar forms, from warriors to wolves to elderly ladies to businessmen to ducks to vampires to mermaids and on, celebrating the vast array of possibilities that SL offers.  But these seem like token appearances: the identities depicted in the artworks themselves are strictly human. There's not a furry, cyborg, tiny or even neko to be seen. (There's Maya Paris's wacky mechanoid bird, which I loved, even though—or more likely because—it seemed to merrily fail to answer any of its questions; but in context, I think it's more of a costume than an avatar.)  Somehow, alternative embodiments of identity aren't at issue: there's a distinct normativity about the sort of avatar that's up for consideration.  The depictions and obsessions suggest that the norm is young, white, and most often female.  Whether or not that reflects the demography of the real life artists in Second Life, it certainly doesn't reflect the span of avatar types in Second Life.  It doesn't even reflect the range of artists' avatars (some of which are supposedly expressions of felt identity).

Maya Paris's mechanoid bird

I should emphasize, I am not criticizing the Museum of Identity exhibition curator, FreeWee Ling, who brought together many interesting and provocative works.  The disjunction between expressed ideas about the plurality and fluidity of identity in SL vs the artistic representations about it is much more widespread than that.  Nor am I suggesting that the pieces at the exhibition are bad art.  In fact the overall quality is very high.  My personal favorites are Botgirl Questi's [correction:] Chrome Underwood's smart, witty cartoons, especially the one in which an avatar is unfaithful to one of his alts by getting into an affair with his other alt; but I liked many of the others as well.  My subject here lies not in the quality of the art, but in the nature of the ideas behind it.

Two comic strips by Botgirl Questi [correction:] Chrome Underwood
(read the left one from the bottom up)

There is yet another important characteristic to nearly all of the art and discussions about identity in SL: its individualistic mode of thought.  The identities at stake are essentially independent beings, perhaps connected to an individual in the real world, but in all other respects separated or outright isolated from an overall social context.  Of course, individualism (in both the moral and philosophical senses) is endemic to modern industrial and post-industrial societies.  It is in fact one reason why the concept of identity is so appealing to many people: "identity" brings the self-confirming assurance of a drug that demonstrates individualism's correctness.

The one piece in the Museum of Identity that notably departs from straight-up individualism is Lollito Markham's "Identity Office," which perhaps not coincidentally doesn't portray any avatars at all: it is a police detectives' office, ready to pin down who we are in order to keep us in our place.  I haven't decided whether Markham is engaged in social critique or following the simpler idea that society is an oppressive force opposed to the individual, which is a problematic theory too; the latter seems more likely, since the police office doesn't appear to gesture outward to underlying social structures, but at least Markham engages with a concept of society.

Lollito Markham's "Identity Office"

It is worth comparing "Identity Office" to two other works, not part of the Museum.  Miso Susanowa's build "State of Mind," which had a theme somewhat similar to Markham's, was more clearly a critique, concerning a system of social structures and relationships involving the network of overreaching state power, surveillance, torture and propaganda.  Bryn Oh's "Condos in Heaven" (blogged previously) extrapolates consumerism and economic imperialism by having them win a war again heaven itself.  As far as I know, this is the only full-scale piece in which Bryn undertakes social criticism (although one should note her abandoned shopping carts), but in most of her artwork, society is felt through its absence: a key source of her characters' tragedy is their forced deracination from the world they came from.  They are not loners or renegades—they are exiles.  Because exiledom involves a relationship to one's society, Bryn's work departs from individualism, though perhaps only to an inchoate extent.

We do not exist outside society: on the contrary, society is the condition for our existence, and our ideas and experiences are deeply rooted in its structures.  Our consciousness doesn't shape our being so much as our social being shapes our consciousness.  History isn't the creation of Great Men and Great Women: we got here because of the doings of all who came before us.  And the simple fact is, life is with people.  We cannot understand ourselves outside of that fact—if understanding ourselves as personal identities is even so important.  Identities are social.

Okay: I'm perfectly aware that if any artists are reading this, they'll take or leave it, and that's the way the cookie crumbles.  Anyway I'm not interested in being prescriptive: my aim is to describe and interpret what I see, rightly or wrongly.  Still, I agree with one artist in RL, Ben Vautier, who wrote: "To Change Art Destroy Ego."

Burn 2: A few favorites

Okay, I simply don't have time to blog about Burn 2, mostly because I'm working on another post entirely that with any luck I'll have ready tomorrow or the next day.

But here are a few of my favorites, in no particular order, and not to imply that there aren't other good things -- I just crash all the time and I'll never get to everything!

Miso Susanowa's "House of Cards: The History of Social Networking Considered as a House of Cards" is both a trip down memory lane (for those of us old enough to have memories with lanes) and a warning about the dustbins of history.  Near the top are some playing cards with Philip Linden's (original) face ... and already he too seems to be in the dustbin of history.


Madcow Cosmos and Lorin Tone have an archaeological site rising from detritus to a spaceship heading to the stars. On the middle level of the part you see below, a little to the left, are buckets and oil drums which play drums and other percussion, and skulls which chant. You can easily spend an hour playing with them. Find some dances in your inventory, you'll want to use them.

Bryn Oh has a new, disturbing work -- another one of her cam builds, which you enter by leading your camera through a doorway and up a corridor to small for you to enter, until you reach a chair with a sit which you can use to get inside, later having to do more camming. The use of the sit is I think a step toward involving the viewer even more intimately than ever.

And that's all I can manage to blog about.

Pick your jaw up from the floor, Div ... twice!

Jaw-dropper #1 is Linden Labs' bizarre asinine moronic obscene and I think self-destructive decision to double sim prices for nonprofit organizations and educational institutions, which (more or less by definition) are not major moneymakers yet are (more or less for the same reason) fonts of creativity. It's hard to imagine what LL's forecast is -- that these groups are heavily invested enough in SL that they'll choke down the additional US $150/month? Well, maybe a bunch of them will. My own university isn't doing squat in SL, but given its two rounds of layoffs, drastic cuts in the library acquisitions budget (ca. 40%), elimination of travel funds for professional (non-faculty) staff, etc etc, I doubt it would consider SL a great use of its cash. But maybe other schools are doing work in distance learning or other activities that would make the increased cost tolerable. It seems like a stretch to me. More endangered is involvement by nonprofits, many of which are small and often desperately underfunded; yes, there are a few enormous and essentially corporate foundations like the American Cancer Society, but it seems like time and again, LL's decisions favor the big guns and let the small players hang.  People keep saying small businesses generate the most jobs, maybe that should be a clue to what LL should really support....

Jaw-dropper #2 is a post John "Pathfinder" Lester (formerly Linden) wrote describing how people are already able to run OpenSim and Imprudence on a USB key. Yes: an entire virtual world and the ability to inhabit it, all on a single thumb drive, and all of its contents your own -- not rented, not reliant on someone else's servers. And since a viewer like Imprudence can be used with more than one virtual world, in principle it should be possible to seamlessly travel from OpenSim to Second Life to Inworldz and on. It's a declaration of Virtual World Independence. Go plug in.

Miso Susanowa's "code dreams"; or, "if (gAvatar == misoSusanowa) { state Identity; }"

Having picked on Miso Susanowa a little bit in a recent post, it turns out she's given me another morsel of food for thought, an intriguing one in the form of her piece at the Pop Art Lab's Art Breaker show, "code dreams." To understand it -- and certainly to make your way through it -- you can hardly do better than to read Miso's own blog post about it.

Miso is unusual among SL artists because sound is a -- perhaps the -- primary element in her work. (Her discussion of this is one reason her post about "code dreams" is so valuable.) It's crucial to turn up the volume on sounds, and probably the master volume control as well (you may want to turn down the UI volume if you do that). If you don't, you won't hear much of anything, which is how I missed almost everything in this piece the first time I visited it. Wearing earphones is a good idea, since the installation has stereo effects. Note that some objects play sounds only when you're nearby (camming isn't sufficient, though it's often valuable in order to increase volume); sometimes there is a bit of a delay before sounds play, probably due to SL sluggishness. Also, there are a lot of objects with sounds, and you may find it helpful to adjust their volume or turn one or two of them off temporarily (a click usually opens up a menu).

At first glance, "code dreams" looks like a random jumble of plants and objects and odds and ends, and perhaps not very interesting. But once you've adjusted the volume controls, "code dreams" clearly emerges as the immersive environment it is meant to be. It should be said, this quality is less pronounced in the first part of the installation, on the right side, which Miso identifies as the "input" side. (True to form, the first time I went, I unwittingly entered on the wrong side. The installation works better her way.) Here Miso introduces the most explicit codes in this work, starting with a cube at the entrance which gives a notecard about the piece, and has an image hidden within it.
Most of the codes in this part of the installation are of the computer sort: her SL avatar's unique alphanumeric key, an assortment of everyday identifiers such as her driver's licence number, audio waveform graphics, hexadecimals, and so forth. One object dispenses a notecard with a pure binary sequence of ones and zeroes. (I won't translate the computerese for you, but I'll reply to Miso by quoting Bertolt Brecht: "ein Mann ist kein Mann" ["one man is no man"].) However, "code dreams" also incorporates the fundamental code in the biological world: the four nucleic acids (as represented by letters) that combine in a dizzying array to create every living creature's ultimately unique DNA.
In the middle section ("processing"), the computer codes are subordinated to the more personal codes of memories and dreams. A couple of plants play bits of dialogue from the movie "The Wizard of Oz"; in one Dorothy declares that she'll stay where she belongs, in the other she defends the reality of her dream. A dog barks. A "guardian angel" sculpture plays a muffled recording of a child reciting a prayer. Bytes of computer and DNA code are scattered on the rug. A small table cluttered with childhood objects (some of which respond to touch) stands next to a girl's bed -- complete with Disney headboard -- which invites you to sleep. There, the sounds of the installation blend together in an intense and dynamic surround.

Aside from the soundscape here, which is wonderful, I have some mixed feelings about this part of the work. The focus on Miso's personal "codes" is problematic since there's not much to elucidate the context or the references, or even to indicate that these are references; Miso's post identifies them, but that provides only a little bit of help and one can't expect most people to read it. On the other hand, that focus fits with one of the work's other themes, identity. However, as if to alleviate this very problem, the bed table holds the "key" to the work, in the somewhat literal fashion of a golden key which delivers a poem called "code dreams." (It also tells Miso who touched it.) In the poem, Miso tells us that she both dreams in code, and codes dreams.

Miso's post calls the last section "output"; I'd describe it as "out into the world," where one can think big. The section is dominated by large "blossom tree," above which is a model solar system. Sit on the sun, and click planets on and off in order to play Miso's "Solar Symphony." The music is similar to Steve Reich's (especially his "18 Musicians") in its use of repeated and layered musical phrases and rhythms. (I love Reich's music, so frankly this was my favorite part of the installation.) Another piece on this side of "code dreams" is Shijin, a mechanoid "poet" who utters a number of poems into chat. And near the exit there's a "data" cube (with the word "data" repeated everywhere on its sides) that shrinks when you approach it to reveal an "information" sphere that will give you a copy of Miso's painting "The Artist as a Binary Process" -- a parallel to the cube in front of the entrance. These three pieces seem oriented toward the question of finding and expressing one's place in the world.
There are many more pieces in "code dreams": I'm only picking out the most prominent. Also, the elements in the three sections aren't nearly as discreetly separated as my description may suggest: binary, hexadecimal and nucleic code is scattered everywhere, a drum on the right seems to presage the themes of memory and dreaming in the middle section, and so forth.

The soundscapes of "code dreams" are impressive. However, I have to say, I'm not enthusiastic about computer metaphors for human thought and experience. Our minds are not computers: scientific research into cognition increasingly demonstrates that thought is emphatically an embodied activity -- the body is very much in the mind. Cognition and experience are emergent capabilities, simultaneously different from flesh as such, yet deeply rooted in it and existing only on its terms. We do not process inputs and produce outputs the way a computer does: our environment and our physical interactions with it structure the conduct of thought itself, in particular the way we create associations and metaphors (which are, it turns out, intrinsic to human cognition). The close of Miso's poem "code dreams" epitomizes what bothers me: the statement "physical world / only masks on the core of self" (or in the version in her blog, "the core of experience") articulates a dualistic view of the body/mind relationship, positing a deep division between them, in which our thoughts are Cartesian ghosts in the machine, our corporeality a mask shrouding our selves. I don't believe that.

And I'm not sure Miso really does either, precisely because she's an artist. Art depends on materiality just as the mind does. The codes dominating the first part of "code dreams" are more or less isolated abstractions rather than the ground of the work (although they are important to the theme of identity). They actually have a more concrete quality -- functioning less as interesting curiosities, and more as integral components -- in the dreamwork of the middle section, surrounding the bed of the little girl; and I say this, despite the problems of having work that alludes to but does not represent private experiences. So the codes and dreams of "code dreams" are in a difficult tension; perhaps the point is irony, though it feels more like ambivalence. In either case, when the codes become the background and not the focus of "code dreams," the work takes off. The dynamic is exemplified by music itself: yes, you could say that in music, "here's a note, here's another note, here are three at once" ... but you would be wrong. Thus the two strongest moments of "code dreams" are the most symphonic: bed and planets. The artist's professional code is to dream big.

It should go almost without saying that I'm poking at "code dreams" because I think it's a really stimulating work and I think you (O Reader) ought to haul yer ass over to the Pop Art Lab pronto, because the installations are supposedly going to be removed on 4 Oct. And there are seven more besides this one. So go -- NOW!

There are a number of interesting issues regarding the theme of identity, which is central to "code dreams," but I'm leaving the subject aside for another time.

Oh, and in tribute to Miso's themes of codes and identity, the alternative title to this post is an invented snippet of Second Life script (LSL). It means, "If the current avatar is Miso, set the program into the state of Identity (and do whatever you do in that state)."

soror Nishi's Tree of Trees

Just a short post on Tree of Trees, soror Nishi's newest major installation. One hardly needs to say more than that it's enormous, beautiful, iridescent, magnificent.  Not as enormous as Kolor Fall's builds I discussed previously, but certainly equal in magnificence.  It has a strong "rain forest" sense to it, and indeed there's an area where you can hear water dripping. More than that, however: if you turn ambient sound (and probably the master sound slider) all the way up, you can hear the drone of meditative singing (possibly throat singers of Tuva?). Meditation is I think a core element of Tree of Trees, as signaled by a poster in the landing area.

I only wish that soror had incorporated a few animations into the piece. There are a few sitting poses in one location, but I didn't locate any of interest. A couple of meditation poses or tai chi anims would be very fitting.

Some photos:

That Pest, the Audience

I attended a bit of the Art Breaker opening event at the Pop Art Lab -- much less than I would have liked (damn you, RL!), but a bit. From what I've read on other blogs, I missed some good stuff. I did catch the last half of the initial talks, including that of Pathfinder Lester (formerly Linden). I have to admit, most of what I heard didn't seem very informative (I won't be as hard on the speakers as sororNishi was, after all I missed a lot, but I also won't say she's wrong).

But my ears perked up when Pathfinder, near the end of his talk, spoke of artists affecting people's lives and their work needing to be known more widely. To me, this is crucial. Who is the audience for artists' work in SL? How can artists find their audience? The Art Breaker event drew a lot of people -- at one point the sim held as many as 63! -- but I could see that many of them were other artists, plus some gallery owners; I suspect that "outsiders" like me were a distinct minority (it would be interesting to find out). Pathfinder, albeit not an artist himself as best as I know, for his part talked mainly as though he expected only artists in the audience.

Now, it's neither surprising nor problematic that artists would mostly want to spend time with each other (and to some extent, gallery owners and patrons), stirring each other's ideas and encouraging each other onward. And when I've happened to meet them, I've had really interesting conversations with several artists, including Bryn Oh, Kolor Fall, AM Radio and Miso Susanowa, who were very generous with their time.

But at presumably public events, relationships between artists and non-artists (if present) seem to easily go a bit awry. For instance, when I attended Selavy Oh and Misprint Thursday's "Wedding" performance last January, it made an impression that at the reception afterward, when I thanked them for the (theoretically open) invitation and congratulated them on the piece, neither of them replied. Similarly, I went to an opening at Crossworlds once, where not only did the gallery hosts not greet me, they didn't notice that I asked them something. Hello? Audience here! You invited me!

Miso, in her own post on the Art Breaker event, criticises a "marketing maven" for recommending "pithy, zen-like SHORT [blog] postings," and she says, "Listen up, droid-boy: it all depends on what audience you're trying to reach. Now go get some real-world experience and call me back." I wasn't at that part of the event; for what it's worth, I agree that it depends on your audience, and still more, on your goals and the complexity of what you want to say (not to mention your particular writing style and abilities).

However, there is an obvious question: who is she trying to reach, whether in her blog or her art? Is the "marketing maven" not part of her audience? I ask because -- whatever the appropriateness or viability or even the tone of his suggestions -- he was there. I doubt he was forced to attend, let alone that he was paid to. Surely he came because he wanted to offer his support and appreciation for art in SL, making a time commitment just for you? Is it too much to expect some dignity in return? Either debate with him, or thank him for coming and leave him to enjoy your work (or not) in whatever way he does. Or maybe, even take him seriously.

Okay, I don't want to go too far off the rails here. As I said, I've had some great discussions with artists in SL, including Miso. And she does have the right to be irritated by things someone says. It may also be the case that incidents like the ones I mentioned at public events are exceptions, have extenuating circumstances, or whatnot; perhaps I'm making too much of them. But my basic point is, if you're only interested in addressing other artists, then I think you're setting your sights too low. The growth and development of art in SL can only occur as a larger collective effort -- or better, a collaborative one. Non-artists are not flies in the ointment. As soon as you put your work out there for a wider audience, one way or another we're part of your future.

Ballet Pixelle's "Avatara"

I attended Ballet Pixelle's show "Avatara" last night. I hadn't been to one of their performances in well over a year. The shows I saw then were essentially in the classical ballet mode, making little use of SL's possibilities. Interesting, but nothing I'd write home about. "Avatara," in contrast, exploits SL capabilities to the extent that it fully enters the realm of the "not possible in real life," joining the company of the ZeroG SkyDancers. (And without harkening to the movie "Avatar," much to my relief.)

Regrettably I didn't have the presence of mind to take photos until well into this short performance (under 30 minutes), and the only worthwhile one I took is from the curtain call. But in it you can see representatives of two different sets of alien creatures, one silvery and somewhat insect-like, the other a simple orange sphere on a tall cone. Although objects like the orange aliens don't exactly have the greatest dance moves, along with the silvery aliens they demonstrate that in SL, dancers don't have to be human or even humanoid. (That said, Ballet Pixelle made damn sure we recognized some of the silver aliens as female. Aren't there enough "not possible in real life" breasts in SL?) Nor do their bodies have to be stable: large caterpillar transform into people, who then transform into butterflies. And gravity need not rule ballet either, as dancers occasionally flipped upside down.

I don't know if Ballet Pixelle has been doing this sort of work all along or has progressed toward it, but it's good to see and I hope they keep at it.