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| screenshot from rawVamp at remixworx.net |
MY immediate THOUGHTS [28-30 April]:
My rawMeat bodies as avatars in remixworx - e.g. rawLorem Ipsum - and the various heads - interesting that i'm using scans of the body sliced - a cadaver sliced as a kind of avatar - in the sense that some of my remixes are my avatars in the remixworx world - it is a world, the blog, the selected works
the sliced meat body scans are interesting to me because they reveal the meat of what we are, via a digital medium, via a digital representation -
connected idea - is that i can only imagine the meat that is inside you and the meat that is inside me - that is, unless something awful happens and there's a flesh-tearing accident or surgical operation - so most of the time our innards are as imaginary as the bodies of virtual creatures, avatars - except, of course, we can feel our bodies, and our bodies send us messages - e.g. the need to ingest and excrete - so we have physical evidence that there's stuff inside us - but it's still an imaginary realm - e.g. i have a tendency to imagine growths inside my body, fears of cancer (unfounded, a slight tendency towards hypochondria), so i turn to the internet for information to set my mind at rest, and that works for me.
so we may be thick but what's inside remains imaginary - we want it to remain imaginary (unless it's a wanted pregnancy) because otherwise it means something terrible is happening or has occurred.
which leads me to think, or imagine with ease, that an avatar has thickness, imaginary thickness - is it so different to imagine the insides of an avatar when we can, mostly, only imagine our own insides and the insides of others' bodies? - e.g. i'm reminded how awful it is when medical technology reveals how much hidden fat there can be inside a body, threatening health.
these questions also make me think of neuroscience research about imaginary limbs - those illusions - e.g. the illusion of the rubber arm/hand… [e.g. What phantom limbs and mirrors teach us about the brain]
LATER NOTES:
Alan talked of pixels being healed - pixels being distinct and separate from any other pixel, unlike cells of the body that are all interconnected. This made me think of cancer again which is caused by cells that fail to die, cells that should die but their time-to-die switch/signal fails and the body keeps on generating new cells - so in some ways is this a polar mirror image, an inversion of the human body - avatars are our 'mirror' images?
wow C. this is so beautiful. upon first look I am particularly drawn in by the layers. to layer an avatar is to make it more vast, perhaps? and a vast avatar allows more connection/ identifying with it than a simple or singular one?
ReplyDelete"i can only imagine the meat that is inside you and the meat that is inside me"--what I appreciate about this C, is the way that it brings into deeper question the 'real' vs the 'imaginary'--b/c if we spend the majority of our time relating to what we imagine to be the meat of our bodies and others bodies, how is that much different, say, than imagining what an avatars insides might be like. I also feel that such imaginations (getting into the grit of) increase proximity between us and ______and that increased proximity builds and allows for intimacies of many types. sensation of closeness is one of the qualities of those intimacies that I am most intrigued by...
Thanks, j/j. I don't know if the layering makes the avatar more vast. Maybe it does. The layers are animated, randomly to some extent, in the original Flash piece, making it more protean, more chimerical, which may offer more variable ways of relating to it.
DeleteOne thing that comes to mind at this point is that the images from the VHP (virtual human project) are taken from real cadavers; in other words, they're parallel to what's inside of you but they have their own, inert and obdurate, history, whether or not you or me or anyone is familiar with them.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel the parallel you mention holds that strongly? It's easy to know what an avatar's interior is; in fact, that can be an issue when you're constructing anything on top of the somewhat blank generic form you're given to work with. And in SL and other virtual worlds, you can move into the 'interior' of another avatar; interestingly, many of the elements that go into it are one-sided and disappear from the interior, which just emphasizes their ephemeral and constructed character.
I've never felt the interior of the body is an imaginary realm - that just might be me, or the fact I've known a lot of sick people. It's an invisible one, unless, as you point out, surgery or accident occurs, but for me at least it's no more imaginary than the interior of a computer or television set or even a cabinet with the doors closed. Azure and I deal a lot with animal cruelty/abuse etc. so the signs are always there...
What the VHP does show, though, is the body laid out as a cartography of what we take all too often as meat (we're vegetarians) - the fragility of the body is really apparent. As is the fragility of identity as well - for example I can't recall the history or names of the people in the VHP; I even forget how much information was provided. It's a concrete loss. One might ask what are the histories of avatars themselves, in virtual worlds - in the MOOs, the (text-based) bodies were in 'body bags' when they weren't online (i.e. activated by their users) - you wandered through what appeared to be morgues. The same thing also held with the objects left behind by them - when a MOO gets unused for a while, all the created objects are still around, you're wandering through ruins.
Which brings up Jason Rohrer's work - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Rohrer and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_World - he deals directly with these issues - of death, of things that are left behind, of ageing bodies, in his gamework, where you 'are' the avatar. -
For me, the interior of the body, "the interior of a computer or television set or even a cabinet with the doors closed" can all become imaginary realms, at least partially, in that if their interiors and, crucially, their interior processes are unknown to me, as distinct from merely invisible, then I use my imagination to create a mental model. My mental model could be partially or wholly imaginary depending on how much knowledge I have of the invisible realm.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you mention cartography in relation to this too. Early maps, e.g. Mediaeval maps, often mapped imaginary realms along with their limited topographical knowledge. With the VHP there's an interesting inversion happening - at least, in my reuse of the human slices - a real body has been sliced up, digitized and layered to create a map of itself, and one that stands for a map of all womankind and mankind. It becomes symbolic, emblematic, allegorical perhaps, of what, I'm not sure yet.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "of what we take all too often as meat (we're vegetarians)"? One of the disturbing things about exploring the VHP is the reminder of the butcher's shop, the slaughterhouse. But perhaps that is exactly what you mean - "the fragility of the body is really apparent."
Yes, it's what I meant. A dancer I know, Carrie Ahearn, is just completing a work in a butcher-shop dealing with meat - go to http://carrieahern.com/ for information. I haven't seen it; I've not the money nor the time but I think it's amazing. Re: Cartography, there's the poem of John Donne, think the title is Hymn to God my God in my Sicknesse -
ReplyDeleteJohn Donne
HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.
SINCE I am coming to that Holy room,
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music ; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before ;
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die ;
I joy, that in these straits I see my west ;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me ? As west and east
In all flat maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.
Is the Pacific sea my home ? Or are
The eastern riches ? Is Jerusalem ?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar ?
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.
We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place ;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me ;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.
So, in His purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord ;
By these His thorns, give me His other crown ;
And as to others' souls I preach'd Thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
“Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.”
- which has stayed with me. And yes, Medieval maps! Also Mandeville's Travels, which is a wonderful book; the farther from the known world, the more fantastic the descriptions.
I don't know if you're familiar with my work, 'Underbelly' ( http://crissxross.net/elit/underbelly.html ), but I had real problems pulling that piece together until I hit upon the idea of creating my own fantastical map, based on the Hereford Mappa Mundi combined with gynaecological diagrams and diagrams of 19th Century pit workings. It was during my research for 'Underbelly' that I first came across the Visible Human Project.
ReplyDeleteThe John Donne poem is marvellous. I haven't read him for a long time but "Batter my heart three-personned God" is a line that's always stayed with me.
Looking at this now - it's wonderful. I'm from coal-mining country in North-Eastern Pennsylvania, and this resonates with that.
ReplyDeleteThe average lifespan of a breaker-boy in the area was 18 years.
Underbelly is also a pulling-away, dealing with thickness, in this case real and miserable. -