EDIBLE AVATARS, ANOREXIA, AND FALSE ACCUSATION: THE THEORETICAL BASES OF HOLOGRAPHIC FUTURES AND MELANCHOLIA
Edible avatars succumb to anorexia; prims have little or no body of course, although avatars might be accused of just about anything, including. Holographic objects have no weight and that makes them sad; if you’re a tree in a forest you can’t hear an avatar crying in any case.
Digressor: Alan Sondheim
- which also references the holographic universe - a theory put forward by Leonard Susskind and others -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
- why should this be of interest here? Well, one reason is that if avatars are projections by their users (however that's defined), and if their users introject the avatars ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introjection ), then the universe itself might enter into this - in the sense that we ourselves might be holographic projections from the edge of things. The philosophy and metaphor is a bit confused, but I think there's something to it - what if we're living in a universe of projectivity - everything we sense then is also a projection, and avatars might be seen as a 'zero-point' - a projection with 'zero substance' and only image...
So perhaps this is something to think about. In any case, I hope we can all discuss, all present images - images of any sort that you might decides relates to the subject matter here.
Thanks, Alan
an ongoing conversation is easier for me if there are responses directly to each others statements.
ReplyDeleteI am responding now to Alan's most recent post.
what particularly drew me to this course was
"holographic objects have no weight and that makes them sad"--so, possible consideration of the similitude between avatars and ghosts?
also that if avatars are anorectic (by nature? by choice? do avatars have volition toward reversals of what they have inherited as part of a lineage of avatars?)then is it possible for them to also be inverse-anorectic and what could that look like? if we consider entropy (in the context of A's reference of the holographic universe) is it not possible that the melancholy of avatars has to do with the entropy (latent capacity) that they carry within them? an awareness that their progressions beyond the strictures of anorexias of many sorts are also there with them, just out of reach somehow?
or, what is it to have your upcoming (healed) form somewhere in the queue of your consciousness while you are simultaneously unable (in a moment) to inhabit that as identity?
hi, could you elaborate? this isn't how I understand entropy, which is a measure of disorder and entropy. by 'anorectic' I mean reduced to a configuration of two-dimensional surfaces which have zero bulk in three or more dimensions. and do avatars have volition at all? certainly if they're bots they might have, but they're usually 'run' by humans, and humans may see them as extensions of themselves (of their human minds and bodies), or just as a mathematical operator or function that 'represents' them in certain situations.
ReplyDeletebut if avatars are ghosts, or vice versa - I wonder if ghosts then might not be avatars projected from something or somewhere else? I personally don't believe in ghosts, but this is a possibility; in Second Life someone did a piece called 'Princess Iron-fan' in which a traditional Chinese opera character wandered in a landscape randomly (she was a bot), and appeared very ghost-like; also, you could see her from one side only. In Second Life there's a texture-object that makes things somewhat invisible, and gets rid of any alpha-layers that might cloak avatars and other things; I used it extensively for a while, so avatars appear and disappear like ghosts - and so does half the landscape...
and of course this is in response to your comment - I agree with your ongoing conversation -
Thanks, Alan
oh, here it is. glad I found your response! ok. I see entropy in the context of energy not available for work (latent capacity).
ReplyDeleteI understand what you mean by anorectic (2dimensionality). I am interested in if there are ways for avatars (which are usually in the context of the digital, "run" by humans) to exert latent or still not embodied volition toward emancipations or shifts of some kind. meaning, is it possible to create a neoteric zone where different shades of inter can occur?
I love all of these conversations, but this place in particular is one that I am rooting in re my own investigations into the avatar. is there a way to perceive of an avatar as something other than a stand-in or surrogate?
I think if they are engaged in ways that are not strictly relegated to "use", we might find that avatars do (or could) have volition.
when we think about Hindu use of the word avatar we can see the importance of incarnation in the term. I wonder if the more general interaction with avatars via digital realms does not leave some of the overall potentials of avatars out of the picture? if we can see them not as mere replications or drones, but instead as potential identities, how would that change their relegation to us as something of our "use"?
the real issue is, how so potential identities? I can see them as surrogates in the deepest sense for human bodies - this probably occurs in avatar sex, where the locus of action is within the virtual world, but the emotional 'fit' is within the physical. at times the avatars might appear as sexual intermediary objects (in the sense of Winnicott's transitional objects like teddy bears). there are also people who are working in mixed reality, where the physical body is represented by an avatar motivated in a virtual world; it's also possible to project a dancer into a virtual space with bambuser, where she or he may interact with virtual objects (I've done that).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's a question of 'use' so much as representation; 'use' seems to imply a tool, whereas representation can work as a kind of mirroring - in which case looking at the phenomenology of mirror neurons would also be useful!
not sure what you mean by 'neoteric' - the dictionary definition doesn't seem to work...
I try to get away from the Hindu use - I think Tibetan tantra's notions of generation or completion stages of imagined deities might be more useful; they have been to me...
this is interesting, the change in the terminology from 'use' to 'representation'--and yes, I agree. neuron mirroring is very relevant here. although it still does not feel like a core concern of mine to differentiate in rigid ways, between the avatar and the non-avatar. it is a sort of binary thinking that feels limiting of intimacy to me. perhaps I can ponder them in dyad and tandem with each other though...
ReplyDeleteand I find the Hindu use of the terminology pretty valuable re my own considerations here. although, Tibetan tantras are certainly relevant.
the Hindu use seems to me binary - Krishna's embodied in X or not embodied in X; in the Tibetan tantra, the emanation becomes illusion, is always problematic, under erasure. I think one has to differentiate between avatar and non-avatar in thinking through Second Life, because the realms, causation, and origination are deeply different; the avatar has no life of its own and even disappears or droops after a while if not activated. it mouths words you say or words you feed it, and so forth. but in essence, literally essence, it's only a relatively small collection of templates; there's no neural system and programming is minimal; unless you download/upload a particular behavior, your avatar can't lie down for example. I think it's a problem to read avatars as independent, just as I think it's a problem to read the Internet as sentient - which was something people were talking about a few years ago, because of multiply-connected webpages and so forth. I don't go so far as to think of an avatar as a function, but in fact if I use one to work out my altered motion-capture animations, that's precisely what it is - an image embodying 'inconceivable' behaviors that a real human being couldn't carry out - for example choreographies in which part of the body goes through itself. with an avatar I can program a performance like that.
ReplyDeletein Irigaray (I think, and maybe in her Speculum), the female is seen as a transitive term between males, an operation obviously heavily criticized. but if you rework this to an avatar as a transitive term among human participants in Second Life, you might see where I'm coming from. it's not always the case - since the avatar-image may mirror the participant's sexual desire, it can even serve as a masturbation fantasy for some. (which brings up the use of mirrors in sexual play.) but I think that to see the avatar, in that situation, as independent, is to produce a psychosis, or at least a deep misreading of the world.
here I'm talking about Second Life avatars; the situation is again different if you have a hallucination or apparition - if you believe in apparitions, you believe that they may well be independent of you, that they're not just illusory...
just speculating here -
"I think that to see the avatar, in that situation, as independent, is to produce a psychosis, or at least a deep misreading of the world"--this is the part of what you say above that is the most challenging for me...
ReplyDeleteand I do very much have apparitions (figures) that I relate to. I am particularly curious though, about finding ways of allowing the strict perspective of avatars to loosen a bit, to find out if it is possible for psychic convergences (rather that strict logical delineations) of different types to take place re them.
what is it to "program" an avatar to cry if you as the human programming it, are not crying, for example? and if it does not matter as a programmer, if it is crying, then why even bring up their sadness at all?
in other words, I really do not want to mock their pain.
I think for me this is answered or discussed in the other comment I just made; everything depends on defining 'avatar.' And when you ask 'what is it to "program" an avatar to cry [...]" - it's literally just to program an avatar. It's not "their sadness" that's being brought up in virtual worlds - it may not be anyone's sadness. As I said in the other comment, there are people working to make the appearance of online avatars more in line with human expectations. There's no "mocking pain" - there's no pain. When I delete an avatar (which I've done, everyone has in SL), I'm not killing anything; I'm just doing something else.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to catch up with this fascinating discussion. I had been reading various (copied) posts on my recent train journeys and making notes but unable to post comments. So now I'm trying to work out how to link my thoughts into the flow of your/our discussions across various threads. I'll scatter my thoughts (and links) around and try and connect them up, see how that works.
ReplyDeleteWhere to start?... Pain (physical &/or emotional), healing (& pixel healing), mirror neurons, projection, representation, use, avatar as tool, surrogates, apparitions, illusions, psychosis, programming an avatar to simulate our own emotions and/or to provoke emotions in others perhaps via mirror neurons or as a reaction to a simulation of an actor, who is a representation of another human/living identity...
Here's an interesting article that connects physical pain, illusion, surrogacy and also perhaps a potential use of an avatar:
"Mirror therapy may help to reduce the pain of arthritis - An optical illusion involving a mirror can trick the brain into reassessing a hand with arthritis as healthy and pain-free"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/14/mirror-therapy-reduces-pain-arthritis
For me, this also connects very powerfully with the idea of pixel healing and human cells that Alan brought up elsewhere in the blog. I'm also fascinated by the power of illusion to effect change in actuality. I'll add my thoughts on these in other threads.
I've found another of my notes which was occasioned by something in j/j's first comment above:
ReplyDelete"...is it possible for them to also be inverse-anorectic and what could that look like?"
my note:
Perhaps inverse-anorectic is akin to cancer in humans - cancerous cells that refuse to die - can an avatar succumb to digital cancer or is that an oxymoron? in that the digital is infinitely replicable with no deterioration, damage-free pixel multiplication, the inverse of unlimited cell multiplication in biological lifeforms.
This is really complicated and goes in several directions! I think inverse-anorectic could also refer to bulimic of course, although the two aren't really inverses of each other, any more than sadism and masochism are inverses.
DeleteNot just cancer cells by the way - viruses, herpes for example, remain in the system after treatment, at least a vestige. Cancer appears almost as a parasitic organism in its own right; it hides, metastasizes, jumps from organ to organ...
Digital cancer would be allied to bit-rot, which I think does occur. There are guards against it with checksums and redundancy but in an infinite amount of time, everything would fail. On the other hand, I think the danger's exaggerated - for example I have cassette tapes from the 1960s that still sound perfect without print-through. A lot depends on storage conditions...
Nothing would be _infinitely_ replicable, but replicable to a unaccessibly high number of times might be possible.
All of this is a huge issue for archivists or even people like myself trying to preserve their earlier work.
Here's the bit-rot def. from Wikipedia: Bit rot, also known as bit decay, data rot, or data decay, is a colloquial computing term used to describe either a gradual decay of storage media or the degradation of a software program over time. The latter use of the term implies that software can wear out or rust like a physical tool. More commonly, bit rot refers to the decay of physical storage media.
Software, as an ideality, can't wear out; it's instantiation, particular install, can. As far as avatars goes, they disappear, become potential at best, when you log out. And so much depends on your viewer, on the corporate health, say of Linden Labs (or equivalent), and the Net itself. I've never seen any decay of an avatar, but I've seen numerous instances where an avatar won't "load" properly - sometimes this is clear to others, sometimes only to the person doing the loading...
Somehow the idea of bit rot feels rather reassuring, makes the digital seem rustic, but it's yet another instance of projecting organic qualities onto virtual material. We have to use metaphors to understand the world around us and the phenomena we experience. At the same time the metaphors affect or mould the way we're able to think about things. I'm thinking of the work of Lakoff and Johnson - 'Philosophy in the Flesh' and 'Metaphors We Live By'. We can't help but introject our projections.
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