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THE VIRTUAL AS INTERFACE TO SELF & SOCIETY
Sensing, computation, and display technologies continue to expand how we connect to society and simultaneously engage in acts of self-reflection and self-fashioning. As we engage in the practice of blogging, posting online videos, publishing photos, chat, online forums, or a networked multiuser environment, we connect to larger social spaces, often with individuals we don't know, or come to know remotely, while simultaneously engaging in numerous acts of self-presentation. Unlike other forms of media, like newspapers, television, radio, or cinema, the Internet and its wireless extensions have enabled individuals to communicate and present themselves in ways no other form of mass media has been able to accomplish. This is not an easy process, however, as the self we publish is open to theft, surveillance, hacking, flaming, anonymity, and deception.
Virtual worlds, and particularly networked pervasive 3D environments, are useful contexts for critically and imaginatively exploring how we project our so-called self into computerized space, reconstruct it in digital form, and set about interacting with other reconstructed selves. In combination with "computer software programs, rules, commands, and networked interactivity," we perform a sense of presence to others by effectively manipulating "graphical, textual, navigational, and audio modes that are coded to correspond with our bodily senses" (Bolter).
Self-presence is a key concept and goal in the construction of many virtual environments. Participants in this session will discuss the various means by which presence is achieved. We will look specifically at how virtual environments allow viewers to shift points of view at will, and control and manipulate their own perspectives by occupying, exploring, and traversing virtual space. Does this freedom of movement become the defining quality of the virtual self? (Bolter) How do we further complicate this by creating contexts for participants to move back and forth between physical and digital spaces either serially or simultaneously?
Participants in this session will explore an online multiuser environment together and this experience will inform the basis for debate and discussion.
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