VIRTUAL SUBJECTIVITY in 2009
Lori Landay/translated by L1Aura Loire
Definitions
Subjectivity is the experience of the “I”. Subjectivity can be defined, in Raymond Williams’ phrase, as “structures of feeling.” It encompasses a person’s feelings, thoughts, and perceptions; it emphasizes their individual encodings and decodings of their environment, social interactions, and experiences. The term comes from the French verb asujettir, which has a double meaning of both to produce subjectivity and also to make subject--it is both creative and restrictive.
If subjectivity is the first-person experience of the “I,” shaped by both individual psychological experiences and wider cultural forces, and it is intersubjective—created socially—then the people behind the avatars certainly bring their actual world subjectivities in here. However, once inworld, instead of having a body through which to experience the world, we have an avatar and visual and sound input that are not necessarily connected to that avatar’s position. There are "mirror neurons" in the brain that respond to what the avatar does, but it is different than direct sensory input. Therefore, the already blurry line between the self and the world is completely smudged in virtual subjectivity.
VIRTUAL SUBJECTIVITY
So, instead of an "I," now we have an "I/Eye" of virtual subjectivity, which is a mode of first-person experience in a virtual world that is founded on a fusion of visual and metaphoric point of view, shaped through "self-design" of the avatar and environment, reinforced and extended through social interaction, and enacted through virtual agency. Part of virtual subjectivity is the extent to which the mind/body connection translates inworld experiences into embodied sensations that feel "real." To sum up, there are four major factors that contribute to virtual subjectivity:
1) virtual point of view
Soviet silent filmmaker Dziga Vertov imagined a "kino-eye," a mechanical eye of the camera that could do what the human eye could not. In 1923,Vertov wrote: "I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. . . . free of the limits of time and space, I put together any given points in the universe . . . . My path leads to the creation of a fresh perception of the world."
I am interested in thinking about a VIRTUAL KINO-EYE, the eye of the camera function in SL, which can be used to make machinima, but also as a human eye, an avatar eye, as a way of experiencing the virtual world. It is as if Vertov's dreams have come true, and the kino-eye really can be "our"--or our avatar's--eye.
The various points of view that the participant in a virtual world chooses (PHYSICAL: avatar default, mouselook, camming & METAPHORIC: exploring a different identity through anonymity, role-play, alts, gender-switching, being non-human) can be both tools for machinima--for digital storytelling--and are also one of the ways through which a virtual world is experienced.
In a way, Second Life is all immersive, interactive art installation space and we are all performance artists within it.
2) virtual self-design
Anthropologist Jason Pine uses the term "self-designed" to refer to how in SL we can modify our avatars and environment.. As we make choices, we actualize our subjectivity, expressing our identity, communicating our sense of self and shaping our experience so that we and others can see it. Self-design extends beyond the avatar to being able to shape the environment, for those residents who buy land and participate in the virtual world in that way, too. Then the land, the structures they choose to put on it, also become part of what shapes their subjectivity, giving them a “home” in a world based on the metaphors of space and place.
3) virtual social relationships
William Gibson imagined cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination” in his novel Neuromancer in 1984 –and we create our senses of self in a virtual world through our interactions with each other. Subjectivity is really intersubjectivity because it is social and cultural. Groups are important in SL, as are the individual and informal connections we make.
Virtual identity is created and maintained within a social framework—we validate each other’s existence and help make our online identities and virtual lives more real. There is also the element of cultural norms, aesthetics, practices, behaviors, manners, language—all the things of a culture—that contribute to virtual subjectivity. Subcultures and groups can be very important in shaping an avatar’s appearance, behavior, language, everything. We create our senses of self in a virtual world through our interactions with each other. Subjectivity is really intersubjectivity because it is social and cultural. Groups are important in SL, as are the individual and informal connections we make.
HOW we make, maintain, and experience those relationships is crucial, however, because it is through computer-mediated communication. Researcher Joseph Walther's concept of "hyperpersonal communication" is helpful in understanding a mode of communication that often idealizes the self and other. Text chat is editable (you can edit your response before sending, and can see when the other person is typing and wait before sending), and almost but not quite synchronous. It is a "low cue" form of communication, without visual cues. One of things that can happen in hyperpersonal communication is that we overemphasize similarities and ignore differences as we forge connections between the idealized, edited self we are putting out there and our image of the idealized other with whom we communicate.
4) virtual agency
Agency is the capacity to act in the world, to effect it. We have a high degree of agency in SL; we can build things our of nothing, shape oursleves and our environment how we wish, and our choices are almost limitless. Virtual agency is what we choose to do in SL. Depending on what activities we are engaged in, we are going to have very different first-person experiences of what it means to be an “I.” We take on different roles as we act, and perhaps comparmentalize aspects of our indentity and self into "alts."
A project like Brooklyn Is Watching fosters virtual agency in providing a space for artists to build, a place for people to build communicate across the actual/virtual boundary, and a bridge to real world critique. As a mixed reality project, it makes the screen in the Brooklyn, NY gallery Jack the Pelican that shows SL into a 2-way window, into a portal, that prefigures a future in which we will move between virtual and actual realities, heightening our agency in each.
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LINKS
The Falling Woman Story by L1Aura Loire http://blip.tv/file/1838833
Brooklyn Is Watching blog: http://brooklyniswatching.com/
Professor Loire's Second Life http://ll2ndlife.blogspot.com/
Selected Sources
Battaglia, D., ed. (1995). Rhetorics of Self-Making. University of California Press.
Blakeslee, S. (2006). "Cells That Read Minds." New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-23, from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html
Boellstorff, T. (2008). Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton University Press.
Cooper, S. (2002). Technoculture and Critical Theory: In the Service of the Machine? Routledge.
Curtis , A. "THE CLAUSTRUM: Sequestration of Cyberspace." (2007). Psychoanalytic Review, 94(1), 99-139.
Landay, L. (2008). "Having But Not Holding: Consumerism & Commodification in Second Life." Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(2). Retrieved 2009-03-23, from https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/355/265
Ortner, S. (2005). "Subjectivity and
Cultural Critique." Anthropological Theory Vol 5(1): 31–52
Steinberg, M. (2004). Listening to Reason: Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-century Music, Princeton University Press.
Vertov, D. (1985). Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. University of California Press.
Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23(1):3-43. http://newmedia.cityu.edu.hk/en5608/readings/Walther%202006.pdf
An Emergent Second Life, Video. [28 min] Paper Tiger TV. Co- Producer and Director, Bianca Ahmadi; Associate Producer, Juan Rubio; Editor, Juan David Gonzalez; Content Director, Jason Pine. http://papertigertv.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Not Possible in Real Life Blog http://npirl.blogspot.com/
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