The Fantasy of the Ultimate Display and the Promises of Monsters: Avatars and Cyborg Friendship
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Transcript of The Fantasy of the Ultimate Display and the Promises of Monsters: Avatars and Cyborg Friendship
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avatars and cyborg friendship:
Cynthia A. Davidson, Stony Brook University 2013
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Donald E. Jones speaks of gaming and virtual world
avatars as the fantasy of the ultimate display.
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He identifies two kinds of
avatars: normative.
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And fantastic.
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Normative, meet fantastic.
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What is an avatar?
[in computing] the graphical
representation of the user or the user's
alter ego or character. It may take either a
three-dimensional form, as in games orvirtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form
as an icon in Internet forums and other
online communities. It can also refer to atext construct found on early systems such
a MUDs. (Avatar, Wikipedia)
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Avatar defined*
the incarnation of a Hindu deity (as Vishnu)
an incarnation in human form
an embodiment (as of a concept or
philosophy) often in a person a variant phase or version of a continuing
basic entity
an electronic image that represents and is
manipulated by a computer user (as in acomputer game)
*Merriam-Websters Free Dictionary
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Do the Gods Go Postal?
Avatars are often described as sent forth
from God as his incarnations on Earth to
do his bidding.
In a sense, avatars in the religioussense are messengers, but they are
also living embodiments of the message
of God. The word made flesh, if youwill.
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Some things cant be sent
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Why flames dont die easily.
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Remember these cute little
creatures?
I t t t ll th i b hi d
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Internet trolls thrive behind
screens.emerging through
text.
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An named troll loses his power.
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Monsters are unsendable and unnamedtext,
according to Derrida. Yet they show up.
Do monsters demand the
right to laugh, to sing,
and to weep, but also the
right of victims?
Jacques Derrida
The Post Card
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The nameless surprise
A monster is a species for which we do not yet have a name, which
does not mean that the species is abnormal, namely the composition or
hybridization of already known species. Simply, it shows itself [elle se
montre]--that is what the word monster means--it shows itself in
something that is not yet shown and that therefore looks like a
hallucination, it strikes the eye, it frightens precisely because noanticipation had prepared one to identify this figure.
Derrida, Points, Passages, From Traumatism to Promise
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So, what is a cyborg?
is a hybrid, body- machine
a connection-making entity
a figure of interrelationality and globalcommunication that deliberately blurs
categorical distinctions (human / machine,nature / culture, male / female, Oedipal / non-Oedipal) emphasizing a network ofdifferences and political accounts ofconstructed embodiments (Christian Hubert).
Donna Haraway has defined cyborgsubjectivity as requiring a commitment topartiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity (ACyborg Manifesto)
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Although real embodiments of the cyborg charactercertainly exist, theorists like Haraway and Haylessituate the cyborg as a subject position. Furthermore,as writers like Sherry Turkle and Sandy Stoneacknowledge, human-machine interactions that
articulate new subject positions based on humandependence on the machine interface, qualify as cyborgrelations. These writers concentrate in particular on thepossibilities of alternative identities on theInternet. Without the surgeries required for physicalprostheses, the screen can act as a kind of prosthesis
through which race, gender, age, and shape arerendered invisible (Turkle, 1995).
Jessica Santone, Cyborg
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Thinking theoretically.
If monsters are what cannot be sent and
avatars are what is sent forth, what then is a
cyborg? It is intuitive to think that maybe the
cyborg can mediate between the twosomehow, but the road to mediation is a
complex and rocky one due to our anxieties
about technology and the deposing of the
body.
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Internet trolls are one type of
CYBORG
And they operate on a principle of
constantly emerging through technology.
When recognized for what they are, they
sink back into the shadows and change(their name, their approach, their
appearance) or they lose their
influence. Hence, they are also
MONSTERS (re: Derrida).
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Elle se montre: the cyborg as
monster in popular culture
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a show of horrorexponential
surprise
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Until the human is erased
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Or buried and unrecognized
under the unfamiliar
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thief of human identity
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Or raw, exposed, and
degraded.
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Or strong, helpful, and sexy.(what)?
Fantasy of ultimate display.
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the power of naming
Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic
Woman NAMED the cyborg.wrapped
it in humanitymade it friendly, even
lovable. Monsters cannot be announced. One
cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,'
without immediately turning themonsters into pets. (Derrida, The
States ofTheory)
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This popular cyborg superhero has a
storyand a name (Victor Stone)
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made the everyday cyborg
heroic.
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Everyday cyborgs
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The familiar domestic
cyborgs
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The happy cyborgat
peace?
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Politicians became
cyborgs
E T (T Vl h) h i
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Eye Tanya (Tanya Vlach): heroic
everyday cyborg rewriting her own
circuitry.
A prosthetic limb doesnt represent
a need to replace loss anymore.
It can be seen as a symbol that the
wearer has the power to create
whatever it is they want to create inthat space so people that society
once considered to be disabled
can now becomes the architects of
their own identities
Aimee Mullins
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Is the Doctor a cyborg?
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Bodies are boring.
Promotional image BBC
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Who is.?These faces can be seensentlike
post cards.across space and time
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Warning!
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A scar in the fabric of time
That which cannot be sent
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Cyborg (via many avatars)
Utterly tied to his technology, the Doctorsendless regenerations are projections ofhumanity that he does not possess, housingoddities such as two hearts.(And in the
episode where his Tardis assumed humanform, his machine that houses his time-traveling body projected a body of its own. Inall cases, the machine RECEDES for betterprojection of the human form.) The real
doctor is a scar of energy (and memory) intime, neither flesh nor technology alone, butfacilitated by both.
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In other words
The technology becomes less visible,more transparent.
The Doctor is user-friendly. In fact, he needs friends (companions)
to survive.
His bodies are his avatars, his ultimatedisplay fantasy that he uses to makefriends and social connections.
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After his death
He is buried in the machine
You were expecting a body? Bodies
are boring. Ive had dozens of them.
Calls it the tracks of my tears (with
irony, perversity as befits a cyborg, and
it is only a partial truth)
The agent (avatar) of Great Intelligencecalls his life force an open wound.that
can be entered.
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The promise of a name
Inside the scar, a story unfolds Saving the friend who makes The Doctor
possible
The one who broke the promise appears
(elle se montre) with no revealed name As soon as he speaks, he is identified in
the show credits as The Doctor, and is nolonger a monster, but another avatar
(incarnation). The actor who plays this newly named
incarnation is named Hurt in real life.
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Cyborg Friendship
We are all monsters online, constantlyemerging through text, mediated by thescreens of computer technology.
We build names online through whichwe make promises of who we are there.
We forge friendships through thosepromises.
Sometimes we have more than onename and more than a single set ofpromises.
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What is a virtual world?
The computer accesses a computer-simulatedworld and presents perceptual stimuli to theuser, who in turn can manipulate elements ofthe modeled world and thus experience adegree of telepresence. Such modeled worldsand their rules may draw from the reality orfantasy worlds. Example rules are gravity,topography, locomotion, real-time actions, andcommunication. Communication betweenusers can range from text, graphical icons,
visual gesture, sound, and rarely, forms usingtouch, voice command, and balance senses.Virtual World (Wikipedia)
Wh t th f i t l
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What are the purposes of virtual
worlds?
MMORPGs are usually highly
competitive games. Open worlds, such
as Second Life or Blue Mars, also focus
on environment creation, scripting, andother forms of art, as well as providing
venues for social activism and distance
learning. But most of these activities
lend themselves to two goals
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Avatar Development
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and Social Connections
B tt j ti b tt
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Better projections, better
connections
are two major goals of virtual reality
for those who play there. But the
discrepancies between the projections
and the realities can cause anxiety.
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Trust and Betrayal
The Doctor tells his companions,
You can trust me.
But they dont even know his name.
Or do they? They know the name that
he has chosen.
They dont know the name that he was
given (at least not yet).
What (who?) are they trusting?
Cyborg social connection is
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Cyborg social connection isbuilt between emergent
selves Facilitated by projections of fantasy Mediated by technology
Trust is built around the named
projections Betrayal is a constant source of anxiety
as the self is always emerging anew
Complicated by alts or alternativepersonas (represented by variousavatars) with names of their own
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The Twelfth Doctor=His Alt?
In one sense, the Doctor has been used
here as a parable for online identity and
vice versa. But it is the Twelfth Doctor
who represents an online identity that isquite divorced from its main identity.
The Twelfth Doctor represents the
wildness of an online identity divorced
from consequencesat least, until it is
discovered. And named.
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In this scar of the Self or tracks of my
tears is found the emergent self or
monster that must be integrated or
destroyed. Since it has been named aspart of the Self, chances are pretty good
it will be integrated. (But stay tuned.)
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A reality parable
Last year, my presentation at thisconference included a story about the real-life passing of an online friend and thevirtual memorial service we held for him in
World of Warcraft. When I presented this, Ithought he was actually dead.
40 players met online and marched forover three hours to a harbor in the game,where we shared memories and lit virtualfireworks in his honor.
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It was very special. My guildmate, Micheala, took hundreds
of screenshots. She does beautiful work. Here is one.
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Here is the final shot.
Later we found out that he
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Later we found out that he
hadnt actually died
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The person we mourned told some of us
about his real life: his name, his physical
disabilities and personal tragedies, his
hatred of his own imperfect body, hisemotional ups and downs, and even sent
his close online friends a few photos. There
were promises of real-life meetings. We
were a family. When he turned out to be alive, some were
happy and some were not.
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I would like to say the story had a happy
ending, and we all learned to love each
other for all our selves as they really
were. But the person who died leftagain (moved to a different server). This
time, no one mourned his leaving.
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The funny thing is
I did not regret the experience that I hadduring the virtual memorial, even though itwas based on a death that never occurred,at least physically.
When we walked for him, we were heroesmourning a fallen hero. Paladins spread
their fiery wings and wept. Gnomewarriors shouted his name (in text chat). Itfelt real.
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Its something that would not have
happened if we hadnt known so much
about his sad and tormented real self.
He had let us enter into the Scar and geta glimpse of the Self.
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Perhaps he feigned death because he
wanted to give us a better story. But he
came back, even if it were only to leave
again, in a less dramatic manner.
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Conclusions
In cyborg friendship, the terror of
technological power and possibility of the
deposing of the body becomes reframed as
an issue of trust and betrayal, mediated byidealized projections (of humanity or a
related fantasy self).
The Self is the scar we leave in time
through which we are constantly emerging,surprising others, not always in a good way
(sometimes in a good way).
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Sometimes the projections aredystopian rather than utopian, as weembrace the monstrous in ourselves.But the real monster is that whichemerges unannounced and has noname.
We play with identity online to
reconfigure our age-old grappling withthe complexity of the Self, and toconnect with others.
Thank you all for making this
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Thank you all for making this
possible.
A full list of Works Cited and Remixed
available at
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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