Tag: existence

Second Life

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/24/4698382/second-lifes-strange-second-life

I was never very interested in Second Life or the Sims franchise even though I had one or two Sims in my childhood and I was a fan of SimCity for a bit. Simulated reality is a wonderful way of capturing the imagination (I take Pokémon way too seriously) and creating an immersive, total experience. I wouldn’t be the only one to tell you that a Pokémon battle can get emotional, even if you look as if you’re casually button-mashing and interacting with pixels that don’t have any bearing on real life.

Creating an alternative lifestyle for oneself on a virtual platform would posess even more of a hypnotic draw, and my job isn’t quite to explain it but to note down whatever is relevant for my research.

People are very self-interested, for one. If you create an avatar resembling an idealised version of yourself (not your physical self – a version of yourself that you feel is authentic to your personality, which has no bearing on what you actually look like) you’re bound to invest time and effort into it, regardless of whether it’s tangible or not (and this makes me wonder if we should place more value on tangible goods as opposed to intangible goods, and why intangible goods are often regarded with contempt especially with regard to gaming). It isn’t unheard of for people to spend real money on their virtual possessions in Second Life and consequently to form very lasting attachments to these possessions.

The mutability of Second Life also offers a freedom that real life does not accord to you. Any aspect of the appearance is easily altered, and the environment bends to a coder’s will through several clicks and keystrokes. The phenomenon of virtual control versus real-life passivity (the thought of repainting my room, for example, makes me shudder with horror because so much effort is involved) is quite seductive.

Second Life is also subject to its own share of crime – virtual property can be duplicated and stolen, the system can be glitched and slowed down simply out of a vindictive pleasure in disrupting the order of things and the mutable age and appearance of Second Life avatars has already resulted in simulated child pornography becoming a very real phenomenon. There are communities that indulge in ageplay, which I don’t exactly want to go into more depth with than I absolutely have to. I find it unpleasant, and it’s tangential to the key issue that a virtual reality comes with its own set of conundrums and codes that don’t necessarily correlate with real-life society’s.

Another issue I was interested in more was death and virtual reality – firstly the death of an avatar (dying in Second Life returns you to your home location), the murder of an avatar (there are specific combat-centric locations in SL where you can bear arms and fight to kill – otherwise killing is a no-go) and what happens to the avatar if a real-life user dies. (And equally, what happens when a real-life user considers SL more real than his/her ‘real’ life.)

I still haven’t answered most of my own questions about existence (in terms of the virtual sphere) but this is my starter kit of thoughts for the fact-fiction issue I’m exploring.

Gorillaz: Rise Of The Ogre

Gorillaz_band_photo

I had an idea recently about how to flesh out my theme for my FYP. After doing the Gemini project I’m still keen on exploring duality, but instead of confining it to the realm of mythology I’m thinking of expanding a little into something a bit more contemporary.

My favourite band as a teenager was Gorillaz, and I followed them all the way from their Demon Days period up till now. (Gorillaz is a band consisting entirely of animated characters – none of them actually exist as figures in the real world.) I’ve always thought it was cool that Gorillaz concerts involved holograms of the fictional band members, but it was only recently that it struck me that the entire Gorillaz phenomenon is a perfect example of when fact and fiction start to blur.

In the Gorillaz autobiography, Rise Of The Ogre, an unnamed interviewer has conversations with all four Gorillaz members about their personal histories, their music and how Gorillaz’s look (or rather how Jamie Hewlett draws them) and sound has evolved over the years. The personal histories of the Gorillaz members are so deep and rich in authenticity and character that it’s almost too easy to believe that Murdoc, 2D, Russel and Noodle really exist and are having a conversation with the interviewer, and are not just the brainchild of Damon Albarn and Hewlett.

A band whose members don’t even exist (then again, how do we define existence? By the very fact that the Gorillaz members are now recognizably pop culture icons does that not pull them into existence in this world? And what is celebrity anyway, if the media plays along with Albarn and Hewlett and interviews cartoon characters they created? Marge Simpson has been in Playboy magazine, after all) has sold what is presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars in albums, concerts and merchandise and has successfully kept fans’ attentions on said fictional members instead of immediately associating Gorillaz with the images of Albarn and Hewlett. They’re not synonymous with one another (at least not to me), nor are any of the Gorillaz musicians personas of any of the creatives behind them. Is that not just mindblowing?

Gorillaz and their music have inspired me for the past seven years and I love how a work of fiction has given rise to real-life effects (i.e. Gorillaz may not be real in the same sense that Emma Watson is real, but their albums certainly are real and have given me countless hours of listening pleasure. I also have their band t-shirts and their autobiography, so there) on people and maybe even on modern music. I’d love for my FYP to play with the same kind of fact-fiction divide and blur it so much that people start believing in whatever it is that I create. That would be a wonderful kind of power.