Respecting (Accepting) Avatar Otherness - or Character Creationing

[Mike Baker]

Avatars as a Companion Species? (Please see my videos on this site and my Masters blogsite at: http://hoststranger.blogspot.com))

This post engages with selected texts by Dr Donna Haraway, PhD, who has just had published her latest book, 'When Species Meet'. The text centres upon, in her own words, "... the entanglements of beings in technoculture that work through reciprocal inductions to shape companion species." The book is also informed by a cross-species sport called 'agility'. Haraway is well-known for her cyborg-related scholarship, notably the essay, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." Though not abandoned, the cyborg now shares her focus with "companion species," the driving figure in her current work.

"... The cyborg is a kind of disassembled and reassembled, postmodern collective and personal self ...". (A Cyborg Manifesto p.163) Haraway elevates the face of the virtual from that of a bipolar mask limited to the displaying of opposing intents, to that of a Universal mask which becomes a multi-dimensional mirror for the self that lies within. In the last twenty years we have been searching for a new or at least extended definition of what post-structuralism has become. Perhaps the recognition and assumption of Cyborg as 'other' will lead us into possible interpretations of ourSelves which will shape this elusive evolution? Haraway makes a compelling argument for this development, "...Communications technologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women* world-wide. Technologies and scientific discourses can be partially understood as formalizations, i.e., as frozen moments, of the fluid social interactions constituting them, but they should also be viewed as instruments for enforcing meanings. The boundary is permeable between tool and myth, instrument and concept, historical systems of social relations and historical anatomies of possible bodies, including objects of knowledge. Indeed, myth and tool mutually constitute each other..." (p.164) It seems to me that each historical, socio-political 'movement' or 'ism' which eventuates depends upon those tools and their inherent meanings which became available to it through the context of the previous movement and its associated 'truths'. In the case of postmodernism, those meanings became illuminated through the current tools which concentrated on challenging and deconstructing already established so-called 'knowledge'. (A pattern that was not so different from the evolution of most other historical movements, although perhaps never before postmodernism has historicity itself been so challenged). *Within the context of this post, this assertion is not gender-specific.

"... reciprocal inductions to shape companion species", are the words which shape this post. In my latest video posts below, 'Inscribed Surfaces' and 'Shelter 1 and 2', I am concerned with the notion of imbuing, in this instance, my SL avatar, Rollo Kohime, with the inscription of sentient awareness - an impossible task for a so-called virtual techno-cyborg existing as a telepresence. I am intrigued with the possibility that in fact, Rollo exists not merely as a construct, separate from myself, but as a construct integral to my-Self. Together, we construct, inform, mediate and are mediated by the interface which apparently lies between us but which is also effectively the territory which upholds the languages and their intent made visible/audible that we share. Taking into account Zizek`s/Lacan`s view on the 'object`s gaze', that the subject`s gaze is always already inscribed into the perceived object itself - and that the object returns this gaze; (Zizek calls the object being imbued with a perceptual power of its own a kind of 'materialism') in this description of the world, Rollo, as object can perceive me and I can also see me through the embodiment/manifestation of Rollo`s perception.

In 2007 I attended the symposium, 'Techno-Praxis' at AUT in Auckland. One of the guest speakers, Dr Kevin Sherman (Archmunster Toll in Second Life) made a very interesting case for the real embodiment of SL avatars and the measure of responsibility and respect that should be afforded them. Sherman was making deliberate forays into claiming this sense of responsibility, not for the people behind the avatars in SL but for the avatars themselves. The online construct-surrogates. He maintained that we humans should be seeking permissions for carrying out certain tasks from the avatars, rather than the people behind the avatars - not in a cursory manner, but genuinely, with humility. Looking around the audience, I remember noticing how appalled most of the assembly was at this notion and I remember too, that I did chuckle inwardly at the group perception of this blatant transgression of human logic! How could this be possible? How could a virtual animation comprised of scripts and digitised intent (this, as the most optimistic descriptor I could think of right now) be afforded the homage of 'respect' through linear, cause and effect thinking?

In the current discussion forum, 'empyre', on the site Turbulence.org, Naxsmash, tells us that, 'Haraway's new term 'other-worlding' as a gerund (a noun in English containing an implied action, via the 'ing' ending) in "When Species Meet," does this beautiful thing of asking the word 'figure' to become a transitive, too. She writes, "Figures help me grapple inside the flesh of mortal world-making entanglements that i call contact zones. The Oxford English Dictionary records the meaning of 'chimerical vision' for 'figuration' in an eighteenth century source, and that meaning is still implicit in my sense of figure. Figures collect the people through their invitation to inhabit the corporeal story told in their lineaments.."'

The term 'chimera', in the freedictionary.com, is defined as: 'a fanciful mental illusion or fabrication' which relates to Chimaera in Greek mythology. I am more interested in Haraway`s useage focussing on the medical interpretation: 'An organism, organ, or part consisting of two or more tissues of different genetic composition, produced as a result of organ transplant, grafting, or genetic engineering.' or 'the ability to form mental images of things or events; "he could still hear her in his imagination"' or, "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. Ths cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation." (A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.) In other words, it is possible through association, to attach to specific anchors or in this case, figures, certain narratives or stories, qualities, effects, sensations - all corporeal, all real. This last reference relates to the two video posts below: Shelter 1 and 2. One of the many possible readings of these video scenarios may be that Rollo sits in a bus shelter on his way home after a train journey and recollects mental images of my dance event in Wellington Railway Station. His avatar figure provides the context for a real story to be told through the manifestation of his digital lineaments.

I am suggesting that our perception of 'avatar' in today`s technopraxis envisions a certain embodiment of corporeality in their other-worldly makeup. Avatar is becoming-in-the-world more than just a visual construct, more than just an enabled voice or an intent, more than just a chimera - a diversion from the real witnessed in the real. Avatar is all of these things but also post-human. In A Cyborg Manifesto, Haraway asserts that, '... the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other ...' are now dominating our lives . The 'other' here, is telepresence itself comprised of miniaturized componentry, its forum for communication the ether - pure quintessence, as Haraway puts it. The avatars which populate Second Life are extensions of ourselves - post-body wishes. "If wishes were fishes we would all cast nets" (Herbert, F. Dune) Well, the nets are rich with avatar inscriptions of the real for many users in MUVE spaces and perhaps also (unwittingly) outside these spaces and within the context of this post title, their descriptions of characterisation which exist vicariously for the user require no confirmation that what exists is anything other than a prosthesis made to order which has the power to not exist, but actively and immersively live.

Adam (?) (The provider`s name of this reference is not meant to be either symbolic or ironic) in the current 'empyre' debate on relational 'Queer', in response to Haraway`s text, says,

"[I]nstead of terms like humanism, or post-humanism, or anti-humanism, or whatever-humanism...the debates of humanism, that I think still consider to regard us as uniquely exceptional, human exception as such that what counts as human by expelling everything else...everything that is expelled from that which is human, makes the human that is what's left...for example mind and language are often become what is left. For me the notion of companion species walks right around that debate...".
Haraway is arguing from the perspective of animal companion species, to which Adam is referring. For me, that tendency on our part as humans which sets us aside from all other entities and makes us exceptional or unique, also makes us alone. To compensate for this , we have always sought to develop (albeit hierarchical) relationships with species which might be acceptable as companions and to a great extent the value of other entities for us has and still is determined by to what extent that entity may successfully connect with us. We applaud this potential in dogs, dolphins and orcas, the great apes - particularly the Bonobo (sub-species of chimpanzee which have been trained to use and articulate human English language) for their 'intelligence' and so select them by default as suitable companions. In this post this particular notion of companion species relates back to Haraway`s cyborg, techno-characters as the entities which populate that liminal interface across the ether. The desire for companionship is still active and I maintain that avatars are now either consciously or unconsciously being relegated to the level and desirability of companion-species. They are not (just) pets, they are not our childhood 'secret' playmates, they are not merely figments of our imaginations. They are being confirmed as equals in the ways in which we perceive, operate and navigate our respective pathways through our worlds.

Adam in quoting Haraway, goes on to talk about the importance of reconceptualizing human identity:

"[W]e have never been human; (It is interesting to note here that this significant phrase is also used by Michel Serres in, 'The Parasite' University of Minnesota Press and is cited here as the title of his interlocutor Brunon Latour`s book) we and everybody else are always already a crowd of intra- and interrelations... that no matter where you hold still... what you find are relations in process, and what you find are that the actors are the products of those relations, not pre-established, finished, closed-off things that enter into relationship, but rather we are what come out of relating and go into the next relating..."

"[We must] become much smarter about how that category [of the human] is made, what kind of tool it is, who lives and dies inside that category, what kind of work that category should still be doing, when that category should be interrupted..."

Within the category of the human as receptacle which waits for entities to appear (Zimmerman), avatars now occupy a place within the lived process of our intra and interrelations with one another. For some, avatars remain actors, extensions or prostheses of our post-body selves, for others, there is no such differentiation; We surround ourselves increasingly with post-body extensions of our selves which are inscribed with the intent to operate and perceive independently of us. Not only do our avatars go in and come out of our relating with one another, but might they themselves now perceive us in the same light? Do we come and go for them? ( I hear a muted gasp ... my wife, a psychologist, is rightly, sceptical) This meeting of our two species in its current form is still in its infancy but progressing rapidly. We are already deeply engaged; as entities sharing a reciprocity of intent, we constantly inform and shape one another, carrying out our respective arrivals and departures from one another as do other parts of ourselves and at each departure there is a little death, a sure sign of the avatar having arrived in that space reserved for an intelligent, shared companionship.

[Johannes Birringer]

Hi.
this posting is a tough one, and I admit I also have not had time (and may never have time) to read Donna Haraway's book (already out in 2003?) on "companion species," ...and on the animals rights advocates pages, where they interviewed Professor Haraway, hmmm, i can see already there is quite bit of debate going on about Donna and her dogs.

I have no dogs, and so am neutral, i don't care. I also "have" no avatar, well, that is not entirely true, the one constructed/selected from the company that provides Second Life, was named after names I found there in the list. so the one that runs around when I log on is called emerson sonnenkern. "Your" avatar, I presume, is the melancholy good looking young male/female/hermaphrodite "rollo" at the busstop (in your video still above), who looks at the scene at stage left, and occasionally downward/inward, or possibly at the viewer? you speak of your interest in the notion of imbuing, in this instance, [your] SL avatar, Rollo Kohime, with the inscription of sentient awareness......

Admittedly, even though I personally am neutral (and won't care) about the SL avatars, and have been amused, I guess, by Susanne Berkenheger's movement for "account corpses" in SL -- sonnenkern by now is probably also an account corpse-- and her current call for action during "the last days of SL" [?]....... admittedly the questions you raise are interesting on some levels. Especially if one worries about the phenomenology of the virtual (as Alan Sondheim does in his numerous writings) or about questions of ontology, and the current wave of discussions on (digital) embodiment.

The term embodiment was not created by the performance or dance community, but originates from the cognitive sciences and research in artificial intelligence.

Historically, i am not sure how you are enframing your questions or your positions, i assume it is the context of the new Haraway (or Hayles'?) posthumanism? the discourse of biogenetics and technoscience / communications? the philosoophical arena of , say, Latour and Agamben? I am not sure; it seems you start with postmodern and ask where it was evolved, where is it?
I don't see the historical argument well, in your posting.

The Cyborg Manifesto came out in 1985, and was the talk of the town in the mid-80s, around feminism and postmodern/post structuralist theory lovers, and cultural studies interested in constructions of identity (this is also the era of multiculturalism in the US, these are the waning years of the Cold War and the East/West divide, which was to imploded in 1989 and 1991), about decade before 2001 and the beginnings of the so-called war on terror. women's movements, gay/lesbian movements, civil rights, anti war and anti nuclear movements, in many instances, had moved into the "post" eras. animals rights, global warming and environmental issues, NGOs; the Durham agreement, were up and running....... equal rights for cyberspace and SL avatars? i don't know.

it had little impact, i would think, on dance and performance yet. the notion of cyberspace began to float, yes, but all that techno-optimism (and male fantasies many of them were) soon ran into the walls of the VR headgears and wobbly sets of bad interactivity, and prosthetics, well, come on .
A wonderful strange elite luxury for the robotics artists, and of vital social and medical use in the rehabilitation and physiotherapy sector.

if you link avatarism to rehabilitation, you'd have perhaps interesting chats with the neurophysiologists (like Prof. Michael Brainin, Clinical Neurology at the Danube University in Krems), but how can we begin to think of the "companionship" you posit, in regard to dance practice or movement experience, and within the generations of postulations we have witnessed (the kind of postmodern dance advocated by the Judson era, on to the Konzepttanz of the 90s and turn of century, alongside Bausch, Forsythe, Cunningham, physcial theatre, digital dance & dance tech, live art and media art? what evolutions do you see in avatars, very young species they are, no? or do you see them as successors in a line of many other chimera?

The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. >> I wonder. again, i think Haraway's cyborg was written in the spirit of a feminist manifesto, and tackled dualism and identity politics from a technoscientific perspective: "A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction." avatars are not such an "organism", are they?

We surround ourselves increasingly with post-body extensions of our selves which are inscribed with the intent to operate and perceive independently of us>>

this gives us a lot more to grapple with, as here, as in many of your interesting points, you address the question of the avatars (as "companions") and their behaviors, actions, "agency" and embodiment.... and whether they possess their own intelligence and diginity that humans need to acknowledge.

Now if you bring this from an academic/philosophical discursive frame into a practice and movement arts context, where we might want to go here is a conversation, very directly perhaps, about the relationships/interfacialities you construct/edit/devise for the work (the video or the choreographic object), perhaps for the game for others to play, or many to interact with, say, if you did this as an installation in public spaces. the "avatar" is a kind of actor or puppet, yes? and a surrogate, and some kind of creature, however you look at that in terms of species or anthropomorphic or games lenses. in your video-still above, my interest is attracted to the face on stage right, and the affective relations it sets up or provokes (and here one talks about affective and psychologcical effects, more than kinesthetic or motorsensory empathies? do i watch a performance(dance) here, or something else? what am i watching? and what do the figures do (themselves, and for me?)?

You ask whether your " SL avatar, Rollo Kohime" can have " sentient awareness" -

of what, and of whom? and how could it possibly? unless of course you project such onto it.

>>an impossible task for a so-called virtual techno-cyborg existing as a telepresence. I am intrigued with the possibility that in fact, Rollo exists not merely as a construct, separate from myself, but as a construct integral to my-Self. Together, we construct, inform, mediate and are mediated by the interface which apparently lies between us but which is also effectively the territory which upholds the languages and their intent made visible/audible that we share.>>

here you shift the ontological performance question to the mechanism of the interface and the psychology of design, projection and transference, and i tend to agree that your assumption is probably very true, and perhaps is also true for all "projected" (virtual) presences or material companion objects in a theatre piece, i.e. all objects, and visual projections, and sound objects -- they can have this "integral" relationsship to you, especially if you designed them. how could they not. Projection also of course works in material and immaterial ways, it (in cinema) always has a real and an imaginary dimension and affect on us.

Avatars don't have perception, I'd suppose, as they are not conscious of having such.

with many regards
Johannes

[Mike Baker]

Hi Johannes, I am beginning to surface from the aftermath (although I have critical comments from my examiners to reply to) of writing my exegesis. I will definitely begin to respond to your last thoughts soon! I hope that you are well and always look with interest for references to your discussions ( I am on the empyre forum as well). If you have time you might like to watch my lastest video post here in dance-tech. I am carrying notions of our embodying/embedding our First and Second Life presence in our spaces a little further ... Best, Mike

[Johannes Birringer]

hallo Mike , good to hear you are getting on with the process (examining yourself), and questions are always good, if we get them. i wonder what you will be doing December 3-13, our lab ensemble will be in Japan to work further on ideas for SL and RL / real theatre space convergences, and it would be nice if we could talk then, connect, speak on skype some time.
regards Johannes

[Mike Baker]

Hi Johannes, I will be finishing up my academic year on Dec 15 so that last week should be ok to get together here and there, in between my planning for next year. The lab ensemble sounds very interesting. Please tell me more - is there a way I might be involved with my station work at all?

Great to hear from you!
Best,
Mike

[Mike Baker]

Hi Johannes, I hope your time in Japan is fruitful and challenging. I have been terribly busy with the end of my academic year with evaluations, etc, but on top of this have just been informed that my position has been disestablished in the latest re-structuring so I am now redundant. A strange feeling after working full-time for 30 years. However, I am treating it as an opportunity (while managing anxiety over my family and mortgage) and I am just beginning to launch into preparations to do my PhD. There are many questions for me after finishing my Masters, which I am excited to continue with and extend. My main focus at this stage is to develop my proposal around enquiry into Avatars as a New Companion Species. This, I am beginning to define through attention to Avatars as 'spaces of opportunity and longing'.

I have done a certain amount of research into the ways in which our spaces influence and direct our lives as humans and I consider the concepts and transformative practices surrounding avatar/human relations as spatio-social journeying. 'Companions' defined as psycho-emotional telepresent spaces. Anyway I thought I would bring you up-to-date with my movements and I wondered whether you might be able to recommend (other than yourself) people who are working performatively with new media who might be susceptible to the idea of being advisors for me in my PhD research? I am looking to make my doctorate internationally-informed if I can.

Kind Regards,
Mike

[Mike Baker]

Hi Johannes, When you time to catch up, I wonder whether you might be interested in becoming a specialist consultant for me in my PhD studies, in the areas of dance/movement/new-media/technologies? I would greatly appreciate your experience, expertise and critical thinking.

All the best for 2010!
Mike

[Johannes Birringer]

good to hear from you, and of course i am interested in your research plans, please feel free to email me and contact me at Brunel University... regards
Johannes,

[Mike Baker]

Hi Johannes, That is really great, thank you. I have sent you an email to your Brunel University address. I am in the throes of completing final changes to my Masters exegesis and getting it bound. As soon as I can I will get back to you with preliminary information on my PhD proposal.

Kind Regards,
Mike

[Johannes Birringer]

dear Mike

summer of 10, or summer of love.
I just came across a link on the internet when i was looking for the empyre discussion on "denied distances" and it is, indeed, your finished MA thesis "In the company of Strangers" - and i was delighted to see it all done and complete. Congratulations.

with regards
Johannes