Writing in RL / Banking in VR

Trying to figure out how everything fits together, because I am sure it fits together.

Interestingly I was forwarded a great article by a friend this afternoon.
It would seem that within the popular MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) 'EVE' the largest bank developed and run by players 'EBANK' has suffered a very real blow.

"In June, former EBANK CEO "Ricdic" embezzled over 200 billion ISK [or InterStellar Kredits] from the bank and later sold it in real life." Reported Xav de Matos yesterday on joystiq
In what sounds very familiar to RL (real life) the bank has frozen users funds, the embezzlement only part of the problem, poor management of EBANK means that many "380 billion [ISK] in defaulted loans" have added to the banks woes.

When I was writing this I couldn't find an exchange rate for an InterStellar Kredit from what I understand you are not technically allowed to exchange them for actual RL money as the currency seems to be the property of the game.

Meanwhile my partner has lost his voice and because I am relishing the silence in which to study we are communicating using an RL 'chat'.
I am sure using these metaphors in practice only strengthens our view that the Internet is all around us. (Strengthens our relationship with the object/utility? Who can say.)

In a tent

Sitting at the zoo x2

Sitting at the Zoo

Virtual Reality is a Utility

I have found several ideas of how 'virtual reality' can be defined so far in my research but I have found a particularly interesting one in the work of Nicholas Carr 'The Big Switch; Rewiring the world from Edison to Google,' (2008).

Carr's thoughts on what 'virtual reality' is, is encompassed within the much larger idea of Internet and computational capacity being treated as a utility, much like electricity. Carr refers to Google and Amazon as examples of companies who are at the leading edge of supplying services such as software or processing power via a "socket in the wall" (Pg 5, N Carr, 2008). Much as individual residences do not generate their own electricity (for the most part for better or worse), rather then own processing power or software in your own computer these resources are also supplied and consumed as needed.

The paradigm shift here is the way we recognize the technology of computing as a utility, a "cheap universal commodity," (pg 5, N Carr, 2008) that is among other things a cost of doing business or a domestic resource. The paradigm shift occurs when we start to arrange our lives around this utility, much as we have around electricity or around electric light. But what I have talked about so far is a profound change to our own reality rather then expanding on virtual reality in reference to Carr's writing.

Carr elegantly explains the technical concept of 'virtualization' using the example of a telephone answering machine. The first iteration of the answering machine was a stand alone, analogue, tape-machine. The second iteration was a model with a computer chip, digital, smaller and part of the telephone's form. However now the answering machine is completely digitized, instead of having a form of any kind all it's functions are "replicated though software code". (pg 75, N Carr, 2008).

The telephone answering machine has become a "virtual machine," (pg 75, N Carr, 2008) that exists as part (or many networked parts) of various machines belonging to a telephone company and supplied as a service. Virtualization is the construction of a virtual machine out of pure software that exists on other networked machines.

Pure software is one thing, but since the first steps of the networked computer system it has been plagued with Utopian dogma. From the late 1960s "as computers came to be connected into a single system, many writers and thinkers embraced the view that a more perfect world was coming... They saw the virtual reality of networked computers a setting for social and personal transcendence." (pg 108, N Carr, 2008). Networked computing power is a vehicle for transcendence and equality as much as electricity is. If we view them as a utility then yes it has the power to shift our way of thinking, and living, but it is the human expression in the machine that is changing us, not the machine itself.

There is a "failure to reckon adequately with the computer as a human expression" (pg 194, S Talbott, 2007). In 'Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in the Age of Machines' (2007) Steve Talbott identifies the computer is currently still an artifact of a human expression. A "manifestation of intelligence,"(pg 194, S Talbott, 2007) but of our intelligence as with all other human made artifacts.

By keeping the computer within the context of "an expression of living beings" (pg 195, S Talbott, 2007) we can understand it as a now integral and vibrant part of human activity. Rather then trying to coax intelligence from the computer we can instead recognize that "the intelligence is really there, objectively,"(pg 194, S Talbott, 2007), in the artifact of the computer as much as "in the sound waves uttered from our larynxes, in the pages of the texts we write, in the structure and operation of a loom, automobile or computer." (pg 194, S Talbott, 2007)

The technology of networked computational power, of virtualized machines, of software, is a utility that has the potential to change our lives. It has appended our day to day with constant connectivity, information, a new paradigm for thinking, making and doing.

If we want to see an example of this utility being applied in a way that shifts our way of thinking about the materiality of identity in this appended virtual reality we can look at an example that Carr discusses in 'The big Switch,' that of the online game 'Second Life'.

"Second life is an example of utility service supplied over the internet and shared simultaneously by many people." (pg 114, N Carr, 2008) It is built 'on the fly' (or as required) by many networked machines rather then installed on players individual computers. An example of cloud computing all you need is an internet connection and Web browser to access the virtual environment.

The players inhabit and interact with others players in real time via Avatars that constitute their form in the space, much like in other massively multiplayer online games, such as World of Warcraft. However unlike World of Warcraft there are no rules and no winners or losers, it is simply a space that the players can do what they like via their avatars including write software programs that create new parts of the game. Second life is simply a service that is provided and consumed over the utility of the Internet, like an answer phone.

It therefore stands that virtual reality is, in part, the network. The network is the utility. So virtual reality is a utility? Or is it the creative artifact of a combined human expression?

Windows

Inside
Outside

I realize it takes away what mystery it had showing the both sides of the window. Imagine you can only see one or the other.

What the world really needs is windows that actually do this in our student flats, saves space and does away with the need to hang balloons on your letterbox to steer guests to right apartment.

Grazing

Sketching in my parents house.
Sketching at University.

Investing in objects

Sherry Turkle uses the terms 'instrumental technology' and 'subjective technology' in her authors lecture on her new book 'The Inner History of Devices' (2008) to discuss the relationship we have to objects. 'Instrumental technology' describes what the technology is used for and what it does for us. A cellphone in one instance is a device that allows us to contact other people by calling them.

'Subjective technology,' meanwhile, is the term used to describe what the technology does to us. How it might change our perception of ourselves and our idea of how we fit into our environment or community.

Turkle does not limit technology to objects like cellphones or computers, they might be spectacles, a pencil, a toy with a long colorful tail. However in Turkle's view they become an extension of self by understanding them as 'subjective technology's' rather then just an instrumental device.

As Sherrie Turkle comes from a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic tradition of thinking, it is worth clarifying a few more ideas. In her lecture Turkle unpacks what she understands an object to be, this is particularly relevant because she uses this term to define objects of technology.

Within a psychoanalytic/psychodynamic frame an 'object' is the word that psychoanalysts use to talk about people. We bring people to live inside us as people 'objects'. An agenda that Turkle has in this book is to elevate the study of object 'objects' to afford the same degree of nuance that is used in the critical discussion of people.

Though a personal investment into (or use of), an object the object becomes a technology that can be applied with the idea of having a subjective and and instrumental component to it. Turkle talks about a student she taught at MIT talking about her computer. "When you use a computer," the student is quoted as saying, "you put a little piece of your mind into the computers mind and you come to see it differently." (0.08.28 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/634).

The relationship of people to computers is a subject that Turkle has written a substantial amount on, her book 'Life on the Screen; Identity in the Age of the Internet' (1995) Turkle talks about the use of computers to communicate with other people, social networks, and the effect of virtual spaces on the connections between individuals and/or machines.

The way Turkle discusses the use of objects is interesting to me because of the way she understands the relationships between technology, objects and people. Objects of technology can be almost anything, so I can expand this to talk about conceptual objects.

By a conceptual object I am talking about a technology that can be activated through another technology, such as a computer or by using language. An avatar is a conceptual object, and object that is defined as something that represents or stands in for a user of a virtual space.

If we look at the way Turkle applies the terms 'subjective' and 'instrumental' to describe the relationship an object of technology to a person we can begin to unpack an Avatar in a slightly different way. Certainly an Avatar has an instrumental use, so it follows that this conceptual object must have a subjective effect also. And as an instrumental technology through our use of these objects it becomes something we invest ourselves into.

Scale to Fit.

Yesterday I spent some time drawing, I did this panorama a few days ago after a shoot during the weekend, but wanted to see how I was thinking about the form I had made. I am am now stuck on a (quite major) issue. The prints of the digital images I have recently finished very much reference the screen in a way that overwhelms the documentative elements of the performance or the contents of the drawing.

This screen reference is found in the way the image sits inside an A1 piece of paper, 'scaled to fit'. When I view the images on my computer while they are scaled to fit to the screen it does not seem quite as obvious here as it does as artifacts on paper. I was trying to figure out why this is so... On the computer there is the perceived ability to scale and interact with the image, however, on paper the image is locked into a relationship with the action of scaling to fit a standardised printer output.

My new studio space

I went to my studio space today and considered how I was going to approach removing a giant mural drawing done in some kind of thick water soluble ink. The theory was first sanding then washing, but halfway through sanding this thing off it became apparent that not only was it going to take forever but I was going to go through a number of expensive sanding heads. I was given a bucket of toxic smelling shellac based sealer/primer and told to paint over it and then follow with white paint.

The giraffe project

In my own practice I have taken to chanting out loud while working, "How does what I am doing apply itself to the materiality of identity in virtual space". Which has the very real side effect of making me look completely deranged. Mostly this is because my artwork seems to be about fluffy animal suits. "You're a furry!" my friend proclaimed after seeing a recent panorama work.

The animals came before I read 'The Human Zoo' by Desmond Morris. The author was recommended to me by my lecturer after seeing a presentation I did in July.
The Human Zoo is a bit dated now. It was published in 1969 and the copy I have feels like its turning 40. It claims to belong to the predecessor of Massey University and has a stamp in the front cover that tells me it was purchased for the Wellington Polytechnic Library on the 20th of August 1971.

Morris's key idea in this book is that the human animal or 'naked ape' evolved over many hundreds of thousands of years to suit an environment that was expansive and a culture that was tribal and isolated. A few thousand years pass, (which in this scale equates to the blink of an eye) and suddenly the human animal is living in built up urban environments.
Morris then seems to lurch a bit between the idea of the basic human animals instincts being reapplied to the 'concrete jungle' and the reapplication of the tribal behavior to a global tribe or "super-tribe" created by the shear mass of people living in small boxes stacked up like a zoo would have looked like in 1969.

"The comparison we must make is not between the city-dweller ad the wild animal, but between the city dweller and the captive animal. The modern human animal is no longer living in conditions natural for his species. Trapped, not by a zoo collector, but by his own brainy brilliance, he has set himself up in a huge restless menagerie where he is in constant danger of cracking under the strain." (D Morris. Page 9, 1969.)

In an attempt to reign in the chaos of having a tribe where you do not know every one's name, and to stop the fracture of a creature that needs to belong to a tribe Morris explains that we have created pseudo-tribes. Tribes that are composed of interest groups, people who have a common interest or purpose, social class, or local identity.

Interestingly Morris identifies television in his chapter on super-tribes as being the centre of a "great deal of debate" (D Morris, pg 36, 1969). When Morris was writing this book he observed that television was contracting the "social surface of the world," (D Morris, pg 36, 1969) and it was thought that this mass-communication technology was going to create a global community, a super tribe or global tribe.

"Unhappily this is a myth, for the single reason that television, unlike personal social intercourse, is a one way system. I can listen to and get to know a tele-speaker, but he cannot listen to and get to know me... it is no substitute for two way relationships of real social contacts." (D Morris, pg 36, 1969).

The Internet provides a mass-media two-way/many-way technology that Morris identified as lacking from television. Our identity is stretched into another space using another technology, but one that has the real ability to facilitate social interaction. A question I find myself pondering now is how we append this space to the menagerie that Desmond Morris identified 40 years ago. Is the Internet making us any more of a global society or simply helping us to identify with more specific pseudo-tribes?

Morris realised that human animals manage their identity with relationships to other human animals and therefore for any identity to exist in this technological augmentation it needs to be activated with two way conversation. The materiality of identity in virtual space is constructed with language, and with identifying with the community around it.

Perhaps a greater need to connect with the creatures in the boxes around me is driving my research, certainly Desmond Morris would have me believe we all live in a profoundly unnatural environment already. Our relationship to virtual reality may slot into our 'physical' reality with even more ease then I previously imagined.

Seeing the 'whole'.

A panorama is the result of stitching together separate images to make a single image. You can do this in a number of different ways and with a number of different software solutions, with varying degrees of success and ease. I was pointed to a video panorama the other day on facebook, but I have also seen panorama building applications that run on iphones in conjunction with the camera.

So why are we feeling more and more compelled to stitch photos? Do we expect a wider image or an interactive image now? My theory is that panorama is used as a method to create a connected vision but also to activate the concept of the ‘whole’. By seeing the 'whole' picture perhaps we can understand it better and re-examine the context that we locate ourselves within.

Some serious food for thought lies with the artistic collaboration Susan Wenyon and Micheal Gamble who use panorama (and holography) within the framework of cartography on several occasions.

When we construct a panorama what are we doing beyond uniting fragmented parts? Are we re-inserting ourselves into a space? Or are we making a new space? Or a bit of both? And why?

Critical Spacial Practice

I am fascinated by Proffesor Jane Rendell's approach to the activation of space in an artistic practice by translating a post‐structuralist approach to language. For my own investigation of virtual space and language I decided to separate out the terms virtual and space and define one and then the other. I follow with a quick summary of Rendell’s definition of critical spacial practice from her keynote at the one Day Sculpture Symposium earlier this year.


•Jane Rendell highlights the anthropologist Micheal de Certeau in the argument that “space is a practiced place”

•According to Ferdinand de Saussure and de Certeau language is made up of complex rules. The governing rules are called ‘langue’, while the act of actively engaging with these rules or ‘speaking’ is referred to as ‘parole’.

•Rendell considers that place is fixed and with the addition of practice, a temporary, conflicted, ensemble is constructed – space. Rendel considers space is a practiced place, and that space is activated by language.

Subjects of the Virtual

Our identity straddles many places, and many spaces.

“It is often difficult for the public to understand that all these acts are real - part of the artists life – and mimetic – having little to do with the conduct of that life outside of the aesthetic frame of art. In these ways performance has constrained mimeses, employing the interstitial continuum of the metonymical connection to deconstruct traditional metaphysical representation.” by Kristine Stiles on page 91 chapter 6 ‘Performance’ from Critical terms for art history; second edition. Ed. Robert, s, Nelson and Richard Shiff.

Mimeses as a concept applied to performance art holds true for the way we identify our actions in virtual spaces, especially if we look at digital or virtual space being an augmentation of real space.

An avatar is a form that digital identity takes; the avatar acts to represent or reproduce an active presence in a virtual space. In practice this ‘reproduction’ stands in for a user and represents their presence and participation in examples that range from virtual performance spaces or art spaces, to video games or social networking websites.