Face, Authenticity, Transformations and Aesthetics inSecond Life

Abstract

In such 3D virtual environments (3DVEs) as Second Life, one can 'be' re-created as avatar in whatever form one wants to be, facilitated by extensive beauty and cosmetic industries to help the residents of this world achieve a particular kind of glamorous image -limited only by their imaginations and Linden Dollar accounts. Yet, others in 3DVEs are working hard to re-create their avatars to be replicas of their 'offline' selves, appearing as they do in actuality. Such phenomena provide a rich opportunity to explore the cultural contexts of 'self-making', the process of 'becoming' and the transformative, often transgressive, processes of 'beauty practices' as bodily praxis and serious play. Drawing on their international ethnographic research undertaken in Second Life, the authors explore the phenomenon of image, affect, subjectivity and representation in this alternative arena. We focus specifically on three interrelated and paradoxical aspects of self-making in this 3D virtual world: first, the ways in which many of our respondents described their avatar personae as symbolically representing their 'authentic inner selves'; second, the ways our respondents used photography and video to verify and authenticate these 'inner selves', through capturing representations of their avatar bodies in action; and, third, the ways 'authenticity', for many of our respondents, depended on their avatar image aligning as closely as possible with their bodily appearance off-screen. The concept of what residents of Second Life understand as constituting the 'authentic inner self' both in and outside of the virtual world becomes particularly pertinent here.The body is in the social world but the social world is in the body. (Bourdieu, 1990: 190) With good reason postmodernism has relentlessly instructed us that reality is artifice yet, so it seems to me, not enough surprise has been expressed as to how we nevertheless get on with living, pretendingthanks to the mimetic faculty -that we live facts not fictions. (Taussig, 1993: xv).

Visualising disability and activism in Second Life

“…3. Bloustien and Wood were the two chief investigators of the project (see Bloustien and Wood, 2013). This article builds on and extends several of our earlier research and publications as noted in the text and references.…”

Customizing Your Demons: Anxiety Reduction via Anthropomorphizing and Destroying an “Anxiety Avatar”

“…Qualitative research suggests that individuals use customization interfaces to circumvent the normative tendency to build the ideal virtual self, opting instead to imbue avatars with less socially desirable self-concepts. For instance, Bloustien and Wood (2013) found that users of SL often imbue their avatars with physical disabilities as exhibited by use of virtual wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs. Ultimately, this use of avatar customization raises a unique series of questions: if humans benefit from imbuing avatars with qualities related to their physical disorders, can the same be said for mental health-related disorders?…”

“…Users of popular VEs such as Second Life (SL) are increasingly creating avatars that convey less desirable, but no less integral, self-concepts ( Stewart et al, 2010 ). For example, Bloustien and Wood (2013 , 2016) recent work identified a growing segment of SL users creating avatars that exhibit their physical disabilities (i.e., avatars representing the disabled self-concept). Where creating an avatar representing the disabled self can be beneficial to the user by fostering self-worth (see Dunn and Burcaw, 2013 for a review of disability identity), the implications of creating an avatar rooted in undesirable, mental health-related self-concepts (e.g., anxiety) remain ambiguous.…”

Performing selves: The trope of authenticity and Robert Wilson's stage production ofI La Galigo

“…Moreover, in a regional/local respect, Michael Bodden's work on identity and theatre in South Sulawesi shows how 'regional cultural identity is part of a process of the changing relations between centre and region within a national culture, and is also intertwined with the relationship of regional cultural workers to their local audiences as well as to each other'. 99 This 'doubleness' of identity politics, that is, the desire to 'claim a particular, distinctive identity while at the same time wishing to critique and relinquish any claims to a fixed, stable notion of self', 100 fosters insight into the competing paradoxes of contemporary identity formation.…”