the fantasy of the ultimate display and the promises of monsters: avatars and cyborg friendship

7/28/2019 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

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the fantasy of the ultimate display and the promises of monsters: avatars and cyborg friendship

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