Botgirl Questi announced that a new virtual art exhibit, the Caerleon Museum of Identity, will be opening on Saturday, October 2, at 12:00. (Her press release was not specific, but I would assume that this is SLT.) The announcement included a video clip:
You can read the full text of the press release at Botgirl’s blog. With 18 artists represented in the exhibit, which will run through October, it promises to be a thought-provoking museum.
I say this because this exhibit goes to the point of one of the things that provokes discussion among people “living” and working in virtual worlds: when we’re looking at an avatar, is that someone’s real identity there? The anonymity of an avatar gives people wonderful flexibility — with this creation of bytes and pixels, we can be who we want to be, not what we really are. For some, it’s wonderfully liberating; for others, it allows them to conceal aspects of themselves they’d prefer not to show. But for all of us, we have to confront the question at least once: is this what the person behind the other computer is really like?
Most of us play various roles in our RL day as it is, usually linked to our interactions with those around us. We have one face for the customer in our store; another, a presumably looser version, for the co-workers when we’re in a private moment on the floor or in the back room. Friends outside of work may see yet another, at a sports game or club-hopping. Even our interaction with some family and relations, if not all of them, can be a form of role-play; we have favorite grandparents we love to visit, or abysmal aunts we wish would never stop by, and we either display our feelings, or conceal them as deeply as we can out of politeness’ sake.
But what happens when all of the cues built by society and the knowledge base of personal, direct interaction in a meeting are made invisible and irrelevant?
In Second Life, we only have what the person is showing us with words on a screen, or perhaps a voice; and, of course, the appearance they choose to build for themselves out of pixels and prims. For all we know, the rampaging extrovert with chopped, grungy hair, greasy leather clothes and piercings in places never dreamed of, might be in RL a dramatically shy wallflower with clean, tied-back hair, an ultraconservative wardrobe, and never even piercings for earrings. Indeed, they might not even be the sex they’re portraying themselves as. And then,of course, there are the furries, dragons, fae and aliens teleporting all over the place. One of my favorite avatars from my days at the Blarney Stone was a blue fox. That surely wasn’t what the person was in real life!
You may want to check out this exhibit while it’s open. Hang around for a while and meditate on the studies; see what these artists’ thoughts evoke in you. I haven’t seen this yet, though I may attend the bloggers’ preview on Friday. But my experience and training tell me that the best art make you think, opens up your senses to a new reality, or a new take on reality. This virtual world we love and deal in is a reality in itself that needs new thoughts, new philosophers to work out its parameters. Perhaps the Caerleon Museum may begin the walk toward such an exploration.
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