To continue the emphasis on Nature and embodiment, Beeble has a new look called "Beeble Earth" - a mix of topsoil and hanging moss. Beeble Raccoon is still with us, but taking a much needed vacation: he's exhausted from all the teasing he got for being a furry!
I plan to continue my interviews and hope my new look won't be as much of a distraction as a six-foot raccoon. I suppose I could choose a more "normal" look, but why do that when it's so easy to make up something new and change it from time to time?
One of the SL residents Beeble Raccoon interviewed is Kyo Runo, an 18 year old woman from the UK who changed her avatar image constantly as I struggled to keep up with her. Her inventory of looks and skill at change-on-the-fly changes was amazing to watch - not to mention embarrassing for an avatar who still has trouble moving digitally!
Beeble may never become so adept, but it looks like there will be new looks to come!
If you've read these few posts, you'll know that their scarcity is due partly to my disinterest in digital life, but in a fascinating technological irony, the 500-year old technology of the BOOK boomeranged me right back into SL with renewed enthusiasm. (so is that book a traitor to its specific medium?) The book that betrayed the others is second life: the official guide.
Yesterday i, uh, my creator...
(Beeble speaking here of his biological maker, one of many (i's) eyes)
or should i say I? - Beeble has tried to distinguish himself with the lower-case first-person. This identity stuff is endless...of course playing with identity didn't start in Second Life, nor with the book, but waaay back in shamanic history, identity shift was/is a regular practice.
So, nothing shamanic or anything, but i will be Beeble, and I will be his creator.
(and perhaps this "I' should be expressed in bold italics, for emphatic embodiment - 'emphatic' deriving from 'to show' or 'to appear')
got that?
(yesterday, I attended a UR Learning 2007 teaching & technology conference, and my colleague, known as Ignatius Onomatopoeia in SL, was showing his hilarious but informative video of his SL explorations so far. I'll try to get a link to it. It's worth seeing just for the scenes of him dancing in a gorilla suit!
And so the question arises, arose during the demonstration, what's the academic value? How do we apply this in the classroom? Hmmm....how indeed! I'm sure the same questions were asked of the BOOK once too!
The keynote speaker for the mini-conference was Dr. Phil Long of MIT's Office of Educational Innovation and Technology - I like the order of those words because it places the priority on education, not technology and it leads with educators. In his talk, he inadvertently affirmed educational and design principles that were articulated by transcendentalists like Emerson and Peabody and utopians like Fourier and in more modern novels like Gilman's Herland, Skinner's Walden Two, Callenbach's Ecotopia or Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time.
Modern studies are confirming what our elders knew: learning behaviors, patterns and spaces should have some freedom to form their natural shape based on student interest and engagement. Learning should involve the body and real-world experiments. Learning should be diverse in content and approach, and face-to-face human interaction is an essential part of the process of learning.
The specific educational/intellecutal value of SL is primarily its invitation to creativity and "world building" as Iggy puts it. One thing many teachers have noticed of students is the waning of creative thinking and SL has many tools to spark this. Beyond that however is the intellectual value of critical discussion of this world as it evolves, as we are changed by it as we create it. Old forms of social interaction are morphing, mutating into something else...no doubt both good and bad.
SL can facilitate inter-cultural exchange as can be experienced with Iggy's new hillbilly friend "Pappy Enoch" known for his famous cry: Wee Doggies!
OR it can be a bit more sober like the Student Symposium work on display at the UR Tower.
Using SL in class, Teachers would be free to create any kind of classroom, demonstration, image, multimedia exhibit, tour, interactive space...whatever they wanted and could afford, but it can be used for free.
The Basic membership is free and you can play for years if you're not digitally materialistic (oxymoronic?) but with a Premium membership, for only a few dollars you can have access to tremendously powerful digital creation tools. And if your school won't support your work by buying real estate or building an island, you can always meet at public spaces with your students or tour the vastness of Second Life - more than likely there will be a group, exhibit or place that matches with your particular discipline. )
so, to boomerang full circle, beware the book!
(it ain't going anywhere, but there's no tellin' where one'll point you)
Oh where to start? First, and perhaps most relevant, is my identity as an academic who is exploring SL for research and pedagogical purposes. Since this is the primary motivation for my interaction here, at least i have one stable point of reference (i think).
In my doctoral studies, i've been fascinated by the hype of the cybervangelists who endlessly extol the virtues of digital existence and disparage physicality, referring to our biological lives as "the meat world." My own preference and perspective is that, while digitality is fun & can teach us, BIOLOGY is our unrecognized power and ultimate reality. None of this fantastic technology would even exist (much less persist) if it weren't for the biology that created and maintains it.
Since i feel such a strong connection to the cycles of my body and Nature, when creating my avatar i chose the closest thing to a dog that I could find. Dogs seem to me a good representation of earthiness (they give birth anywhere, lick themselves, smell each other) not so much a prescription for behavior i recommend. i look a bit more cartoon-like than i was hoping, but then everybody does here.
I suppose the word "avatar" is an oddly apt term since it derives from Hindu mythology and refers to the descent of a god into the material world. But the term is also completely inappropriate since, in terms of technology, WE are the gods and when we make an avatar we DE-materialize ourselves in a way. Or perhaps an avatar is simply a technologically enhanced version of the childhood friend....or spirit guide.
My friend Ignatius Onomatopoea has been teasing me that i'm a 'furry' or a 'fuzzy' but my purpose in maintaining this particular look is purposeful both for the expression of our connection to the Earth and an invitation to reflect upon and discuss the nexus of image and identity. For example, when Iggy was creating himself, he wished to represent himself as close to his biology as possible but the program didn't have options for gray hair or baldness!
What might this imply? Remember the rejection of biology and the horror of aging present in Brave New World? Does some of the cyber-hype and particularly the disparagement of the body reveal a similarly neurotic fear of aging and death?
Is it possible to arrive at a place in the mind where THE BODY IS NOT THE ENEMY or the traitor to OUR EGOS but rather the wise teacher born from millions of years of field testing and development? i think so. This is my personal goal.
My SL identity crisis is dawning not because of my loss of faith in my body, but because of the connotations of the image i have chosen! From Iggy's teasing, to a chance interview with an SL Designer, to conversations with a veteran gamer, i have learned that the 'fuzzy' or 'furry' is a category of avatar that existed before SL and which is associated with sensuality, particularly 'kinky' sex - whatever that means! How can you have sex without a body?
So, what do i do? Surrender my avatar because of digital prejudice? But is it prejudice or a self-designation by the players? By choosing it i tapped correctly into the embodied sensual that i want to emphasize without understanding its previous and wider connotations.
In some way, this confusion is perfect. Beeble is here to explore & learn, but also to remind and to celebrate the world of the flesh, of embodied experience so he would definitely NOT identify with avatars who find satisfaction in any kind cyber-sex which is not and can never be true sex at all. It's just like my take on cyber-rape: there has to be physical proximity and contact for the term to have any useful meaning - for me at least. Y'all can go play with your keyboards if you like.
These associations, biases or readings' of my avatar, or of the basic ICON behind it will prove to be an interesting filter in my attempts to interview people in SL.
more to come....
