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Meta_Body — virtual corporality as a shared creative process
Abstract
This chapter discusses the Meta_Body participatory art project. Initiated in a collaborative virtual environment and in a “real life” art exhibition, it now continues in the metaverse creative flux.
Meta_Body focuses on two aspects: first, the avatar as body/language, open to experimentation and potency; second, avatar building as a shared creative process and as aesthetical experience.
Through the practice of avatar creation, distribution, embodiment and transformation, the artists aim to understand the processes of virtual corporeality constitution: to question the role of the body in virtual environment, its importance in engaging with the world and in self-expression, and explore its metaphorical aspects.
The method used to implement this project is a shared creative process, in which multiple subjects come to be authors along different phases of the project. Through the embodiment and transformation of avatars, the artwork’s aesthetical experience becomes a creative process.
http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/metabody/132423
... A dimensão lúdica do ato criativo, característica relativamente comum à generalidade dos processos artísticos, é ainda mais prevalente em ambientes virtuais colaborativos criativos (3). Esta dimensão lúdica estende-se aqui à fruição, contribuindo para a transformação tendencial da experiência estética da obra num ato criativo (4). ...
... À data de redação, visualmente, Radiola é uma imensa paisagem povoada por gigantes e pequenos seres surreais, com um ambiente climático nebuloso, que diminui drasticamente a saturação das cores com a profundidade de campo. 4 O OpenSimulator é uma plataforma de código aberto para implementar servidores de aplicações 3D multi-plataforma e multi-utilizador (26). Cada rede construída a partir deste código é uma Grid, um mundo virtual, grande ou pequeno, aberto ou não a utilizadores externos (27). ...
Os mundos virtuais são um meio de crescente relevância. Oferecem possibilidades únicas para criação e interação, sendo por isso objeto de utilização e investigação em numerosas áreas. Este artigo estuda a prática artística em mundos virtuais. Através da discussão de projetos artísticos selecionados pela sua abrangência e pertinência, são definidas tipologias de arte em mundos virtuais. Estas tipologias identificam um conjunto de funcionalidades indispensáveis à realização desses projetos, que no seu conjunto, evidenciam as três affordances fundamentais para o conceito de Ambiente Virtual Colaborativo Criativo: criação, colaboração e distribuição. Definindo as fundações necessárias a uma plataforma criativa, aberta à colaboração e partilha, este estudo contribui para o futuro de mundos virtuais enquanto local para a co-criação de conteúdo e significado, por comunidades artísticas e pelo público geral.
... A produção de conteúdo no SL e no OS é quase totalmente dependente dos utilizadores, o que permite uma situação especial -cada utilizador pode ser o designer de si próprio. A construção do avatar do SL e do OS é sempre um processo criativo partilhado, a forma como a corporalidade virtual é constituída neste ambiente é muitas vezes o resultado de uma autoria distribuída e, portanto, um processo criativo partilhado, como analisado em estudos anteriores [13]. ...
Este estudo analisa a utilização de avatares em ambiente mediado, em particular o seu contributo para a produção de uma corporeidade virtual. A pesquisa foca-se na experiência de incorporação em ambientes virtuais multiutilizador de vertente social e nas capacidades demonstradas pelos avatares neste contexto. O avatar apresenta-se como o signo visível de um corpo distribuído, que se produz na conjunção do utilizador, do código e do hardware.
... The method used to implement this project is therefore a shared creative process in which multiple subjects can be regarded as authors along different phases of the project and where some of these individuals can switch between users and producers of materials distributed, making them also produsers (Bruns 2007).We present here three different approaches to the concept of shared creativity: the first, collective creation, is the process used by Meilo Minotaur and me in the construction of the avatars and virtual installations, a cell group acting as a single author in a very intimate form of creative process; the second, distributed creation, is how derivative work was created using the first set of avatars to build further elements which in turn fueled a reserve of materials available for the realisation of new creations; and the third, collaborative creation, a process in which each artist retains her personal mark in a creative dialogue with othersas was the case with Takio Ra (Luís Eustáquio), who contributed to the project by creating "soundscapes" 27 for the virtual installations, as we shall see below (Sousa 213;2014a;2014b;2015a;2015b). ...
The aim of this study is to understand how a shared creative process of construction of virtual corporeality in collaborative virtual environments becomes an aesthetic experience. The research is divided into two main but correlated themes: virtual corporeality and shared creativity. It is my purpose to find the relationship between the constitution of a virtual corporeality and the new processes of creative sharing and creation in collaborative virtual environments. I also aim to relate these two aspects to the new forms of aesthetic experience emerging from these virtual contexts.
Meta_Body is the main practical artwork that sustains this investigation, an ongoing project since 2011. This is a participatory art project. Initiated in Second Life and in a tangible art exhibition (All My Independent Women 6th edition, at Vienna), it now continues in the collaborative virtual environment’s creative flux. Meta_Body focuses on two aspects: first, the avatar as expressive body, open to experimentation and potency; second, avatar building as a shared creative process and as aesthetical experience. Through the practice of avatar creation, distribution, embodiment and transformation, I aim to understand the processes of virtual corporeality constitution. I interrogate the role of the body in the virtual environment, its importance in engaging with the world and in self-expression, exploring its metaphorical aspects. The method used to implement this project is a shared creative process, in which multiple subjects come to be authors along different phases of the project. Through the embodiment and transformation of avatars, the artwork’s aesthetical experience becomes itself a creative process. This research is therefore grounded on an art-based and project-based methodology, whose results can be seen not only in this written thesis, but also in the artworks themselves, and their derivatives.
I accomplished my intended goals and came to a new understanding of virtual corporeality and its connection to shared creativity and aesthetical experience. I believe this work to be an important starting point for new investigations that will arise with the new turn to virtual reality.
The experience of the body in the Metaverse is not always an experience of the flesh, at least regarding the avatar. Even though virtual experiences can trigger a physical dimension of the senses, these sensations are lived by the body in front of the screen, rather than by the avatar’s body, which may function as an expressive element. The avatar may be crucial in communicating with others (as language) and play a role in the users’ access and interaction with the virtual world (as experience). A tension between language and experience opens up a new and fundamental aesthetic territory in the avatar, demanding a reconfiguration of concepts and processes involved in its creation and embodiment. This article aims to explore how virtual corporeality may emerge from this tension in the manipulation of avatars in Creative Collaborative Virtual Environments (CCVE), what affordances enable this emergence and how it impacts aesthetic and creative experience.
A 2013 UK study forecasting how our identities will change in the following decade noted that until now, a kind of inner narrative has provided individuals with an ongoing subjective, internal commentary, but through the growth of online social media, identity is “no longer an internal, subjective experience, but is constructed externally and therefore is much less robust and more volatile” ( Foresight, 2013 ). Arguing from the fields of literature and feminist science studies, Susan Merrill Squier observes that “no longer stable, the boundaries of our human existence have become imprecise at best, contested at worst” ( Squier, 2004, p. 7 ). This chapter concerns itself with digital embodiment and the construction of the self as avatar, and the ways in which contemporary arts practices are emerging through the exploration of digitally constructed realities on new technological platforms. This chapter argues that access to the experience of digitally constructed realities enables us reflect upon how our own privately constructed realities are also created and allows us to shed light on the distinctions between fiction and reality.
This article is a reflection on the Kromosomer project, a storytelling performance held in both
physical and virtual worlds, which was implemented and disseminated through digital, virtual and social
media. The aim of the whole project was to search for an expression that could combine physical
experience with virtual world. The project was also looking at how to deal with social inclusion. The
motto for this enterprise was the traditional Norwegian legend characters who represent “the other,” the
“not-normal,” as a pretext to address the question of alterity. These legends’ characters were re-created
as avatars in the metaverse, where they were also freely distributed in virtual installations as unfinished
artifacts, open to mutation. In the Second Life virtual world, participants could pick up avatars and
create their own stories through snapshots, machinima, etc. The physical performance later used these
participants/produsers’ interpretations and narratives of the avatars in stage design and in the storytelling
performance itself. We describe and analyse the main work method used for this project — a shared
creative process of collective and distributed creativity. The project encompasses different forms of
expression therefore we will also focus on how metaphors constitute themselves as paramount to our
way of working.
In this article, the authors consider emerging consumer practices in digital virtual spaces. Building on constructions of consumer behavior as both a sense-making activity and a resource for the construction of daydreams, as well as anthropological readings of performance, the authors speculate that many performances during digital play are products of consumer fantasy. The authors develop an interpretation of the relationship between the real and the virtual that is better equipped to understand the movement between consumer daydreams and those practices actualized in the material and now also in digital virtual reality. The authors argue that digital virtual performances present opportunities for liminoid transformations through inversions, speculations, and playfulness acted out in aesthetic dramas. To illustrate, the authors consider specific examples of the theatrical productions available to consumers in digital spaces, highlighting the consumer imagination that feeds them, the performances they produce, and the potential for transformation in consumer-players.
Virtual environments allow individuals to dramatically alter their self-representation. More important, studies have shown that people infer their expected behaviors and attitudes from observing their avatar's appearance, a phenomenon known as the Proteus effect. For example, users given taller avatars negotiated more aggressively than users given shorter avatars. Two studies are reported here that extend our understanding of this effect. The first study extends the work beyond laboratory settings to an actual online community. It was found that both the height and attractiveness of an avatar in an online game were significant predictors of the player's performance. In the second study, it was found that the behavioral changes stemming from the virtual environment transferred to subsequent face-to-face interactions. Participants were placed in an immersive virtual environment and were given either shorter or taller avatars. They then interacted with a confederate for about 15 minutes. In addition to causing a behavioral difference within the virtual environment, the authors found that participants given taller avatars negotiated more aggressively in subsequent face-to-face interactions than participants given shorter avatars. Together, these two studies show that our virtual bodies can change how we interact with others in actual avatar-based online communities as well as in subsequent face-to-face interactions.
In this study, the role of presence in the imitation of a virtual model was examined. Immersive virtual environment technology (IVET) was used to create photorealistic virtual representations of the self that were depicted eating food in a virtual world. Changes in the virtual environment (via a changing or unchanging body) were incorporated to create variance in perceived subjective presence. Based on previous research, presence was hypothesized to affect the relationship between the environmental manipulations and the behavioral outcome of imitating the avatar's eating behavior. Here we show that presence did indeed affect imitation, but that the effects varied for men and women in accordance with previous research on sex differences in eating behavior. Men who experienced high presence were more likely than low presence men to imitate the virtual model and eat candy, whereas women who experienced high presence were more likely than low presence women to suppress the behavior and not eat candy.
Pierre Levy takes a fresh look at the whole idea of what is virtual. He's responding to the widespread belief, and sometimes even panic, that a digital society with emphasis on virtual interactions is necessarily depersonalizing. He takes particular exception to the notion that "virtual" and "real" are opposites. Instead, Levy argues that virtuality is one of four modes of existence, the rest of which he describes as reality, possibility, and actuality. Each is defined in terms of its relationship with its environment. In following Levy's world view, you may find that he interprets some or all of those terms in ways you're not used to, but the result is an interesting new approach to what it means to be part of an increasingly digital world. He examines the virtualization of several elements our society: the corporal body, text, the economy, language, technology, contracts, intelligence, subjects, and objects. What he finds is not a destruction of the personal so much as a transformation. Virtualization adds to, but does not replace, the real, the possible, and the actual. By understanding what virtualization means and involves, Levy believes that society will gain a greater variety of options for interaction in all areas. Becoming Virtual is a serious philosophical work, dense with ideas.
This article focuses on the collaborative work of the artists CapCat Ragu and Meilo Minotaur in Metaverse environments. The aim is to describe and analyse their cooperative creative process from the perspective of one of the artists/authors, walking through three artistic works that were made in the Second Life® region of Delicatessen: ‘de Maria, de Mariana, de Madalena …’, ‘Petrified’ and ‘Meta_Body’. These projects reflect two aspects of the artists’ work – on the one hand avatar art, and on the other the creation of virtual environments. The text also reflects on the concept of shared creativity, which the artists propose through their avatar creations.
O steampunk caracteriza-se como uma cultura urbana juvenil que ressignifica os costumes Vitorianos, permeando-os com discursos tecnologicos e futuristas. A partir dos pressupostos dos Estudos da Cultura Visual, a intencao deste artigo e apontar algumas caracteristicas da proposta retrofuturista do grupo, argumentando como o steampunk propoe uma visao de mundo peculiar e critica. Tambem serao apontadas consideracoes sobre as influencias da cultura da midia nesse processo.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson take on the daunting task of rebuilding Western philosophy in alignment with three fundamental lessons from cognitive science: The mind is inherently embodied, thought is mostly unconscious, and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Why so daunting? "Cognitive science--the empirical study of the mind--calls upon us to create a new, empirically responsible philosophy, a philosophy consistent with empirical discoveries about the nature of mind," they write. "A serious appreciation of cognitive science requires us to rethink philosophy from the beginning, in a way that would put it more in touch with the reality of how we think." In other words, no Platonic forms, no Cartesian mind-body duality, no Kantian pure logic. Even Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics is revealed under scrutiny to have substantial problems.
Parts of Philosophy in the Flesh retrace the ground covered in the authors' earlier Metaphors We Live By , which revealed how we deal with abstract concepts through metaphor. (The previous sentence, for example, relies on the metaphors "Knowledge is a place" and "Knowing is seeing" to make its point.) Here they reveal the metaphorical underpinnings of basic philosophical concepts like time, causality--even morality--demonstrating how these metaphors are rooted in our embodied experiences. They repropose philosophy as an attempt to perfect such conceptual metaphors so that we can understand how our thought processes shape our experience; they even make a tentative effort toward rescuing spirituality from the heavy blows dealt by the disproving of the disembodied mind or "soul" by reimagining "transcendence" as "imaginative empathetic projection." Their source list is helpfully arranged by subject matter, making it easier to follow up on their citations. If you enjoyed the mental workout from Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works , Lakoff and Johnson will, to pursue the "Learning is exercise" metaphor, take you to the next level of training. --Ron Hogan Two leading thinkers offer a blueprint for a new philosophy.
"Their ambition is massive, their argument important.…The authors engage in a sort of metaphorical genome project, attempting to delineate the genetic code of human thought." -The New York Times Book Review
"This book will be an instant academic best-seller." -Mark Turner, University of Maryland
This is philosophy as it has never been seen before. Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of the mind offers a radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self; then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytical philosophy.
Review of: Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship by Claire Bishop
In this work ,we focus ,on demonstrating, a real ,time communication interface which enhances text communication by detecting from real time typed text, the extracted emotions, and displaying on the screen appropriate facial expression images ,in real time. The displayed expressions are represented in terms of expressive ,images ,or sketches of ,the communicating ,persons. This interface makes ,use of a ,developed ,real time ,emotion ,extraction engine from text. The emotion extraction engine and extraction rules are discussed together with a description of the interface, its limits and future direction of such interface. The extracted emotions are mapped into displayed facial expressions. Such interface can be used ,as a ,platform ,for a number ,of future ,CMC experiments. The developed ,online communication ,interface brings together remotely located collaborating parties in a ,shared electronic space for their communication. In its current state the interface allows the participant to see at a glance,all other online participants and ,all those who ,are engaged ,in communications.,An important ,aspect of the ,interface is that for two users engaged in communication, the interface locally extracts emotional states from the content of typed ,textual sentences automatically. Subsequently it displays discrete expressions mapped,from extracted emotions to the remote screen of the other person. It also analyses/extracts the ,intensity/duration of ,the emotional
Presence research may have inherited what is labeled the two pole model of presence from its origins in telerobotics and telepresence research. A logical engineering model that saw presence as only moving between physical and virtual space became a psychological model of presence shifts. Psychological theories based on the two pole model have been troubled by an inability to resolve theoretical and observational inconsistencies such as those labeled the book problem, the physical reality problem, and the dream state problem. It is suggested that these problems are just three faces of one problem: the failure of the two pole model to adequately incorporate the roles of mental imagery and spatial attention in driving presence. An outline of the Three Pole Model of Presence is introduced. Once a third pole, mental imagery space, is added, it appears that the book, physical reality, and dream state problems may be just different situations involving shifts of presence to mental imagery space and a withdrawal of attention from sensorimotor stimuli. Compared to the standard two pole models, the Three Pole Model appears better able to resolve the logical and observational challenges summarized in the book, physical reality, and dream state problems.
The phenomenon of virtual worlds is changing how humans behave and make sense of the world. Working within the paradigm that
all human experience is incarnate, this chapter investigates how the processes of inworld identity construction occur within
and in relation to the user’s body. Ninoo Nansen, my avatar, is the catalyst for this inquiry. Referring to past ethnographic
research in Second LifeTM and drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (The Phenomenology of Perception. In: C. Smith (Trans.). Routledge, London (Original work
published in 1945.)) and Sartre’s (1968) theories, I utilise phenomenological analysis to interpret the data. This analysis
reveals the intentional structure within which identity is formed in the virtual world, differing from how it emerges in the
physical world. I initially analyse how a unified, phenomenal I – from which the world is perceived – is formed from the interaction
between the user and avatar during the experience of Second Life. I then consider how the encounter with the Other in Second
Life modified the pre-virtual and inworld identities.
The culture of mashups examined by the contributions collected in this volume is a symptom of a wider paradigm shift in our
engagement with information — a term that should be understood here in its broadest sense, ranging from factual material to
creative works. It is a shift that has been a long time coming and has had many precedents, from the collage art of the Dadaists
in the 1920’s to the music mixtapes of the 70’s and 80’s, and finally to the explosion of mashup-style practices that was
enabled by modern computing technologies.
StudyW Academ Excellen Award Collab-U CMC Play E-Commerce Symposium Net Law InfoSpaces Usenet NetStudy VEs
Long before Time recognised them as 'person of the year' for 2006, Trendwatching.com described "Generation C" (2005) as interested more in open collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and information than in personal advancement. Generation C drives phenomena from filesharing through blogging to Wikipedia, undermining industrial-age modes of production, distribution, and consumption and replacing them with the hybrid model of produsage (Bruns 2006), where users are producers and usage is almost always already inherently productive in its own right. This paper will outline the processes and implications of a paradigm shift from industrial production to informational produsage, with a particular focus on its potential effects on the democratic process.
Reports of phantom limbs amongst aplasics (i.e., subjects who congenitally lack one or several limbs) have often been presented as evidence that body image is 'hard-wired' in the brain and that neither sensory input nor proprioceptive feedback are essential to its formation. Although attempts have been made to account for these phantoms by other means, these have been on a case by case basis and no satisfactory alternative framework has been proposed. This paper collates the accounts of aplasic phantoms and presents them as compatible with a four-part hypothesis, in which body image is learnt from experience during both pre- and post-natal development, and in which cross-cortical connections and mirror neurons play prominent roles. This model unites several previously disparate theories to offer a viable solution to several longstanding phantom limb mysteries and serves to highlight avenues worthy of further inquiry.
Virtual reality (VR) is typically defined in terms of technological hardware. This paper attempts to cast a new, variable-based definition of virtual reality that can be used to classify virtual reality in relation to other media. The defintion of virtual reality is based on concepts of "presence" and "telepresence," which refer to the sense of being in an environment, generated by natural or mediated means, respectively. Two technological dimensions that contribute to telepresence, vividness and interactivity, are discussed. A variety of media are classified according to these dimensions. Suggestions are made for the application of the new definition of virtual reality within the field of communication research. s t ) - r technologies social responses to communication c SRCT Paper #104 Page 3 Jonathan Steuer Defining VR: Dimensions Determining Telepresence Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence Virtual reality (VR) has typically been portrayed as a medium, l...
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