SLCC Abstract
During the SecondLife Community Conference in August, there will be a day long education summit with panels, roundtable discussions and poster displays. This is the abstract I submitted. Feel free to comment.
“Image Slippage”: Navigating the Dichotomies of an Academic Identity in a Nonacademic Virtual World
In a sense, all residents of SecondLife are performers. Whether performing the role of a fashion designer, a social diva, or a business owner, an avatar’s identity strongly relies on the performance of that role within the environment. What happens when the role you choose to play is that of educator? What kinds of inner chaos occur when your SecondLife role and your first life role converge, meet, or clash? In this presentation I will explore the areas of conflict and ambiguity that arise from performing the role of educator in SecondLife. Using examples from SecondLife educators and my own experiences I will first establish the kinds of ambiguities encounter in the environment. Next, building on these stories, I will introduce theories of identity from Jacques Lacan and Kenneth Burke to explore the meanings of the situations and experiences that result in “Image Slippage” (when either our real life selves take over our SecondLife performances or when one identity/image conflicts with the other). I’ll end the presentation by exploring approaches to these moments of “Image Slippage” that may make performing the role of educator more exciting as we learn to “embrace the slippage.”
July 9th, 2006 at 7:36 am
This is really interesting - please let me know as your research goes on about this topic. I think the simple act of taking on a new role in SL is much closer to what is truly interesting in performance art (as we were talking about) than trying to do something more “exotic” or knowingly performing to an audience.
Martha Wilson, owner/director of Franklin Furnace (long one of the most influential performance art spaces in the US) has a quote about what performance art is. I won’t try to quote it exactly, but it is to the effect of - there is broadway, there is off-broadway, there is off-off-broadway, and then there’s performance art; PA is the term reserved for performances that cannot be placed into any of the other categories. It’s a sloppy definition, but it actually makes sense - we all know a Broadway play when we see it, but how do we know if we’re seeing performance art?
We don’t, and that’s actually the power and most interesting thing about it. You see something strange (or perhaps banal) and it might be art, it might not be. It makes you question what is real in the world around you and what is “just” art. And how is a performance any less real - to the performer or the audience - than something not performed? Or more real?
Oh, I could go on and on. But I’ve terrorized your blog enough!