Friday 15 August 2008

Identity, gender and death

We make money not art has an interesting piece about the work of Marc Owens, including a description of a RL virtual transgender suit and an facility known as Second Death which will terminate your avatar after a random amount of time in-world (terminate as in permanently delete the account).

The first would probably go down a storm at SLCC?

The second is quite interesting. One might say, I suppose, that our avatars die when we do, or when the virtual world(s) in which they are manifested die (whichever comes first)? As I've argued before, I think the personas we see in our avatars are bigger than a particular avatar in a particular virtual world and I'm not sure I have a particular desire to feel virtual grief in the way described here anyway. But it's an interesting project nonetheless.

3 comments:

Art Fossett said...

"One might say, I suppose, that our avatars die when we do, or when the virtual world(s) in which they are manifested die (whichever comes first)?"...

... or when we get bored of them of course!

GoSpeed Racer said...

My Avatar wants to live on and on....

http://gospeedracer.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/virtually-forever/

Moggs Tigerpaw said...

I guess I would be no more keen on being randomly terminated in SL that I like the idea in RL.