'In the Company of Strangers'

Wednesday, 23 December 2009

(MUVE) Avatar - A New Companion Species? A Study of Privileging Human Companionship mediated through Spatial Reflexivity

Many thanks to all my camp-followers who have kept in touch through this Masters study. This last three years of work has been fascinating and engaging for me. I trust that certain aspects may have been interesting for you too. Clearly, there is much more to be done in many of the areas covered tentatively by my research-practice. At present, I am preparing application for a PhD proposal in new media and performance. I have found the generation and maintenance of my concepts and research incredibly useful in the form of an online blog, so (if my application is successful) I will be creating another one for my PhD research-practice. Please stay in touch and I will provide the address for the new blog in the New Year 2010.

Below are preliminary thoughts on concepts and content for my further research. The title is above:

This research will attempt to investigate and extend definitions of the notion of Companionship:
1) Companionship existing as a habitable place comprised of a number of properties; physical, spatial, anticipatory, psycho-emotional, telepresent, liminal. Companionship is a space, one among others, contained within the description of humans as 'mobile volumes' susceptible to, informed and mediated by both 'real' and virtual properties which impinge upon us as we inhabit our respective world locations. (Roger Caillois and Mimesis; Grosz, E. (1999). Space, Time and Bodies in Wolmark).

2) How can Avatars define spaces of opportunity in the field of human engagement?
Enquiry will be conducted into why and how for some, MUVE Avatars may enjoy the privileged status of 'Human Companion' afforded to pets such as dogs and cats; apes (particularly the Bonobo ape), cetaceans, (Dr Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the late Twentieth Century in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature and her more recent publication, When Species Meet) family, friends, imaginary friends, partners.

Key Questions:
Might Avatars be a New Companion Species? Why? How might this be defined? How might this be validated/quantified?

Why are MUVE Avatars currently relevant?

'IN THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS'

Abstract Title:
In the Company of Strangers - Negotiating the parameters of Indeterminacy; a study of the Roaming Body and Departure in Urban Spaces

Abstract:
This performance-based project scrutinizes Indeterminacy as a mediating force impinging upon our behaviour and its subsequent impact on the nature and constituency of engagements and dialogue between people in selected urban spaces. Concepts centring on the dynamics of temporality and embodiment in departure are being investigated in both First Life and the Multi User Virtual Environment, Second Life as two locations on the same world surface of the Real.

My research-practice posits the formation of a new Urban Myth: Experienced through the vehicle of the Roaming Body, our meetings and encounters with people frequently manifest as disjunct mis-communiqués and dis-engagements. I am asserting that this is due to the inevitability in our existence of indeterminacy acting as a significant governing factor in the articulation of our relations with others, reinforcing our description as time-based entities traversing the passage of the everyday. I maintain that this is evidenced in us through the occurrence of a continual, pre-emptive state of departure. Indeterminacy implies motion and emerges, as Massumi asserts, through ‘… an unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary …’. We, as humans, are constantly being drawn away – always either approaching or embracing involuntarily, a state of ‘Leaving’ which co-mingles with and unerringly erodes our efforts to stay engaged with another in the here and now.

In my research/practice, which underpins the concepts in
this masterate, interventionist inscriptions are being used to prompt and interrogate the constituents of encounters and departures in designated public places. Experiential movement frameworks employed are informed by the discipline of Contact Improvisation Dance and Authentic Movement. The working process is being documented using a range of video narrative.

Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, Durham & London, (p.5).

Def: 'The Roaming Body' - the body as entity which can never be fully committed to a set position or location in space and time (Mike Baker Feb 09)

Title image: Dancers - Mike Baker and Sylvie Haisman, Camera - Fiona Baker

Links List / Please find more images at the bottom of this post

-empyre- soft-skinned space
alansondheim.org
AlienNation Co
dance-tech.net
danssansjoux.org
Dr Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the late Twentieth Century, in Simian, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991
Dr Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, 2008
Henri Bergson, Mark Hansen, (bodies in code), microflicks, dad.project, leftluggage, davidandjacob, slightly.net, hyperchoreography, throwdisposeablechoreography, Contact Quarterly, Text and Performance Quarterly, Liminalities, skellis.net, Body Space Image, Jumpcut, Brian Massumi, Marc Augé, T`ai Chi Ch`uan, Body Space and Technology Journal, Slightlymoving, Proximity, Saatchi-gallery.co.uk, Len Lye, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Michel Serres, The Parasite, University of Minnesota Press, 2007
Scott Draves.com
Second Life.com
subtletechnologies - Alan Sondheim
touchcompass.org.nz
Turbulence.org
YouTube (people and blogs - strangers), Discourse off the Walls - Authored Indeterminacies, Peter Lorre,