Article 1: Vasseleu

Vasseleu, Cathryn. “Virtual Bodies/Virtual Worlds.” Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. Ed. David Holmes. London: Sage, 1997. 46-58.

Vasseleu begins her piece by very briefly defining both cyberspace and virtual realities. She identifies cyberspace, on the one hand, as “the space within the electronic network of computers from which virtual realities, among other things, can be made” (46). Virtual realities, on the other hand, as “computer-generated system which use cyberspace to simulate various aspects of interactive space (that is, they are inhabitable computer systems of space)” (46). Saying that cyberspace is used to make “virtual realities, among other things” makes it sound like quite a malleable material. Her reason for positioning space in this way is because she seeks to parallel the space of the body and the space of the computer throughout the essay.

Vasseleu’s main argument is looking at “the material consequences of perspectives which disavow the corporeal basis of virtual technologies” (47). What I think she is getting at here is the way that our physical bodies are disconnected from what happens on screen. Even when we have some sort of avatar “in-world”, without any sort of sensory feedback loop between our physical and digital selves, our experience is flawed from the outset. In other words, our presence in virtual realities is troubled by this sense of disembodiment. To try to put this in context, I understand what she is saying through my experiences in Second Life. I see my “Mini-Me” running around the virtual environment; I know that I control it; it is supposed to be me, right? And yet I am always aware of my physical body that is at the controls. Vasseleu’s point is that in this relationship I have little sense of being embodied in my SL avatar.

So what is the big deal? Why does examining embodiment matter? “Many of the paradoxes and ethical concerns which appear to have been generated by virtual technologies,” says Vasseleu, “are themselves a kind of ‘emergent behaviour’ – unprogrammed effects generated within the tensions of more familiar systems of representation which have supposedly been disrupted and displaces” (47 emphasis added). Embodiment matters because virtual realities create an almost-but-not-quite condition among individual, avatar and space. What I see my (digital) body doing and what I feel in my (physical) body do not match up. Being disembodied in cyberspace, which is visually remarkably similar to physical space, leads to issues that we, as a society, have not had to deal with before. Vasseleu’s answer to these new concerns is the “virtual environment suit” (VE suit). Actually, embodiment tech operates on different levels. It begins with the VE helmet, then the VE glove, and culminates in the VE suit, which is the third and most complete embodiment experience. Each magnitude of embodiment (helmet, glove and suit) offers the user a deeper sense of being in the space and Vasseleu does a nice job of relating them to discussions of Kant, Copernicus and Descartes. With these heavy-hitters she addresses the relationship between vision and touch, as well as the how subjectivity of the individual plays in to spatial experiences.

Vasseleu points out that “the possession of an occupiable dimension has become the most urgent agenda of the agent/observer, the significance of simulation lies in its subjective legitimation of new imagined universal territories” (49). At the end of her piece, Vasseleu tries to tie her discussion of embodiment and spaces to an idea about gender. She mentions gender at the beginning when she that she is interested in “the extent to which such perspectives [which disavow the corporeal basis of virtual technologies] reproduce modes of embodiment with which many women are already familiar” (47). Essentially, I think she is pointing out the need to examine the consequences of equating bodies with spaces, as places to be conquered; and, she says, women have had to deal with this sort of thinking in relation to their bodies for a long time. This seems to be a valid and interesting tract to take, but Vasseleu only returns to gender in the last couple of paragraphs. Gender ends up, for me, feeling like an afterthought.

Article 2: Ostwald

Ostwald, Michael J. “Virtual Urban Futures.” Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. Ed. David Holmes. London: Sage, 1997. 125-144.

Ostwald’s piece sounds a little like a comment on the Grand Theft Auto debate: “Overt virtual technologies, including the Internet, were blamed, like television before them, for the breakdown in the family unit, the rise in street crime and the decay of conventional Cartesian urban spaces” (125). Although Ostwald does not mention it, one could also say that this debate about “new media” and society goes all the back to youth being “corrupted” by the novel in the 19^th century. It is interesting to note the presumed threat that each of these mediums (the Internet, TV, and the novel) posed for this greater sense of the “community” at large. Community, for Ostwald, is the common denominator that he uses in his discussion to span the gap between physical and virtual spaces.

Ostwald’s argument is actually spelled out in his first endnote: “The aim of this chapter is to remove the boundaries that separate the ‘physical’ from the ‘virtual’, it is doubly ironic that such ambiguous terms must first be created and then used alongside the equally ambiguous terms ‘physical’, ‘virtual’ and ‘real’” (143n1). Personally, I am all for challenging and examining boundary conditions between physical and virtual spaces, but removing the boundaries? I like the idea of unpacking what is “real” and I do not believe that this has to be limited to physical space. But does that mean that distinctions like physical and virtual no longer have any meaning?

In relation to the community aspect that Ostwald sees as connecting physical and virtual spaces, he spends time discussion the agora. “Similarly the complex interplay of communal, spatial, cultural and political forces at work in the agora renders it an appropriate model with which to consider critically those spaces formed through the agency of virtual technologies” (134). For all his talk about community, he does not spend time on the individual community member. Leaving out any connection to the individual in favor of the community-at-large is too much for me. It seems to erode the term space too much. By this logic any place that community happens can be considered a space.

“There is a strong and growing need,” says Ostwald, “to consider that zone where the boundaries between the physical and the virtual are completely blurred” (128). Here is where Ostwald, for me, veers off the map. The blurred spaces that he uses as case studies, which represent both characteristics of physical and virtual spaces, are the shopping mall and the theme parks (127). Returning to his unifying idea about community, he says that, “spaces are linked and defined not though technology but through the way that communities form and interact in them” (127). And it is this sense of community that removes the distinction between physical and virtual spaces loses some of its importance. Ostwald works to show that malls, while physical, exhibit many of the same conditions as virtual spaces. First, malls are simulations; his example is a recreation of Bourbon Street that many mall goers, he says, think is as real as the one in New Orleans. Second, malls are forever temporary; their interior stores and layouts are readily changeable. And third, malls operate in the same sort of panoptic surveillance that we have seen in our discussion about the Internet. Malls blur the physical/virtual boundary because they have some of the same attributes as virtual space.

One point in the essay that really speaks to my project/interests is when he says, “The technological revolution is changing how information is used and global communications networks have reduced the perceived effect of spatial displacement” (128). But what are the implications of this? The reduction in spatial displacement here seems less convincing than what he was saying earlier about community’s role in equalizing the physical and the virtual. In my view (and this is my argument in my project) the whole idea of communication networks is directly related to spatial nesting, which is most certainly about (an increase in) spatial displacement. That said, this whole notion of spatial displacement is where I am in my own work and something that I have not yet been able to tease out. Ostwald, obviously, sees displacement diminishing and boundaries evaporating. Boundaries or no boundaries? A sense of displacement or spaces merging into one loose conglomerate? I am just not sure yet…

Article 3: Green

Green, Nicola. “Beyond Being Digital: Representation and Virtual Corporeality.” Virtual Politics: Identity and Community in Cyberspace. Ed. David Holmes. London: Sage, 1997. 59-78.

This essay by Green is the closest to my own interest in nested, or overlapping, spaces. She cites work by two new media theorists, Lanier and Kramerae:

Both Lanier and Kramerae rely exclusively on an interpretation of the digital representations generated by virtual reality technologies as independent spaces bounded by technological artefacts. They thereby tend to marginalize the ways in which human/technical artefact systems operate as spaces which institute embodiment in ‘virtual’ locations; that is, in worlds which overlap, and which are simultaneously digital and non-digital. (63)

What Green is saying here is, for me, a merging of my other two articles by Vasseleu and Ostwald. She is interested in issues of embodiment, or the space of the body, and the simultaneity of spaces this introduces. How are spaces defined/bounded? Walls? URLs? Bodies? Avatars? In the last few classes we have talked about ontology. Green says that “the ontological status of virtual worlds is worked through at the level of embodiment, in the ways people negotiate ‘being digital’ through the pragmatics of organic and physical activities” (73). I am curious about the assumptions we bring to virtual spaces when we try to think of them the same way we look at physical spaces and embodiment.

Green claims that “the digital status of economic exchange relations, of long-distance communications, of imaging techniques and of writing are just a few of the ways that produce bodies as already digital before encounters with virtual reality systems” (73). (Note: the “virtual reality systems” are the sort of full emersion helmet/glove/suit experiences talked about more in Vasseleu.) This makes me think that Green is saying embodiment extends to virtually any of mediating systems. But where are our “bodies” in writing? She cites Mark Gottidener in regards to the relationship between sign and materiality: “The ‘expression’ is the appearance of shape of objects. The expression of a sign refers to ‘object themselves…which exist materially, even if that materiality is simply a text’” (Gottdiener qtd 64). And further, “The ‘content’ refers to both generalized sets of ideas and cultural mores, and more specific sets of ideological relations that are coded in particular ways in specific modes of social interaction” (Gottdiener qtd 64). I think she is saying that embodiment is about expression and content, about having some sort of representational element and set of cultural guidelines that determine how I engage with this element.

Green takes a different view than Vasseleu (you’ll have to read that post for a deeper explanation of her work) with respect to the issue of embodiment. Essentially, for Vasseleu, disembodiment is caused by the lack of sensory connection between the avatar and the physical body. She focuses on the body’s knowledge of where it is when and how that knowledge doesn’t exist with respect to the avatar body. Green, on the other hand, sees disembodiment in two ways. First, disembodiment occurs because of digital avatar’s infinite reproducibility: “The representations are digital and their substance is etheric, so the ‘disembodiment’ of these bodies is articulated through their ‘immateriality’ in juxtaposition with and opposition to the material substances of organic bodies” (65). Green’s second aspect of disembodiment is actually tied to the first when she point to the generic nature of digital avatars. Here I should point out that she is using as a case study the game Dactyl Nightmare (DN), which came out in 1991. Also, DN is a helmet-based virtual environment experience, which means you have a helmet, or goggles, and a joystick controller. Further, Green points out that “These devices code disembodiment and an opposition to more everyday material embodiments by representing bodily impossibilities and underscoring the otherness of digital embodied experiences” (66). Here is Green’s third qualification of disembodiment: the bodily “otherness” associated with digital games. For example, the ability of the avatar’s to fly, have heightened senses, or come back from the dead.

I think Green’s piece is about complicating her broad conceptualization of embodiment in digital contexts (expression and content) with the sort of disembodiment that occurs in virtual environments. She sums it up in her last line: “Being digital is one means of embodiment, virtual corporeality is another” (75).