http://www.umanitoba.ca/mbvan/reso/forum/forumFrame.html
Al Razutis
January 22, 1998
Body-Builders looking for Bodies to Play with?
VRML World Builders looking for Avatars?
What's 'COOL ART_on_the_Net' ?
I begin with a quote from Nancy Paterson's article "Technology (not equal to) Art" which contains valuable observations on VR, the body (and it's disappearance, re-emergence in VR):
'Whatever our class, race or gender, we all take our bodies with us as we approach the millennium. We can only buy so much technological confidence. The rest must come from art and artists...who critically envision a creative future in which we all take part"
--Nancy Paterson
(FUSE, Vol 20, No. 5)
In my earnest investigations of what is out there (and I always recommend looking into Krokers' C-THEORY for relevant and international articles on VR) I came across a strange site:
Bodies© INCorporated
(url: http://www.bodiesinc.ucla.edu)
The above site, with its provocative title, is listed as 'COOL' at the Machita City Museum (Tokyo) site, mirrored at Banff Centre's NMR server. So, I thought, "that's a recommendation"! (Haven't we all been there before? Getting advice on where to go, what to see, how to spend our (precious) time wandering the web?)
And furthermore, 'virtual bodies', avatars, and VRML have a particular interest to me since I am both a VRML artist and currently interested in developing avatar-based interactive spaces in my future '98 projects.
So here I was, a curious fellow, interested in learning what is 'out there', what is important, what comes with an impressive "history" and exhibition credits....
After viewing the opening graphic, and looking at the first linked pages, a sudden thought crossed my mind: "Techno-Fascism on the Net?" "Authored by university yuppies from Santa Barbara?" "No way!", I protested. And then I read, and explored the site.
This is what I found.
From the URL, the site originates at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). (Santa Barbara, for those who don't know the terrain, is a fairly fashionable 'suburb' of Los Angeles, 100 miles to the north of LA.
The players, according to a lengthy history, credits, are a group of faculty, students, programmers, all led by a certain Victoria Vesna. This is her pet project, she's persistently worked on it for several years...
The genesis of this avatar project begins with something called 'Virtual Concrete', INSTALLATION ART that features various attempts to engage visitors interactively, first with text, then with 3D models of bodies, soundscapes, finally with VRML interactive worlds. Their history page informs us that it's been a laborious project of many ups and downs, delays, changes, presentations at conferences, art galleries, defections by some participants to 'industry' (Softimage and presumably the gamer industry)...and it has yielded something now called
"Bodies© INCorportated".
What is Victoria's Secret?
It seems to be a preoccupation with death, voyeurism and politics, if one is to interpret the chronology as shifts around consistent themes.
The elaborate history is an introductory glimpse into the scope and intentions of this project. It contains personal anecdotes, and speaks of the shift from text when a fortunate 'connection' was made: the acquisition of rights to BODY PARTS from Viewpoint Data Labs (creators and purveyors of body part 3D models on the net). It continues describing dissemination on the NET of thousands of body part models to 'customers', changing stride and envisioning sending the bodies to a death-zone via introduction of a "virus", summarizes Victoria's experiments with "hundreds of ways of "dying...all of which are 'documented from actual 'real world' situations", chronicles collaborations with students, programmers, the introduction of VRML 2.0 worlds with localized sound, and ends up describing the site as it exists now:
"HOME" (a starting point for visitors),
"SHOWPLACE!!!" (where bodies are put on display, chatted about, and interacted with),
"LIMBO" (where pre-ordered bodies are put on hold),
"NECROPOLIS" (the place of deleted bodies).
One could say that this refers to some kind of 'suburbia', since inner-city dwellers (as in South-Central L.A.) hardly have time to 'shop' (for replacements) or be too concerned about their 'resting place' (for suburbia, it's FOREST LAWN...)
The site's authors claim that bodies NOW are created with "textures" (like jpeg texture maps) to feature a shift from "sexual" to a "psychological" content. They speculate about the need to engage with the "right-wing corporate body" idea (a number of examples provided by Christopher Newfeld), and to incorporate (left-wing?) "revolutionary" ideals.
So far so good? Not really.
The site, first and foremost, comes on as a cynical advertisement for the 'disposable body' and as a vehicle for a body-obsessed 'chat-line'. (You know that Microsoft and AOL are thinking along the same terms...)
Far from being a 'pleasant' or 'friendly' place, this ambience is dark and authoritarian. The front-page image on this site is a head shot with "©" stamped on the forehead, like a sci-fi prisoner's portrait; the lighting is Orwellian, the illustrated figures always stand against a black background, and the first textural come-on is very revealing:
"Would you too like to own a specialized body such as this? Well, you can. By surrendering some of your Bodies© INCorporated shares, you can acquire new unique body parts and body textures to replace the current ones. Impress your friends...WOW your co-workers! Don't settle for less."
Cynical yuppies in Santa Barbara playing the standard 'post-modern' game of paste and lampoon in the junkyards of 'Po-Mo' culture? It reads like that at first glance.
But first impressions could always be faulty. So, upon delving further, I got to see: "CURRENT CHOICES":
A "vulcan" blank head in VRML 2.0, presumably one to attach limbs to.
"COMING SOON!" I read, I could ORDER "New Body Part, Texture", and SUBMIT same.
Presumably, 'soon' means when this site goes into 'exhibition mode' on the 24th of January in San Francisco, as well as at the various VRML '98 and SIGGRAPH events coming our way in February.
What caught this writer's attention and distress (and distrust) was the following, which I attach here unedited:
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"At Bodies© INCorporated, SHARES IN THE COMPANY are acquired the following ways:
1. EVERYTIME YOU LOGIN as a "member" you receive 1 share.
2. EVERYTIME YOU CREATE A NEW BODY PART that meets with the approval of the Bodies©INCorporated Board of Directors and Advisory Boards you receive a minimum of 10 shares.
3. EVERYTIME YOU SUBMIT A "DEAD PHILOSOPHER QUOTE" that meets with the approval of the Bodies© INCorporated Board of Directors and Advisory Boards a minimum of 10 shares.
4. IF YOUR BODY IS CHOSEN FOR SHOWPLACE!!! you will receive generous compensation in shares.
5. EVERYTIME YOU SUBMIT A NEW IDEA that is used in the project - 10 shares
NOTE: When you have acquired 500 shares, you are promoted from a Bodies© INC MEMBER status to an ADEPT -- you will gain building permissions (proposals are submitted to the Board of Directors ArchiTexts). When you acquire 1000 shares, you are promoted from a Bodies INC ADEPT to an AVATAR -- this allows direct communication with the Board Directors. KEEP WATCHING for new and exciting ways to earn shares!"
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What's wrong with this come-on? Well, it conveys the manner, style, and aura of CONTROL, of hidden DETERMINATIONS, of AUTHORITARIAN intents (a 'Board of Directors?', a 'Central Committee'?, a panel of Scientology's 'Operating Thetans'?). And subject to UNKNOWN TERMS of 'approval'. Yet, paradoxically, our participation is solicited under the promissory guise of THIS SITE giving us 'what we DESIRE' (which is a UNIQUE, disposable, body) to 'replace what we have'.
While we may wonder if this site is simply referencing consumerism and Capitalism, its modus operandi encourages the very exploitation of workers (that is, YOU and I, who are there to CREATE), in mimicking the hegemony of the 'State apparatus'. And this is supposed to be 'desirable'? This is what we should aspire to achieve with our own FREE LABOR?
Under their site (apparatus) guidelines, every time WE CREATE (work, submit, accept) something which meets APPROVAL from this unseen 'Board', we 'gain building permissions' and are finally 'promoted' to an 'AVATAR' capable of DIRECT COMMUNICATION with the BOARD. I suppose, that's when we get 'assimilated' into their project and 'idea', and become one of 'them'.
Now, you may be thinking, 'this is only experimental media-art and quite harmless at that.' Or, perhaps it's a 'clever appropriation' of advertising techniques. But consider this scenario: first we get to see "it" (myths of assimilation) on the silver screen in the form of STAR TREK FIRST CONTACT (and the BORG), then we see it as recommended 'web art', soon we'll see it in conferences, and GALLERIES, and maybe AOL and MICROSOFT will think it is "COOL ART" and pick it up...all of which will result in a kind of 'self-fulfilling' prophecy. Or delusion.
But that's reaching too far...for now.
The all-too-familiar scenario in some 'web-art' sites is that WE (the visitor) DO ALL THE WORK, while the artist 'sets the stage' and observes (of course, approves) our WORK, and this is then written up, packaged, curated into exhibitions. Well, this sounds a bit like FREE 'beta testing' for software manufacturers, and one is entitled to ask "WHY?"
Here, at Bodies© INCorporated, we're told that our participation is in the service of someone's "vision", that someone being a certain 'Victoria', who must be a faculty member or at least a research graduate at UCSB. And, if we are successful in gaining admission to the art-work, she and her colleagues get to exhibit our collective works in conferences, at galleries, to give interviews, get research grants, etc.
...and we do this work because:
a) this is "COOL"
b) this is a politically insightful analysis of 'PAN-CAPITALISM'
c) we want to meet 'someone' new
d) we want to be a part of a ART INSTALLATION
e) we're just curious
f) we're being used and are idiots for not realizing it (a political
message here for sure!)
So I considered the following questions:
IS THIS (citing Paterson again) 'a creative future in which we all take part'?
IS THIS cutting edge art or technology to show off at SIGGRAPH?
IS THIS site an academic art toy?
IS THIS site 'worth' contributing to?
WHAT IS MY PAY BACK?
Inevitably, it took me many HOURS, part of the time on-line, part of the time at this keyboard, to 'explore' this piece, and I never really got close to getting enough 'shares' to see anything but a generic STAR-TREK VULCAN head and some cute cloud-maps. By my calculation, it would take WEEKS of unpaid labor to become an AVATAR, and then so what?
What will I have learned? That Capitalism exploits labor? WOW!
The 'PAY', as is suggested on multi-user VR sites (Blaxxun, Community Place), is a chance to 'socialize' your AVATAR with other AVATARS. And on the Bodies© INCorporated site, if one is to judge from the inane comments left on the 'chat line', this socializing is similar to other 'chat line encounters', exchanges, phone-line bills...except that AOL is clear about it's motives: making money and NOT CALLING IT ART.
But I could be wrong, so I turned to read some of the motives of the authors:
(Christopher Newfield:)
"There's no more important change right now than culture recapturing technology -- recapturing technology not to reject it but to make culture its partner again as we invent our future, our society, our redemptions....You will know (this) recolonization is working when you say, paraphrasing Louis Massiah, 'it makes revolution irresistible.'"
But Newfield's 'future', 'society' and 'redemption' are at the service of BODIES© INCorporated, and his essay on "corporate" bodies goes to great length to explain the various TYPES that function. Considering that BODIES© INCorporated proposes 'swapping bodies' until one, premably, achieves 'dissatisfaction' 'sees the truth', and discovers the 'need' for "revolution"... I wondered whether this was or perhaps a proposal for POLITICAL ACTION by subjecting us to a kind of 'trial by negative reinforcement'. ('What we really want' is not 'what we get', and 'it hurts', so 'give us something that is GOOD for us'.....like LEAVING THE BODY BEHIND....for a new META-BODY.)
And as I thought again: "Are these people white middle-class college types to whom 'future', 'culture', 'redemption', and 'revolution' are IDEAS WITHOUT MATERIAL BASE, without class structure? Ideas that can be formally 'played with' as a kind of 'schooled art' game?", another question crossed my mind: "Or is it RELIGION masquerading as ART?"
THE MOTIVE ANSWER: VICTORIA'S VISION
(provided by Victoria Vesna, ref: - url: http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/bodiesinc/avatar.html/
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(THE NEXUS OF INFLUENCES:)
"The avatar in cyberspace, therefore, represents this strange interplay of left wing utopianism with right wing entreprenurism, mixed up with esoteric spiritualism. New Age religion operates in tandem with the networking technologies and the "organic" corporate structures, the new "cool" companies that are emerging all over the high tech industry map."
(MEANING WHAT?)
"Bodies© INCorporated is a project that actively incorporates the idea of avatars, with the intention of shifting the discourse of the body from the usual idea of flesh and identity. It is planned to have a number of artificial intelligence programs integrated into the environment over which there wouldn't be too much control. An avatar IS, but a member is made, and frequently the force, energy, purpose or will of a corporate Entity will utilise the vehicles of a member in order to contact the physical planes. Every members' Body represented is the locus of the contradictions of functioning in the hi-tech environment, while being in the Meta-Body, the Entity in the business of service.
"In order to function effectively as a service provider, Seven Advisory Boards have been constituted: Philosophical, Academic, CEO, Spiritual, Business, Legal and Aesthetic. The number seven governs the periodicity of the phenomena of life, and is found dominating the series of chemical elements, and is equally paramount in the world of colour and sound. Space, which has ignorantly been proclaimed as an abstract idea and a void is, in reality a container for the body of the corporation with its seven principles."
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Victoria Vesna's long thesis on 'Incorporated Avatars: Organizational Contradictions in Cyberspace" (above url) delves into NEW AGE SPIRITUALISM, HINDUISM, and what I would term, 'CALIFORNIA SYNCRETISM'. She implicates Mark Pesce's interests in MAGICK, METAPHYSICS, and NEW AGE PHILOSOPHY (an example of these interests can be found on his links page, accessed via my "LOST AND FOUND" page on http://www.alchemists.com/lostfound.html), and she proposes a THEOCRATIC organizational model (the 'Seven Advisory Boards') as fundamental to the 'VISION' of creating a artificial-intelligence NETWORK of duly accredited, priest-like, AVATARS.
AND....perhaps reminiscent of ancient Egyptian orders of 'ascendant beings', there is guarded access to those who, along with their techno-hieroglyphic secrets and inner sanctums, enjoy unparalleled PRIVILEGE.
SO HERE IT IS:
CALIFORNIA....NEW AGE...HI-TECH CORPORATE...VIRTUAL REALITY...NETWORK.
Unlike the political critiques of SITUATIONISTS (visit http://www.nothingness.org/ for a reading of sources, and anrachist manifestos), web-art of the 'post-modern' style tends to be vague in revealing its intentions. One is obligated to explore, and explore, and hope for some 'pay-off', some clarity. In the case of BODIES© INCorporated, the message is clear: this is a SYNCRETIC site which combines political (utopian) aspirations, with a strange 'Orwellian' vision of corporate 'socialization' in the FUTURE. All of which would reside under the aegis of a NEW AGE 'Advisory Board'.
NEW-AGE THEOSOPHY FLOURISHED IN CALIFORNIA IN THE 1920-30'S....and the patrons were the DEATH-FEARING RICH...
I am also reminded of Nicolas Negroponte's 'ruminations' on artificial intelligence and the future. Yes, he's the same Negroponte who was financed by military mega-bucks while at MIT (Architecture Machine Group, Media lab) in the 70's, 80's, and who now writes (oops, 'ruminates') for WIRED MAGAZINE on net culture, avatars, artificial intelligence and the FUTURE.
So, where did this brief investigation leave me?
To rethink something that Lev Manovich wrote (published in C-THEORY) under the title of "Global Algorithm 1.3: "The Aesthetics of Virtual Worlds: Report from Los Angeles":
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(From the sarcastic opening:)
"Welcome to a Virtual World! Strap on your avatar! Don't have the programming skills or time to build your own? No problem. We provide a complete library of pre-assembled characters; one of them is bound to fit you perfectly. Join the community of like-minded users who agree that three-dimensional space is more sexy!"
(ending with:)
"...on Sunset Plaza in West Hollywood. The avatars sip cappuccino amidst the illusion of 3D space. The space is clearly the result of a quick compositing job: billboards and airbrushed café interior in the foreground against a detailed matte painting of Los Angeles with the perspective exaggerated by haze. The avatars strike poses, waiting for their agents (yes, just like in cyberspace) to bring valuable information."
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Thus, one may presume, that the PRACTICAL OUTPUT for us ADEPTS, someday AVATARS, under supervision of the BOARD, at BODIES© INCorporated"SHOWPLACE!!!" would be (via the chat-line) to make some 'deals', enhance our professional careers, maybe get some WORK at a GAMER INDUSTRY corporation!... or maybe even GET LAID in a motel on Highway 101 between L.A. and Santa Barbara? Those with 'higher aspirations' of course would be inducted into the NETWORKED META-BODY....and in the 'Temples of Eternity'. Here, the glory goes to the artist-sage, the work and simple presumptions reside with us. A class structure not unlike that 'enjoyed' under THEOCRACY, whether it be Catholicism, Hinduism, or the Pharaoh of ANCIENT EGYPT.
A THEOCRACY long since overthrown...but making a comeback in VIRTUAL REALITY? A system that only survives with our CONSENT and participation, and LABOR. Since without our work, there is NO SITE. A dead chat-line; an empty SHOWPLACE!!!, an empty TEMPLE.
Las Vegas (yes, VIRTUAL LAS VEGAS!) knows all about 'it', and the ways to get you 'there'.
TO CONCLUDE THIS READING:
NOW, finally, I UNDERSTAND the 'logic and use-value' of this 'art'. AND I'M NOT BUYING INTO IT! Not for the SHARES, or the inherent PROMISES of 'cyber-after-life' (and ridicule for some that 'can't make it') that these SHARES imply. The 'cyber-after-life' is something I've never bought into; the ridicule of the participating visitor is something I've never comprehended. Nor, have I understood how artists can justify such actions with 'revolutionary' intentions...tied to 'religious' aspirations.
HERE AGAIN, I can see how 'death works' and the use of 'negative reinforcement' metaphors in our culture become 'fave' art, and how they propel the artists in today's cultural 'fashion shows' (conferences, exhibitions, articles, tv spots, interviews)...how they can become a RELIGION. And just think (if we are to take Ms. Vesna at her word), the CORPORATE SECTOR (and their listing is impressive!) is a 'partner'.
For now, I'll turn my attentions and interests ELSEWHERE.
Yet, in all fairness:
I am forwarding this commentary to Bodies© INCorporated, hopefully in time for their upcoming on-line exhibition. Perhaps I'll get responses. Maybe my art-attitude needs 'adjustment'? Do I need another 'body' to make me feel 'good'? Will interaction on the CYBER LEVEL replace interaction at the REAL level? I doubt it.
Perhaps the reader, once having examined the site, the surrounding issues, can provide additional views, or thoughts on where this 'art form' of AVATARS and VIRTUAL REALITY is going. And where we should look for inspiring examples.
One thing is certain, the 'creative potential' for avatar-based VRML ART is there, the issues are wide open, and the medium is truly in its formative stage. There are MANY sites to visit. Which ones are "COOL?" "RECOMMENDED?" And why?
As for me, and my immediate interests, I am undaunted. I will certainly pursue making VRML creations in this, most slippery, of subjects.