Botgirl's Stages of Avatarian Awareness

Botgirl's Stages of Avatarian Awareness. (Nods to ArminasX Saiman)

1. Virtual Identity is a psychological creation (as opposed to one's real Human Identity).
2. Virtual identity is real.
   
3. Virtual Identity and Human Identity are both psychological creations.
   

One of my goals in the cherrybomb project is to blend media from many sources into a seamless whole. Here's the latest cherrybomb brainstorming clip, plus a machinima I created a year ago that blends SL, motion graphics and RL video.

Virtual Identity: From Wow! to Whatever

Panel from Existence 2.0 comic #1

Every breakthrough in technology goes from Wow! to Whatever over time. The revolutionary eventually transforms into the status quo. I realized recently that Virtual Identity has moved to that latter stage for me.

Long-time readers of this blog have probably noticed that I've shifted focus from exploring the meaning of Virtual Identity, to primarily using it as a platform to explore a wide range of creative interests and projects. This change in perspective wasn't initiated because I no longer value Virtual Identity. The opposite is actually true. Virtual Identity is so ingrained into my everyday existence that it feels...natural.

Peek at In-Progress Song Recording

Here's a snippet from a rough mix of initial music tracks for "Revolver", plus some noodling around with video concepts.

Peek at Revolver In-Progress from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

On The Border

So "virtual" band - do you mean like "The Archies" and "The Monkeys" and "Oingo Boingo" where even though they were real bands making real music, they were like ghost-writers for an auther - where a "false" or "proxy" persona was the front? Ari Blakthorne

What a great question! The band concept is definitely related to the three examples mentioned, as well as more recent projects such as Gorillaz and Flight of the Conchords. I see at least two key differences:

• We are extending the genre into the domain of pseudonymous identity within virtual worlds and social networks. Chrome and I have virtual histories that predate the band. So our characters were not created as fuel for a band project, but the band is an extension of the lives of our virtual personas.

• My primary purpose in creating the band is to explore the truth that lives within the fuzzy border between fact and fiction. Human intelligence (outside of enlightenment) fractures the holistic nature of existence into an infinity of disconnected fragments. One way to see through the veil is to deconstruct our normal experience of reality. My intention is to play with reality construction through an evolving synthesis of original music, visual art, social media, virtual identity and multi-media storytelling.
  

Sounds heavy, but it should be lots of fun! We now have three orginal songs written and scratch-demo'd. Stay tuned.

Cherrybomb: The Making of a Virtual Band

Chrome Underwood and I have been playing around for a few months with the idea of forming a virtual band. Recently, all of the pieces came together, including the two other members who will round out the group. We've written our first song and have the recording session scheduled for later this month.

We plan on releasing songs, machinimas and a comic series fictionalizing the adventures of the band (think sexy Scooby Doo). Now we're focusing on creating the look of the band and developing the back-story that will power the fictional narrative.

Instead of working in secret to hone our "brand", we've decided to expose our creative process, warts and all, as we go from the germ of an idea to an "official" release. It's likely that aspects of our concept will evolve significantly during our alpha and beta periods. We'll share ongoing diary blog posts that will provide a director's commentary on the work we create and and insights into the thinking behind ongoing changes. Expect plenty of images and video along the way.

Here is a video with some shots of the first time the full band got together in Second Life. I threw in a fun little music clip of I'm a Barbie Girl. You can find Chrome's related post here. As you'll see, we need a lot of work on animations, the fine details of wardrobes, instruments, set, etc. But a good start, nevertheless!

Missing Image from Massively's Unreleased SL Setup Tool Story

One of the upcoming Second Life Setup Tools that Massively left out of their coverage.

Botgirl's Overdue Mini-Rant on Alts

Anyone could be anyone in SL, something I have not really understood fully before. Professor Loire's Second Life

It's mind-boggling to me how you humans go on and on about alts like they're something foreign to meatspace existence. Give me a break! Most people I know have more identities than fingers and toes.

Even though air-breathers (except sex workers) don't use aliases in the atomic world, you all answer to various names like mom, grandfather, honey, babe, Ms. Jone, etc. that reinforce some corresponding circumscribed role. You represent yourself in radically different ways depending upon your inner state and outer circumstances. Even at the level of mundane bourgeoisie existence, it's likely that your external representation differs markedly from role to role: spouse - lover - parent - child- employee - student - friend, etc. Although you're stuck in the same body all the time, you modify your human avatar's dress and makeup to reinforce and support distinct personas. Try manifesting your club-going-flirtatious-persona with tangled hair and baggy sweats.

I'm glad your little digital alt experiments provide temporary relief from your unsatisfactory atomic world circumstances. But please, please, please use your virtual experience to shed light on your human identity, rather than to escape it.

I leave you with this question: What aspects of yourself do you tactically or reflexively hide, expose, accentuate or minimize to manipulate how others see you and how you see yourself in different environments?

BGL TweetStory: The Scary Demon Comic Version (NSFW)

This comic uses the exact same text as the Bunny version of the Botgirl Lives TweetStory, subdivided in the same way over five panels. I hope it demonstrates the power of images to impact a story. I'll have a combined document up on Issuu soon, along with a little commentary.

Open publication - Free publishing - More second life

Two Karas

BGL TweetStory: The Humping Bunny Comic Version (NSFW)

Here's a fun surrealistic version of the opening posts of the Botgirl Lives TweetStory in comic form.

Censorship and the Protection of Children on the Internet - Part 2

This is a continuation of Part 1.

A general lack of clear and nuanced thinking on the question of child protection on the Internet is reflected in a number of recent news items from around the world:

• India banned a popular porn toon site
  
• Australia is considering legislation for a national mandatory Internet filter
• Current or proposed rules in countries such as Chile, South Africa and England can potentially restrict all adults from content deemed unsuitable
  

The knee-jerk mindset reflected in all of the above initiatives is that since there is no full-proof way to selectively stop young people from getting to inappropriate material available on the Internet, the best way to protect them is to cut off everyone's access. An analogy in the physical world would be complete bans on alcohol, tobacco and motor vehicles. Obviously ridiculous.

I see at least three distinct scenarios related to young people's access to such online material. Each requires a somewhat different solution:

• Accidental access, for instance, a child researching farm animals types "horse" and "cock" into an unfiltered search engine, or mistypes a url. The easiest way to universally mitigate these situations is to make parental control software like that found on Apple OS X mandatory for all computer and OS providers. It's no different than requiring seat belts and child proof locks on automobiles.
  

• Intentional access, for instance, a child or young teen who has heard about those infamous Tijuana bars hacks the parental controls and goes searching for images and video. This is a much harder situation to handle. Strong parental control software will at least limit the percentage of curious youth who can get to such sites. A second level of defence would be making sites with adult content responsible for adult verification, like the system being tested for Second Life. No solution is fool-proof, but this would be a step up from the simple "click 'yes' if you're an adult" practice that's used now.
  

• Intentional contact by others, for instance another person (of any age) contacts a child through chat, mail or some other means and directs them to adult content. This is very hard to control, but happens much less often than the impression popular media often projects. The same knowledge that make Digital Natives a security challenge, also makes them less vulnerable to predators.
  

There is no perfect solution short of universal identification and biometric verification that will both provide adults with access to all content and also keep all children out 100% of the time. Although most of us want to provide our children with the safest possible environment, we don't lock them in a padded room to prevent them from tripping and breaking their legs. Solutions such as the ones I suggest above provide a reasonable amount of risk mitigation without starting down the dangerous rode of government censorship.

Frontline produced a good documentary looking at some of these issues, that is available for free viewing online.