THE IDENTITY OF THE SELF IN DIGITAL PERFORMANCE

MASTER THEATRE STUDIES 2012-2013

THE IDENTITY OF THE SELF IN DIGITAL

PERFORMANCE

Supervisor: Dr. Alexander Jackob, University of Amsterdam Second reader: Prof. Dr. Kati Röttger, University of Amsterdam

University of Amsterdam

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Alexander Jackob who greatly helped me throughout the process of writing this master’s thesis. I am sincerely grateful for his assistance and intellectual support that have crossed boarders. I also thank Kati Rötgger who has given me valuable comments as a second reader.

For my sister, to the amazing person she is, for my mother and our afternoon philosophical discussions and for my father who inspires my ideas of freedom and utopian islands.

I would also like to thank friends I have met in Amsterdam who have shown me the way to different paths and patterns. I owe them new insights into what I can expect life to be. Many thanks to my favourite Parisian lovers, Robin and Nathalie, without our long night talks and wanderings I would have missed the point. It is sometimes just about extravagance and fantasy. May we see Jack of heart a countless number of times again.

Finally, I am thankful for the University of Amsterdam for making my studies possible as well as enjoyable. For any inadequacies in the following work, the

responsibility is entirely my own.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1- Introduction ...6

1-1 Virtual worlds and the imaginary …...6

1-2 Rationale: aims of research and research question …...7

1-3 Theoretical landmarks: Digital performances in Second Life...8

2- A chronology of Second Life …...11

2-1 Short history of virtual worlds ……...…...11

2-2 What is Second Life? …...16

2-3 Popular success and subculture: …...18

3- Second Life and digital performance ………...21

3-1 Definitions of digital performance ………….………22

3-2 Aristotelian perspective, theatrical tradition and continuity …………..26

4- The avatar in Second Life ………31

4-1 The body of the self? ……….31

4-2 Micha Cardenas Becoming Dragon (2010) ………...35

5- The space in Second Life ………...…….39

5-1 Utopia or heterotopia? ………..………….40

5-2 What kind of stage is offered? ………42

6- The time in Second Life ………..48

6-1 The time of the virtual self, of the memory of the self? ……….………49

6-2 Eva and Franco Mattes’ Synthetic performances (2007) ………….…..51

7- Conclusion ………...…55

7-1 To shape the self in Second Life ………55

7-2 Suggestions for further research ………..………...57

TABLE OF IMAGES

COVER IMAGE

Fig. 1: Chris Marker’s Second Life home. Source: Web, New World Notes

IN-TEXT IMAGES

Fig. 2: Becoming Dragon by Micha Cardenas. Image by Erik Jepsen. Source: Flickr, Micha Cardenas Calit2.

Fig. 3: The gate in Brussels. Source: Web, Odyssey Contemporary art and performance.

Fig. 4: Eva and Franco Mattes, Marina Abramovic’s Imponderabilia. Source: Web, reNUM.net

1- Introduction

“But the true voyagers are only those who leave Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons, They never turn aside from their fatality And without knowing why they always say: ‘Let’s go!’

Those whose desires have the form of the clouds, And who, as a raw recruit dreams of the cannon, Dream of vast voluptuousness, changing and strange, Whose name the human mind has never known!”

Charles Baudelaire (translation by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

1-1 Virtual worlds and the imaginary

The imaginary figure of the voyager has travelled through centuries. From Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy (1555), Jules Verne’s Voyages

extraordinaires (1868) etc. to more recent works that make the traveller go through

time and space, futuristic adventures, as in Kubrick’s 2001: A space Odyssey (1968) or Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999). I am not talking about these specific works only because they are part of my personal imaginary, as Baudelaire’s poem is, I have read them and seen them from an early age and I bear in my mind memories of

explorations that transport the whole body in an entirely different universe that will impact both spirit and flesh. They also set a departure ground to talk about immersive technologies, virtual worlds (VW) in which the human body travels to another place with his/her mind. And the aesthetics of science-fiction books and films have

influenced the way virtual worlds have been thought and designed. Thanks to new technologies, the human being is able to create an avatar, a three-dimensional online self, which will explore different spaces and extend the territory of the “actual” self.

Very rapidly these tools have been used by performers who question issues of representation, of the relation between actual and virtual. From imaginaries of futuristic spaces and beings comes a reality of bodies expressing themselves in virtual surroundings. Images of discovery, exploration and new planets remain watermarked.

Virtual worlds seem to offer new possibilities to create representations of our reality and thus of ourselves, and to truly challenge our perception. I will talk about it further in the first chapter. But beyond the utopia and the romanticized aspects of digital performances it is sometimes difficult to evaluate the real effects and impacts of such works. Nevertheless, one aim of this study is also to offer a critical point of view on the development and ambitions of digital performances in VW.

1-2 Rationale: aims of research and research question

Gaston Bachelard in La poétique de l’espace begins the chapter nine, “The unlimited intimacy”, with this quote from Rilke, “Le monde est grand, mais en nous il est profond comme la mer” (The world is large, but in us it is as deep as the sea)1 (Bachelard 2012, 169). In this book he explores the creative power of imagination which never ceases to reinvent ways to represent elements. Following Bachelard, imagination is not used to run away from the real but to infiltrate it, animate it with new virtual worlds of images. I will question the relation between real and actual in relation to the performing self. The links between the imagination of the self and the representation of the self, seen as the externalization of one’s intimacy, inner self, will be the subject of my research. I will relate them to issues of genres, space and time. How the depth of someone’s perceived and imagined self can be expressed, challenged, extended through performance art and the use of technological and digital devices?

1 Translation by C. Pierre

1-3: Theoretical landmarks: Digital performances in Second Life

I have chosen an analytic and interpretative perspective to explore this subject. I will analyse different theoretical approaches in order to develop the issues raised by the research question. Authors are mainly from theatre and performance studies but I will also use texts from fields of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, etc. to develop and to support my arguments. They all have in common to discuss the representation of the human being within a specific space and time. The decision has been made to choose Second Life (SL) as the only virtual world to be discussed. Not only to narrow down the field of research but also because this online platform provides many examples of digital performances and attracts many artists; I will develop this subject in the chapter 1. The first two chapters will be dedicated to draw the lines that determine this research. They also underline some key terms and arguments that will serve as a technical and theoretical background for the following chapters. In the three final chapters I will use selected theories to analyse several case studies so I can develop arguments based on the observation of performances’

discourses. I will come back to it in more details at the end of the introduction. To conduct this research I was very inspired by issues of self-identity, how to determine the realness of one’s identity. Which also comes down to this simple question, what is my true self? Does such thing even have a reality that can be expressed and even more performed? It is, as many commonly used expressions, a rather more complex question than it first appears. “Self-identity needs to be continually reproduced and reassured precisely because it fails to secure belief. It fails because it cannot rely on a verifiable continuous history. One’s own origin is both real and imagined.” (Phelan 1993, 4). Virtuality offers a bridge between reality and imagination, to link what we perceive as being real to a virtual image. The chapter 3 will examine this dubious issue. And it is only possible to consider it as a bridge if we refuse to oppose virtual and real. Bruno Latour, interviewed about new media for the School of Political Sciences of Paris, explained that the error we always make when talking about the web is that we say we are going from real to

virtual. As if we have a real nation with blood, weapons, people and a land, we compare to a virtual space with people calling themselves “facebookiens” as we are saying Parisians or French. Moreover he says the web materializes what used to be immaterial. For example on Social Networks we formalize interactions, names are given to ways we communicate with each other (Latour 2009). Thus, the

differentiation we instinctively make has to be revaluated. Phelan also takes interest in the question of realness when she writes “As Judith Butler points out, the

confusion between the real and the representational occurs because ‘the real is positioned both before and after its representation becomes a moment of the

reproduction and consolidation of the real’ (“Force of fantasy”: 106). The real is read through representation, and representation is read through the real” (Phelan 1993, 2). I will talk about links between digital performance and mimetic representation in the second chapter. What I want to argue here is that virtual and real are not to be

understood as antonyms. Thus the virtual plays a role in shaping one’s self-identity.

I will begin my research with a chronology of Second Life. I will go from the origins of virtual worlds to the birth of Second Life and explain what makes the specificity of this online environment. I consider being very important to grasp the roots of the human desire to create other spaces in order to understand its effects and the attachment it produces.

Secondly, I want to link digital performance theories to traditional theatre theories, more specifically to Aristotle’s Poetics. Not only to justify my interest and inputs as a theatre student who is looking into new technologies but also to argue for a continuity. The newness of the field is to be nuanced and the ways performances are analysed and interpreted still rely on centuries of tradition of mimetic

representation theories in theatre studies.

Then, in the third chapter I will precise my analysis focusing on the avatar. How can we consider it in relation to the self and to the performance? Gender studies and the theory of performativity will help to perceive the possibility of a virtual body to exceed the norm. The avatar as a way to extend and to augment the body is a matter that will be discussed. Micha Cardenas’ Becoming Dragon (2010) will serve as a case study to develop my argument.

Fourth, the question of the space will be at stake. Second Life and virtual worlds are often described as utopia or as dystopia. I will use Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to theorize the space outside of this dichotomy. If the “virtual” space is not to be opposed the so-called “real” space, still it functions differently and it is not just a mere imitation of the actual world. Then I ask if biopolitics still apply there. How does virtuality impact the stage as a theatrical element? And there is no theatre without spectators so I will talk about the relation between users and viewers in a Second Life performance, the place of interaction, a concept that have arisen in the sixties and seventies, related to the idea of an egalitarian space.

Finally I want to talk about the time of the performance in Second Life. Should we still rely on the tradition of the here and now of the performance? How to consider such a mediatized event? Also, the self in time is directly related to memory, as an identity is constructed by a history of the self. This is why I will pay particular attention to the reenactment of Imponderabilia (1977) (originally performed by Marina Abramovic and Ulay) inside Second Life performed by Eva and Franco Mattes. What kind of memory of the self is transmitted via non-human, virtual bodies?

“Habitants délicats des forêts de nous-mêmes”

(Delicate habitants of the forests of ourselves)

René Ménard (Translation by C. Pierre)

2. A chronology of Second Life

In the following chapter I will retrace the major steps that lead to the creation and development of Second Life. To apprehend the specificities and characteristics of performances in SL, it is necessary to look into the history of virtual worlds and the technological advances that surround it. The decisive question is to discern what distinguishes them from other types of performance. Therefore I will first go through the history of virtual worlds, their major features and discuss their origins. Then I will talk more specifically of Second Life, in respect of the question: what makes it particular and so attractive to many artists?

2.1 Short history of virtual worlds

As a starting point I will define some of the terms that are used to designate virtual worlds and thus choices I have made in order to write a concise history that will be used to frame the research subject area of interest. Indeed there are different manners to understand and to describe what can be referred to as virtual world but can also be named virtual environment, virtual community, cybersociality, online culture, metaverse, synthetic world, persistent world, artificial world ... Terms that can be found in various articles and books by Frank Biocca (Biocca 1992), Howard Rheingold (Rheingold 1991) , Agnes de Cayeux and Cécile Guibert (De Cayeux and Guibert 2007) or Tom Ludlow and Mark Wallace (Ludlow and Wallace 2010). I choose to use the terms virtual world, cybersociality and online culture to refer to what Second Life belongs to, following the choice of Tom Boellstorff and the definition he gives (Boellstorff 2010). I find his arguments extremely clear because, as he declares in the introduction of his book Coming of Age in Second Life, he is not writing for any specific type of reader. He wants to be understood by a larger

audience than by specialists of the field. Moreover his anthropological approach distinguishes his book from others published on the same subject. Boellstorff writes that VW are “places of human culture realized by computer programs through the internet” where many people can meet and interact with each other simultaneously (Boellstorff 2010, 17). It is a quite neutral definition that excludes judgement of values that often refer to virtual worlds as utopian or on the contrary dystopian. I could have also chosen Rheingold’s Virtual Reality (Rheingold 1991) which is one of the most influential books on the subject but which appeared to be a little dated and – in my opinion a crucial aspect in the debate on the importance of virtual worlds - too much focused on the technological side of the field. As a theatre student I am more concerned with questions on the body and different types of being. For example the actor’s body is a central theme and the way he/she incarnates another being has been the subject of many fundamental essays such as Stanislavski’s Building a character (1948) or Jacques Lecoq’s Le théâtre du geste, mimes et acteurs (1987). Questions of the performing body and being will be analysed further in the third chapter. Coming

of Age in Second Life is also one of the rare books to be dedicated to the study of

Second Life. The explanation he gives about the word virtual is particularly interesting. “‘Virtual’ connotes the approaching the actual without arriving there” (Boellstorff 2010, 19). He says so because one of the English meanings of the word virtual is close to the term potentiality. The author refers to the Oxford definition in which the virtual is a reference to something “that is so in essence or effect, although not formally or actually” (Oxford English Dictionary 2006). The binarism of the two terms actual and virtual is very important and will reappear as a subject of discussion throughout this dissertation. Because the difference is mostly one of perception, especially in the case of virtual worlds, users often testify to feel as if they are in the “actual” world. Artists generating mixed-reality performance also question this separation. And when it comes to the self, understood here as one’s perceived identity and presence, it becomes even more confusing to draw a line between your “virtual” self and your “actual” self. Richard Rogers noticed in The End of the

Virtual that “with respect to the relationship between the real and the virtual, virtual

interactions supplement rather than substitute for the ‘real’, and stimulate more real interaction, as opposed to isolation and desolation.” (Rogers 2009, 7) Following

Rogers, what an individual is doing online should not be opposed from his or her actions within their “reality”, the rules and the context may change but the notion of interaction and social exchange remain.

Along with this plethora of synonymous, different forms of knowledge associated with the words as well as divergent histories come up. Theorists, coming from very different fields, from Information Technology to Anthropology, seem to have a hard time defining the historical and conceptual roots of virtual worlds. Some argue that they are as old as humanity, “W.H Auden spoke of a desire ‘present in every human being’ to ‘make new secondary worlds of our own, or if we cannot make them ourselves, to share in the secondary worlds of those who can’”

(Boellstorff 2010, 37). From an anthropological perspective, already cave paintings can be interpreted as a hint for human desire to create something imaginary,

essentially virtual, approaching the “actual” world without filling the gap that exists between actual and virtual. Even more important and significant in this context appears Plato’s philosophy of ideas referring to the world as being itself made of signs and illusions – in opposition to his concept of the world of ideal forms - which is often quoted. (De Cayeux and Guibert 2007) (Boellstorff 2010) (Dixon 2012) (Houliez and Gamble 2012). The question of resemblance is at stake. “In Plato’s history it is the physical world that is ‘virtual’” (Boellstorff 2010, 34) It would concur to the idea that it is pointless to oppose “real” world and “virtual” world. They both share some fundamental characteristics. Not only as a philosophical opponent but also as the first theorist of theatre and acting in the scenic or – if you will – “virtual” space of the theatre, Aristotle is also often quoted for his writing on the notion of mimesis that I will develop in relation to digital performance in a coming chapter (Aristotle 1990). Virtual worlds can be seen as another mean to represent the “actual” world thanks to technological devices; which could be considered as the only new things brought to the story of men representing their environment. The desire to extend our physical and formal world could be seen as being as old as sin.

In a matter of technological devices the origins of virtual worlds get closer to us. It begins with inventions like the laterna magica developed in the seventeenth century, used to project images, and also the stereoscope, the first one was conceived

in 1838 by Charles Wheatstone. They were the first steps towards a three

dimensional vision of images. Then the development of manufacturing processes, including paper machines and transportations, that took place during the industrial revolution is of importance, “print technologies shaped new forms of human sociality” (Boellstorff 2010, 36). It is also said that “all media have always offered entrances to imagined spaces or ‘virtual realities’, opening up symbolic worlds for transgressive experiments (Fornas et al. 2002, 30).” (Boellstorff 2010, 36). The inventions of the telephone and of television, as parts of electronic mass media, are often described as very important moments within the history of virtual worlds. Following Steuer in his text “Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determining telepresence”, these devices are closely linked to the phenomenon of telepresence, “extent to which one feels present in the mediated environment, rather than in the immediate physical environment” (Steuer 1992, 76). The experience of perceiving yourself as “being there” in an environment that is purely immaterial is a

characteristic of what defines virtual worlds. Steuer describes virtual reality “as a real or simulated environment in which a perceiver experiences telepresence” (Steuer 1992, 76-77). A critic that could be made is that this description could be applied to pretty much all mediated experiences. Virtual realities, a term coined in 1989 by Jaron Lanier, are nonetheless not to be confused with an online creation like Second Life. They are “electronic simulations of environments experienced via head

mounted eye goggles and wired clothes enabling the end user to interact in realistic three dimensional situations” (Steuer 1992, 74). Although VW do not require expensive materials and are not deeply immersive, they share some roots and

characteristics with virtual realities. For instance they are interactive, they are used to expand human perception and to experience another identity, and they are also technological tools used for educational and medical programs.

Attractions and video games are also a great part of the historical

development of VW. Sensorama invented by Morton Heilig in 1956 is one of the most often quoted examples of immersive, multi-sensory entertainment technology. “This arcade-game-style simulator utilizes four of the five senses to simulate a motorcycle ride: Users see the Manhattan streets go by, hear the roar of the motorcycle and the sounds of the street, smell the exhaust of other cars and pizza

cooking in roadside restaurants, and feel the vibration of the handlebars.” (Steuer 1992, 82). It is considered as the ancestor of virtual reality. Another major idea is the one of Myron Krueger who in 1995 created Videoplace: “Two people in different rooms, each containing a projection screen and a video camera, were able to communicate through their projected images in a ‘shared space’ on the screen. No computer was involved in the first Environment” (Medien Kunst Netz “Videoplace”). The rise of video games during the twentieth century is also part of this history. According to Boellstorff, VW originated above all from video games and more specifically from multi-players games and simulation games such as the “Sim” games or even before in the seventies: Multi User Dungeons whose first versions were only textual. And “as these simulations became more complex, some Internet based communities look on features of virtual worlds” (Boellstorff 2010, 49). Thus communication between individuals is a primary feature. In this respect it seems to be helpful to ask in what manner the communication process is structured and constructed by the media/medium i.e. Second Life itself. Then it is interesting to talk about the qualities of this kind of communication.

Second Life, to talk more specifically about it, is an online virtual world directly related to “Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG), replicates of a three dimensional space, in which a user is represented by a 3D avatar” (Houliez and Gamble 2012, 2). The most famous are Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft, many residents of SL are or have been participating in these games

(Boellstorff 2012). But before going to the singular history of SL, I would like to hint at two important aspects. First I would like to highlight the fact that the idea of the “newness” of virtual worlds, virtual realities, is hotly contested. Some features are new such as some technological devices but on the other hand the ideas and concepts they originated from seem to be as old as the hills. Quoting Hayles, Boellstorff underlines the fact that “virtual worlds did not ‘spring, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus, full-blown from the mind of William Gibson … [They have encoded with them (VR)] a complex history of technological innovations, conceptual

developments and metaphorical linkages” (Boellstorff 2010, 32). Second it is an individual experience of mediated perception to live simultaneously with others,

accompanied with a sense of “being there”. It makes it quite similar to what we call the “actual” world; they have common characteristics as well as fundamental differences. However the virtual is not an antonym for the real, and should not be seen as a complete artifice.

2.2 What is Second Life?

The online community was launched in 2003 by the company Linden Lab, a developer of digital entertainment. They are makers of shared creative space

according to their own terms. (Linden Lab on the Internet 2013) It has immediately sustained the attention of Internet users. Second Life seemed like the promise of a world to conquer, to colonize, to develop and to construct together (De Cayeux and Guibert 2007, 13). Even though Linden Lab owners consider themselves to have pioneered the virtual world space with their creation, SL was preceded by others, more or less successful in their attempt. In 1997, Philippe Ulrich, CEO of Cryo Interactive, and Alain Le Diberder, program director of Canal Plus, founded

“Deuxième Monde” with the desire to create a virtual community, a parallel society. It already required to be connected online to communicate with other avatars and to evolve in a city shaped to look like Paris. Some issues explained in an article written by journalists of the national French newspaper “Le point”, part of the online

archive, are to be found again in other articles about Second Life. For instance they discuss the feeling of freedom as well as people who decided to meet in the “actual life”, called here the first world (Hacot and Ubertalli 2007). “Le Deuxième Monde” was closed down in 2002 for being too expensive. Users tried to save the community before it was terminated, in vain, but for most of them it might have been their first experience in a virtual world, trying to build their own society. Soon after SL was created, ready to host even more people and to give them the possibility to invest their own space.

SL is quite easy to access; you can download it for free on the Internet. What is required is a computer with enough memory and powerful enough to host the program. You will then meet your avatar and learn to make your first steps, as well as

fly, on the grid (name given to the whole territory of Second Life). It is not a game so there is nothing to accomplish except walking around and getting comfortable

moving and talking to other avatars present. When you get accustomed to this new environment you can think about customizing your avatar or getting yourself a private place. It is possible to buy these things using the local money, the Linden

dollars that are convertible in US dollars, or to create your own, depending on your

abilities. This is one of the most important features of SL; you are the owner of everything you create whether you decide to sell it or to share it with other lifers (term sometimes used to refer to residents of SL). Indeed Linden Lab decided to centre its strategy of development on users-contributors and thus to use an open source server. Their slogan is “Your world, your imagination” which tells a lot about the kind of message they want to transmit to their users. Residents of SL feel like major players of the virtual world’s creation. This openness appeared to have

satisfied the users and in some ways helped SL getting popular but it was also part of a bigger plan. Doing so Linden Lab hoped to create a standard and dreamed that in the future we would have had some sort of 3D web with navigators functioning like virtual worlds. In 2007 Linden Lab revealed the source code under a free licence (De Cayeux and Guibert 2007, 56-57). Nevertheless Linden Lab decides alone without collective discussion and this issue of governance, within a world that resembles a public space, will be debated later.

The economy of Second Life is closely related to the one of the “actual” world. As said before the local money is convertible in “actual” money. One of the lifers, Ailin Grief even became a millionaire thanks to her in-world business (it designates the fact that an action occurred in SL using tools provided by the

platform). Using her avatar, named Anshe Chung, she has built a successful company by providing multiple services to other residents and reinvesting her money in the “actual” world. On the official website, apparently abandoned, it is written: “Today Anshe Chung Studios maintains offices in the real world where it employs more than 80 people full time, and is extended by a huge network of virtual reality freelancers worldwide.” (Anshe Chung Studios 2003-2010). This story has inspired many others to subscribe and some indeed succeeded in earning money via SL through various means.

Aesthetically speaking, which refers mostly to the architecture of the place, Second Life is a heterogeneous composition. Overall it does look like a video game, the graphic design is very similar to what we are used to know today. The beauty, if we can talk here of such thing, is more contained in the possibility to create a flying building than in the pictorial appearance of this building. You can find a reproduction of the city of Amsterdam as well as surrealistic constructions. After a period in which most users were trying to imitate the “actual” world, to produce an environment similar to the one they live in, some wanted to experiment. In SL it is possible to add “scripts” in order to animate the objects you are using and thus to alter the space in a new way. Stephan Doesinger says in an interview about the possibilities you get when you are an architect in Second Life: “c’est la partie la plus imaginative, cette tentative à l’aide de scripts de changer l’espace, d’y faire quelque chose et plus seulement le regarder. De nouvelles relations spatiales émergent.” (It is the most imaginative part, this attempt thanks to scripts to change the space, to alter it and not only to look at it. New relationships to the space are emerging)2 (Lechner 2007). Same could be said about avatars, they might not be described as beautiful, but it is not their aesthetic that is the more interesting. They have the possibility to be different, not only mere imitations of our bodies. This is also why the aesthetics of science fiction and fantasy books are very influential in virtual worlds (Boellstorff 2010).

2-3 Popular success and subculture

Second Life has quickly grown from its creation until 2007, the year during which mass media almost all took interest in the subject. The numbers of articles on Second Life at that time is countless. Business Life made its cover on Second Life. It has expanded from one square kilometre to 650 000, from three continents to an archipelago of islands, from a hundred of residents to 300 000 (even if the average of simultaneous participants was of 40 000 users a day). Following this success,

powerful enterprises decided to buy islands to promote their brands such as

American Apparel, Dell, Reebok (De Cayeux and Guibert, 2007). Multinationals like

2 Translation by C. Pierre

L’Oreal conducted interviews for “actual” jobs in-world. SL became for a while a mainstream phenomenon. During the French presidential campaign in 2007 every candidate had his/her own island to welcome potential voters. The artist Suzanne Vega played a live concert show on the radio show The infinite mind (Ludlow Wallace 2010, 1). The list of examples is non-exhaustive. Most of the books written on SL focus on its enormous growth and publications become rarer after 2007. A consequent coverage of what SL looked like at that time results from this. Journalist and essayist Peter Ludlow, with his avatar Urizenus Sklar, created a newspaper online “The Second Life Herald” that has disappeared, what remains of it is a book

The Second Life Herald: The virtual tabloid that witnessed the dawn of the metaverse

(Ludlow and Wallace 2010). Some websites still exist such as the “SL enquirer” or the “SL observer”.

Second Life was to some extent considered as what the future internet would be like, confirmed by Linden Lab strategy to position its creation as a standard. But it did not happen. Even though there is still an average of one million users logged in each month reported by the company in 2011, it is nothing compared to Facebook which now dominates communication on the Internet. Almost every company have also shut down their island as visitors would no longer come (Heath 2011). Most articles written on Second Life in mainstream media nowadays are even pretty sarcastic about it, considering users as escaping their real life to become online butterflies. However Second Life remained active once the lights of fame turned off. It is populated by residents very attached to the virtual worlds who evolve within their online community. SL is still a place for experimentations adopted by performers such as the collective Second Front based in Second Life, academic institutions, the University of Lyon has opened offices in-world, online activists represented at a time by the Second Life Liberation Army (SLLA) who were

defending the residents rights, are trying new forms of governance. It has not become a standard, a norm, so it somehow goes back to its roots, remaining in the continuity of the history of virtual worlds. Those who decided to stay after the media exposure enjoy Second Life for the sense of community it offers, the feeling of being away from the “actual” world and still having a feeling of “being here”. Second Life is not hermetic to what is happening outside of it. A consequent part of the residents claim

to have found a place in which they can actually be themselves, find their “true self”, even if it is a slippery notion. Economically speaking SL is not as interesting

anymore, but the individual still find there a space for self-realization. It is the interesting point here and the reason why SL seems to be a particularly favourable ground for performances.

Before pursuing with the next chapter I would like to highlight some points that I have just developed above. Dreams to extend our world into another space are nothing new conceptually speaking but thanks to technological developments we now have access to three-dimensional virtual worlds. Second Life is based on these human desires to augment our reality. Easy to access, with an open source server, it allows performers to some extent own their creation and to disturb certain limits of representation of the self and its identity.

In the coming chapter I will relate theories of digital performance, performances within digital culture, to the traditional theatrical concept of the

mimesis. Can we talk of a continuity within the history of theatre? Through this

question I will discuss the interest theatre theorists have in issues related to representation and digitalization.

“Après un théâtre – après … votre théâtre – l’heure de notre théâtre? Ou bien: ces

théâtres – de l’épique, de l’absurde, de la littéralité, du corps métaphysique – sont-ils avatars ou crises des anciens théâtres, ne sont-sont-ils qu’écarts momentanés, de

l’ancien: LE théâtre, puis les errements, puis, de nouveau et après,

LE THEATRE?”

(After a theater - after ... your theater – time of our theatre? Or: these theaters - of the epic, the absurd, the literal, the metaphysical body - are they avatars or crises of old theaters, are they just momentary deviations of the former: THE theater , then misguided ways, and again, and thereafter, THEATRE?)

Emile Copfermann (Translation by C. Pierre)

3- Second Life and digital performance

To get a better understanding of performances taking place in Second Life it is necessary to focus on the most important theories about digital performance. Since the 1990s it has been the subject of many publications whether they underline the newness of the field or point out a continuity within the “traditional” subject matters of theatre studies. It will help define the theoretical frame surrounding the

performing self in virtual worlds. First I will look into the most significant positions on the links between digital culture and performance through three different

theoretical perspectives on the subjects published in the recent years. In a second step I will underpin my claim that the dramaturgy of the Second Life narrative is

3-1 Definitions of digital performance

I will provide an overview on the current research on the field of digital performance, by relying on three central publications that inform about it: Theatre

and Performance in Digital Culture by Matthew Causey (Causey 2006), Mapping Intermediality edited by Sarah Bay-Cheng and others (Bay-Cheng et al. 2011) and Digital performance written by Steve Dixon (Dixon 2012: which was first published

in 2004). I have chosen these three specific books because they have come across often during my studies, they appear to be of great importance in the actual discussion about the topics I am concerned with in this dissertation; also they all have been published (or reedited) recently so they reflect critically on the most modern advances in the area of digital performance. Furthermore, they all offer different perspectives on the field allowing the reader to get an idea of the variety of thoughts surrounding the subject.

Matthew Causey’s book Theatre and Performance in digital culture, written in 2006, intends to reflect in a critical way on the relationships between theatre, performance and technology. Analysing the appearance of televisual screens on stage and the impact of new media on the scenography, he seems to defend and to focus on a quite traditional model of theatre. He begins his first chapter by stating “There is nothing in cyberspace or in the screen technologies of the virtual that has not already been performed on the stage. The theatre has always been virtual, a place of illusory immediacy” (Causey 2006, 17). Here theatre remains the centre of interest, modern technology has been added to the stage and it requires to be analysed through new models of performance analysis. This is what Causey offers to do. Therefore he questions some characteristics that have been turned out as fundamental to

performances such as liveness, immediacy and presence. They have been discussed by authors such as Richard Schechner, Peggy Phelan, Philip Auslander, etc. To Causey what appears as primary is not to define a new genre that would be the mixture between theatre and new media but to find out what they bring to each other,

what is still essential to each even after they are being combined. How is theatre challenged by the appearance of modern technology on stage? Can we even talk of theatre when it is happening exclusively online, therefore entirely recorded? This is a question Causey does not clearly answer although he argues “that the now, the immediate, has become one of the accidents (the mere appearance) of the transubstantiation of performance into the technological” (Causey 2006, 31). He underlines a major change. “Performance in this configuration of technological interventions which disrupt the spatial and temporal texts, becomes what

performance has never been: here and not here, now and not now simultaneously” (Causey 2006, 39). Thus, he points out to the fact that a theoretical change is needed when it comes to performance that has entered digital culture. Means and meanings have changed. Even though, as Causey argues in his book, the theoretical ground is still the one of theatre. He often uses plays of Beckett and Genet to make his point. For example, he uses Genet’s The Screens in his chapter “The screen test of the double” to interpret the use of screens as an additional, virtual as well as material, space on stage. “They are, in essence, each a tiny theatre with curtains and

prosceniums, where a world is created through the pictures drawn on them” (Causey 2006, 27). Digital technology represents and provides – metaphorically speaking - another stage within theatre and performance studies. It is another step towards illusion and embeddedness, something that has always existed in the field.

The book Mapping Intermediality, edited by Sarah Bay-Cheng, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender and Robin Nelson offers yet another perspective on digital technology linked to theatre performances. In the introduction Robin Nelson states that “a primary concern is with the impact of the ‘technical media’ (Elleström 2011, 12 ff.), not only as they are used in live theatre, but in how they have

challenged the very conception of theatre” (Bay-Cheng et al. 2011, 13). Thus, they claim there has been an intermedial turn, the inclusion of other art practices and other mediums: “the proposition of this collection is that intermediality may now best be understood in relation to performance” (Bay-Cheng et al. 2011, 15). Mapping

Intermediality specifically concerns itself with the use of digital technologies, the

combination of theatre and digital culture. The authors observe changes, in particular the ones that have an impact on our perception. “Digital culture has generated a

widespread interactive engagement and playfulness in environments which require a fundamental reconfiguration of temporal and spatial relationships since they do not adhere entirely to Kattenbelt’s defining characteristic of theatre as ‘the social meeting between performer and spectator in the live presence of the here and now’ (2006, 33) ” (Bay-Cheng et al. 2011, 19). Here again, as it was the case in Causey’s book, digital performance is not defined as a specific type of autonomous art. The main subject is to illustrate, debate upon the interrelationships and metamorphic interplays between digital media and performance arts. How theatre tradition is being

challenged is once again a major question. Thus the here and now, the question of time and space is the subject of a very interesting chapter that clearly relates intermedial performances to theatre tradition. Nevertheless their argument is that digital media provides a new temporality consisting of a continuing present, as whether you log in or log off the interface remains, “the no-place of online digital environments becomes the unceasing time of now, the spatialisation of time as all-encompassing location” (Bay-Cheng et al. 2011, 90).

In his book Steve Dixon gives a quite general definition of what is digital performance. But before doing so he comes back to the two terms separately and notes that they are both problematic in the sense that throughout the years they have been stretched in order to be applied to many different things. However, he defines digital performance as “broadly to include all performance works where computer technologies play a key role rather than a subsidiary one in content, techniques, aesthetics, or delivery forms” (Dixon 2012, 3). This definition seems to include quite an important part of performances taking place nowadays. Indeed, Dixon’s book appears to aim at covering as many productions as possible that involve

computational technological devices. Digital performance functions as an

encyclopaedia that will help the reader to get a general idea of what this is about and some tools to apprehend and analyse it. Also he points out the diversity of

applications of new media in performance art and the significant importance of the Internet in its development. He argues that “theater is thus created not only by those who consciously use computer networks for theatrical events, but also by millions of ‘ordinary’ individuals who develop e-friendships, use MOOS, IRC, and chatrooms, or create home pages and ‘blogs’ on the World Wide Web” (Dixon 2012, 3). People

are offered places to express themselves and create their own persona; something which Dixon relates to a kind of performance. The questions of the link with the nature of theatre, the newness, the utopian vision are also invoked at the very beginning of the book. These are three primary points when it comes to discuss digital performance. Can we talk about a rupture with theatre tradition? Should we legitimize a romantic view on digital performance? Dixon’s answers do not appear to be categorical which is logical given the type of book he has written. Nonetheless in the introduction he gives a clear idea of what some of his beliefs are. Steve Dixon acknowledges the potentialities of digital performance but he is also careful and tries to be critical towards those who appear to be too enthusiastic. But also in the

introduction of the chapter 2, he declares that he “dispute[s] the contention of writers such as Matthew Causey, who declares, ‘There is nothing in cyberspace and the screened technologies of the virtual that has not been already performed on stage (Causey 1999, 283)’” (Dixon 2012, 37). Oppositely to Causey, Dixon argues that there is something purely new that you cannot find in past performances. Talking about Lev Manovich discussion on new media he states that “his discourse […] is indicative of a tendency in cyberculture criticism to romanticize (or else demonize) technology, to generalize its ontology and to forge links between computer

technologies and other cultural and theoretical discourse too readily and indiscriminately” (Dixon 2012, 16). He makes here a very important point

denouncing excesses that can be found in some articles. He also underlines the fact that digital performance is a very new field that sometimes shows a lack of specific vocabulary and analytic tools.

3-2 Aristotelian perspective, theatrical tradition and continuity

Even though these three books all agree on the fact that the encounter of theatre performances and digital technologies, digital culture, challenges our certainties and bring something different; they do not relate in the same way to theatre tradition and the influence it has kept on contemporary theatre that includes modern technologies. I also wish in the following part to provide new insights on the way digital performances can be analysed from a perspective that involves theatre and performance studies. I would argue that besides their modernity, digital performances can be examined with a vocabulary and tools rooted in theatre tradition.

Aristotle’s Poetics is one of the major books and one that no theatre scholar and theatre scientist can ever avoid. It is one of the pillars of theatre tradition. It has gained a new importance during the seventeenth century, being at the origin of the arousal of notions of verisimilitude and decorum. D’Aubignac during the “Querelle du Cid” wrote “Voici le fondement de toutes les Pièces du théâtre, […]; en un mot la Vraisemblance est, s’il faut se le dire ainsi, l’essence du poème dramatique, et sans laquelle il ne peut rien faire ni rien dire de raisonnable sur la scène” (Here is the foundation of all theatre Plays, [...] in a word the Verisimilitude, without which nothing can be done or said that is reasonable on stage)3 (D’Aubignac 1971, chap. II). A very good example of decorum can be found in Racine’s Phèdre when

Théramène goes on stage to tell how Hyppolite died. (Racine 2000, Act V sc. 6) The

Poetics is concerned with basic concept such as the mimesis, which was interpreted

and discussed over and over for centuries. It is possible to find it in Lessing’s

Laokoon, D’Aubignac’s La pratique du théâtre, Ricoeur’s Temps et Récit, Bakhtine’s Esthétique de la création verbale etc.

Mimesis is a Greek word that is translated in French as representation or

imitation. Aristotle argues that man is a mimetic animal; it is even what distinguishes him from animals. Before being cultural and artistic the mimesis is indeed a natural

3 Translation by C. Pierre

aptitude that consists in producing then recognizing intellectualized representation of the sensible world. Images are produced through a mediation operated by the reason on the perception, process at the beginning of our knowledge (Gefen 2003, 45). In the chapter IV of the Poetics, Aristotle points out the tendency of the human being to represent and to take pleasure into aesthetical representation of things. According to him it is the reason why men enjoyed rhythms and melodies, and then the gifted ones came to write drama after having done improvisations. Mimesis is first a scenic and visual imitation but which is based on a text that represents itself a story. (Gefen 2003, 235) Aristotle argues that the action should be prior over the character; he also develops an apparent contempt for the spectacle which is the less artistic and relevant of the six parts of the tragedy (Aristotle 1990, chap. VI). This would be what has influenced for centuries the tendency of the western theatre to overlook the drama text and disdain the performance as an autonomous form of art, deserving to be studied.

Thus, text-based theatre has been the dominant form until recently. With the expansion of new media during the twentieth century, theatre has developed new forms of representations and discourses. Hans-Thies Lehmann coined the term

postdramatic theatre to designate this theatre of a new era. He was inspired by

“Brecht who chose the term ‘dramatic theatre’ to designate the tradition that his epic theatre of the scientific age intended to put an end to” (Lehmann 2006, 21). Through this term he refers to a theatre that operates beyond drama, no longer subordinated to the text. Drama becomes one element of theatre among others.

Meanwhile, performance as one autonomous part, has gained the legitimacy to enter the academia and to be studied separately. Then, later he declares “the spread and then omnipresence of the media in everyday life since the 1970s has brought with it a new multiform kind of theatrical discourse that is here going to be described as

postdramatic theatre” (Lehmann 2006, 22). Also he argues that Brecht’s innovation

of the epic theatre still belongs to the dramatic tradition. There is no rupture whatsoever. The author states that the “postdramatic theatre thus includes the

presence or resumption or continued working of older aesthetics including those that took leave of the dramatic idea in earlier times, be it on the level of text or theatre. Art in general cannot develop without reference to earlier forms” (Lehmann 2006,

27). On the other hand, Lehmann wants to imagine theatre after Aristotle, after drama, after the mimetic staging of a fable.

Concerning digital performance theories what I find very interesting is that the Aristotelian influence, what could be also called theatre tradition, is still very present whether it is contained within the analysis, debated, or considered as past, something let behind, as Lehmann does. In the introduction of Mapping

Intermediality it is said that the authors “recognize [...] that in digital culture virtual

potentialities to a considerable extent displace representations of reality. However [they] do not want to fall back on an unsustainable technological determinism. In aiming to characterize a historical moment, [they] acknowledge continuities as well as ruptures” (Bay-Cheng et al. 2011, 20). Even what could be considered as the newest, most modern form of theatre cannot get rid of theatre’s ghosts. The concept of mimesis is particularly interesting because it can appear under different forms. Aristotle’s Poetics is a fragmented text of which several parts are missing and it has allowed many interpretations. Digital performance theorists are not interested in verisimilitude and decorum; these notions belong to the past. Nonetheless they still are concerned with the representation of the real and the narratives it uses. Mimesis has a value of replacement, to replace with signs destroyed, hidden, remote realities (Geffen 2003, 37). As Aristotle, quoted by Gefen, argued in Thesmophories “quant à ce que la nature nous refuse, l’imitation tâche d’y suppléer” (About what nature is denying us, imitation tries to supplement it)4 (Gefen 2003, 37). Some contemporary critics such as Genette, Ricoeur, and Schaeffer even translate mimesis by fiction, suggesting that there is no difference between a representation that refers to the real and one that deliberately does not.

What is very interesting in both Matthew Causey and Dixon’s book is that they use as a reference Laurel’s influential book, Computers as theatre (Laurel 1991). What Dixon says about it is that “she analyses the Poetics in considerable detail to demonstrate that new technology shares precisely the same concerns and contexts that Aristotle formulates: dramatic structure, empathy, engagement, and catharsis” (Dixon 2012, 171). Dixon describes her analysis of the links between theatre and computers as exhaustive but also exhausting and at times he gets sarcastic

4 Translation by C. Pierre

again. But overall Dixon seems to value Laurel’s arguments. “She suggests that the notion of theatre can be applied to multimedia not only as a metaphor, but as a way to conceptualize human-computer interaction itself. Performance academics have frequently drawn on these ideas to reflect on the complementarity between performance and computing” (Dixon 2012, 172). Further in this chapter called “Computers as theatre”, he analyses the impact Laurel’s work has had on artists’ work such as David Saltz’s interpretation of Samuel Beckett’s Play. Saltz uses the mathematical computer to replace the actors and instead of the theatre director there is the programmer. What is the most important here is the application of analogies drawn by Laurel “between theatrical and computational ideas of role-play,

interaction, mimesis, and ‘make believe’” (Dixon 2012, 171). Aristotle in this

specific case is the absolute reference to integrate theatricality into computationality. A computer drama can be interpreted as analogous to a theatre drama. Dixon himself in his book, trying to write a panorama of digital performance experimentations and theories, uses a quite classical structure drawing on notions of space, time, bodies which reminds the structure of Mapping Intermediality.

Matthew Causey is way more critical towards Laurel’s book, he argues that she “makes a fatal error in using Aristotle’s Poetics as a model for shaping narrative flow in interactive and virtual environments, thereby closing off any radical potential for virtual performances by relying on traditional narrative” (Causey 2006, 51). Further on he adds that Aristotle’s theory is far from being sufficient especially if artists “want to inaugurate a new aesthetics of the virtual, then they must advance new notions that critique Western narrativity and subjectivity, exposing their ideological bases and promoting social reconfigurations” (Causey 2006, 61). There are new territories that virtual realities should explore outside of the Aristotelian theoretical frame that has been haunting theatre for so long and belongs to the past. It is at least what Causey seems to state.

Theatre is a place of illusion, on the stage the world turns into imitating images, symbols. New technologies do not provide a new dramaturgy of theatre or theatrical representations. Digital performances, as far away as the verisimilitude (and sometimes decorum) as they are, still provide visual narratives that can be analysed with tools from theatre and performance studies. I would argue that mimesis is a concept that can be used in relation to performances in Second Life. They are directly related to issues of the representation of the real, of the links between resemblance, identity and being. Performers in SL turn computers’ data into images that translates one’s subjectivity, a rhythm, sonorous and visual imitations of actions.

The next chapter is concerned with the figure of the avatar, the virtual being, which I will later analyse in relation to a performance by Micha Cardenas, Becoming

“How will this end? Poor she that dotes on me. What will become of this? As I am a man, My state is desperate for another’s love; As I am woman (now alas the day!), What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe! O time, though must untangle this, not I, It is too hard a knot for me t’untie”

Sarah Bay-Cheng and Jay Sennett

4- The avatar in Second Life

When you decide to make your first steps in Second Life the first thing you will have to do is to create your own avatar. You will name it, give it the appearance you want it to have. It is, within technological limitations, your creation. It becomes the expression of your existence online, your virtual “body”. My purpose in this chapter will be to describe the importance of the avatar in relation to the self and more specifically to the performing self. First, I will examine theories of

performativity and gender. Because they make us understand how, what we could see as biologically determined is also a social and cultural construction. And the avatar brings new questions on genders and the expression of our “true” self. Then I will analyse a performance by Micha Cardenas, Becoming Dragon (2010), and its

intrinsic discourse, to illustrate but also to develop the theoretical part of this chapter.

4-1 The body of the self?

How can we define the avatar in Second Life? Is it a duplication of our daily life self? Then, a digital version of ourselves we can use to communicate with others, imitating the “real” world? But it is certainly not the “natural” world, it is a

fabricated environment made of data that can be erased, fixed, changed. There are notions here of human construction and of choice that are central.

However, I would like to begin with Judith Butler’s definition of gender and of its performative aspect. It is a fundamental point in the argumentation that I will develop later on the relation between performance art and avatars. Judith Butler considers genders as the product of cultural norms that precede and exceed us (Butler 2012, 292). We might be born with either female or male genitals but are taught to act as males or females; we perform our gender identities in order to correspond to social norms and a cultural imaginary. The example she gives is the one of

hermaphrodites whose parents are asked to choose at the birth of their child between one of the two, so he/she can grow up accordingly to the binary system of genders. Nonetheless, following Butler, this binary system is far from being a fatality. “There are humans […] who live and breathe in the interstices of this binary relation, showing that it is exhaustive; it is not necessary” (Butler 2004, 65). In her book

Undoing gender, she questions the autonomy of gender. Thus she writes “the body is

that which can occupy the norm in myriad ways, exceed the norm, rework the norm, and expose realities to which we thought we were confined as open to

transformations.” (Butler 2004, 217). Perhaps, the avatar can be seen as one of the ways to exceed the norm, to create another reality for genders that cannot be found in the actual world yet. But this is a point I will develop later as I would like first to discuss the link between gender performativity and performance. Is the

performativity of gender comparable to the performing of a play? In Performative

acts and gender constitution, Judith Butler argues that “the act that one does, the act

that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene. Hence, gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again.”(Butler, 1988, 526). Genders walk on and out of stage, it is not produced as a theatrical object as it survives the play. But the performance can be seen as a way to exemplify the reality of genders as an act, something that can be challenged, disrupted. About the

performance of gender itself, Judith Butler firmly distinguishes performativity from performance. In Theatricality, Shannon Jackson quotes Butler’s sentence in Bodies

That Matter (Butler 1993), “In no sense can it be concluded that the part of gender

distinguished from performativity insofar as the latter consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and exceed the performance and in that sense cannot be taken as a fabrication of the performer’s ‘will’ or ‘choice’” (Jackson 2003, 206). Butler underlines the fact that the performer himself/ herself has to deal with genders as it is, according to her, an internal construction that does not depends of his/her will or choice. But I will argue with Micha Cardenas’ performance and the use of avatars, that performance has the possibility to highlight some of these constraints, using technological devices, the spectators’ gaze... It can also offer the possibility to explore the in-between of the binary system and also the in-between of the actual life gender and the performer performing gender.

Kati Röttger in her article “The actor in the age of cloning” asks a fundamental question “How does acting and fabricating interfere with human notion?” (Röttger 2012, 4). She emphasizes the links between acting, performing a being, embodiment and the histories of performing a body and performing images of a body. Rather than separating performativity (performing a body) and performance (acting as performing a human being), Röttger points out a connection between both. We can talk about interference. “What is happening between the actor (as human being) and (the performed image of) the human being is technique. Here, technique is conceived as a way of fabricating and regulating. The actor distinguishes himself by controlling certain ways of regulating and fabricating (techniques) in order to carry out certain embodiments (imagery) of human beings” (Röttger 2012, 6). As seen before, Butler’s argument is focused on her idea of gender existing as a

preceding norm and does not consider the specificity of the actor as a transmitter of human beings imagery. She considers as primary the idea of “truth” that exists off stage rather than its representation or discourse on stage. To use Butler’s words, the performers’ will and choice shows through the use of technique. This point is very important when it comes to the use of new technologies which offer possibilities to impact durably the body or to extend its presence. Of course it is not question of “truth” here but of embodiment. But it can be moved to questions of fiction and reality. “During the performance not only the actors but also the spectators are confronted with the permanent switch of mediated realities: Realities of video, film, theatre and ‘real life’ on the one hand, and on the other the reality of an actor

between life, body and body image, between real life and a fictive role” (Röttger 2012, 11). This matter seems to become even more complex when it comes to avatars, which are not only an act but also an incarnation of the performer’s self as we will see with Micha Cardenas’ work. In this case, the acting self, as its gender, seems to walk on and out of stage in the same way. Here, the use of digital

technologies tends to blur the lines between real life and a fictive role; especially in Second Life in which the links between the users and their avatars are very tight and intimate.

Tom Boellstorff in his anthropological study of Second Life, Coming of age

in Second Life argues that “Avatars, however, were not just abstract anchors of

virtual perspective; they were the modality through which residents experienced virtual selfhood, central to both immersion and the construction of community in virtual spaces […] [they] make virtual worlds real, not actual: they are a position from which the self encounters the virtual” (Boellstorff 2010, 129). He goes further when he testifies that “Some Second Life residents spoke of their virtual-world self as ‘closer to’ their ‘real’ self than their actual-world self” (Boellstorff 2010, 122). The users can choose to be a woman or a man whatever their real sex is, it is beyond any form of transgendering, as it can be interpreted as new ways to incarnate manhood or womanhood. You can also choose to become furries, anthropomorphic avatars that form a powerful community inside SL. The avatars are not to be disconnected from their users, the virtual self shapes the actual self and vice-versa. Thus virtual worlds and the embodied avatars can appear as a refuge but also a mean to experiment what the actual world refuses to acknowledge or even to consider. The body is one of the major elements in performance art, the body that is also supposedly marked by its apparent gender, it is never seen as a neutral material, something has always already been written on it. There is just a possibility to rewrite upon it. Thus the actual body can appear as fixed in history whereas the online one is more easily open to new narratives, it can fly, switch to become an animal as well as an old fashion man. The avatar is not subjected to the biological binary of gender; the avatar can embody and perform a need for gender to exceed normativity.

“New technologies become extensions of the human body and as such influence its identity. The body itself, the way it is defined, its history, its gender and substance also undergo multiple transformations which has an immeasurable effect on our idea of identity” (Kluszczynski 1998, 38). In this article called “Art of virtual bodies” published in the Digital Creativity journal, the author strongly believes new technologies will change our perception of the human being. The article being

published at the end of the 1990s, he is more careful about the way it will be received by the audience, the people. Whether it will be seen as progress or it will reveal hostile standpoints. Still, according to him, there is an undeniable newness coming from these innovations, the virtual worlds, which will bring a change. But is it really that simple? I will try to nuance and develop these affirmations analysing Micha Cardenas’ performance, Becoming dragon, in which she did try to go beyond the norms and moreover beyond the real/virtual dichotomy touching the self.

4-2 Micha Cardenas Becoming Dragon (2010)

In an interview given by S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein to Mandy van Deven for “Herizons” (a Canadian feminist magazine) about the publication of

Gender Outlaws: The next generation, they were asked if they “think the internet

aids trans and gender nonconforming people’s ability to discover and settle in to their identities?” The answer of Kate Bornstein then was: “I think it comes down to this: in cyberspace, we’re not tied down to any identity, desire or power that may be based in any number of cultural factors triggered by our physical bodies. In cyberspace, we are disembodied and that’s a big freedom. [...] We get to ignore all the taboos and explore our lives’ most fun mysteries: our sexualities and our gender expressions” (Van Deven 2011, 19). It appears to be a pretty good introduction to talk about Micha Cardenas’ Becoming dragon.

Fig.2

In Becoming dragon, she replaced the one year requirement of real life experiment that is asked from transgender people in order to receive the “Gender Confirmation Surgery” by 365 hours of Second life experiment. She “lived immersed in the online 3D environment of Second Life with a head-mounted display, seeing the physical world only through a video feed, and used a motion capture system to map [her] movements in Second Life. The installation included a stereoscopic projection for the audience. A Pure Data patch was used to produce [her] voice to create a virtual dragon’s voice” (Cardenas 2012, 43). She embodied a dragon, her avatar named Azdel Slade, inside the virtual world as well as a transgender performer artist people could talk with. She decided never to separate the real and the virtual, to create simultaneity. It is a mixed or hybrid reality performance. It is important here to notice that because of the technological devices she used, she turned Second Life into a virtual reality, in which the sense of presence is much stronger. She said she chose the dragon because of the shape-shifter and fantasy aspect that, according to her, corresponds to transgender and Second Life. And moreover because it is a non-human character, so gender norms do not apply to it. (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology 2008)

In the chapter of her book, The transreal: political aesthetics of crossing

realities, called “Becoming dragon” she singularly reports almost only her taking the