Becoming Dragon New Summary August7
From borderlandsHacklabWiki
I am interested in doing an immersive, durational performance in Second Life to explore the transformative potential of massively multiplayer online environments. Given the convergence of rapidly improving biotech and cheap body hacking techniques I want to ask how far we are away from the time when instead of sex reassignment surgery, people want something like species reassignment surgery. Given that thousands of people are spending their days in Second Life and developing love lives and marriages as cat people and dragons, is it really so far off?
The first stage of this project involves exploring the possible value of Second Life as a replacement for what psychiatrists refer to as Real Life Experience. Transgender people, such as myself, are required to live for a year as their chosen gender before getting Gender Confirmation Services (aka sex reassignment surgery), could this be replaced by virtual living? Can networked synthetic worlds be a place to develop new subjectivities, beyond the limits of male, female or human? To explore this question, I plan to do a 365 hour immersion.
Based on my research so far, I would propose that three main components of identity are: embodiment and sensory-motor memories, social feedback to our expressions of our identity and our conceptions of ourselves that we strive towards, which Lacan describes in the Mirror Stage. As such, for my performance I want to use an immersive HMD environment, but also a networked social environment and a Vicon motion capture system to represent my physical gestures in world. This is the mixed reality component of the piece, where I plan to model the physical space I am in, in second life, so that I can navigate the space for the performance.
Artists working in Second Life now like Cao Fei describe their interest in Second Life's transformative potential. Eshi Otawara used Second Life to help her deal with her husband's death. I want to see how far we can push identification with an avatar, through long, durational experiences. My performance is mainly inspired by performance artists Orlan, Stelarc and Marina Abramovic.
The overall project Becoming Dragon is concerned with the possibilities for transformation offered by contemporary technology, including synthetic worlds and synthetic biology. My first stage of the performance, being developed now, coincides with my beginning Hormone Replacement Therapy.
You can read more about my project here:
http://sharingissexy.org/wiki/Becoming_Dragon:_Stage_1
http://sharingissexy.org/wiki/Becoming_Dragon
http://sharingissexy.org/wiki/Abstract_of_Submission_to_Electronic_Imaging_2009
