> finger on the button (but which button?!)

Probably the Big Red Button That Doesn't Do Anything.

(http://www.pixelscapes.com/spatulacity/button.htm isn't the original, but functionally identical)

I will post real content someday, but we were just talking about the Big Red Button tonight and I wanted to bring it up to the class as a new media object. Really! :>

What does this say about embodiment (a concept I'm still trying to sort through)? But, since we were on the subject of post-human moments...

http://www.jsonline.com/tech/news/mar04/212852.asp

Your nickname or hacker callsign is very important...

ED

www.fark.com has periodic "photoshop" contests where people submit doctored images. Here's a recent one where people imagine themselves in popular video games:

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=855305

We've mentioned photoshop a number of times in class as well as video games as well as immersive experiences. I'm can't articulate the theory but I know there is something very post-human about these "playful" examples.

The most chilling is the one example of a "Columbine shooting" video game. What does it mean to "embody" yourself in such a virtual text? Granted the photoshopped image is trying to be ironic and comment on the "perps" as losers, but it's a unsettling (and oversimplifies the characterization of and further posthumously bullies the shooters).

Bleh.

Ed,

Hmm...and I thought it was just because we were old skool hacker/net geeks that while at the booksigning of William Gibson, two of my friends and I had a long talk/pondering of which of our "real" names we wanted emblazed on our tomes by the illustrious pop culture icon.
;)

Seriously, I think it speaks to the fact for the most part, the net is a textual virtual environment, and as we would embody ourselves in this environment, participating in it, "living" in this space, names are perhaps the most basic form of embodying a person/idea/concept. To harken back to necromancy and mythology(neuromancy?), to know a thing's name is to have power over the thing itself. In the begining was the Word, and all--and here, you ARE the word.

Again, overall, the net is very much a textual environment and I think many are becoming aware (if they weren't before) that how they represent themselves in text IS a representation, an embodyment of who they are, as much as when employers look at a resume, they are getting a textual image of that person as a worker/potential employee. Words at the most basic level are icons, images standing in for things. I think this specific phenomena is more a matter of employees/admissions departments, etc. catching up to using the technology itself and being in this environment to call attention to what is not so new an idea. Again, if your resumes and cover letters give us an image of who you are, through text, so should the online world. (Heh, reminds me, when I got hired by the University of Michigan's counseling center as a secretary, one of the things they fixed on in the interview was, "Your email! It is so unique--why that? Surely there must be a story there!" (Who are you?)

I think what is just as interesting, perhaps, is the idea that time and space/matter are not static here, as in a material text. Embodiment takes place in a simulation more closer to the "real" world. Time effects the text in an AIM chat--text is scrolling, active, dynamic. Closure occurs there on the moving "page" and we are more heavily guided as we read. The changes in text CAN TELL YOU IF I AM YELLING OR BEING OBNOXIOUS--and we hear/feel it, don't we?

This is a very fascinating subject for me, one I am probably going to explore further.

Lys

Hey Ed,

Thanks for that link to Fark. Very instructive. The Columbine image is truly creepy, but at least--unlike many of the other images, most of which involve violence of some kind--it seems to be thinking critically about video game violence (along with the one that depicts a toddler shooting other toddlers in Grand Theft Auto).

I'm a big Photoshophead, and have played around with the kind of surreal collages at Fark (including pasting myself into the picture). It is a way inserting oneself into a virtual world, and yet is also a threshold space between reality and the world of the image.