(please actually post this time!)
1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
I was struck by the way Metropolis shows the female physical form being manipulated, while The Handmaid’s Tale used female abilities as a commodity. Watchmen just continued to show that gender stereotypes are still alive and well.
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
I’ve learned that it’s not always that gender affects technology’s formation, but also what is considered technology and that technology does not so much create gender as imitate it. The latter part is interesting to me because it seems like technology comes with the freedom to bend these gender norms, but in Metropolis we see that adhering to them can be used for other ends.
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
I really like the small group work because it makes the class seem smaller and I get to hear a lot of opinions. I also like being able to talk to other people in the class and getting to know them. It also gives me the chance to talk about my ideas and develop them before I say anything to the class.
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)
The layout is kind of cluttered. There are a lot of links and sometimes it is difficult to find what I’m looking for. It might be nice to have a log in button somewhere around the top of the page.
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
I find meeting with the instructor is more helpful in terms of receiving feedback. It really helps me to talk about my ideas. I think I like the idea of online commentary rather than the actual practice. Posting has been fine otherwise.
Group discussion and question (Marwa, Farhat, Alex, and Ashley)
On Monday’s class we broke into groups to discuss the readings on The Influence of the Avatar on Online Perceptions of Anthropomorphism, Androgyny, Credibility, Homophily, and Attraction and Tinysex and Gender Trouble. My group consisted of Marwa, Farhat, Alex, and myself (Ashley); we focused mostly on the quantitative research and what it tells us about how people perceive the avatars in relation to one another.
We noticed that the selection of avatars given in the reading consisted of those with male characteristics, those with female characteristics, and those that were non-gendered such as a cat, frog, or a bottle. When we compared the stats for each of the avatars in the categories of femininity and masculinity, we noticed that although there were avatars that were gender neutral, they were still categorized as either being male or female.
We found this to be very interesting and the question that came to mind was why do people still attribute a gender to non-gendered avatars? Are people really that uncomfortable with not knowing the gender of an avatar and if this has any influence on which avatars people choose to converse with?
In nytimes.com I came across an opinion video directed by Jesse Epstein which seeks to understand “why magazines should let readers know if images have been retouched.” It is titled Sex, Lies and Photoshop.
It starts by explaining a bill in France which is trying to pass that would force magazines to list the touch-ups that have been done on every photo. Later the video explores the negative effects these images have on people.
For something that is only 4 and a half minutes long, I was struck by seeing just how in depth the photo shopping is. In the video, people who work for fashion magazines explain the process of how they select body parts from different models to create one photo, how freckles can be filled in to seem more “even,” how they avoid touching up the eyes as that is something people can spot quickly, how to make legs look longer, how to make female bodies less athletic, etc. The director asks, “If the models themselves can’t even measure up to their own images… what does this mean?”
I ask, Why do we have impossible beauty standards? Why do we feel pressure to fit them? Is there a way for us to have alternatives to the constant bombardment of… beauty avatars?
More babbling about gendered gamers…
I was wondering if maybe identifying with a male character makes me an avatar “trans” or something. I have a male priest alt[ernative character on WOW] (I admit, the muscles and off the shoulder dress really influenced this decision), but it’s often seen as weird or deviant. (My tanking is with women toons; I take my tanking seriously.)
Also, how many women in this class prefer the online gaming to that of console gaming? I mean, I’m sooooo not a console gamer because I hate gamer thumb that happens. I love HALO to bits, but there’s only so many runs of it and LOTR that I can do before my thumb starts bleeding on the controls and affecting my game :P. (LOL guys, I stop before I bleed… most times).
like, for real, I’m pretty bad. on the other hand, being wholly confident in a terrible haircut IS one of my stronger qualities, so maybe I made an accurate representation of myself.
I’m going to go ahead and say that I hate hate hate almost everything about Second Life’s interface. I’m going to fool around with the Oblivion character generator sometime this week so I can feel better about my virtual-representation-creation abilities. I’ll be sure to post my results.
In class I mentioned I’d post some more information and a couple of my own examples of multimedia projects. There are lots of ways to conceive of this project and you certainly don’t have to do your project the way I’ve done mine. My friend and fellow technologist, Alan Levine, has a wiki page that outlines the basic process of how you might approach this project. He explains how to find media for your project and links to copyright friendly sources, such as Creative Commons licensed photos that can be found in Flickr. He also links to more than 50 tools, organized by type, that you can use to build your project. There’s everything from web-based PowerPoint/Slide tools to Comic Tools. You can make a collage, a map, or an audio project. There are a ton of possibilities! Here are my examples, with a little explanation about how I put these together.
The first one was the latest one I did, and I also posted a draft of it on my YouTube account. In both cases, I started out by narrating the images, creating a script, but I abandoned that to basically let the images speak somewhat for themselves, although I added subtitles and titles that were shortened versions of what I wanted to say. Both pieces were intended as conversation starters, so I felt it was important to give the audience some room for interpretation. Music was also important. The first one includes a copyrighted song, which I don’t necessarily recommend. I think I could argue fair use to some extent here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I got dinged for this. The second video uses Creative Commons licensed music, which doesn’t have quite as professional a feel to it, but it works okay. In the first video, I chose a song that I thought matched my topic and ended up coordinating the images to go both with my subtitles and with the lyrics of the song. So, as you can see, this can be a complicated process. In each case, I probably spent about a week working on them, usually spending a couple of hours a day. Partly this was because of the tools I was using (iMovie mostly) and because I became obsessed with getting things just right.
I would suggest finding a tool you feel comfortable with so that that’s not a barrier to you and not adding to the time you spend on the project unneccessarily, but I would also suggest pushing yourself a little too. I knew how to use video tools, and so I felt comfortable from a technical standpoint, but I am not as comfortable working with images, so in that way I pushed myself to think a little differently. Both of these were fun to put together, and I hope you’ll have fun with yours too!
The Value of Openness/The Need for Protection
Two strikingly contrastive stories in today’s NYTimes: one fascinating history–on How the Internet Got Its Rules (which is all about the value of openness), and another account about a different value–the need for protection; this is about how the geisha are being pursued by modern tourists w/ their cameras. Many thanks to ZY (see: The Technology of Geisha) for helping me see this as an encounter between two very different (ancient and modern) technologies.
I realized after I made these that they reflect what I would like to be. You probably won’t see me grinning like the left one very often, but that’s how I’d like to be.
The right side one is me wishing for warm weather!
Feedback is after the break
From the title of my post I’m sure you can all assume that my small group did not stick with the medieval MUD prompt. Instead we created a disco-tech in Luxembourg. I don’t want to give away their characters (I’m hoping they will comment to explain their own), but I will tell you mine:
On the topic of RPGs: The Guild
It’s kind of awesome ^_^
Also: ROBOTS HAVING SEXXX robots, robots robots!
Gaming girls, which interestingly addresses the physical differences amongst gamers. (ie… my what big… er… hands you have there…)
If I don’t make sense, regarding this kind of stuff let me know. (I’ll probably edit this later, in a daze. Feeling loopy and not sure I’m making sense.)
Our ultimate question was: What is the impetus or appeal of acting like “someone else” online? Why are the four of us kind of uncomfortable with it?
The line of thinking that led to this question started with some of us expressing our discomfort with one of the people in Turkle’s article, who referred to his online avatar/character as “me.” Roisin said she has a hard time “separating myself from myself”, and I think we all agreed that we strive to present the most accurate picture of ourselves online as we can. But, maybe this is only because we’ve never entered into the context of an imaginary space like a MUD, instead staying in online spaces that are tied to ‘RL’, like this blog–or that simply don’t expect us to be anyone other than who we ‘are’. But the question remains, why are some people drawn to those ‘second lives’ and others are not? It’s a psychological question more than anything.
Briefly, we also talked about the assertiveness vs. bitchiness debate in representations of gender online. We thought it was interesting that when one gender does something, it can signify completely differently than when another gender does the same thing. In reference to sexual online relationships, we made the distinction between having netsex as yourself and having it as your character; the former would be “cheating” while the latter would be like porn. But we also thought that acting out one life online and living another must be confusing at best and destructive at worst. All emotional connections are “real”, whether online or off.
Me, Eva and Madge immediately started our conversation with the question of whether or not having a relationship (we mostly spoke of sexual relationships) online in second life or by any other online medium can be considered an infidelity by a person in a real-life relationship. Madge and I immediately said yes. But Eva said no. We then discussed our own definitions of cheating, whether or not emotional attachment is cheating or if just a violation of the physical aspect of a relationship is cheating. Madge and I both felt that if someone is emotionally attached to another online member in that confidential information is shared with the online partner rather than the life-lover, then that someone can be considered a cheater. Eva however took a slightly different approach to the subject of online relationships. She agreed that an emotional attachment to someone else constitutes an infidelity but she herself supports polygamous relationships and the honesty that comes with sharing that information with the other person who may or may not be in other relationships as well. As long as the individual shares that online relationship with their real-life partner, then the relationship should not be considered cheating even if the person is emotionally attached to the cyber-partner since emotional investment goes into every relationship that a multi-relationship person engages in.
Our conversation then led to MUD which was very confusing to us. We were not familiar with the concept nor the style in which we should present ourselves in this cyber-world so we didn’t explicitly write out our descriptions but gave a label as to what we would be. Eva would be a sexy female vampire, Madge would be a female ninja and I would be a female bounty hunter. We all then realized that we had all used the word “female” to describe us, as if we wouldn’t be complete without it even in the computer realm. Our imaginations overtook us for this question and we really didn’t explain as to why we went so extreme in our characters but it’s a good thing to consider in class on Wednesday.
Just an addition: Eva told us that she and Hillary had spent a summer creating a virtual Bryn Mawr campus in Second Life and that the attention to detail is quite exquisite. I think the class should see our campus represented virtually on Wednesday.
We strayed away from the Medieval prompt for our MUDs today, and ended up with three New Yorkers and a space lady. Our characters included: the perfect Upper East Side trophy wife who described the benefits of her life, a Manhattanite who focused more on the details of her life (apartment, job, etc.), a 20-something NYC artist and poet who described her interests and briefly touched on her appearance, and a future space resident a la 1960s Barbarella vision who only described her physical qualities (clothes, voice, etc.) and her weapon of choice. Laura commented when she visited our group that it sounded like all different versions of personal ads, which we agreed with.
Most of our conversation centered around the selection of avatars and the emotional connection to online personas. We discussed the impact of emotional online cheating vs. physical cheating and were divided over whether you could separate your physical and emotional self, as well as if that really even mattered. Hillary offered the following statement: “Cheating is cheating if it’s emotional, whether the body is involved or not.” We also discussed question 5, about how we would make our avatar different depending on the context, in depth. Different online situations/scenarios can imply the need for a different avatar, like the different worlds in Second Life. If you transition from a world which looks like our reality to one which is Renaissance-themed, you might be inclined to change your avatar’s outfit to match the environment. The environment provides the freedom to change your physical expression, but at the same time limits you while you’re in it (how many people in a Renaissance world would walk around in non-Renaissance clothing?).
Our question to the class was inspired by Facebook and whether profile pictures are avatars. We asked how self-censorship works on these different sites, and how you choose what parts of yourself to represent to the online world. I think we intended it to go more towards privacy and future employers searching your profile for no-nos, but it was cool that it spawned into more of an identity discussion about online vs. physical, public vs. private, and what is “real.”
In our group, containing Natasha, Julia, Maddie, and Michelle, we mostly focused on the question about Turkle’s text concerning the (virtual) reality of relationships. After Julia told us her anecdote about the woman in Japan who was convicted of 1st degree murder because she killed her husband’s avatar, we got to talking about the nature of avatars. Julia’s story suggests that the avatar is a 1:1 representation of yourself, but the point of creating an avatar, it would seem, is to be able to foster an identity connected to you, but not exactly representing your “true self.” We realize this term is problematic. We also discussed whether or not the conviction for the “crime” should be murder or merely a death threat by way of killing an online representation of the ex-husband.
We talked a bit about the desired level of exposure online. For example, do we want to know more about the person controlling the character within a virtual world, or would we prefer to keep this world in a vacuum? The line between intellectual or cerebral activity and physical activity is blurred often in the context of online romances.
We got to talking about avatars that exist outside of the online world, such as J.K. Rowling’s alternate manifestation as Harry Potter. Is this the same kind of representation that an online avatar offers? Is J.K. Rowling being more or less honest to herself and to others than someone who has a fictive facebook profile or avatar? Is honesty even something to be valued in the schema of avatars and representation? Our final question to the class, which we mentioned in class, was “What is the danger of having an avatar that is a close representation of yourself, versus the danger of having an avatar that is an alter ego or distant representation of yourself?” As Anne noted in class, this question presumes that there exists a “true self” as a point of reference, which is a concept that has been acknowledged as problematic.
