The content is great – flying as an activity within a world of literalism. Your use of the literalism/magic distinction was put to good work, as well. You had an interesting array of additional concepts, as well. It was an excellent idea to gather our photos to incorporate in your presentation – it heightened our engagement and self-reflexivity. If anything, I would have strategized with this technique even more; you did manage to draw out our unique experiences of flying/not flying (Bianca forgets to fly, for example), however.
Suggestions: it is evident that you thought deeply about a number of things associated with flying, the interface, embodiment, space and our orientation within it. There was a disconnect, however between the ethnographic and the theory. This, I suspect, was due to the performance of presenting your thoughts. Presenting is a developed skill. It requires remembering where you’re going, delivering it in a chronology that makes sense for an aural/visual situation, and providing the audience with a question or intrigue, followed by an eventual payoff – like filmmaking I guess.
Things I would do differently. Start with a succinct and marked introduction. "Why look at a thing like flying? In a virtual world like SL, where realism is the dominant ‘genre’, the “magical” act of flying can reveal something about how we engage virtual worlds. I will specifically address…” or something like that. Another way to begin is to give a detailed ethnographic example. “with whoosh sound I glide over the trickling stream, flanked by poppies and clover and then shoot straight upwards against a cascading tower of water, landing up atop a cliff. I am at the xyz Botanical Gardens in SL. I am able to map it with my body, the compass, the surveyor, the owner of this territory. I have a territory before my eyes that I can incorporate into my personal experience, rather than the other way around. It is because I can fly…”
I would perhaps divide the presentation into sections, one being the map, two being empathetic images, three being third meaning, etc, etc. rather than all the theory up – front. Let each idea breathe and live itself out through ethnographic particularity. Overall, I would incorporate much more detailed SL accounts as instances of each of these ideas. That would also help you articulate these ideas more clearly. Remember that this is ethnographic research – based on kinds of experience - personal and participant observation experience and reports of others’ experiences.
I would also more clearly make the connection with everyday life in RL – have we developed a sense of mastery in RL because of flying ability in SL? Are we impatient with walking? Do we privilege bird’s-eye views as surveillance or as self-orienting techniques. This could come out in more ethnographic inquiry.
Dec 8, 2007
Alysha - Information Wants to Be Free
You’re a skilled presenter – you lay ideas out clearly, you keep up a pace, and you are organized. Wark’s essay is very useful for thinking about different knowledges and new spaces of circulation (freed from the control of the vectoralists). I find very provocative your idea of collisions. It was harder to follow how you connected Wark’s concept of information with the various types/orders of information you gave as ethnographic examples (building, identity/avatar, process and not product) – I think you are onto something, but it needs better articulation. For example your ethnographic encounter with the English woman could have been more strategically used to elaborate on the difference between her view on education and that of this class/your experience in relation to Wark’s characterization of education as the commodification of knowledge.
I think your encounter with wolf man could as well have been more strongly articulated in Wark’s framework of virtuality, potentiality and pre-objectification – the moment before knowledge categories or identities are formed, labels wielded and experience delimited – another way of saying this, as I mentioned in class, is the queering of a shared space of encounter. Where there is no privileged set of categories and instead the Other can stare right back at you, making you feel completely Other, too.
I think a lot could be elaborated by thinking through ethnographic encounters in a more detailed manner, and finding ways to bring it to life for us. Finally, to say something about RL based upon the phenomena you are tracking in SL – is the revolution coming? Is information free? Is, indeed, everything “information”?
I think your encounter with wolf man could as well have been more strongly articulated in Wark’s framework of virtuality, potentiality and pre-objectification – the moment before knowledge categories or identities are formed, labels wielded and experience delimited – another way of saying this, as I mentioned in class, is the queering of a shared space of encounter. Where there is no privileged set of categories and instead the Other can stare right back at you, making you feel completely Other, too.
I think a lot could be elaborated by thinking through ethnographic encounters in a more detailed manner, and finding ways to bring it to life for us. Finally, to say something about RL based upon the phenomena you are tracking in SL – is the revolution coming? Is information free? Is, indeed, everything “information”?
Trevor - E-vangelism
Good use of media and ethnographic detail. Your ideas of an emergent Christian community, one that does not segregate and that seeks to connect with a broad spectrum of interconnected online communities throughout the network is a great way to frame the project. As you said, this understanding came to you just recently, so of course it was not easy to clearly organize the presentation around this theme in so little time. With more prep, you will be able to begin the presentation with more of a solid statement, a bang, and a small oral map as to where you will take us.
I think the tangent regarding your avatar’s Christian identity and its possible parallel in your everyday life experience as a churchgoer taking an ironic distance or a perpetual disconnect is interesting for also talking about the new forms of attachment, connection, experimentation made possible through the use of avatars – and this you did elaborate on. If anything, you should make this a central point in your presentation. Does this freedom of experimentation through middle voice/middle experience work to the e-vangelical advantage? Is there a space of creative engagement that has caused a loosening of the grip on potential converts of the evangelicals? Is it a space where many people now flock of their own accord because of this new creative freedom?
Like Alysha, you are talking about a space of collisions (pornographers as neighbors, for example), that has softened evangelism, making it more continuous with the entire networked ecology.
Overall, I would dwell even harder on ethnographic detail, fully re-evoking for us your encounters and using instance by instance to elaborate your excellent points. I think you can easily make an excellent presentation for the conference by telling us some pointed stories with narrative, photos, etc, slipping in and out of them into ‘ideas’ and sticking to a set organization.
I think the tangent regarding your avatar’s Christian identity and its possible parallel in your everyday life experience as a churchgoer taking an ironic distance or a perpetual disconnect is interesting for also talking about the new forms of attachment, connection, experimentation made possible through the use of avatars – and this you did elaborate on. If anything, you should make this a central point in your presentation. Does this freedom of experimentation through middle voice/middle experience work to the e-vangelical advantage? Is there a space of creative engagement that has caused a loosening of the grip on potential converts of the evangelicals? Is it a space where many people now flock of their own accord because of this new creative freedom?
Like Alysha, you are talking about a space of collisions (pornographers as neighbors, for example), that has softened evangelism, making it more continuous with the entire networked ecology.
Overall, I would dwell even harder on ethnographic detail, fully re-evoking for us your encounters and using instance by instance to elaborate your excellent points. I think you can easily make an excellent presentation for the conference by telling us some pointed stories with narrative, photos, etc, slipping in and out of them into ‘ideas’ and sticking to a set organization.
Jennifer - Virtual-World Crime
Love this topic and the questions you pose regarding it. I think your decision to narrow your focus to property crime and sex crime was wise; it might be even better to limit it to property crime. Having had the time to focus only on property crime, it streamlined your theoretical considerations (Wark, Lessig) as well. With your research, you are able to touch the abstract and the very concrete – much in line with Deleuzian thinking. It was astute also to frame the entire discussion using Deleuze’s virtual/actual concept-pair. Your effort to make connections between virtual worlds and RL was critical in this discussion, highlighting the question of how the former is re-shaping the latter, or at least the way we and (vs.) regulatory institutions apprehend the latter. These connections also bring up interesting questions regarding how virtual worlds and RL are each incorporated into the other – how their might be an underlying decision to focus on one as the ‘container’ of the other – which one? Is it Wark’s revisioning of the world through the virtual – freeing up the actual from objectification/commodification, or is it the colonization of virtual worlds like Second Life by the same oppressive vectoralist class that has chained information (the elemental unit) in RL?
It was also an important move you made to emphasize that SL is a unique virtual world in that it’s focus is social engagement rather than gaming, which make the issues at hand even more critical. This could become an important line of thought if you want to emphasize the question of containment and colonization raised above. The “literalism” or “realism” of SL virtuality – its synthetic economy, as you called it, included – drives home the fact that virtual worlds and RL, the virtual and actual are continuous. Here your excellent choice to cite a blogger who exclaimed that “they” want to “regulate our fantasies, our minds” is relevant.
Some points for improvement. I would clarify a bit better your use of virtual/actual and possible – these are difficult distinctions that need careful explanation. Overall, while your theoretical content and the quantity of it are perfect for the subject matter and the length of your discussion (and this is a great accomplishment), you would do better to refer back to it as you move through your examples/ethnographic material. Sometimes it works best to raise theoretical considerations as you go, or to accumulate the pieces of a theoretical statement until arriving at a good point in the material to fully explain it. The same thing goes for the research questions with which you opened your presentation. Although it was great for the audience to be able to read and hear the questions you were considering while conducting your research (it helps us to orient ourselves to your discussion and follow it without straying), you could return to the questions more in the course of discussion. Also, it is a common problem of disconnect to make more claims for which you are prepared to give us a payoff. By disconnect, I mean between theory and the material. That being said, it would be a big enhancement to get to the material as soon as possible, getting to the central issue/conflict of each example and providing only some suggestive details.
More superficially, powerpoint should be used sparingly for text – and text that is projected should not be read only sparingly by the presenter. For example – key phrases from citations of bloggers and theorists. Also, it’s important to practice the timing of the presentation – it takes a lot of experience to learn how long it takes to get through various quantities and types of material. For me, the rule has been to present less but allude to what is left out. We were all curious to see your videos and hear more about the sex crimes, but 40 minutes seemed to pass almost without your knowing. Please post the video on your blog, or better yet, on YouTube with a unique tag so that I can link it to this presentation feedback blog. Also, here’s a video you should check out:
.
It was also an important move you made to emphasize that SL is a unique virtual world in that it’s focus is social engagement rather than gaming, which make the issues at hand even more critical. This could become an important line of thought if you want to emphasize the question of containment and colonization raised above. The “literalism” or “realism” of SL virtuality – its synthetic economy, as you called it, included – drives home the fact that virtual worlds and RL, the virtual and actual are continuous. Here your excellent choice to cite a blogger who exclaimed that “they” want to “regulate our fantasies, our minds” is relevant.
Some points for improvement. I would clarify a bit better your use of virtual/actual and possible – these are difficult distinctions that need careful explanation. Overall, while your theoretical content and the quantity of it are perfect for the subject matter and the length of your discussion (and this is a great accomplishment), you would do better to refer back to it as you move through your examples/ethnographic material. Sometimes it works best to raise theoretical considerations as you go, or to accumulate the pieces of a theoretical statement until arriving at a good point in the material to fully explain it. The same thing goes for the research questions with which you opened your presentation. Although it was great for the audience to be able to read and hear the questions you were considering while conducting your research (it helps us to orient ourselves to your discussion and follow it without straying), you could return to the questions more in the course of discussion. Also, it is a common problem of disconnect to make more claims for which you are prepared to give us a payoff. By disconnect, I mean between theory and the material. That being said, it would be a big enhancement to get to the material as soon as possible, getting to the central issue/conflict of each example and providing only some suggestive details.
More superficially, powerpoint should be used sparingly for text – and text that is projected should not be read only sparingly by the presenter. For example – key phrases from citations of bloggers and theorists. Also, it’s important to practice the timing of the presentation – it takes a lot of experience to learn how long it takes to get through various quantities and types of material. For me, the rule has been to present less but allude to what is left out. We were all curious to see your videos and hear more about the sex crimes, but 40 minutes seemed to pass almost without your knowing. Please post the video on your blog, or better yet, on YouTube with a unique tag so that I can link it to this presentation feedback blog. Also, here’s a video you should check out:
.
Juan - Avatars and Transgenderism
You did an outstanding job with this presentation. You succinctly and clearly laid out your research questions, your methodologies and made great use of an anecdote to introduce the subject matter of avatars and transgenderism. It was also a very suggestive to state that SL avatars offer the possibility for extra-ordinary experiences, particularly in relation to gender. Here, I might have added that for those who experience transgenderism in ordinary RL, SL avatars offer a much sought-after ‘ordinariness’ – which, for them is a new kind of ‘extraordinary’ (I think here of your RL friend Jackie and her desire to take her avatar out in the world of ‘play’ rather than the Transgender Resource Center once she entered SL.
You said many great things about transformation (your avatar’s sexual experience and the soundtrack speak for themselves! We might even hear more about your self-identification during that experience, in addition to what you say about how your sex partner identified you) – that you became how others wanted to see you, that you were objectified sexually, that there was a ‘real’ woman both you and others thought you might have to ‘embody.’ Here you might say something about sexual politics, in fact. Overall, it was a great technique to describe the difficulties of SL avatar sex-identity as a way of amplifying what transgenderism must be like in RL experience.
It was also great to put here your exposition of the Trangender Resource Center of SL, along with the video and titles, and then bring up the RL case of Jackie. You might have said more about what you observed regarding her avatar construction. What was she feeling?
I also enjoyed your self-reflexive moment about ethnography and the burden of listening, the burden of encounter. It was moving to hear that the TRC was a resource also for you.
It may be useful to talk about the relationship between sex (anatomy) and gender-expression in the context of these avatar-RL issues. Given the read-made ability to construct avatar anatomy at will, what design choices do transgender individuals make regarding gender expression? You might consider talking with the gallerist of Venice Beach, errcheck hicks, who mixes and remixes sexes each time I see her/him.
Another question that comes to mind is: What sort of connect/disconnect to transgender individuals feel when they have avatars but not real bodies that reflect their ideal anatomy?
You said many great things about transformation (your avatar’s sexual experience and the soundtrack speak for themselves! We might even hear more about your self-identification during that experience, in addition to what you say about how your sex partner identified you) – that you became how others wanted to see you, that you were objectified sexually, that there was a ‘real’ woman both you and others thought you might have to ‘embody.’ Here you might say something about sexual politics, in fact. Overall, it was a great technique to describe the difficulties of SL avatar sex-identity as a way of amplifying what transgenderism must be like in RL experience.
It was also great to put here your exposition of the Trangender Resource Center of SL, along with the video and titles, and then bring up the RL case of Jackie. You might have said more about what you observed regarding her avatar construction. What was she feeling?
I also enjoyed your self-reflexive moment about ethnography and the burden of listening, the burden of encounter. It was moving to hear that the TRC was a resource also for you.
It may be useful to talk about the relationship between sex (anatomy) and gender-expression in the context of these avatar-RL issues. Given the read-made ability to construct avatar anatomy at will, what design choices do transgender individuals make regarding gender expression? You might consider talking with the gallerist of Venice Beach, errcheck hicks, who mixes and remixes sexes each time I see her/him.
Another question that comes to mind is: What sort of connect/disconnect to transgender individuals feel when they have avatars but not real bodies that reflect their ideal anatomy?
Lindsay - Self-Spectatorship
Linsday – Spectatorship
Outstanding presentation. At the onset you placed it within multiple frames – 1) you wanted to avoid the objectifying tendencies of other theoretical considerations of the gaze, 2) that you were reading your presentation, as it were a script and ‘true to form’ and consistent with the matter at hand, 3) you placed yourself and your presentation within the mix of conversations and events that you encountered in your research, hoping to create for us an encounter, including us in the frame, and 4) you did not want to be looked at as a (‘loser’?, ‘insane person’?, ‘fool’? – I can’t remember).
Excellent use of materials: SL wiki regarding camera use, Make My Day reality TV show, your richly detailed and multi-framed experience of looking and being looked at in the sex club, your mobile gaze as shopper, makeovers and socially acceptable interventions on one’s appearance, the guide to SL tourism and the Devil’s Moon.
Finally, your closing statements regarding unknown and unknowable ways of looking (your elusive and un-objectifiable subject matter) were innovative and astute. If anything, you could leave more time for this concept to breathe. You also talk about felt experience and spectatorship, as well as participating in the image. Do you therefore mean the haptic, rather than synaesthetic gaze? If it’s the latter, what more can you say about how other senses are implicated in this gaze?
Some points for improvement: reduce the amount of theory. You might start by abbreviating the panopticon discussion. Still more, although the panopticon discussion is perfectly relevant for a related discussion of reality tv and participatory culture and experience economies via regimes of looking (and framing and genre-construction and genre-policing), it seems to follow its own path, only glancing off your other ideas on posthuman embodiment and self-spectatorship and immersive seeing (haptic looking). You seem to be saying a lot more about spectatorship than power/surveillance, and overemphasis of the panopticon, etc might be misleading. You do incite us to think about whether SL itself is a framed experience that is commercializing, incorporating, commodifying; what then, is the relationship of the image-object commodity (the spectacles of capitalism) and the kind of image-experience or looking-experiencing that you are describing? How would you theorize animations, in this context? You might find Lev Manovich’s article “Generation Flash” useful.
Outstanding presentation. At the onset you placed it within multiple frames – 1) you wanted to avoid the objectifying tendencies of other theoretical considerations of the gaze, 2) that you were reading your presentation, as it were a script and ‘true to form’ and consistent with the matter at hand, 3) you placed yourself and your presentation within the mix of conversations and events that you encountered in your research, hoping to create for us an encounter, including us in the frame, and 4) you did not want to be looked at as a (‘loser’?, ‘insane person’?, ‘fool’? – I can’t remember).
Excellent use of materials: SL wiki regarding camera use, Make My Day reality TV show, your richly detailed and multi-framed experience of looking and being looked at in the sex club, your mobile gaze as shopper, makeovers and socially acceptable interventions on one’s appearance, the guide to SL tourism and the Devil’s Moon.
Finally, your closing statements regarding unknown and unknowable ways of looking (your elusive and un-objectifiable subject matter) were innovative and astute. If anything, you could leave more time for this concept to breathe. You also talk about felt experience and spectatorship, as well as participating in the image. Do you therefore mean the haptic, rather than synaesthetic gaze? If it’s the latter, what more can you say about how other senses are implicated in this gaze?
Some points for improvement: reduce the amount of theory. You might start by abbreviating the panopticon discussion. Still more, although the panopticon discussion is perfectly relevant for a related discussion of reality tv and participatory culture and experience economies via regimes of looking (and framing and genre-construction and genre-policing), it seems to follow its own path, only glancing off your other ideas on posthuman embodiment and self-spectatorship and immersive seeing (haptic looking). You seem to be saying a lot more about spectatorship than power/surveillance, and overemphasis of the panopticon, etc might be misleading. You do incite us to think about whether SL itself is a framed experience that is commercializing, incorporating, commodifying; what then, is the relationship of the image-object commodity (the spectacles of capitalism) and the kind of image-experience or looking-experiencing that you are describing? How would you theorize animations, in this context? You might find Lev Manovich’s article “Generation Flash” useful.
Will - Second Life Celebrity
Still a fascinating topic, and you have much to add to it with your own experience in reality TV and your new connection to Norman Korpi. You’ve also done some great research on SL musicians, gathered interesting testimony, and focused our attention on the simultaneously limiting and liberating qualities of SL for celebrities – that many feel they can concern themselves less with appearance and focus more on their art, while at the same time, the SL public still has specific demands on celebrity appearance.
My main suggestion regards organization/focus. You touch upon many topics, but do not make any single topic clearly dominant. Included are: 1) race/sexuality (as both ‘identities’ and ‘appearances’) and access to celebrity status, 2) appearance in general (including body type) and SL celebrity, 3) Norm and Pedro of the Real World and their experiences and your personal identification with them, 4) musicians on SL and their new freedoms and recurrent limitations. The most intriguing 2 possibilities I find are:
a)focus on reality tv and sl celebrity statuses using your own and Norm’s experiences, with some reference to other celebrities in SL. You could include in your study both of your attempts to become SL celebrities – what you need to do, what fails, how it differs from RL, etc. It would seem logical to also search for individuals who are celebrities only, or at least first became celebrities, in SL. This would make the comparison to reality TV more coherent. Reality TV celebrity status is like a second- or third-tier status, distinct from Hollywood royalty and, as Norm could tell you better than I, distinct from other institutionalized mass-mediated forms of celebrity. Maybe the same thing is occurring in SL – that some ‘other’ category of celebrity status is produced in this environment.
b)Focus on SL musicians and their discussions of their newfound freedom to focus on their art – because appearance is ‘programmed’ and does not require ‘maintenance’ (recurrent cosmetic surgery, going to gym, facials, etc), yet does require money to buy appropriately stylish skins, clothing, accessories, gestures, etc. You could make brief references to your own and Norm’s experiences, but you would have to place them carefully, as you would be opening up an entirely new subject/medium – reality TV.
I think race and sexuality may more clearly become ‘appearance’ issues, in addition to ‘identity’ issues, when we talk about avatars and SL. However, opening the question of race and sexuality would require, it seems, talking about that massive issue of identity, which you omitted. Bringing it back in to the research would make for an interesting third possible project: for example, how the relationship between appearance/identity and celebrity status change in SL versus RL.
My main suggestion regards organization/focus. You touch upon many topics, but do not make any single topic clearly dominant. Included are: 1) race/sexuality (as both ‘identities’ and ‘appearances’) and access to celebrity status, 2) appearance in general (including body type) and SL celebrity, 3) Norm and Pedro of the Real World and their experiences and your personal identification with them, 4) musicians on SL and their new freedoms and recurrent limitations. The most intriguing 2 possibilities I find are:
a)focus on reality tv and sl celebrity statuses using your own and Norm’s experiences, with some reference to other celebrities in SL. You could include in your study both of your attempts to become SL celebrities – what you need to do, what fails, how it differs from RL, etc. It would seem logical to also search for individuals who are celebrities only, or at least first became celebrities, in SL. This would make the comparison to reality TV more coherent. Reality TV celebrity status is like a second- or third-tier status, distinct from Hollywood royalty and, as Norm could tell you better than I, distinct from other institutionalized mass-mediated forms of celebrity. Maybe the same thing is occurring in SL – that some ‘other’ category of celebrity status is produced in this environment.
b)Focus on SL musicians and their discussions of their newfound freedom to focus on their art – because appearance is ‘programmed’ and does not require ‘maintenance’ (recurrent cosmetic surgery, going to gym, facials, etc), yet does require money to buy appropriately stylish skins, clothing, accessories, gestures, etc. You could make brief references to your own and Norm’s experiences, but you would have to place them carefully, as you would be opening up an entirely new subject/medium – reality TV.
I think race and sexuality may more clearly become ‘appearance’ issues, in addition to ‘identity’ issues, when we talk about avatars and SL. However, opening the question of race and sexuality would require, it seems, talking about that massive issue of identity, which you omitted. Bringing it back in to the research would make for an interesting third possible project: for example, how the relationship between appearance/identity and celebrity status change in SL versus RL.
Bianca - Machinima, Academia & the Arts
This was a very organized presentation, which made it easy to follow. Your idea to structure it as the recreation of the research experience itself was original and clearly demonstrated the amount of time and perseverance it required. In fact, using this format raised the question as to why it was so difficult to locate these scenes of the machinima world – should we conclude that maybe it is still a burgeoning area of practice in arts and education? Or, should we wonder if those who are using machinima in these domains are not yet effective at promoting their use of it? Or, is this merely the trajectory of SL research for a newbie becoming a veteran user who now rents property and furnishes her home with projections of Wong Kar Wai film stills?
You clearly announced that this is a work-in-progress, so it is likely you were simply documenting your progress to-date. If, when you’ve gotten further in your work and are ready to present at Irvine (if our proposal gets accepted), in your presentation you trace for us your research experience, it will be necessary to ‘justify’ it. But, I assume, you probably won’t structure it that way, as you’ll have more to tell us about how machinima is being used, how you are using it, and the impacts these uses are having in the arts and education. You’ve already got some great contacts and examples of the kinds of work being done and it seems like you are interested in using it yourself. Maybe in your next version of this presentation you’ll include your own experiments with machinima for promotional or other purposes.
You clearly announced that this is a work-in-progress, so it is likely you were simply documenting your progress to-date. If, when you’ve gotten further in your work and are ready to present at Irvine (if our proposal gets accepted), in your presentation you trace for us your research experience, it will be necessary to ‘justify’ it. But, I assume, you probably won’t structure it that way, as you’ll have more to tell us about how machinima is being used, how you are using it, and the impacts these uses are having in the arts and education. You’ve already got some great contacts and examples of the kinds of work being done and it seems like you are interested in using it yourself. Maybe in your next version of this presentation you’ll include your own experiments with machinima for promotional or other purposes.
Jeff - Voice of Spaces
A lot of intriguing ideas concerning narrativized experience, scripts, space, and a sort of posthuman collaborative agency (that includes the self among multiple types of force) generating the ‘voice’ of spaces. It took me some time, but I identified this last to be the central idea to glean from your presentation.
Because you assembled many ideas, ethnographic narratives and media, it was at times difficult to locate the thread. I would considerably trim down the content to a few resonating ideas that can each have their own space to resound within. This also means slowing down, adding pauses for emphasis. This does not necessarily mean to sacrifice breadth or depth – you can find a core argument or line of (inconclusive) thought and move closely along a single trajectory while alluding to the rhizomatic pathways that lead off this trajectory. Sometimes it is even more effective and narrativistically dramatic to do so (rather than overwhelming the audience with the dizzying array of possibilities). This may merely be a problem of interior/exterior – you may not have found a way to satisfyingly convey what you know well in plainer, but not unsubtle, terms to us, on the outside of the mode of thought you’re engaged in. One solution is to give us a cue or map of some sort at the beginning, preparing us for what’s to come, what to look for, AND then, step by step, giving us the payoff. The payoff is often not there because there is an inherent gap between theory and actuality. Despite the ability to be articulate in the language of subtle abstractions, it is still a challenge to track for an audience how abstractions work through concrete situations, experiences, feelings.
You also spend some time talking about the unique qualities of sound in virtual architecture and spaces – what it lacks and what is different when compared to RL architecture and spaces. Your ethnographic narratives were vivid and engaging and a nice breather to your theoretical discussons. I think it would be useful to more clearly make the connection between SL and RL (or vitual/actual?) you want to point out. If there are differences, then why do they matter? Do the differences give us a look at what things are to become for us all in RL? Do the differences just give us the ability to see more clearly what RL is like in terms of sound/space? Do the differences offered by SL sound/space experience allow us to experience RL sound/space differently?
Because you assembled many ideas, ethnographic narratives and media, it was at times difficult to locate the thread. I would considerably trim down the content to a few resonating ideas that can each have their own space to resound within. This also means slowing down, adding pauses for emphasis. This does not necessarily mean to sacrifice breadth or depth – you can find a core argument or line of (inconclusive) thought and move closely along a single trajectory while alluding to the rhizomatic pathways that lead off this trajectory. Sometimes it is even more effective and narrativistically dramatic to do so (rather than overwhelming the audience with the dizzying array of possibilities). This may merely be a problem of interior/exterior – you may not have found a way to satisfyingly convey what you know well in plainer, but not unsubtle, terms to us, on the outside of the mode of thought you’re engaged in. One solution is to give us a cue or map of some sort at the beginning, preparing us for what’s to come, what to look for, AND then, step by step, giving us the payoff. The payoff is often not there because there is an inherent gap between theory and actuality. Despite the ability to be articulate in the language of subtle abstractions, it is still a challenge to track for an audience how abstractions work through concrete situations, experiences, feelings.
You also spend some time talking about the unique qualities of sound in virtual architecture and spaces – what it lacks and what is different when compared to RL architecture and spaces. Your ethnographic narratives were vivid and engaging and a nice breather to your theoretical discussons. I think it would be useful to more clearly make the connection between SL and RL (or vitual/actual?) you want to point out. If there are differences, then why do they matter? Do the differences give us a look at what things are to become for us all in RL? Do the differences just give us the ability to see more clearly what RL is like in terms of sound/space? Do the differences offered by SL sound/space experience allow us to experience RL sound/space differently?
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