Tania - Icaria

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.