Tag: embodiment
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My avatar, myself
My rez day as Kay Jiersen is this week, and combined with visiting a thought-provoking exhibition at GBTH, I have embodiment on my mind. I’ve written about this in the past, but years have gone by and it’s worth considering again. To age or not to age Since Kay was born, my physical self has…
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VWBPE’s Steampunk Social
Last night I attended a networking and fundraising event for the upcoming Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference. The theme was steampunk and the music tended toward the blues. A friend asked why I volunteer with VWBPE (or attend, when I can’t help out). I’m not an educator; sessions on techniques for increasing classroom…
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Wednesday film: The Last One
The main character of this short is the final survivor of his kind in the war between humans and robots. The film is nicely shot and touching, but I’m including it mainly because of the last line of voiceover. How soon could that be true for both sides in the battle? Will it ever be?…
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VWBPE conference, day 3 (part 2)
The afternoon session “Educators and the Second Life Viewer”, led by Oz Linden, wasn’t a topic that had direct impact on me, but I was curious. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one: Oz began with an overview of how the Lab does viewer development and release and then the questions came flooding in. Most of…
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Avatar embodiment as self-directed therapy
You might have noticed that the Second Life avatar I’m using for photos has changed. With my SL partner Jakob offline and in the hospital, it’s uncomfortable to use the avatars that feel like “me” — my 9 year old alt and my 4 year old main Kay avatar. They feel too vulnerable. It’s unbearably sad to spend time in…
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A walk in the woods in any weather
If you’ve read more than a few posts of mine, you know that I scoff at the nouveau Luddites telling people to put down their phones, limit screen time, or join the “real world”. Here is another reason why. Lately I’ve needed some time with my thoughts, but the weather in my part of the…
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Short documentary on virtual reality treatment of PTSD
Motherboard published this 20 minute documentary in March, but I just stumbled across it today (thanks GoodShit – NSFW). I’ve met a lot of people with PTSD or mental illness who use virtual worlds as part of their coping strategies, as well as some in formal virtual reality treatment programs. It’s incredibly powerful to be in…
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Thoughts on virtual gender, appearance, and performance
Over at Motherboard is a short piece about a virtual gender stereotype experiment conducted at Stanford University. Basic concept: users competed against bots to complete math problems. Regardless of physical world gender, when users were assigned male avatars to compete against female bots, they were most successful. The avatar representations were simply cartoon faces (dark eyes and hair, pale…
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Prosthetic history
io9 published a photographic history of prostheses yesterday, going back to an iron arm from the 1500s. Some of them are quite beautiful, like this Victorian hand: Mechanical and electronic enhancement of the human body fascinates me. I’m interested in how the prosthetic part is (or is not) incorporated into a person’s proprioception and sense of…
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Using avatars to decrease racism?
There was a detailed post on io9 yesterday about a study in which researchers tested implicit racial biases of a group of light-skinned Spanish women and then split them into four test groups in virtual reality: some used a white avatar, some used a black avatar, some used a purple alien avatar, and some saw…