body in quotes

There’s the “Body in Quotes” panel at the Borders, Boundaries & Liminal States conference in Second Life. Sponsored by Ars Virtua New Media Center, and the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, and hosted at the Amphitheater on Learning (NMC Virtual Worlds). From stage left to stage right is Xerxes Druart (Stuart Bunt of SymbioticA) , Wirxli Flimflam (Jeremy Turner), Natberg Sternberg (me) and The Unknown (Carlos Castellanos – moderator). I think I’m cool cuz I know that Pling Ping, the avatar up front and on the left from the camera lense, is Jo Greene of Turbulence. We like her.

WIrxli has a fantastic summary of his talk and some images of the panel etc over at his blog. I had no idea he had so many avatars, and it was fun to have a bodyguard protecting the guy sitting next to me in SL. He also says my audio kept crashing, which sucks. I had no idea. Oh well. I’m not gonna paste my notes, like he did, cuz they are mostly disorganized, but I will say that a draft of the short paper where most of my ideas come from will be online in the next few weeks. It mostly looks at affect and body-environment coupling in and around the space of the computer, network, crying babies and spouses, all between RL self and avatar self, and how those might disperse and interfere with one another. Next time I try to use ventrilio and SL at the same time, I will go into the office rather than trying to use my home connection….

Stuart’s work blew me away – he is a bio-engineer that works on a team facilitating art and artists (the likes of Stelarc). Some of his recent work includes pigs with wings, and attaching a homegrown ear to Stelarc’s forearm; oh and, the one my veggie wife likes, they “grew” a leather jacket so as not to harm a cow!

Thanks to all on the panel, and to Carlos…