Avatars

A wise friend recently asked “Are people dressing more like their avatars?” and I pondered and went to sleep and woke up having dreamt of avatarian existentialism all night long.

I perceive avatars as:

• Text-based ‘handles’ which users may appoint as their name on a website/ forum/ MySpace page, or even as an email address (linguistic avatars?)
• A 2D icon (pictorial avatars? Image avatars?) These could be profile pictures, graphical images used as signatures, or characters created specifically for the purpose. Might accompany a handle, appear as a Facebook/ MySpace pic…
• A 3D image/ model/ character

The avatar’s function is as a representation of the user within the online environment. As such, the user imbues the avatar with qualities they want to project into that environment. The avatars have differing levels of relationship to the actual identity of the user.

Anyway, I chose to ignore linguistic avatars and focus on 2D icons (with some reference to 3D models).

Here I am, thinking:

And here:


And here:


And here:


I hadn’t read much on avatar theory, but thought that Baudrillard, Foucault, and a tiny sprinkling of Barthesian structrulist analysis provides a framework from which to understand avatars…

I see avatars as serving a psychological function and a social function.

I’ll deal with the social function first.

Social Function of Avatars
The avatar is a visual representation of the user that enables participation within the online environment. As such, it is a social tool.

It also acts as a calling card/ telephone number/ identification card etc, allowing others to find the user/ avatar.

At the same time, it provides a distancing device that turns person (user) into character (avatar). It is a fictionalising tool that creates a new reality.

I’ll use this as the basis from which to discuss the phenomenon of an avatar within the frameworks of a few theorists.

How and what do they mean?

What would Barthes say?
Avatars are a form of language; they operate as a sign system according to a grammar that can be read in simple structuralist semiotic terms.

The symbol of the avatar (signifier) points to the signified (the user), creating a sign. As with all signs, the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, and the act of signification is determined (or at least accepted) by the culture/ language within which it is used.

The joy is that avatars often/ usually revel in their arbitrariness as a sign system: the ‘visual accuracy’ that might be assumed to influence a user’s creation of the avatar is often playfully disregarded and the avatar takes the form of an animal/ lego character… Avatars move/ play/ dance within the gap of the sign; the act of signification becomes the site of pleasure and play, the jouissance of the avatar.

C’eci n’est une pipe

The signifiers also become afloat from the signified. Avatars have their own names/ handles (such as in Second Life, where the list of surnames available restricts user choice, and also ensures an arbitrariness between avatar-name and user-name) and can be seen to have their own existence beyond the user. I am sure that research that asked users about their avatars would find that users often discuss their avatars as being distinct to themselves, as if they are real people separate from the user. To put it in different terms: as if the signifiers are separate from the signified.

In this way, avatars are wonderfully post-structuralist signs, with meaning existing at surface level.


What would Baudrillard add?
I’m not good on Baudrillard, so you’re going to have to help out here.

Here’s my reading.

I guess the place to start is the idea that with avatars, meaning/ reality has been replaced by signs/ simulacra. Avatars exist within the age of hyperreality, where the object/ reality of the user has been replaced by the symbol of the avatar.

I found a blog by an art student who uses Second Life and discusses her avatar thus: “I have often believed that my second life is more true than my real life… My avatar Gracie Kendal, is an extenstion (sic) of me. Her personality, the way she dresses, her art, her relationships, her house, her dogs… I don’t hide anything. Now sometimes that can get me into trouble…LOL (won’t go there!!) But for the most part… Gracie is true.”

(I like the fact that the blog is called ‘The Secret Life of Gracie Kendall’ and is named after the avatar, not the user.)

Presumably, a Baudrillardian reading would emphasise the replacement of reality with hyperreality/ simulacra; the replacement of truth with the symbol of truth…?


What would Foucault do?
Best be brief:

Foucault would love avatars. They are a site of power: users create their own identity, enacting agency (within the framework of the avatar-creating software/ interface). In that way, an avatar is an expression of the subject, within the dominant discourse. This needs developing.

Psychological Function of Avatars
I mentioned a long time ago (this was going to be a short post!) that avatars had two functions: a social function and a psychological function. Now to look quickly at the psychological function.

Avatars seem to operate somewhere between a mirror, an alter-ego and a pet. I’m sure Lacan, Freud and someone who specialises in pet-theory would be useful to discuss here. I am expert in none.

Avatars are created by the user, and the user is free to imbue the avatar with qualities that they wish to project within the online environment. The degree of agency that the user has is sometimes limited (e.g. an avatar created using the lego avatar-generator has only a limited range of possibilities), however the area of interest here is the way in which users choose to project themselves within the online environment.

My avatars above mostly reflect my real image/ identity/ habits from the real world (white boy; casually dressed; shaved head; likes meat). How would it be different if I’d created an avatar where I was female/ black/ disabled/ non-human? Why do some users create avatars that are similar to their own identity, whilst others create avatars that are very different to their real identity?

I guess all sorts of words and theories could be applied: escapism; aspirations; idealism; experimentalism… I don’t feel the need to be derogatory here: avatars clearly fulfil some sort of need for the users. I sense that the use of avatars that are very different to the user’s appearance are a form of liberated playfulness of signification, and that users enjoy playing within the gap of meaning.

Avatars that take the forms of profile pictures (like on Facebook and MySpace) are kind of like wearing your best clothes to non-uniform day at school: users want to present certain aspects of their personality (real, imagined or aspirational) to the society they interact with.

There’s a need for a whole ethnographic study on users and avatars.


Existentialism and Avatars
Fuck yeah.




“Are people dressing more like their avatars?”

Hopefully.



I propose a few comments on related topics. Proposed titles:

• Baudrillard and Avatars (my limited knowledge means I can’t really develop much further).
• Existentialism and Avatars
• Nihilism and Avatars
• The Ontology of the Avatar
• Advertising and Avatars: Branding Your Identity (Adidas and FCUK are dressing Yahoo users' avatars in branded clothing. From the pitch: "And now you can make your Avatar just as stylish as you - with the very latest FCUK Spring & Summer 2005 Collection of clothes." - http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2005/10/branding-avatars.html)
• Avatars and Character Theory for computer games

Some articles I’d like to read but haven’t had time yet:

http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.32337.pdf
http://www.digra.org/dl/db/07311.16435.pdf