THE UNBECOMING OF REAL LIFE AND OUR PROGRESSIVE SHIFT INTO THE ONLINE WORLD

ANDRÉ HILLAS

The growing popularity of the Internet has encouraged us to engage with communities abroad, based on content, rather than geographic location. As a new media source, its interactive nature is being defined by the users, who invest vast amounts of time and money into its infant stage. Website genres have emerged, with users self-diverting from their homepage to their favourite sites on a daily basis. A strong emphasis in the online world lies in interaction between users, which fuels the viewer’s circulatory experience when browsing. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter demand our regular updates, and we thrive on the ‘news’ our friends provide us, which we return to them. Our chance to be of semi-celebrity status is realized through this process. Second Life is an experiment of human interaction in a virtual space. In this environment, users meet each other via their online ‘avatars’ and often develop relationships with users they have not, nor will ever meet in real life. Some Second Life users reach a certain point in their gaming, where the amount of time spent in their virtual lives can impact on their real lives. Here a grey area exists which blurs the distinction between the real and non-real. Through vast progressions in technology and the Internet, we have begun a progressive shift into our online personas.

Second Life is a virtual game that has no missions or goals. It is a virtual platform that aims to replicate real life to a certain extent. In it, players interact with each other, build property, design their avatars (individual humanoids each user has to represent them in the game) and travel around the Second Life universe. It is free to play, however, if players want to add features to enhance their user experience, they must exchange real life currencies into Linden dollars. With Linden dollars, they can buy land, houses, clothes, body parts for their avatars (ie. wings and reproductive organs) and other items, such as access to private areas. The game is one of a very small number that has no specific aims. This allows a large amount on user imagination to enter into the playing platform, and many exciting creative opportunities emerge. A large number of art galleries exist in Second Life. They are built by players and in many galleries, artists will pay the gallery owner to have a show. The show is accompanied by an opening, where players meet to socialize, drink, eat and view the art. Although this is a virtual environment, there are many aspects of the real that exist within this experience. The artist still spends time creating the art. The gallery still has to finance and run a real-life business. The people at the opening have to dedicate time out of their day to congregate in a place for the opening. All these factors epitomize what it is to live in real life. It is hard to label Second Life as a completely virtual experience.

In 2006, Philips Design set up an island in Second Life that players could visit and interact with. The purpose of the island was “to gain feedback on innovation concepts, engage residents in co-creation and obtain a deeper understanding of potential opportunities in this virtual environment.”  Philips’ press release upon the introduction of Philips into Second Life stated that is was their “philosophy that design should be based around people and grounded in research. It also corresponds to Philips Design’s firm belief that the future of design lies in the co-creation of products.”  It was therefore a natural step for the company to be one of the first to leap into the virtual world road test new ideas and concepts on an online audience. The process involved various methods of interaction. Tours were hosted around the island; ‘Ideation Quests’ were held, which involved the viewer interacting with the space and responding accordingly with ideas and feedback; meetings and gathering to discuss ideas and proposals were held on a regular basis; submissions of user-created buildings/plans was available as well frequent discussion forums. The approach by Philips was very loose in order to allow the users full freedom in the way they handled their personal experience. This environment contrasts largely against rigid market research that is regularly employed by companies to gauge consumer feedback. Philip’s “belief that the future of design lies in the co-creation of products”  discards the notion of separation between production and the consumer.

The term ‘prosumer’ can be applied to the Second Life audience that participated in the Philips projects. The term combines the idea of the producer and consumer as one and was coined by the company Widality Services, a mobile app company. The success of companies such as Widality rely on the prosumer to tell the producer what they want, so they can in turn consume it. It is a new roundabout way of production many new technology companies thrive on, which invariably leads to success. A large majority of websites operate in a similar fashion with users logging in to leave comments, responses, discussions on forums, links, reactions and ratings. YouTube offers the viewer 13 ways to respond to a video; like/dislike, add to favourites, watch later, my top 5 videos, add to playlist, share, link, your reaction, comment, video response, link to uploader’s channel (where more options exist), like/dislike comments or continue to linked videos. These options are placed strategically to ensure users respond accordingly, which may provoke another response, which ensures more feedback, etc. This is a form of marketing that exists all over the Internet. ‘Surfin’ the web’ has become a controlled process, directing the user from page to page, site to site. Websites point us in the direction they want us to go rather than allowing user-lead experience.

Philips’ predicted this form of user experience ahead of time in 2006 when the Internet was less structured than it has become in the last 5 years. In 2006, sites like MSN, 4chan and Myspace were market leaders, yet the sites were stagnant environments that weren’t as user friendly to navigate. Philips’ approach ensured a positive experience for users that were familiar with Second Life as a platform. Philips’ was mildly successful in the feedback it gained from its users. In June 2008, Philips posted on their Second Life blog that at the height of a particular tour of the island, more than 30 people followed a guided tour of the island. Although Philips claims 30 to be a large success, the figure is fairly low compared to the average 45,000 users that were logged in at any one point in early 2008. The information gained from feedback was no doubt valuable, however it was not the defining point of the project. Rather than judging the statistics as a success rate though, Philips success lies in its innovative approach to prosumerism. In this respect, the Philips entry to Second Life was a very successful venture, as it bridged a gap between a large corporate company and its market.

Deakin University’s art school takes advantage of Second Life as a platform with its own art island. Here, students submit real life artwork to galleries, create virtual art in Second Life, have meeting and tutorials and view online shows. In this example, Second Life has been transformed from a game to a learning tool. It was set up in 2008 by a Deakin lecturer, Gary Hayes, and since has been constantly added to. It now boasts many buildings, all with purpose rooms and functions, and is on display 24/7. However, it is closed to the general public and only Deakin students and staff can visit the private island.

Contrary to Second Life, social media sites such as Myspace, Bebo and Facebook demand a more truthful representation of their users. These sites aim to replicate the real person that creates a profile in their likeness. We post images, videos and status updates intended to imitate our personality and physique. On Facebook, our contacts are for the most part, friends and family we have met in real life. The website is used as an extended address book that thrives on the interaction between users, with the opportunity to make contact in a multitude of ways. One can post a status update, in which friends comment on, or if they are lazy, they can click a button that will ‘like’ the status for them; one can email; one can post videos, photos and links to other websites, all with the added option of further comments, links and likes; one can post directly on other people’s pages; create pages, events, etc. The site is designed meticulously to ensure a constant looping process as users circulate through the content, returning to the home screen, just to circulate again. This guarantees hits, which in turn, creates money for Facebook through advertising.

Our obsession with online popularity fuels OSM (online social media) sites and has encouraged us to share with the world very unimportant information that typically would not be classed as news. Western culture is celebrity obsessed, with trash TV and magazines winning audiences over educational programs or news. Britney is sought after more than our leading researchers or philanthropists. OSM encourages everyone to have their 15 minutes of fame, which further supports this culture. We are then left with an online world that trades quality for light entertainment.

Ryan Trecartin deals with notions of celebrity, fame and the online world in his work. His video “P.opular S.ky” (2010) blends new media aesthetic with acting replicating the hyper-real paparazzi world that glorifies and trades on celebrity status. The actors wear copious amounts of make up, absurd costumes, and sport cheap wigs and fake glasses. The work is a 40 minute long mash up of content designed to overwhelm the viewer so that no linear narrative can be read. Trecartin uses imagery derived from Second Life and similar games, images and .gif’s from large corporations gleaned from their websites, screen shots from Photoshop, sporadic text, stock images from Getty Images and 3D animations. The video layers these kinds of images and videos over each other, rushing on and off screen at a very fast pace. This is coupled with an overwhelming soundtrack comprised of the actors voices reading lines such as “The next time you see me, I’ll be able to play every instrument in the world. Trust.” that make no sense, demonic music and sounds, as well as re-edited script that is constantly repeated throughout the video. The work is of such a nature that the viewer does not know where to begin. The fast pace nature and rapidly changing content ensures a true representation of the nature of celebrity culture, which is inherently linked to our personal strive for fame online. The fast pace nature of the Internet is well understood by all online users, however when it is synthesized in an artwork, it is a reflection on how twisted it has become. Sites such as Twitter and Reddit guarantee that information is only important for a short period of time, often only a few hours. This contrasts to the pre-internet era where news was relevant for few days, considering the slower distribution of newspapers and preparation of radio or TV shows. Trecartin’s hyper-real characters represent western society’s need to glorify an extended sense of what is ‘real.’ This take on fame is extended in trash magazines such as ‘Who’ or ‘Woman’s Day.’ Our celebrities are not honest representations of the community. Trecartin glorifies our obsession with this culture, yet critiques it for its insanity.

Cory Arcangel looks at our obsession with online fame and popularity in his works “follow my other twitter” (2011) and “Sorry I Haven’t Posted” (2010). In follow my other twitter, the viewer follows a link from Arcangel’s personal website, which automatically searches the phrase follow my other twitter in Twitter.com. The results are a list of people that have recently tweeted that particular phrase. The artwork is live and ever changing. The joke relies on a particular kind of Internet humour that appears often in online forums and sharing sites. Because of this understanding and reference to the place it came from, the work stands as a strong critique on out obsession with Internet fame. Sorry I Haven’t Posted is a blog in which every post has been has gleaned from other people’s blogs. All the posts are of the same nature, with the author apologizing for not having posted in a while, and continuing on to discuss their usual content and banter. The work looks at the people’s conceited views of themselves online, and mocks their faux fame. These bloggers do not need to apologise for not posting, because no one actually cares that much to begin with. For the most part, bloggers don’t owe anything to their readership, as it is often very small, and their blogs are usually personal records aimed only at glorifying themselves anyway.

We seem to be constantly after a larger audience, who we can preach our personal ideals to. Yet the people we preach to are just as real to us as an imagined being, considering for the most part we will never meet them. This is the crux of Internet culture. Arcangel’s works are laced with a detached sense of irony that echoes a love for this community, yet at the same time, judges it on its humorous nature.

Our progressive shift into the online world has seen the human motivation for attention materialized. It has also seen the corporate world try to keep up and introduce measures to control and benefit financially off our desire to be noticed. Online, we hold multiple personas. Some are representations of ourselves closely linked with our real life, yet some are more distant, such as the avatars we create for ourselves in Second Life. The Internet is a place for new opportunity, and as long as we have the motivation to gain the attention we so crave using our online personas, it will live on.