Output details

An Avatar’s Broken Memory Performance Installation

My research inquiry defined a creative form, while offering critical tools to understand the innovation inherent within my idea. The questions were:

• What are the creative insights for behaviour after performatively playing an avatar?

• How can I develop improvisational expressions, whilst embodying the behaviour of an avatar?

• How does interactivity function dramaturgically, when using IT to trigger rhythmic sounds and visual content?

I used Practice as Research to develop a critical model for interactive installations, exploring within the on-line 3D world of Second Life, how my avatar would visualise and perform in an installation. With reflective practice, I questioned assumptions surrounding the nature of artistic dimensions beyond the standard four dimensions of 1D, 2D, 3D and 4D. I answered these questions by studying my impulses while exploring excursions into the on-line 3D world of Second Life, creatively employing improvisation to explore instincts through movement and installation design. Embodying my avatar was achieved when both the movements and installation were integrated. Visually, I captured key insights to evaluate whether the movements corresponded to my original impulses. As the explorations progressed, particular relationships and movement patterns emerged, creating a conceptual language, which I incorporated into an article and a performance. I used reflective practice to capture key moments, oscillating between action and reflection. The concept behind the event was to create a digital mirror that would capture the audience’s reflections and, by using sonar and floor pads, trigger pre-recorded sounds and images of my avatar’s movements in the same digital environment, using the same lighting conditions and angles; thus giving the illusion of appearance and disappearance.

Conclusions

• Working with an avatar offers ways to explore new relationships between self, behaviour and identity mediated through technology.

• The research articulated new artistic dimensions; a fifth (network of choice) and a sixth (an avatar making behavioural choices.