Here are my slides – I wasn’t going to put them up because they’re a weaving together of a few other talks which are already on slideshare! Also they are designed to be viewed as double page spreads in the in-world book format. There is a paper based on the “play” section of the paper coming out next month, and I’ve been writing a new paper about the avatar which I’ll be presenting in December, but the latter slides are related to that. So stay tuned if you’re interested! 
Tag Archives: identity
Go Virtual!
Thanks to the wonderful Jokay, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the NSW Learnscope “Go Virtual” conference today. There were about 20 participants actually in Wollongong, where the conference was held physically, and another 30 or so participants attending from inside Second Life. Apart from a few technical issues (and these seem to be surprisingly minimal really – just tricky getting voice working and in synch with no delay or feedback) it went very well.
My talk was titled Play and Identity in Digital Spaces, and I combined the material from about three of my previous talks and four or five different papers. I want to especially thank Jazzydee and Achariya for dropping in and contributing stories about their avatars!
Later in the day, I was also involved in a panel discussion about leverages the affordances of Second Life for education. Panelists included:
- Jo Kay, Freelance Design, Facilitation and Virtual Worlds Consultant
- Sean FitzGerald, Independent Researcher, Consultant, Trainer and Presenter
- Angela Thomas, University of Sydney
- Alan Levine, Vice President, NMC Community and CTO, NMC: The New Media Consortium
- Nick Noakes, Director, Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching, Hong Kong
Here’s a nice shot of CDB and I after the panel discussion. CDB is coming to Australia next month!!! He’ll be doing a lecture tour and meeting up with people interested in using Second Life for education, so if anybody wants to meet up with him (and me!) in Sydney let me know
(Thanks to Jokay and Alan for images)
PS: I’ve been writing a paper the last couple of weeks, and preparing this conference talk, and doing a hundred other tasks, including some extra and unexpected teaching, so the blog has suffered!
My Digital Fiction Presentation for Futures in Literacy Conference
Creativity in Second Life: Educator’s Panel
The final panel session for the NMC’s Symposium on Creativity in Second Life was wonderful! Chaired by Alan Levine (CDB Barkley), it involved a diverse range of educators involved in Second Life, reflecting about the week’s sessions and creativity in SL in general. Educators included:
- Lori Bell (aka Lorelei Junot), Alliance Library System
- Jo Kay (aka Jokay Wollongong), Illawarra Institute TAFE, New South Wales
- Hilary Mason (aka Ann Enigma), Johnson & Wales University
- Troy McConaghy (aka Troy McLuhan), ISM Corporation
- Nick Noakes (aka Corwin Carillon), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
- Beth Ritter-Guth (aka Desideria Stockton), Lehigh Carbon Community College
- Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney
Despite issues with sound, we managed to combine both text and sound to do this reflection. Alan blogged details of the session here, including a podcast and a chat transcript. I had to do my bit by text instead of voice (luckily I was last so I hastily converted the speaking notes I had into close to proper sentences while other people were talking). Some of the comments seem to have been truncated in the transcript though, so, for anybody interested, I am including my notes (and they’re a bit messy!) under the fold.
Continue reading
NMC Session: Creative Identity Play
Yesterday I presented my session about avatars and identity play in Second Life. It was more of a workshop than a presentation, and there were some wonderfully fascinating stories people shared about their avatars: why they created them and crafted them the way they did; what decisions they made about identity markers to include; how other people perceived their avatars; and any identity experiments (gender, fashion, race and so on) that they had explored. I really enjoyed hearing people’s stories, and wish I had had the foresight to log a transcript of the chat!! I managed to crash out 5 times during the session :/ This meant I didn’t have time in the end to really recap some of the central points I wanted to make!! Here are some shots from the session of people sharing and participating:
… and a few resources, links, landmarks, copies of slides, free clothes and avatars and so on were given out at the end. If you didn’t get to go to the session (or you missed out because you had to leave early) and would like a gift bag, just send me an im in world!
(My thanks to CDB Barkley, Joanna Trailblazer, Jokay Wollongong, Heidi Trotta, Nick Noakes, Stephanie Misfit, Tasrill Sieyes, Desideria Stockton, Thinkerer Melville, Anne Enigma, Larry Pixel and many many others who contributed in various ways to the session – by sharing stories, posing for photos, letting me use their photos, contributing avatars and giving me freebies to add to the resources kit!)
Rate My Dorm Room
From the article: Old media targets the facebook crowd comes this:
…many traditional media companies are also seeking to capture the Facebook crowd. But one such “old” media company hoping to make big a youth push that might surprise you is E.W. Scripps (SSP), the newspaper publisher that also owns cable channels Food Network, DIY and HGTV.
The company’s HGTV.com Web site has launched a popular feature called Rate My Space, which lets people upload photos of bathrooms, kitchens, yards and other “spaces” so that people can judge them and offer comments, tips and friendly advice. Charity Curley, the vice president of HGTV.com, said that the Rate My Space section of HGTV.com has 41,000 registered users and has generated 44 million page views since the end of February.
But for the most part, HGTV has catered mainly to an older audience. Now, HGTV is going after the kids as well. The company has quietly launched a Rate My Dorm Room feature on the site in order to attract the people that are most familiar with the concept of social networking and user-generated content.
I’m wondering whether the ratings system is used differently with the younger crowd to the adult crowd. It kind of reminds me of the research that was done (about 10 years ago now – before myspace and facebook even existed) on how youth websites were analagous to their private bedroom spaces and a form of identity play. But it also makes me want to click on the photos on the cork board to get a close up! It’s like the web has now moved so close to reality now that we want reality to be more web-like. Or something.
My NMC Symposium on “Creativity in Second Life” Presentations Next Week
Next week the NMC is running an entire weeks symposium on “Creativity in Second Life” There are a number of strands: Machinima, Fashion, Sculpture and Modeling, Virtual Photography, and Teaching Environments, social / arts events, and lots of practical and interactive sessions. I am involved in three sessions, all at (sort of) Australian friendly times. Here are the details of these sessions (in Second Life time):
Fri Aug 17 7pm – Fri Aug 17 8pm
Teaching On the Second Life Stage: Playful Educational Strategies for Serious Purposes
Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/64/193/22
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney
Kim Flintoff (Kim Pasternak), Edith Cowan University
Theatrical spaces have historically been places used to teach, purge and shape culture. For over a decade, virtual reality has offered a new kind of theatrical space; now, with the rise of social networking spaces, many more people are using the potential of the web to perform, critique and comment on cultural issues. Second Life provides a new and exciting space where students can explore issues that are both personal and global in significance. Teaching strategies which incorporate dramatic and theatrical components are perfectly suited in the Second Life environment for engaging students in playful but meaningful reflection on such issues. This session will involve participants in role-playing, reflection and discussion. Participants will also be encouraged to brainstorm the possibilities of incorporating such strategies into their own educational programs.
Sat Aug 18 4pm – Sat Aug 18 5pm
No More Business Suits Please: Creative Identity Play in SL
Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/185/136/43
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney, Australia
Second Life offers a unique opportunity to refashion one’s self and to play with fictional identities. Yet many of us who work inside Second Life feel trapped in our offline identity roles and conform to traditional discourses of femininity, masculinity, appearance, beauty and fashion. Professionals wear business suits, educators cry out for more modest clothing, and artists wear funky coloured skins. In some contexts, people who resist these discourses are discriminated against. This session explores how we might be able to leverage one of the greatest affordances of Second Life—the avatar—for personal, community and professional agendas.
Sat Aug 18 5pm – Sat Aug 18 6pm
Panel Session: Reflections on Creativity in Second Life
Location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Conference%20Center/214/18/51
Moderator: Alan Levine (aka CDB Barkley), The New Media Consortium
Lori Bell (aka Lorelei Junot), Alliance Library System
Jo Kay (aka Jokay Wollongong), Illawarra Institute TAFE, New South Wales
Hilary Mason (aka Ann Enigma), Johnson & Wales University
Troy McConaghy (aka Troy McLuhan), ISM Corporation
Nick Noakes (aka Corwin Carillon), Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Beth Ritter-Guth (aka Desideria Stockton), Lehigh Carbon Community College
Angela Thomas (aka Anya Ixchel), University of Sydney
The Cross-Media Self
Yesterday when I added Andy Piper as a friend on Facebook, I flippantly said “now we’re friends everywhere” – since I knew him on Second Life, on Facebook, on twitter, on flickr, on his blog, and through his comments on my blog.
He paused for a while, then replied with a wide ASCII grin:
“friends *everywhere*?
see http://onxiam.com/people/andypiper“
I clicked the link, and my jaw literally dropped in astonishment at the number of tracks Andy makes across the web. How the HECK can any one person do so much?!?!
Right now I feel pretty overwhelmed by the number of social media spaces I seem to exist in: 3 blogs, 3 or 4 roleplaying forums, a fan forum, a zine, flickr, linkedin, twitter, facebook, Second Life (plus an alt), 2 youtube accounts, gmail, work mail, skype, google chat. People keep inviting me to new things but I just don’t have the time! And each one of these has channels or groups or threads – I am in 63 flickr groups, 19 facebook groups, subscribe to numerous blog feeds, several podcasts and a number of youtube channels. I’m part of 2 high traffic email lists (Association of Internet Researchers and Second Life Education), and about 10 low to medium traffic ones.
My solution at handling them all is to concentrate on two or three at a time. The amount of reading and writing and uploading and downloading and viewing and clicking I do every day is becoming ridiculous. I am a terrible commenter on friend’s blogs, I only blog once every day or two, I barely post to email groups, and I only keep up with urgent emails. If I tried to fully engage in everything I wouldn’t ever get any work done!
Andy wrote a post about his experiences called The Quicksand of Web 2.0, in which he debates some of the pros and cons of different applications and talks about addiction and his “off switch”.
Its all left me wondering about the kind of identity play we engage in across all of these different spaces we inhabit, and the type of narrative constructions other people are making about us as they make connections between our multiple cross-media selves.
And is it possible for people who read your work across these spaces to suddenly get turned off by a bad case of TMI (too much information)? Or as one of my literary colleagues is wont to say, “that person just has too much narrative going on.”
But not you Andy
Facebook: A Space to Play
I’m now on facebook! Thanks to my friend Kate who I bumped into at the BlogHer Conference in Second Life, and who told me that you can play scrabble through facebook, I stopped resisting and joined up, and yes… now I am addicted! And enjoying a long distance one word a day game of scrabble. I can’t believe how many widgets and STUFF you can do/add – and unlike my blog which I try to keep at least semi professional, it feels like a much more playful space. Or maybe its just because it is new and the personal/professional boundary is still distinct. Anybody else want to play (a slowish game of) scrabble?
Nudes Descending- Interactive SL Art
Gaza does it again – you might remember Gaza Stripped, an article from Slatenight magazine (now sadly on hiatus for the time being), where Gaza, pictured below, discussed her philosophy about real/virtual/pop art.
Nude Descending is another play on an artistic icon, in which falling nude art pieces topple down a staircase, and if you want to really interact and become art you allow your naked avatar to topple down too.
This exhibition is being shown at the Odyssey Gallery, and also includes all sorts of other interactive and thought provoking pieces. Just DO NOT say a certain phrase or term, or you will be attacked by a tornado and catapulted across to another sim! (I haven’t seen one person not test this, despite the warnings
All art has notecards with commentary and questions for you to ponder about the art work, which helps you understand what intention was had by the artist. How you interpret it though is still dependent upon your own experiences, expectations and belief systems about art and virtuality, so if you visit the exhibition with friends it can raise some very interesting discussions.
Four Eyed Monsters – the full feature film on youtube
In February I blogged about the innovative movie Four Eyed Monsters. Now the young producers have put the entire feature film on youtube, so here it is:
I’m so excited to be able to watch this after missing out on it when it was shown in Second Life. I love it!
Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: the audio to my conference talk
Thanks to the wonderful Alan Levine, I now have the audio recording to go with my NMC talk, here:
Alan’s write-up of my talk is on the NMC blog here – thanks so much!
Postcards from Second Life
south beach strip club in Second Life, originally uploaded by amywilson.
Amy Wilson’s (Freelunch’s) Postcards from Second Life is now available, and there will be a free signing of the book in Second Life on Saturday, June 2nd, 6pm PST at the Pooley Auditorium (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pooley/250/6/38). The book, a set of watercolors documenting the travels of the artist inside a virtual world, is currently available at lulu.com (http://www.lulu.com/content/840930) for $15 US.
I was sent a link to Amy Wilson’s artworks a couple of weeks ago but have been so busy I haven’t had a chance to blog about it. I find Amy’s work more fascinating the longer I look at it. I love the fact that visual artists are interpreting and expressing their impressions of Second Life through their medium of choice. There are so many people blogging about SL because writing is their mode of choice, and we’re all uploading a ton of photographs to flickr as amateur photographers to capture special and/or memorable moments. But I haven’t seen many people using art as their medium of expression (though I did recently read Sharon’s post about how she has begun drawing avatars in her visual journal).
I think this reinterpration of Amy’s is also very clever because it makes a considered critique of various aspects of SL – covering issues of identity, reality, relationships and business inside the virtual space. These are issues that we are all quite familiar with, but to see them articulated in a new form holds them up for renewed inspection.
I’m Heading Off for June to Speak, Research, Speak, Plan more Research etc etc…
The major speaking event I have is the featured session at the NMC Summer Conference. I was specifically invited to speak about a “bit of everything” related to my research, so here’s the slides that accompany the talk. I hope I can arrange an audio stream to support the slides for the near future.
And here is the line-up for our panel session at the ECAR conference:
Youth Online – almost there!
Yay! Here is my final book cover!!!
And here is one of the endorsements:
How lovely of Len Unsworth to write such kind words.
My June Plans
I have quite a busy schedule planned for June, with talks, presentations, panel discussions, and research network meetings.
I will first be arriving in San Francisco where I’ll be meting up with colleagues to discuss some joint research project plans (and going to the Ghiradelli chocolate factory, let’s not forget!)
Then its a very busy week in Indianapolis at the New Media Consortium Summer Conference. At this conference I’ll be speaking about my favourite subject:
Pleasure, Play, Participation and Promise: Socio-emotional dimensions of digital culture which are transforming the shape of new media literacies.
Drawing on several inter-related ethnographic studies of multimodal virtual worlds, this session will examine the significance of affect on transformative moments in people’s online lives. These moments, whether filled with great joy and hilarity or laden with angst and sorrow, are all moments which crystallize experience, provide a privileged locus for the creation of knowledge, and have a significant impact upon identity. From younger adolescents who embrace online communities as part of their normal socialization, to the silver surfers, the older generation of converts to digital culture, I will explore the motivations and emotions of a range of individual cases in order to illuminate the key factors which are driving the changing dimensions of new media literacies.
I hope to see a lot of colleagues at the NMC conference that until now I’ve only met in Second Life or via online conferences. It is sure to be the highlight of my year Oh and I will get to hear Edward Castronova give a keynote!
Next is a panel discussion I’ll be on at the ECAR (EDUCAUSE Centre for applied research) Summer conference in Boulder, Colorado.
At this conference I’ll be speaking about teaching in Second Life. Here are the details:
This ain’t your daddy’s classroom, that’s for sure! Serious(ly fun) living and learning in the virtual world of Second Life
Is serious learning possible in a virtual world? The panelists in this session have each mounted significant and sustained efforts in the virtual world of Second Life™ to explore that question first hand across a variety of disciplines and settings. Collectively they have amassed years of experience in such settings, and clearly measurable successes. Join them as they discuss their projects, the challenges they’ve faced, the insights they have gained along the way, and their recommendations for institutions and faculty considering a virtual world presence.
Larry Johnson, aka Larry Pixel, The New Media Consortium
Phillip Long, aka Radar Radio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sarah Robbins, aka Intelligirl, Ball State University
Angela Thomas, aka Anya Ixchel, University of Sydney
Then I head back to San Francisco for a little R&R for a few days before the long flight back to Sydney. The minute I get back I’ll be heading up north to Armidale for a two day mega session with teachers, talking about machinima, digital fiction, and virtual worlds. And then June will be over. Phew! If you are at any of these conferences do come and say hello!
Proposed Book Cover Design
This is the proposed book cover design for my book!!! Yay!!! Finally its *almost* here. I am very excited now to be this close
Youtube’s Geriatric1927 Featured in “My Generation” Video
I love this! Earlier this week I watched Geriatric1927′s latest youtube video and he announced that he had been involved in this music video of the famous song, “My Generation”. In this version, a whole bunch of musical seniors have been used to create an amazing music video to raise awareness of aged care issues. It’s so wonderful – watch it! You will smile all day (There’s a Myspace page as well, of course).
Update:
I just found the following information about the forming of this group:
The oldest and greatest rock band in the world – meet The Zimmers and their amazing cover of The Who’s “My Generation”.
Lead singer Alf is 90 – it’s quite something when he sings “I hope I die before I get old”. And he’s not the oldest – there are 99 and 100-year-olds in the band!
The Zimmers will feature in a BBC TV documentary being aired in May 2007. Documentary-maker Tim Samuels has been all over Britain recruiting isolated and lonely old people – those who can’t leave their flats or who are stuck in rubbish care homes.
The finale of the show is this group of lonely old people coming together to stick it back to the society that’s cast them aside – by forming a rock troupe and trying to storm into the pop charts.
Some massive names from the pop world have thrown their weight behind The Zimmers… The song is produced by Mike Hedges (U2, Dido, Cure), the video shot by Geoff Wonfor (Band Aid, Beatles Anthology), and it was recorded in the legendary Beatles studio 2 at Abbey Road.
I’m in Vogue!
The May edition of Australian Vogue Magazine, that is…
See the front cover headline there “Is your life better online?” – that’s the byline for an article called A Life Less Ordinary written by Cathrin Schaer.
I don’t have permission to reproduce the article, but it begins thus:
Imagine being given licence to completely reinvent yourself with a new name, a new body, and even a new personality. We all have days when that might sound like an appealing idea. Enter Angela Thomas, a lecturer in English education at the University of Sydney, and her alter-ego Anya: A glamorous brunette who frequents jazz clubs, has a wardrobe that “would rival Sarah Jessica Parker’s”, owns land and a flash house, and edits an arts and culture magazine…..” (page 198)
And what follows is a lengthy and thoughtful piece (sprinkled with lots of fabulous quotes not just from me but a number of other Australian academics) about identity, psychology, community, web 2.0 and relationships (business and personal) in virtual spaces. This author really did her homework, and it shows. Far from being reactionary and sensationalist, she talks about the subtleties of virtual spaces and the way they are becoming a normal extension to social interaction.
So, run out and buy Australian Vogue right now and read more!! It’s one of the best journalistic accounts of Second Life I’ve ever read.
Romanticism and Second Life Fashion
Having an avatar has made me much more aware of fashion, the fashioned body, and the relationship between fashion and identity. I think spaces like Second Life where the customisation of the avatar is a constant fascination (which drives the thriving fashion industry) prompt us to become more reflective about fashion and the body as a visual metaphor for identity. The virtual space is also a romantic space which is somewhat dreamlike, a space for imaginary illusions, sensual delight and fiction. It is a playful space. Even when I am teaching inside Second Life (or maybe especially when I am teaching) I play with my avatar’s appearance to stimulate student discussion about these ideas. Sometimes I seek authenticity in my appearance when the gaze is external (like my TV appearance last year) but more often than not I enjoy the indulgence of being playful, and changing my skin / hair / clothes / shoes on a daily basis. Joanne Entwhistle in The Fashioned Body says:
[The] restless Romantic spirit, this indulgence in dreams and fantasies, is what drives fashion.
She also argues that fashion is way of shaping our identities in a way which helps to stabilise our sense of self in a time when identities are increasingly fragmented and fractured. So maybe those of us who are enjoying “playing dress up” as much as I am are actually doing much more than meets the eye – we’re finding that the avatar simultaneously provides us with not only the freedoms and pleasures of playing out our fantasies, but are also a way of dealing with the chaos in our everyday lives.
PS: My rose coloured glasses are also magical: they tell me when my friends come online, they announce when other people approach, and they help me fly fast and high. And the very nice man that made them also customised them especially for me so I could wear my eyelashes at the same time. At one level I sit back and laugh at myself and the investment I have in my avatar. At another level I try to theorise about it. But at the deepest, most honest level, I just enjoy it and don’t care anymore about trying to justify it!
