Introduction about constructing online identity

l   What is identify? What is a digital or online identify? Different from “in person” identity?

One definition from the Concise Oxford English Dictionary of identity: “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is, the characteristics determining this.” More simply, one might say your identity is the answer to the question “who are you?”

Digital or online identity is a portrayal of who you are in a digital or online format. Like any form of identity, this presents only a slice of who you are, and in some ways allows a person to mare carefully control what that presentation of identity is.

2   Questions of authenticity

With the ability to construct your online personas, questions are raised related to the intention behind how this representation or conveyed. Is an online identity a “true” identity or is it something inauthentic, simply constructed by the portrayer.

    “In sum, the selves that we have are composed of multiple identities and contradictory experiences. In late-modern society, it is almost impossible to have a fully unified, completed and coherent ‘self’; rather, we all tend to have fleeting, multiple and contradictory selves”

(Charles Cheung “Presentations of Self on Personal Homepages”, p45)

3  Identity convergence is when you have a crossover between different portrayals of your identity. As many people have multiple online identities this becomes a more relevant issue. Some risks that could come along with this would be if one identity is intended for a specific audience but the audience of a different one of a person’s identities encounters both identities they might question the person’s integrity and character through these contrasting portrayals.

4   Public vs. private sharing of personal info

 Online identities can blur the line between what we traditionally think of as public vs. private information. It also can challenge comfort zones regarding what we might consider personal spheres.

5  Ethics issues

By placing your identity in a digital format instead of a living format it places this information in a place that can potentially be used by others

People can hide behind a constructed identity to harm others in ways they might not as their “real life” identities

Adams on Art

In Adams writting, he demonstrated his opinion of what is art. According to him, art has different types. Ages ago, it was divided into literary art such as drame, fine art such as paintings, decorative art like wallpaper. But there were also grey area here, areas such as industrial design is not what we think of as pure art. As he said :"The boundaries between art and non-art is not hard and fast."1He thought that video games should be categorized into literary art. The definition has its root in the longlast philosophy about art. Far ago, people thought that "art was representational, that art existed to portray a person or scene or object."2 But when it came to modern time, we take art as an expression. It should express the artist, showing what he/she wanted to tell spectacles. And art should not be limited by time and space. By saying this, he meant that we should be able to appreciate Greek sculptures despite that we are so far away from them. I think this is his basic idea about art. And I partially agree with him. I especially agree that the boundaries is more blurred now. I mean art is becoming more and more interactive with other forms like culture, etc, and we have a looser view of what is art.

According to him, if video games want to become art, they have to go beyond fun and commercial. It need to have other entertainment means. He also atated that they need an aesthetic. We just have to judge more elements in games, like theirs scenes, and how figures are constructed, is the story good, etc. And he thinks that video games is very different, so the roles of their producers and developers are important. Developers have to break the ground, finding new blood to games. And they must challenge the views, because otherwise they would be boring. And the whole chain of video games should seek for a change.

Anyway, art is so different now, maybe video games can become a great art form containing very different experiences from traditional art.

1:Adams, Will computer games ever be a legitimate art?, P1
2:Adams, Will computer games ever be a legitimate art?, P2

Case Study:The Science of Deduction

In 2010, BBC released the new Tv series they’ve made. Based on a famous character from a famous novel——Sherlock Holmes.The producer successfully translated the story into a modern version. Sherlock is a consulting detective while Waltson just returned from a war.

In the series, there are a lot of modern techniques being used to carry out the plot. Such as blog, SMS and BBS. Thanks to those creative and rigorous staff of  BBC, those fictional websites were actually invented.

The Science of Deduction is one of them.

Staff of BBC worked out this website and release it in 2010, just as the show was screened.

The website is called: The Science of Deduction. 

There are 4 areas you can search in the website.

Home: Giving brief introduction of this site by “Sherlock”, showing some hidden messages that you can refer to, updating the latest Forum activity.

Forum:  Like an online chatting room of “Sherlock”. His client can communicate with him there. Containing posts of  “Sherlock” and clients.

Hidden messages: It is the most interesting part. “Sherlock ” gives out    puzzles receiving from his enemy, and post it on his little website, and we can  try to solve it. He’ll post the answer later.

Case File: This category contains all the cases he's solved in the show. You’ll find a link to Walston’s blog where you can find details of how Sherlock broke the case.

I found it interesting because this website is trying to make Sherlock a real person who lived in London now. He's a charming man, and now we have an opportunity to communicate with him.And just like the fictional one, the success making of Sherlock Holmes made many crazy fans took it really serious. This website makes the new Sherlock come alive from the screen. Another reason I pay attention to it is because it is related to commercial market. Besides, it shows the hard-work of BBC staff. They care about the detail, and it shows their brilliant way of promotion.

I can't think of negative issues it raises. This website is all about dedution, not so concerning or peeking into a real person's daily life. It seems to be a heaven for fans of Sherlock or fans of detective fictions. They can brain storm here, and the founder is kind of creating a sense that we are communicating with Sherlock, although it's all fake and we all know it.



How things expanding from me?

How fascinating, one day we were so resisting to machine combined with human bodies, like Edward below, the next day we regarded them as superheros, as wolverine.

          

We exploded several works that expressing this theme, and among them the most attractive work for me is those of Stelarc's.

 

In this work,'The artist's body's positionedat the centre of the structure on a turntable and activates the machine through an extended 'arm' with a manipulator'1, so actually the artist can do more things at the same time, as well as be manipulated by other people. Quite like a robert.

I found it interesting because this is an active behavior, I mean he wanted to do this, not because he had to. He tried to experience outer power and super power. Like Iron man, it seems that he has the ability to do greater things than normal people. Also I saw it as a revolutionary work combining science and art. It actually use technique in reality not on the Internet.


1:Christian Paul, "Stelarc, Ping Body", 1996, P 166

Why so serious?

When watching the film, I can't help thinking of 'Clockwork Orange', I don't know why, maybe they both concern about teenagers' psychiology and affect the teens' behavior. Especially when I saw those gamers so addicted to the game and just like the main character in ' Clocjwork Orange' drinking the evil milk and commiting all the terrible cirmes. It's very interesting to see the traces of changes in teens' interests.

I would like to start with the pros of playing videogames which also been talked about a lot in the film. First, for individuals, it can help children to fight against diseases. Let's not forget that videogames has plenty of forms, and not all of them are devils. Remember the game played by a young patient, it's supported by the hospital. The game let players to be a kind of medicine of human form, players choose patients, and then go into their bodies and kill the virus. It actually can help the patients to know their diseases better, and by giving positive implies, it can in fact help cure the diseases. Another example is the AA(American Army). The military force in U.S. paid to develop this game in order to attract young people serve for the army when they grow up. I found it very creative and brave to do so, and the effect is good. There are also cons. Just like the movie, some kids very addicted to the violence in the games and applied it to the reality, like robbory and classroom shootings.

In the film, the director tell stories about teens commiting crime in reality, probably affected by the violent games. It's anti-social, and also parents and adults seems to worry about their increasing aggressive. I can't agree with this. I mean nowadays there are plenty of ways through which teens can know about violence and other dangerous thoughts, we can't protect them in a total pure environment, so we just need to guide them and help them to tell digital world from reality.

I really don't think that gevernment should have the right to ban videogames. Because we people can't destroy anything we think inappropriate, that would be horrible. We certainly should avoid bad morals, but we need to have the choice, not meaning that we should do, but we have to choose on our own, not by obedience. Another reason is because actually these games have some positive effects. Such as it can help to release our stress and anger as well as other negative emotions, and it can use to bulid connections between teens and country, like AA.

In my own experience in playing CS, I found that we're actually not so concerned about the blood, because we know clearly it's a game. What we want to achieve is to have fun with friends. We always make jokes on each other in reality when we are shooting at each other in the game. And who did most headshots are respected, only because of one's skill.

So in general, Why so serious?

Mouchette

One of the extreme example of fake online identities is the website of Mouchette. This is a website of a 13 years old girl, who of course is a fake identity created by an artist.

This website contains pictures and links, and it's like the girl is exposing her real life to others but all those fake informations make us sick. 'She' wants to interact with us, and she left some  questions.You can leave your email address if you want.

What impressed me most was the set up of the homepage. no much words, and a sophisticated flower is used as a backgroud. It creat a sense of touch by adding some flies. 'She' is like destroying beauty. All the informations there seems to be real. I mean they are very detailed, for example, she shows us her bedroom. And posters along with other stuff are trying to confuse us.

It's very unique that she used sound effect on her website. And to accompany the pictures and the style, she makes those creepy sound when entering. It's meaningless and makes us uncomfortable. But the sound makes the website quite different from other works of art. It now contains fourv senses we have. So the feeling is stronger.

At last, Iwant to talk a little about the background of this websites. We know that this 13-year-old girl is fictional, but we admit that some part of the uncomfortable feelings we have are closly related to her age. We think it is disgusting and unappropriate for such a little girl to make such descriptions and pictures and sound. So if it would be diferent if this girl changed her identity to a more mature and sextual attractive woman?Is it because of her age that we think it is extreme? It's more like a moral discussion now.

Who are you and who am I?

With the development of internet,more and more different identities are applied nowadays, because all you have to do is to register and one fictional person come into birth.

After interviewing my classmates, I found one person particularly interesting. She has the most online identities among all the classmates I've interviewed, which is more than 10.She has facebook, twitter, MSN and many emails. Some of those identities are completely different from reality, such as age,gender,job. She thinks it's fun to use fake identities to communicate with people on line. And She feels unsafe to expose herself on the internet, the real her.

Comparing with mine,I'm quite simple. I have around 5 online identities, and they are some chatting tools, emails and blogs.They are more sensitive than the real me,because I think it dangerous to tell a person who really lives around you the real thoughts and feelings you have. I think that by using a fack online identity, you can express your real feelings and thoughts freely and escaping from the pressure you have from daily life. But there're some certain risks such as loss of your private information and causing trouble in reality.