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Create the perfect virtual you
Second sight Photography: Robbie Cooper/Chris Boot
Create the perfect virtual you If you could redesign yourself, what would you look like? The world of online role-playing games offers us all the chance to invent a new identity in the form of a virtual character, or avatar. So do people create avatars in their own image, or do we use them to create fantasy versions of ourselves? What exactly is the relationship between someone’s real image and their virtual one? These questions fascinate photographer Robbie Cooper, who has taken pictures of around 100 gamers and their online representations and collected stories about their lives. The picture here is of Charmaine Hance, a full-time
52 | NewScientist | 12 May 2007
mother of three from Ashford, UK, together with her avatar, Jova Song. Hance’s avatar is featured nude in a collection of avatar erotica, which sells in the game Second Life. Many of Cooper’s photographs confirm the stereotypical view that people visit the virtual world to escape from mundane reality. The pictures show powerful, attractive avatars posing next to their less glamorous real-life begetters. But this isn’t the whole story. Other avatars are almost identical to their creators, and the choice between fantasy and reality may reveal something about one’s personality. Research by Nick Yee of Stanford University in California suggests
that extroverts tend to use avatars to try out new identities, whereas introverts tend to create avatars that are extensions of their real selves. Now Cooper is creating his own avatar. “It’s like the alien from The Simpsons,” he says. “It has tentacles and I can safely say it doesn’t look like me.” Alter Ego, a virtual exhibition of Cooper’s photographs, launches in Second Life on 15 May. If you are a member of Second Life (www.secondlife.com) you can view the exhibition by teleporting to the island Abundance. The book Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators by Robbie Cooper, Tracy Spaight and Julian Dibbell is published by Chris Boot.
www.newscientist.com
Create the perfect virtual you If you could redesign yourself, what would you look like? The world of online role-playing games offers us all the chance to invent a new identity in the form of a virtual character, or avatar. So do people create avatars in their own image, or do we use them to create fantasy versions of ourselves? What exactly is the relationship between someone’s real image and their virtual one? These questions fascinate photographer Robbie Cooper, who has taken pictures of around 100 gamers and their online representations and collected stories about their lives. The picture here is of Charmaine Hance, a full-time
52 | NewScientist | 12 May 2007
mother of three from Ashford, UK, together with her avatar, Jova Song. Hance’s avatar is featured nude in a collection of avatar erotica, which sells in the game Second Life. Many of Cooper’s photographs confirm the stereotypical view that people visit the virtual world to escape from mundane reality. The pictures show powerful, attractive avatars posing next to their less glamorous real-life begetters. But this isn’t the whole story. Other avatars are almost identical to their creators, and the choice between fantasy and reality may reveal something about one’s personality. Research by Nick Yee of Stanford University in California suggests
that extroverts tend to use avatars to try out new identities, whereas introverts tend to create avatars that are extensions of their real selves. Now Cooper is creating his own avatar. “It’s like the alien from The Simpsons,” he says. “It has tentacles and I can safely say it doesn’t look like me.” Alter Ego, a virtual exhibition of Cooper’s photographs, launches in Second Life on 15 May. If you are a member of Second Life (www.secondlife.com) you can view the exhibition by teleporting to the island Abundance. The book Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators by Robbie Cooper, Tracy Spaight and Julian Dibbell is published by Chris Boot.
www.newscientist.com