Fictional Identities in Text- and Dataspace

The Female Science

Scripting Communication Environments

Like Ada Lovelace, in development of computer languages, women continue to work in the hard science environment, and contribute valuable research to an otherwise male dominated field. Female directed scientific research that delves into one or more virtual categories is an extension of mathematical literature, and is frequently categorized as ephemeral . But, if we consider that fictional mathematical scripts are equal to literary texts, then these digitally concrete communication environments deserve more scrutiny. Besides Sherry Turkle (MIT) and Lynn Cherny (Stanford) having a reputation for working in this direction, Barbara Becker (GMD), Germany, has been researching online personas from a female point of view coming sometimes to slightly different results than her US collegues.

Fictional Identity in Cyberspace: VR_ID

About Intertwined

The adaptation of multiple personas and gender can be named VR_ID, or Virtual Identities. Sherry Turkle describes this study by using the terms: multiplicity, fluidity, and fragmentation, words which are also found in the terminology of post modern subjectivity. Barbara Becker discusses it as "inszenierung" or simply, the construction of identity in virtual spaces. Text bodies are representation systems which are working fields for online women. An example for this scripting are MOO spaces, which is radical and sexually aggressive.
(See for example the Pop~Tarts feature report on VNS Matrix and Gashgirl)

Imagination, Text Body

Unlike Sherry Turkle or Howard Rheingold, Becker does not insist on slick psycho-hygienic models. For her, online multiple identity is often the techno-natural realization of putting into practice the philosophical streams of the 1960s, which she categorizes as concrete structuralism and language centered views of self construction in and by text. Electronic communication environments are based on this definition, on disembodiment (where the self is experienced as almost pure text construction), and as a process developed by writing. For Barbara Becker, these data bodies have additional restrictions to our already familiar restrictions of pure language.

The Technological Borders

The reduction of information for identity description online is based on protocols, both technical and social ones. Lynn Cherny gives reference to this in her work on gender related behavior in MOOS. She says that media formats of self-installation are based on technological rules that are caused by programs and certain codes, as well as language codes that must be accepted when we enter these virtual rooms.

Vacancies and Imagination

An IRC participant says:

You don't have to be really responsible for your acts and yourself because the other is also the product of your own imagination - for sure much more than a real bodily communication partner.

But Barbara Becker finds this aspect of MOO communication one of the most fascinating things about VR_ID, because one can create 'vacancies', a lack of descriptive means, caused by the technological restrictions of code. This lends effect to one's ability to create a communication partner of ones own fantasy. This sort of data_body can be compared to any principle of artificial or artistic creation, and has even been compared to the creation of fictional characters in classical literature. This is one reason why online communication is associated with literary theory and language construction.

One historical references one can make to similar fictional identities are masquerades. Interestingly, in the German romantic era of the early 19th century, masquerades become very fashionable, and text production, letter exchange and literature were seen as a room for creating identity. This was a period with enormous pressure and observation from the government. Undercover agents made surveillance, and were constantly telling and passing along the secrets they observed. Parallelly, this seems to be that the same observation made in online communication, which is also at a status quo position in the panorama of the Net's activity.

The Increased Speed

Feedback or even biofeedback is tremendously increased by online tools. The speed of closeness, familiarity, and even erotic relations, can not be compared with real life. Because, the other can project it as he or she likes it. This reduction of information in online communication, and at the same time increase in speed of closeness leads to Beckers point, that even though the body is based on cultural description, it can not really be reduced to narrative. Another way to ask this question is, can it be reduced or replaced by language descriptions?

Technologies of the Self

The life practice of Windows is that of a de-centered self, ... a laboratory for the self... trying the self beyond the real self.... creating sub-personalities, which will be limited by an inner lawyer to a whole self... a psycho-therapeutic milieu for self repair.

Sherry Turkle in her book, Life on the Screen.

A number of Termini Technici have become metaphors for self construction. For example, Sherry Turkle speaks of multiple self-distributed systems as self-technique in digital space. Or, of windows as metaphor for the realization of the electronic multiple self. She understands Windows (TM) as a metaphor for multiple training rooms, open at the same time on one screen, offering different personalities. For Turkle, all this shall lead to one mature personality.

Net communication is quite often understood as self-therapy in the American discourse. Psychological clearance functions is given to digital communication in MOO-like spaces. Becker questioned the motto of the 6Cyberconf in Oslo, where she gave a talk on the subject of online identity, by asking who 'are virtual on the road' - or, are they already present in every day life?

Although she criticizes the classical self-concepts of a coherent and consistent self, and many of the online theories from Turkle and Sadie Plant, she insists that the carthartic dimension of online multiple identities truly exists. Becker's theory is that, as the construction of the self is permanently done by using online text (building online avatars and virtual representation) the different self's permanently dissolve in that act of writing, during the process of creating one's own avatar.

As a consequence, Beckers personal interpretations are observant of a 'media evolutionary perspective.' But first, she stated, it is important to check the different formats of self construction processes, the self drafts by fictional hyper-text.

Text, Bodies, Faces

You can post the question, asking if semiotic mixes of signs, words and images are creating a new digital iconology. Becker would answer that clearly, for her, online communication in MOOS and text based e-mail is too standardized, limited, and restricted. In text, they are reduced to "symbolics" (;-) ). Now, there are other possibilities to develop group specific formats, and visual signs in expanded technological environments. To integrate certain bodily dimensions of individuality, like handwriting in letters, as an extension of the body ist still missing.

The body (gesture and mimics) is extremely standardized in avatar representation, which often follows stereotypical ideals of beauty. The traditional tendencies of discarding the body, for purpose of creating ones self, is a tradition in western philosophy. On the other hand. The body is the last guarantee of unity, presence, and individuality. Those are the two juxtaposes of digital culture - body cult and body denial. Even in the body cult, a primary aim is to control the body completely in order to build it into a manipulative body-design in the gym a project of self-creation. So, the body is --as well-- socially constructed and subjectively designed by media substitutions.

Props of the Self

The different processes of a virtual self include, to give yourself a fictional name, and to get into contact and exchange with other virtual figures. Reacting and changing your fictional self as feedback to these, and other figures, is the basis of the online communication.

But, one's social surroundings can be changed completely in online communication. A specialization that many online practitioners practice is that they are different online personalities in each CME. What is special about this is that they can be logged in as different personalities at the same time. This leads to the feeling that people consider themselves pure social imagination, and is likened to the crafting of a new kind of individual.

The Answer

Becker's idea is the subjectivity as a symbolic mediated self. This is an answer to the strange mix of traditional ideas of subjectivity within the post modern subjectivity critique. The virtual or the real subject and the true self (and the variable mask) do not exist in that division. Becker says:

Finally electronic writing is a challenge for the creative use of technique in media art, hyper fiction or computer poetry to open new rooms of imagination beyond technical authorities. There are a great deal of female online worlds being developed and tested. These projects are in some way answering the challenge of online female representation.