- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Series Foreword
- Acknowledgments
-
1 The Origins of Social Media -
2 The Personal Computer and Social Media -
3 Daily Life in Cyberspace: How the Computerized Counterculture Built a New Kind of Place -
4 Community Memory: The First Public-Access Social Media System -
5 PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community -
6 alt.hypertext: An Early Social Medium -
7 Dictation: A Canadian Perspective on the History of Telematic Art -
8 Art and Minitel in France in the 1980s -
9 Rescension and Precedential Media -
10 Defining the Image as Place: A Conversation with Kit Galloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz, and Gene Youngblood -
11 IN.S.OMNIA, 1983–1993 -
12 Art Com Electronic Network: A Conversation with Fred Truck and Anna Couey -
13 System X: Interview with Founding Sysop Scot McPhee -
14 In Search of Identities in the Digital Humanities: The Early History of Humanist -
15 Echo -
16 MOOs and Participatory Media -
17 Hacking the Voice of the Shuttle: The Growth and Death of a Boundary Object -
18 Community Networking: The Native American Telecommunications Continuum -
19 The Art of Tele-Community Development: The Telluride Infozone -
20 Community Networking, an Evolution -
21 Cultures in Cyberspace: Communications System Design as Social Sculpture -
22 Crossing-Over of Art History and Media History in the Times of the Early Internet—with Special Regard to THE THING NYC -
23 Arts Wire: The Nonprofit Arts Online -
24 Electronic Literature Organization Chats on LinguaMOO -
25 trAce Online Writing Centre, Nottingham Trent University, UK -
26 Pseudo Space: Experiments with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media - A Conversation and Two Epilogues
-
27 Expanding on “What Is the Social in Social Media?”: A Conversation with Geert Lovink -
28 Epilogue: Slow Machines and Utopian Dreams -
29 From Archaeology to Architecture: Building a Place for Noncommercial Culture Online - About the Authors
- Index
Pseudo Space: Experiments with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media
Pseudo Space: Experiments with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media
- Chapter:
- (p.377) 26 Pseudo Space: Experiments with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media
- Source:
- Social Media Archeology and Poetics
- Author(s):
Antoinette LaFarge
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
The history of social media has been marked by arguments over two central issues: markers of identity and degrees of participation. The battle over identity has largely focused on the legitimacy of experimenting with personal and social identity through pseudonymous ‘avatars’. The argument over agency has centered on whether participants should be tightly corralled or given full programming power to change the structures of social media itself. These issues are linked through widespread distrust of pseudonymous agency and the suspicion -- fueled by recent controversies over ‘trolling’ -- that people will tend to participate disruptively, and that such disruptions are necessarily problematic. In this chapter, the author argues for a different view, suggesting that artists have led the way in demonstrating the creative potential of pseudonymous agency in social media. Among the fruits of deep participation in social media are new ways of telling stories, understanding identity itself, and engaging with improvisation as a central rather than peripheral creative activity.
Keywords: Social Media - History, Social Media - Identity, Social Media - Creative Practice, Avatars, Improvisation
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Series Foreword
- Acknowledgments
-
1 The Origins of Social Media -
2 The Personal Computer and Social Media -
3 Daily Life in Cyberspace: How the Computerized Counterculture Built a New Kind of Place -
4 Community Memory: The First Public-Access Social Media System -
5 PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community -
6 alt.hypertext: An Early Social Medium -
7 Dictation: A Canadian Perspective on the History of Telematic Art -
8 Art and Minitel in France in the 1980s -
9 Rescension and Precedential Media -
10 Defining the Image as Place: A Conversation with Kit Galloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz, and Gene Youngblood -
11 IN.S.OMNIA, 1983–1993 -
12 Art Com Electronic Network: A Conversation with Fred Truck and Anna Couey -
13 System X: Interview with Founding Sysop Scot McPhee -
14 In Search of Identities in the Digital Humanities: The Early History of Humanist -
15 Echo -
16 MOOs and Participatory Media -
17 Hacking the Voice of the Shuttle: The Growth and Death of a Boundary Object -
18 Community Networking: The Native American Telecommunications Continuum -
19 The Art of Tele-Community Development: The Telluride Infozone -
20 Community Networking, an Evolution -
21 Cultures in Cyberspace: Communications System Design as Social Sculpture -
22 Crossing-Over of Art History and Media History in the Times of the Early Internet—with Special Regard to THE THING NYC -
23 Arts Wire: The Nonprofit Arts Online -
24 Electronic Literature Organization Chats on LinguaMOO -
25 trAce Online Writing Centre, Nottingham Trent University, UK -
26 Pseudo Space: Experiments with Avatarism and Telematic Performance in Social Media - A Conversation and Two Epilogues
-
27 Expanding on “What Is the Social in Social Media?”: A Conversation with Geert Lovink -
28 Epilogue: Slow Machines and Utopian Dreams -
29 From Archaeology to Architecture: Building a Place for Noncommercial Culture Online - About the Authors
- Index