Join us on the next Copper Robot program for a conversation about avatars. The movie Avatar is cleaning up at the box office. Those of us in Second Life are familiar with avatars–they’re the faces that we show the virtual world. But how do they relate to our physical identities?
WHEN: Sunday, Jan. 3, 6 pm Pacific Time/Second Life Time
WHERE: The lovely Seaside Theater, World2Worlds Island in Second Life, or watch the live video on the Web, or listen to the playback later on this Web site.
What is the relationship between our physical identities and our Second Life avatars? Pick one:
None. It’s called “Second Life” because nothing we do or say in-world has any relationship to the physical world. It’s another life, separate from the one we lead in the atomic world.
Or total. Our Second Life avatars are simply the extensions of our physical identities.
The longer we spend in Second Life, the more complex the question appears, and the less satisfactory the two extreme, simple answers seem to be.
We’ll discuss these issues with two of Second Life’s leading avatars and the people behind them:
Kim Smith (SL: Rissa Maidstone), is an old friend of the Copper Robot. She’s co-founder of World2Worlds, the company that provides the venue, media streaming, and priceless production help with this program. World2Worlds consults with enterprise businesses, governments, and other organizations on putting on virtual worlds events, applications and programs. Prior to World2Worlds, she had a long career with positions of responsibility in technology training, engineering, and public works.
Harper Beresford (RL: Jennifer Grace Dawson) is business manager of SL clothing vendor RFyre, and author of the blog A Passion for Virtual Fashion. She’s been active on virtual worlds since the text-based MUDs of the early 90s, and has a masters degree in English with a partial Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. 
By the way, alert readers will note that I called Kim primarily by the name she uses in the physical world, and Harper primarily by her Second Life name. That’s how I think of them–and I think that’s part of the discussion.
To get you started, you might want to listen to this episode of the Studio 360 podcast, it’s about Avatar the movie, and avatars, and it includes interviews with Avatar director James Cameron, as well as Felicia Day, star of the Web sitcom The Guild, about a group of obsessive online gamers. Copper Robot interviewed Felicia and her Guild colleagues in April. Also interviewed is an expert on Internet avatars; he describes Facebook personas as “avatars.” I’m not sure I buy that they’re avatars in the same way that our SL identities are avatars. We can talk about that Sunday.
Hope to see you there!
Update 1 pm: The blog Metaverse Journal looks at “Avatar: The film, the idea and the word,” noting that the major world religions have the idea of avatars at their centers: Our bodies are not ourselves, our spirits are our true selves, and our bodies merely avatars in the physical world.
That suggests an image: Our Second Life avatars are puppets, manipulated by our physical bodies, which are also puppets, manipulated by our true selves.
