[spectre] _I Am Transreal_ : [part 2] [_Augmentology.com_]

[dj lotu5]

Full version, with links and photos, here:

http://arsvirtuafoundation.org/research/2009/08/06/_i-am-transreal_-a-reflection-onof-becoming-dragon-part-2/

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_I am Transreal_: A Reflection On/Of Becoming Dragon [Part 2]


I am becoming something else. In this moment, this being-in-transition,
I am willfully stepping into the unknown. I am between realities. I can
only imagine what I want to become, and then choose to become that new
thing, but it is radically ungraspable, inconceivable. I can never know
the reality of what I am choosing to become, desiring to become. My
decision to transform can never be the right one, because it is always
based on an illusion, a fantasy, a false conception with only a few
points of data, not the rich details of an embodied life. As the
transformation unfolds, those unknown events begin to occur, like seeing
my breasts in the mirror for the first time after shaving my chest
closely, feeling the movement in my orgasm change into something new or
just walking down the street for a moment as a girl, unnoticed and not
needing any special attention. My decision to become something else is
always a decision to become mythopoetic, because the reality of the new
state is always unknown, imaginary, a construct, a fantasy. Yet I don’t
seek to decry this radical state of uncertainty but to embrace it. The
very moments of everyday perception are also simply intersections of a
real materiality with my symbolic and imaginary processing engines
making sense of them, down to the way that I understand what pleasure is
and what pain is and when the two become too close so as to be confused.
And a choice to not transform is of course still a choice to transform
into a different state, as our bodies are all in permanent transition,
aging, training, consuming, producing, perceiving, creating new folds in
our craniums.

Through this process, I am also becoming an artist. Yet this is simply
another fantasy which I use to structure my desires and find direction.
Artist, porn star, student, professor, father, mother, husband, wife,
lover, child, priest, these are all simply performances of being, yet
their being a performance makes them no less real, nor more real, just
another fold in the swirling interplay, the kaleidoscope of realities
that is our being.

A mixed reality performance using an online 3D virtual world simply
highlights the fantasy nature of our everyday interactions, of the
physical world, by referring back to the physical, stirring up our
memories and conceptions of embodiment. A mixed reality performance is a
misnomer, as every step of our waking lives is a mix of realities, our
self-perceptions, muscle memory, proprioceptions, others’ perceptions of
us, our perceptions of their perceptions of us as they look at us, or
don’t, our understanding that we are walking, taking on a step, on a
sidewalk, by a building. A mixed reality performance simply highlights
this fact, or this fiction, and allows one to see and begin to question
the mythopoetic structure of reality. While performance sought to get
closer to the real, to escape mediation, I embrace the pleasure of bits
projected on my skin and the flickering of digital lights in my eyes, of
the simulacrum of my own fantasy which creates that same fantasy. The
mixture of real and imaginary is more real for being so.

While one can draw one’s fantasy, or write it out in words, 3D virtual
worlds bring us one step closer to seeing in front of our eyes the
fantasy films which play behind our eyes, yet there are many more steps
to bring us closer to dreams. In my dreams I smell, I feel my body in
action, I have visceral emotions, yet software such as Second Life is
far from emulating such unreal realities. Still, we can make steps
closer to dreams, with motion capture, head mounted displays, tactile
interfaces, wish pressure interfaces. I wish for another reality, the
electricity on my skin changes, transferring the new desired location to
the system, and the pressure interface responds, as my chair morphs from
a car seat to a comfy recliner in my skybox…loading world…arriving.


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blog: http://transreal.org

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