Second Life
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Sex: Unknown
With the use of my alter-ego Alexavier Straaf, I conducted a live sex performance in Second Life which addressed issues of both anonymity and voyeurism as they relate to the function of sex in a virtual space. The piece revolves around Alexavier’s interactions with other avatars in a Sex room in Second Life. By eliciting suggestions from the audience on how to behave and interact in this virtual space, I slowly transition their role from that of passive voyeurs to active participants; further conflating the roles of actor and audience in this realm.
Adventures in Art
In Adventures in Art, Alexavier presented my Fall semester review in a documentary-style video to the faculty panel. Part biography, part performance, the piece opened up a new line of discourse in which I continue to use myself and my alter-ego within the same linear space. My use of Alexavier comes from a fascination with the continued fragmentation of self in our society.
Elysium Photographic Studios
For Elysium Photographic Studios, I created an alter ego, or avatar, and built a photography studio in Second Life. The avatar, Alexavier Straaf, was my virtual alter-ego working as a social documentarian in this world. The business challenged traditional modes of representation by creating physical prints of a client’s avatar, thereby reverberating these new contemporary modes of signification out into the real.
Secondscape
Explores the online virtual world Second Life by photographing landscapes captured from within that environment. By referencing the genre of traditional landscape photography, these images evoke the medium’s implicit sense of truth and beauty. If we accept the photograph as a witness of time and space, then these images carry with them an implicit validation of the virtual world as such.
Transitioning
This video explores the Second Life Avatar construct by using a time-lapse format to show the alteration from the template design a person is given upon creating an account in Second Life and their personal design. There are over 80 different points of adjustment on the avatar body, each with a 0-100 point scale. I've taken a screen shot each time I made a 1 point adjustment for a particular part of the face or body. I then correlated the frames-per-second advancement of the film with my resting heart rate. The end result is a slow meditation on my avatar alteration and a film which is nearly 30 mins in length.