VB28 - Performance Document - I Rez, Therefore I Am

VB28 – The Seniors Project

@VB/CO Villa, Biscuit Bay, An Li

SATURDAY 18 June 2011
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SLT: 10am – Noon
EDT: 1-3pm
GMT: 5-7pm
BST: 6-8pm
CEST / SAST: 7-9pm
MSD: 9-11pm

SUNDAY 19 June 2011
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HKT: 1-3am
JST / KST: 2-4am

Previz: http://vaneeesa.com/2011/05/02/previz-the-seniors-project/
Cast: http://vaneeesa.com/2011/06/19/vb28-cast/
Site Plan: http://vaneeesa.com/2011/06/20/vb28-site-plan/
Raw Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaneeesab/sets/72157626867176027/

As described in the previz for this performance, seniors are a rare species in the virtual world. Along the way Agnes found a Virtual Senior photo group on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/slactiveseniors/

So seniors are not extinct, and do have a lobbying group (flickr photo pool! 🙂 but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on the virtual dance floor. I have seen one or two at virtual EDU meetings, but they’re underrepresented there. A virtual EDU conference is way less Kim Kardashian & Hugh Jackman than the dance floor, but even with its style and diversity, the senior representation is at a bare minimum.

I don’t frequent the virtual pixel seks clubs the way Trill Zapatero does, but I’m going to guess that senior citizen presence there is minimal, although Agnes did find a Second Life Senior group that sounded sweet but turned out to be a “Cougar” fetish thing… so maybe… hopefully Trill can fill us in…

In the physical world it’s been the cult of youth culture for a long time and for decades peeps have lamented that the wisdom and beauty of age that was once revered now mostly sits at the bottom of the cultural scrapheap. Meanwhile the business of beauty culture feeds on our instinctive desire for the fertility, vibrance, and sense of immortality of youth culture. We spend billions on lip gloss and high heels and plastic surgery. Then we take pleasure in making fun of people wearing too much makeup or walking unsteadily in heels or who look like too much plastic surgery gone wrong.

Orlan and others have explored this territory for a long time. Paradoxically, we have to ask if we even “need” an Orlan in an age of “Extreme Makeover”
http://www.orlan.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Makeover

Germaine Dufaux

Van Caerndow

Trill Zapatero

Trilby Minotaur

We had a wonderful cast of 14 for VB28 – The Seniors Project. For VB27 – Un/Wedding2.0 we had a massive cast of 46. More than triple! Draw your own conclusions.

In the physical world we shop for clothes, we play with hairstyle or makeup, we decorate our homes, all putatively for functional reasons, but in large measure to explore and define our own identity.

In the virtual world this continues with even fewer constraints and even more possibilities. As Eva & Franco Mattes have put it, the avatar isn’t necessarily a mask to hid your identity… but perhaps a mask to reveal your identity… your inner sense of self. This explains why the virtual world has both so many furry and tiny avatars, and why it has so many Kardashian-ish, and Jackman-ish avatars.

On Saturday 14 souls explored neither fresh-cut roses, nor plastic roses, but the enduring qualities of dried roses.

— VB

At performance' end, we fired up our creaky virtual bones and jumped into the warm Mediterranean rivulet that bisects VB/CO Villa. Beware of that purse you see Agnes wielding in the lower-right: she packs a brick in that thing and swings it with an unrelenting wallop. If the performance had gone on any longer she've sent half the cast to SLGH

Smilla, Vaneeesa, Kai

Myself, Agnes, and Smilla discussing mosaic patterns. At the end of June, our 4-person BiSKiT - Blaylock-Sharple-Keng-Tearfall, Biscuit Bay parcel concludes our approximatly year of roommate, or landmate-fulness and we're going different ways. VB28 was the last performance on the original Biscuit Bay. And this photo the last time that the 3 of us met to discuss a work being performed on the parcel we shared. I move forward with bittersweet feelings, but with a lot of joy for our time as roommates.