CFP: Virtual Performance and Social Networking: Online Economies of Representation

[Susanne Shawyer]

Hello all,


Just a reminder that proposals for papers for ASTR 2011 in Montreal are due
at the end of this month! Full CFP for all sessions attached.


Cheers,

Susanne


*“Yes, I Would Rather Date Your Avatar”:*

*Online Economies of Representation** in Virtual Performance and Social
Networking***

Leigh Clemons, Louisiana State University, clemons at lsu.edu

Susanne Shawyer, Dalhousie University, sshawyer at gmail.com



Facebook. LinkedIn. MySpace. Twitter. Online media users routinely create
and manage social media identities, building representations of identity
even as they consume the identities of other users as “friends” or
“followers.” Online communities form around cooperative online gaming,
MMORPGs, and virtual worlds like Second Life that provide spaces for live
performance interactions. Although these virtual exchanges of social
identity and community are now commonplace, tensions remain about
authenticity, privacy, and the politics of artificial profiles—tensions
rooted in the question of what exactly is being exchanged online, and what
value we place on digital representation.

The theoretical work of Manuel DeLanda, Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
Michel Foucault, and Ian Stewart demonstrates how performance and history
are emerging from and coded into the complex systems that make digital
performance interactions in social media possible. Resulting economies of
digital exchange might be literal (one user purchases virtual goods with
real world cash) or metaphorical (an actual or virtual identity is exchanged
through a social interaction or performance of self). These digital
economies require performance of and between selves to "break the code," as
it were: the technologies of self communicated through, performed with, and
embodied by digital interactions point the ways toward exactly how
performance is the key to understanding the virtual realities of digital
ontology.

Questions we might consider include:

·         How can notions of substitution and performative excess explicate
or challenge the performative aspect of online representation?

·         How do online performances participate in an economy of feelings
through the exchange of images and circulation of memes? How do social
networking performances negotiate exchanges of trust, credulity, and
authenticity?

·         How do online avatars re-imagine Realism? What does the mediation
of the avatar mean for the concerns of Realism—for iconicity, mimesis, or
questions of authenticity?

·         How has the history and development of online performance and/or
social networking reflected or existed in tension with economic/capitalist
concerns, such as technological access? What does the existence of online
performance mean for the performance economies of historically
underrepresented populations?

·         How do online performances create and challenge notions of
community, audience, and reception?



The seminar will utilize social media in its preparation and communication
prior to the conference. Brief position papers of 5-7 pages will be
supplemented by interactions within a chosen virtual environment (Skype,
Second Life, Twitter, Facebook). Members will use social media to explore
both issues in the papers and the virtual communication process. The goal is
that participants experience the performative economies of social networking
as a part of the seminar itself, and that these experiences will further
inform our face-to-face discussion.



We seek 250-word proposals for position papers that reflect on the online
economies of representation. Please email your proposal with a brief bio to
Leigh Clemons (clemons at lsu.edu) and Susanne Shawyer (sshawyer at dal.ca) by May
30, 2011.
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