Nino Rodriguez is asking more interesting questions – this time about
identification. I think there are ways of extending the question and
proposing some possible avenues of exploration in cyborg psychology.

Filmic idenitification starts from projection. In *apparatus theory*,
the illusion that you are the source of projection (because it comes,
architecturally, from behind your head) is the source of
identitification. The identification is first with the apparatus of
cinema itself, with the camera as omniscient observer. The second
classic theory, laura Mulvey's, proposes that the darkness and
enveloping scale of the image start a regression in which the fixed
social self is left behind, leaving the viewer free to identify with
ideal versions of him/herself on screen. She links identification with
the pleasures of fetishism (pleasure in spectacle and exhibition) and
voyeurism (pleasure in being the unseen watcher, holding some fantasy of
power over the action – what you want to see has a tendency to get
shown.)

TV is already different. As light source, domestic furniture and small
group medium, TV attracts identifications with the flow of the medium
itself (like turning on the TV for company) and with the fantasy of
community. The distance between viewer and screen is smaller, but
between viewer and viewer is bigger, with a geographically scattered,
not architecturally organized, audience. The system works to deliver
audiences to advertisers (or, in PBS, to non-profit agencies): TV adds a
layer of identification with the medium to the archeological substrate
of cinematic identifications.

We sit even closer to the computer screen. We regress even further when
we curl up one-to-one with the VR unit. Call it hyperindividual. It evokes a
regression to infancy, before speech, when babies believe, with some
justification, that the world responds to their desires. This is
strengthened by the strong sense of inwardness you get from a light
source as opposed to reflected light in cinema. Where Laura M talked
about voyeurism and fetishism, I think we now get tourism and
transvestism.

The tourist wants to really meet the locals, to get off the tourist
track and to have an authentic experience but cannot by definition,
because he is a tourist. The transvestite wants to masquerade as someone
else, but not to become them, enjoying the disguise, not the life.

In some ways, what is happening is like the infant learning about
identity and identification. Jacques *The Lack* Lacan imagines the kid
looking at a mirror, recognizing for the first time that the image is
herself. What it learns is that it has to identify with itself first,
via a loop through the mirror. In immersive VR something similar is
happening: you learn to identify with your own avatar.

To me this is what is most dangerous about it. The only work I ever saw
that did anything more was Char Davis *Osmose*, where the identification
is, if anything, with the world, and maybe so even more regressed than
the hyperindividuated VDU users, but at least breaking the individualist
spiral of the modern. This has an ethical dimension, like the one Nino
raises: is it blindsiding nature to impose your psychology onto it? And
onto virtual environments?

Which leaves the other avatars. Usually in the cinema you know who to
identify with: they are the ones at the centre of the story. Their
entrances are heavily marked. They are usually played by stars. My
experience in immersive VRs is that I wanted to identify both with the
apparatus and with myself. The latter is more difficult. But I can
imagine the Nino scenario.

The good side is the everyday-life kind of identification: I see someone
stub their toe, I say ouch and empathize.

[…]

It is wierd, but the easiest identification is with suffering. Would
this make immersive VR the most masochistic medium?

The downside is the identification with, say, sports, with winners,
triumph, victory, the fascist mass spectacle of identity as phoney
community. Does this promise a sadistic VR?

Maybe we have to give up the first element of identification - our own
identities - to get through to the other side of this sad dialectic. On
the way, we would have to give up some of its privileges - like privacy.
In which case Nino asks exactly the right question, but back to front:
what does it mean to have personal narratives psychologically imposed on
you by your fellow participants?

* * *

Nino Rodriguez Replied:

My avatar, my self

Sean mentions the idea of identifying with your own avatar.

I think there's probably a whole continuum of relationships possible with
one's own virtual representation.identification in one point in a large
space.

I suspect, though, that it's more difficult to identify with a representation
you have control over. The mind isn't free to wander off when it's attached
to a concrete thing [didn't the Buddha say something along these lines?].
Without this sense of direct control, I think we'll find ourselves once again
wanting to identify with the other virtual representations, who are, once
again, our fellow participants.

In trying to sort out what bothers me about this, I can't escape a certain
creepiness about the whole situation. We're still only identifying with
representations, but they're representations hooked up in real-time to real
people. Perhaps the social mode favored by virtual spaces is analogous to
"stalking" in real life. Creepiness turned sociopathic.

As for VR being "the most masochistic medium", I'm sure there are plenty of
people who would gladly take on the "sadistic" role in order to satisfy the
growing throngs of virtual pain-seekers.

But this is all academic. Take me to such a virtual place and I'll report
back on what I find. Until then, it's just speculation.

* * *

Pit Schultz (pit@contrib.de) responded:

So : psychology is a libertarian police science;)

identity: i met hungarians in rumania which where
more hungarian then in hungarians in hungary. This means they use excessivly
a certain sign-setting of relating themselves to a imgaginary platonic idea
of the real hungarian.
somehow like punks, teds, and mods in the 80ies?

let's think identity and psychology are leading us
to conservative questions. it's more a question
how to deal with the side-effects of terminal
existence, this means physiologically and socially.

[…]

people like to identify
with an idol, father figure, leader, god etc. and
thats how one can reduce noise and gain redundancy.
Speaking in the name of order.

[…]

the problem is maybe the *sayvy context,* where one
is able to accept the carnaveleque shift of
identity borders. Even if we have multiple role
models in different social environments, it doesn't
mean that there are no strict rules. We may have
certain semi-automatic language games which make
communication more successful, but also more boring.