A Chance to Be Good: The Once & Future Avatar

A brief history on the visual development of avatars

Pamela Cohn
Immerse

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All current iterations of the metaverse include embodied digital avatars as the mode in which we experience virtual worlds. From the first crude forms created to express the essence of ourselves in virtual spheres, to today’s artists and cyber-celebs living and working full-time in their chosen avatar form, the notion of representation in an experiential realm continues to be at the forefront of the morphing visual and spatial qualities of self.

Cyber habitation can have both subtle and profound impacts on socializing. Non-verbal behaviors create tangible sensations since animated avatars mimic both authentic and surrealistic movements and behaviors. Experiencing these movements and behaviors has a profound and unique psychological impact. How did avatars develop and become the fundamental way to navigate Web 3.0? The following is a brief history on the visual development of avatars.

1970s: Crude graphical origins

Online avatar history goes back to the early 1970s, when Steve Colley and Howard Palmer at NASA invented a multiplayer game called MazeWar over the ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet developed by the Department of Defense in collaboration with universities. According to author, avatar historian, and executive officer of Digital Space Commons, Bruce Damer, the first so-called “avatar” was a graphical eyeball that moved through the maze with its gaze pointed in the direction it moved. MazeWar was a 3D networked first-person shooter game made for the Imlac PDS-1 computer. The ambiguity over its development timeline has led it to be considered one of the “ancestors” of the genre. Although the first-person shooter genre did not crystallize for many years, MazeWar influenced first-person games in other genres, particularly RPGs.

1980s–90s: Limited customizability but increased connectivity

In the 80s, home computer users could join several networks but could only interact with other computers on the same network. In 1987, Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, working at Lucasfilm, invented a virtual world called Habitat with a Commodore 64 computer. Users assembled cartoon-like avatars by selecting from a menu of heads and bodies. They could then walk around a digital space and talk to one another, their words appearing in chat bubbles over their heads. The 90s saw various computer networks coming together to form the Internet, and it was then that the avatar phenomenon really took off with multiplayer games and virtual social spaces created with avatar communities in mind.

2003: Avatar as creator

Second Life was founded in 2003 by Linden Labs, which in turn launched new industries based on selling goods and services to virtual-world inhabitants. A significant emergence of third-party items and services for purchase emerged, very much akin to the merchandising that crops up, and is a natural extension of, living the avatar life with the accoutrements that express the kind of individuality one seeks in online (as well as offline) representations. In Second Life, one could attend social gatherings, live conferences and other collective events, buy and shop for clothes and gadgets, along with more magical abilities like teleporting yourself to various locations. Avatars could be customized through clothing, choice of gender, ethnicity, skin tone, etc. The virtual worlds that existed before Second Life (like The Sims and World of Warcraft) were distinct and limited. One of the more renowned examples of advanced avatar-hood is LaTurbo Avedon, “the avatar that grew up in cyberspace.” LaTurbo is a 10-year-old avatar that started her existence on Second Life, arising out of its “full-service” capabilities. The avatar herself became the creator, the artist creating, making, and disseminating work in virtual gallery spaces.

As a legacy avatar, LaTurbo creates light, fun adventures in mirror-gazing disco dancing to more serious activist projects like her 2019 “Afterlife Beta”, a cautionary look at toxic masculinity in cyberspace, exhibited at the Arebyte gallery, London. For early adopters of this kind of “lifestyle,” the moral compass of where we’re headed is at the forefront of their concerns. Using apps such as Tinder and Instagram does not connote anonymity or privacy. As LaTurbo stated on a Flux podcast from September 2019: “Avatars remain in places that we often don’t even intend them to. Symbols of self. For those that pass or those we never had the chance to meet, there seems to be importance here. To need to take this seriously so that it isn’t misunderstood. The most beautiful experiences I’ve had online are when I feel I am interacting with a user how they wish to be seen.”

2065: Speculative futures

As more and more artists and nonfiction filmmakers create avatars, not as representations of self but as full-fledged entities with their own “story,” and continue to explore the limits of an avatar’s capabilities in terms of emotional intelligence, our relationships to them will continue to morph and change.

Last year, I had the privilege of interviewing Lawrence Lek for my podcast, Lucid Dreaming. Lek is a Chinese-Malaysian artist and musician based in London, where he’s pursuing a doctorate in Machine Learning at the Royal Academy of Art. In his 2019 feature, AIDOL, he explores the psychological impact of technology and the transition between human-centric and nonhuman power structures. AIDOL is a CGI fantasy set in the year 2065 that revolves around the long and complex struggle between humanity (“Bios”) and Artificial Intelligence (“Synths”). Dovetailing his research and thought experiments from the last several years, Lek looks at the personal costs concerning the psychology of celebrity and fame. Pop star DIVA — think Taylor Swift / Lady Gaga-level fame except they would be AI and their celebrity would expand out into the entire Universe — struggles with the biggest fear of all, in which total and utter irrelevancy is always imminent. There is no comeback, only replacement. In AIDOL, we experience a world of perpetual surveillance and algorithmic governance, except that the fears of Big Brother have given way to consumerism and the desire for spectacle. Sounds uncannily like the world we currently inhabit.

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