Welcome to our Latest Issue: Avatars, Assets & Access
The shiny baubles of Web 3.0, NFTs and crypto have offered tech and business writers who cover digital worlds plenty of material on the creation and valuation of virtual objects. These pieces range from the informational to the advertorial, and cover a tonal range from entertainment to outright dismissal. Articles on digital avatars tend to focus on questions of identity (the ability to try on or roleplay new identities, for example), without examining their makers, sources or component parts. Immerse aims to take a more critical stance, with a focus on relevance to nonfiction production.
In this summer issue we explore the wide world of avatars, spanning thought pieces, artist features, and interviews that explore their implications for immersive nonfiction storytelling projects. Our writers contribute to the ongoing dialogue about avatars and personhood versus objecthood (be it in “reality” or beyond) and explore how the drive to reproduce photoreality has been taken up by nonfiction storytellers. We also asked them to consider how immersive and emerging forms of nonfiction interact with—and in turn affect—identity, aesthetics and notions of reality.
No issue on avatars would be complete without a look at those who build them, and how they have evolved as technologies and platforms have changed and scaled. Dan Schindel takes us through a sampling of character builders over the years. He explores their increasing potential for accessing and imagining ways of being in digital space, as well as numerous pain points and limitations.
Through the many evolutions of re-skins and fantasy worlds, we also want to center issues of access. Over time, what restrictions have shaped who is able to enter these spaces and who has a say in the room? As a primer, we invite you to take a tour through Axe Binondo’s snapshot of what the metaverse looks like — for both paid and free-to-play experiences.
Dora Segall introduces us to Elaine Hindin, Tiktok’s favorite 85-year old crypto-influencer, who’s made a name in the tech-elite-dominated “boys club” through her satirical NFTs. This retrospective of her work, spanning many decades and platforms of technology innovation, is not just delightful but instructive for those of us struggling to create in the current moment.
Jessica Clark sits down with Yao Huang, seasoned tech company investor currently advising on NFTs (non-fungible tokens), to get her perspective on one of the trendiest topics to sweep the artist and technology worlds alike. The interview offers provocative insights on how makers of nonfiction media (especially women and minorities) might engage with these digital assets — especially as access and diversity of use cases continue to grow.
With the increasing convergence of the physical and virtual worlds, few topics are more prickly than the moral and property rights implications of avatar ownership. One provocative piece, from artist collective Whatever Inc., penned by Ayako Watanabe, explores the possibilities of artificially-generated life after death. They explore what happens to humans after death and what it takes, ethically or technologically, to resurrect them.
This quarterly issue marks the start of my tenure as Managing Editor, taking the mantle from Abby Sun, and joining the editorial collective that helps run things behind the scenes. Coming up in the fall is a special end-of-year issue centering issues of disability innovation within a disability justice framework. I will work with Associate Editor Omar El-Sabrout to present perspectives from artists, creative technologists, activists, curators, scholars and practitioners in this ever-evolving space of practice. Inspired by a workshop series from the Access and Disability Innovation Working Group at MIT Open Doc Lab and Co-Creation Studio, this issue will be strongly informed by our individual positionalities (and that of our collaborators), as well as a strong desire to amplify and elevate voices too often left out of the conversation.
Stay tuned!
Immerse Editor
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Immerse is an initiative of the MIT Open DocLab and Dot Connector Studio, and receives funding from Just Films | Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Gotham Film & Media Institute is our fiscal sponsor. Learn more here. We are committed to exploring and showcasing emerging nonfiction projects that push the boundaries of media and tackle issues of social justice — and rely on friends like you to sustain ourselves and grow. Join us by making a gift today.
