the background concepts | the digi-persona the video conferencing environment
To aid the reader not yet immersed in digital culture in understanding the nature and context of this project, I shall first introduce a few background concepts, the digi-persona and the video conferencing environment. the digi-persona Anytime we appear in the digital world, from the simple answering of an email, to taking part in a chat, we do so in the form of our digi-persona. This persona is not a mirror of who we are in the physical world and unlikely to be as complex, but it is nevertheless always the only presentation of ourselves which others see when they encounter us in an on-line environment. This digi-persona is formed not unlike our physical persona, by the environment in which it appears and by our ability to control the impression that we make upon the other. Whether we do nothing to control the presentation of this digi-persona or become absorbed creating new or several digi-personas appropriate to our different social situations, the fact remains that this digi-persona always exists and is our sole albeit inadvertent representative on-line . the video conferencing environment The project, the_living, is about a real digi-persona. She exists in the public space Internet, in the Video Conferencing Environment. In the initial research stages of this project the_living appeared at several video conferencing environment locations (2 CU-SeeMe 1 reflectors) giving numerous performances and experimenting with the live 3 event in this most interactive of all digital spaces. Although originally developed to enable remote audio/visual communication between academic researchers, the individuals who now frequent the on-line spaces that constitute the Video Conferencing Environments are 'work lurks,' constantly observing the small windows of video and chat that appear on their monitors while they attend to the primary tasks of their working day. They work in one physical environment (the office) but socialise in the digital environment. To visualise the social situation one can best imagine doing one's work in a neighbourhood shared office space with people one knows from one's neighbourhood, but with whom one doesn't necessarily have anything in common besides this social contact. Also important to mention is that these culturally rich environments have not yet been explored as places where one can create, observe and exhibit art, or broadcast a non-live image. 1 A reflector is a streaming video and chat server 'reflecting' back to the participants a continual stream of concurrent chat and moving image. A reflector is similar to a web server in that it serves back to the viewer digital information. It is different in that a web server serves back one page to many viewers (one to many) while a reflector continually updates a visual space to which many participants are contributing (many to many). 2 CU-SeeMe is a certain 'brand' of reflector browser, just as Netscape is a certain 'brand' of web browser. A browser enables the viewer to view and interact in the particular environment, whether it be the World Wide Web, or the Video Conferencing Environment. 3 In the Video Conferencing Environment 'participants' gather to chat and send each other live video almost exclusively tapped from their physical surroundings. This environment is well loved because of the eye-contact made possible by the streaming video. It enables the participants to see one's conversation partner reacting to the conversation or discussion. Because people in this environment must always chat 'live,' it is always assumed that the accompanying video is 'live'. D.A. Solomon is living@the-living.org