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Flipping out: avatars and identity

Version 2 2024-06-06, 12:06
Version 1 2017-11-28, 15:58
chapter
posted on 2024-06-06, 12:06 authored by TH Apperley, J Clemens
This chapter focuses on the avatar as the mediating device between real and virtual spaces. The avatar has become the key technology through which this interplay is organized and experienced by organizing our relationship between spaces, which are simultaneously "real" and "virtual." It facilitates this relationship through multiple functions; it is a mode of identification, a vector of the user's agency, and an in-world representative of the user. The role of the avatar is analyzed using the concepts of focalization, localization, integration, and programming. Together, these concepts form an operational framework for understanding the complex form of the avatar, which can take on a multiplicity of forms, both within the screen environment and in the "real world.".

History

Chapter number

3

Pagination

41-56

ISBN-13

978-0-12-804157-4

Language

eng

Publication classification

B1 Book chapter

Copyright notice

2017, Elsevier

Extent

15

Publisher

Elsevier

Place of publication

London, Eng.

Title of book

Boundaries of self and reality online: implications of digitally constructed realities