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When a woman travels by way of the screen, her body does not come with her: she is sitting at her computer in some location and physically she never moves from that location. Even calling this experience "travel" can be seen as a stretch of the imagination. No physical pathways are being traversed, only pathways of information, encoded and decoded and processed to become untouchable data sitting on the screen. No one is "going" anywhere, but information is going everywhere.
The user logging on to a message board, Instant Messenger software, a chat room or a Multi User Dungeon (MUD) for the first time is prompted for a few simple pieces of data—a name, a profile, perhaps an identifying icon or other physical presence. From this data and the other information the user provides, the user’s avatar is drawn and the presence of the user in cyberspace is defined. The avatar can be the same as or very different from the user behind the presence, and can be ever changing, liquid and malleable. The term “avatar” has come to mean most specifically on the web the physical image and handle, or name, that define a user. This is easiest to understand in the context of three-dimensional chat environments or massive multiplayer online role-playing games, where the user controls a moving projection in a virtual world—his or her avatar. The avatar is able to interact with the cyberspace world as the user’s physical presence in a world that is physically unreachable. Interfaces exist to allow users to customize their avatars to ideally suit the personae they are adapting, and whole websites center on furthering that process of customization. In the most sophisticated of these environments the avatar can become everything the user desires, and it is the avatar, not the woman sitting behind the screen, who is traveling. The avatar is the eye and face of the projected self. The term "avatar" is rooted far before the days of computer graphics and cyberspace. The accepted loose definition of the term, “manifestation,” still reaches back to the original usage in Hindu stories: Avatar:The concept of a deity descending to earth transcends religious doctrines and is a central theme in world mythologies. The Greek and Roman myths tell of gods and goddesses coming to men as seductresses, guides, and lovers, leaving behind conflict with their demigod offspring, while the more sedate myths of the Christian faith center on the one offspring and human extension of the deity. In all such stories, there are strong themes of divine meddling in history, of events being reshaped by more powerful hands. But the most complete concept of the manifestation of a deity comes from Hindu stories of the avatars—“the form of a god projecting himself onto earth” (Avatara). The major distinction between the Hindu avatars and forms of incarnation in the Western tradition is in the concept of form. Avatars may appear human—or otherwise—but they are bound by none of the limitations of flesh: “They are eternally existent and free from the laws of the matter, time and space. Although They have no obligation to come into contact with the material energy, the Avataras descend into this world for our own protection, instruction and redemption. Although They may portray human weaknesses such as grief and anger, They are never to be considered ordinary people. Human beings act out of earthly desire, fear and anger. The Avatar, however, acts out of His own blissfully divine nature performing exuberant pastimes for the pleasure of His pure devotees” (Avatara). As a woman sits at a computer terminal, her projection into space takes the form of an avatar--the projection of a goddess, one that reflects the desires of the mind and not the shape of physical flesh back in the "real world." The distinction between the real and the virtual belongs primarily to a mental supposition. As of the current state of technology, a user cannot physically leave this world to travel across the wires. But some of the associations summoned up by the term avatar suggest the traversal of worlds—in a purely mythological sense, the movement by a god from the divine plane to the human plane. The current iteration of cyberspace has none of the total immersion technology of the virtual worlds imagined in science fiction futures, but there are constantly signs of its potential to become such a construct. People live entire virtual lives inside of it, create alternate identities, explore impossible possibilities. Avatars are the power within this virtual world, shaping the code of the environment to their liking just as the self is shaped. |