alpha.tribe takes a firsthand look at the practice of creating multiple identities through multiple avatars by a single user in Second Life®.
The creative output of a virtual fashion enterprise in Second Life® provides the visual context through which this self-observational study is presented. A designer as well as an art educator, the author wished to investigate whether the consistency of the creative self is in fact a given and whether it might not be challenged. Thus five alt avatars, of both sexes, human as well as non-human, have pooled their resources in the operation of a design enterprise, within which each virtual identity pursues his/her own line of creative inquiry, culminating in different lines of output.
Keywords
avatar, alt, metaverse, embodiment, identity, creativity, appearance, play
(Modified from the abstract of the forthcoming article “alpha.tribe” by Elif Ayiter, aka. Alpha Auer for a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, edited by Charles Whitehead)
