The virtual promise: building shells and forms of dwelling in OpenSim platform Evangelia (Villy) Kaklidaki Special Lab Educational Staff School of Architecture Technical University of Crete ekaklidaki@isc.tuc.gr
Socrates Yiannoudes, Ph.D. Lecturer in Architectural Design School of Architecture Technical University of Crete sgiannoudis@arch.tuc.gr
The promise of urban simulation games
body (3) reconstructed to form a selfrepresented, self-described, selfpromoted entity, of new gender and behavior, of new identity.
Contemporary digital urban simulation games such as Second Life, the most widely used virtual world, are commercially promoted as places of endless possibilities beyond the limits of reality. In Second Life website we read: “Enter a world with infinite possibilities and live a life without boundaries, guided only by your imagination� (1). Many other virtual grids, based on the same operating software (OpenSim) are advertised similary. Yet this "cyberpunk" promise of escapism from physical reality to the digital world through a supposedly disembodied purely mental experience (2) seems to be exaggerated. In fact, despite the existence of elements that would be impossible in real life such as manipulation of gravity, the potential to fly, or teleport, user crafted built forms are confined to conventional and archetypical forms as well as traditional notions of inhabitation. This is true despite the fact that avatar embodiments and identities are multiplied, reconstructed and virtualized. Constructing Second Identity Avatars reflect the user’s redefined identity represented by a particular mediated form. The avatar is a synthetic extension of the actual earthy
Figure - : Advertisements for skin products by Laq and RedGrave companies (4)
Many users choose to construct multiple identities, experiment on human behavior and live through them. According to Yvonne Kosma (5) identity as a single coherent concept is undermined by the presence of this new virtually reconstructed self: "Virtual identities function as visual representation of the end of the consolidated body, blurring the distinction between the organic body and the computer" (5). She foresees the emergence of a new social reality remote from physical embodiment a state of total control on the construction and promotion of identity, built and represented entirely by users themselves (5). Within this space of identity reconstruction the limits of virtual environments diffuse into reality, through physical, emotional and economic ways (3 p. 45). The blurring of the boundaries is not biased by the computer hardware or software, but instead it occurs naturally and unintentionally leading to a kind of virtualisation of the real as Pierre Levy