Mediating Difference, Deviance, and Resistance through Artistic Animation within Dance and 3D Virtual Worlds

• In Event: Dancing the Anthropocene: Envisioning Rituals, Bodies, Environments and Political Situatedness through the Lens of Dance - I

Abstract

In recent years, images of conflict and contestation between local police officers and civilians have become common place across public spaces, television networks and social media platforms. Deviance and difference are mediated in various digital and artistic forms, produced and distributed by organized networks and institutions, but increasingly by the everyday user of social/new media technologies; as well as the everyday innovator’s of non-virtual artistic public spaces. The everyday user and innovator are carving out a significant role in how public deviant acts are portrayed and resolved. Twitter battles, music videos, and artistic performances are increasingly mediated sites of resistance. Some users encounter additional conflict as they immerse themselves in virtual environments through new media technologies and artistic/animated embodied forms. Yet little is known about the construction and negotiation process involved in mediating difference and deviance for the everyday user and innovator.
This papers offers lessons learned from a virtual ethnographic comparative study examining how 3-D virtual world users negotiate conflict and contested difference through real-time interaction compared to how SKid dancers negotiate protest through artistic embodiment within a 3D performance environment. Skid is an aspect of Georgia Institute of Technologies Innovative Arts and Technology Program. This study will illuminate an on-going emergent system of selection, co-creation, disruption, reconstruction, and reconnection employed by everyday technology users in mediating conflict.

Author

• Sybrina Atwaters Atwaters, Georgia Institute of Technology