[iDC] The SL Unleashing.

[Armin Wagner]

The construction of the "critical new media artist" - transgender, borderless, free floating or not - is based on the role of the pawn.



Am 12.01.2010 um 05:51 schrieb micha cardenas / azdel slade:
> It seems like this is often a problem new media artists are faced with, or i feel faced with, is wanting to engage a critique of technology by using that technology, and the danger of advertising that technology or being the avant-garde that leads to later commodification. I see often in San Diego these cheap little minicars with GPS audio tours of the city and think of how locative media has been commodified that way.

[…]

> So I often find people looking at my work and thinking I love second life or I'm promoting it in a way. But I still hope that I can subvert the original intention of these technologies for something I think is more ethical or positive. Like when I used an HMD in my performance, all the ad's for HMD's are military guys training for warfare, not transgender / transexual people developing new genders. Or similarly with the Transborder Immigrant Tool, I think we're using the GPS system, deployed by the US military, to subvert borders, not exactly their intended use. 


>>> ricardo at ambriente.com wrote:
>>>> Hello Everyone,
>>>> 
>>>> I'm not on Second Life although I'm one of those people who created an
>>>> avatar long ago and didn't return to it.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm writing now, because when I read about critical artists using SL,
>>>> I'm
>>>> dumbfounded by the lack of criticality toward Linden Lab, their
>>>> treatment
>>>> toward employees and that artists using SL are uncritically contributing
>>>> to a commercial product with questionable ethics.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm largely writing from the position of an educator who has seen
>>>> talented, young students eagerly take jobs with Linden Lab only to be
>>>> overworked and underpaid - taken advantage of for lack of professional
>>>> experience.  Linden Lab has a history of hiring young talented college
>>>> graduates, paying them a low salary and demanding well over 8 hours a
>>>> day.
>>>>  Kids stick with the job, because they think it will lead them
>>>> somewhere.
>>>> I find this treatment of young artists entirely unethical.  And it's
>>>> disappointing to here of critically engaged artists using a corporate
>>>> platform without a critical perspective toward the corporation that they
>>>> are playing tribute to by contributing to its environment and popularity
>>>> while it mistreats its employees.
>>>> 
>>>> ricardo