Critical Affection Understanding artists’ critical play in affective

digital cultures

PhD Candidature Thesis Submitted for confirmation of candidature

RMIT University School of Media and Communication

Melbourne, Australia

PhD Candidate

Thomas Penney

Supervisors

Dr Florian Mueller Professor Larissa Hjorth

10/17/2013

ABSTRACT

Digital cultures engage users’ social, creative and emotional labour and this is seen

as affective. For some theorists and artists, this process is inherently exploitative. For other

artists, however, the potential of these cultures, particularly in social media and games,

provides fuel for playful critique. Given the ubiquity of everyday digital cultures, their

affectivity, and the erosion of new media and visual art divisions, how do artists create a

space for “critical distance”? This guiding question is explored through the notion of critical

play, as extended into new media art-practice. The relationship between affect and critical

distance is extended through two practice-led project spaces. These two projects seek to

provide a tool kit of critical play strategies that, in turn, inform new media and digital culture

debates more generally.

Figure 0: Tom Penney, Ghost, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 1

1 INTRODUCTION: A SITUATION TO PLAY........................................................................ 3

1.1 Motivation .................................................................................................................... 3

1.2 Aim .............................................................................................................................. 6

1.3 Defining Some Key Terms ........................................................................................... 7

1.4 Scope ........................................................................................................................ 10

2 STARTING A TOOLBOX: CRITICAL PLAY STRATEGIES .............................................. 12

2.1 Narcissism and Schizophrenia ................................................................................... 12

2.2 Playing Many Selves ................................................................................................. 13

2.3 Critical Play ............................................................................................................... 16

2.4 Critiques of Critical Play ............................................................................................. 19

2.5 A Problem and a Gap ................................................................................................ 21

2.6 Research Question .................................................................................................... 22

2.7 Extending the Toolbox: Portraits to Profiles ............................................................... 22

2.8 Profiles as Caricature ................................................................................................ 25

4 USING THE TOOLBOX (METHODS) .............................................................................. 30

4.1 Practice-led Research ............................................................................................... 30

3.2 Art-Based Research .................................................................................................. 30

3.3 Reflective Practice ..................................................................................................... 32

3.4 Using The Expanded Critical Play Toolbox ................................................................ 34

3.7 Creative Outcomes in Two Project Spaces ................................................................ 35

3.7.1 Playing the Self ....................................................................................................... 35

3.7.2 Playing the Niche Community ................................................................................. 37

3.7.3 Validation and Research Outcome Stage ............................................................... 39

3.8 Timeline ..................................................................................................................... 40

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 43

1 INTRODUCTION: A SITUATION TO PLAY

1.1 Motivation

The motivation for this research is a situation in contemporary digital culture involving

the playful activity or “playbour” (Küchlich, 2005, para.4) of both users and new media artists

in digital cultures, and the implications this shared activity has on concepts of identity and

subjectivity. This situation involves questions of how and if new media artists should, or can,

engage critically in affective structures playfully. I have the desire to produce artwork as

research to interrogate and test the limits of this situation in the contemporary world, in order

to understand how artists’ play is critical. Below I outline major elements of this situation that

come to form a “situation to play in”, that is, the context from which I draw inspiration to

interrogate and test the limits of as an art-based researcher.

A Digital Divide in Art

Within the past year the art world has converged upon debates of “digital divide”.

“Digital Divide” is the title of an online article released in 2012 by art theorist and historian

Claire Bishop on Artforum. In this article Bishop articulates a division between “new media

art” and “the mainstream art world” (Bishop, 2012, p.1). The premise of this division is that

while mainstream artistic practices seemingly avoid contemporary digital technology (Bishop

uses the examples of works that focus on analogue media and social practice) the disavowal

of, and thus the ironic presence of, the digital is in fact what underpins and sets the political

project of all contemporary artwork. Bishop essentially makes the point that, whether

participating in digital cultures, or “opting out”, the embrace or denial of digital technology

here marks the impetus for the majority of contemporary art. Bishop finds it odd however that

new media art, while openly associating itself with digital technology, uses but does not

effectively critique the digital state of culture we find ourselves in. Therefore Bishop’s central

question becomes:

“While many artists use digital technology, how many really confront the

question of what it means to think, see, and filter affect through the digital? How many

thematize this, or reflect deeply on how we experience, and are altered by, the

digitization of our existence?” (2012, p.1).

Bishop’s critique creates a point of departure for me to start thinking about how, as

artists, one might engage with affect through the digital.

The Merging of Art and User Created Content

Many artists and art theorists reacted strongly to Bishop’s article. Domenico

Quarantina (2012, para.3) retorts: “There are legions of artists responding to the digital age

[…] These artists are neither new media artists nor mainstream contemporary artists: they

are artists that sometimes use digital media [...] sometimes spread their work on the

internet”. Artists may exhibit a disavowal of technology (often for political reasons) however,

those within contemporary digital cultures, both artists and everyday users, participate

creatively in an often indiscernible way. Today many people are participating in a creative,

vernacular use of creative tools in digital cultures and the boundary between art and “nonart”

is blurred; circuits are confused. Social media, apps, and games are omnipresent “listeners”

for our creative input. The “sharing, storing and saving… of… ‘banal’ everyday content”

(Hjorth, 2013, p.99) has become a mode of existence. In this environment of sharing, of

obscene narcissistic intimacy (or rather, “extimacy” (Clemens, 2011), everyone is a sort of

low-level artist engaging in normalised behaviours that enable the dissemination of this

banal, intimate content. Photographs of food, cats and “selfies” construct personally curated

digital environments. This is enabled by sharing features on Facebook, apps, and image

software like Instagram. Jean Burgess (2008) has defined vernacular creativity, that is, the

incorporation of “folk” and DIY practices into digital cultures. Within the digital vernacular,

everyone can operate as a producer of content, a creative user. Axel Bruns here refers to an

extension of Alvin Toffler’s “prosumer”, as a “produser” (Bruns, 2009, p.1) one who creates

and consumes their own content as a user in digital cultures. On the internet, the practices of

artists and non-artists collide in a content free-for-all; “vernacular creativity”’ is not “placed in

opposition to the mass media; rather, it includes as part of the contemporary vernacular the

experience of commercial popular culture.” (Burgess, 2006, p.1).

The critical power of art appears impotent within this structure, where artists and

users appear to operate using a similar narcissistic logic. The work of artists has long

appeared narcissistic and is a central quality to their output. Larissa Hjorth (2013, p.100)

says, “some artists are productively using Facebook to send out invitations, others are using

it to perform a type of public intimacy in which messages, photos and newsfeeds all

catalogue and cultivate the image (and aura) of the artists”. At a glance this does not seem

to be a trend divergent to that of regular, creative produsers, and that artists in this scenario

are complacent, participating narcissists. Indeed, even the current generational movements

of “Post Internet Art” or of the “Diamond Generation” (Obrist and Castets, 2013, np.), seem

resigned to structures that compose such narcissistic circuitry. Of the “Diamond Generation”

(artists born after 1989) Burke (2013, para.8) states it is “…no longer viable to maintain a

binary between insider and outsider art practices, that sooner or later all forms of

oppositional culture will have to interface with the mainstream”. In his article “The Image

Object Post Internet”, Artie Vierkant also defines recent art as: “art responding to [a

condition] described as 'Post Internet' - when the Internet is less a novelty and more a

banality.” (Vierkant, 2010, p.3). It seems bizarre to label anything as “post” given the internet

is alive and well, and evolving faster than we may even be able to comprehend. In resigning

to banality, there is a pervasive acceptance of the normalisation of “the internet” as a

powerful and dominant affective structure. Given these trends, Bishop’s questions of critical

engagement or resistance appear founded and provocative.

Affective Circuitry and Narcissism

When Bishop speaks of affect, she is referring to the way artists might interrogate

how users come to be changed (affected) by this type of “YouTube” culture. I have raised

this in terms of narcissism, which I claim is what can link us into affective circuits; “men [sic]

at once become fascinated by any extensions of themselves in any material other than

themselves” (Fisher, n.d, para.2). Here, data and pixels are for the most part the materials

carrying such representations of “self” in digital culture. In Baudrillard’s terms (1988, p.12)

“The scene and the mirror have given way to a screen and a network”. Like looking into a

mirror, the screens of digital culture provide us with many opportunities to exercise our

fascination with our own extended image; video games, social networking sites and online

dating systems are but a few general examples of environments that involve representations

of “self” participating in networks beyond our physical bodies. Individuals seek to maintain,

act through and present these external “selves” to others. These “selves” might be game

avatars, personal profiles, profile pictures or blogging identities. Through creative

engagement in digital cultures individuals can both change, and are changed by, what

appears on (mostly) screens in the contemporary world. As contributing to Bishop’s claimed

disavowal of an interrogation of affect, this is a form of circuitry that all users in digital culture

participate in, no matter whether they are an artist or not.

Figure 1: Diagram of an individual affect circuit as it is seen for this research.

The above diagram (Figure 1) forms a model of the affect circuit and how it relates to

digital cultures, the body, narcissism and labour. This forms a map of the situation I seek to

“play” throughout the research, where artworks form a symbolic “thinking through” of

elements in this situation. Please see Chapter 2 and 3 for details on what tools I develop to

“play” this situation.

Exploitation and Playbour

I mentioned narcissism as forming a desire to interact, but following this desire are

creative actions that construct personal profiles, avatars and content online. Narcissism

becomes actuated. We are “hooked in” to the circuit and we are then vulnerable to the

agency of systems designed by others. In Communities of Play, Celia Pearce claims:

“While people may feel empowered by their new communities in the global

playground, the bottom line is that their communities, their property, indeed their very

bodies, are owned by corporations.” (2009. p.280)

Julian Kücklich has used the term “playbour” to define the various forms of affective,

creative and social labour of users around social media media and games. As Küchlich puts

it “the relationship between work and play is changing, leading, as it were, to a hybrid form of

“playbour” (Küchlich, 2005, para.4). This is essentially a labour that “feels like” play, where

“produsers” create their own content playfully. As such, we are encouraged as creative users

to enact our subjective voices in social media and games through “play”. This is often for the

benefit of the structures we play in, not only ourselves. Largely this is so that content can be

“sold back” to us through the analysis of the “big data” being produced by produsers through

playbour. Mark Nunes has written about the effects of this. Social media encourages people

to express a self; selves affirm their individuality at all costs. On Facebook, for example, this

is sold as a kind of “social good; to contribute to society now becomes an act of contributing

content within communicative capitalism’s ‘fantasy of abundance’” (Nunes, 2013, p.10). Mark

Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook, speaks of a scenario where “the world will be better if you

share more” (Nunes, 2013, p.10). If we take Google’s recent change in privacy policy as an

example, which collects information from all of its services (Gmail, YouTube, Google+) and

merges them into a single account in order to “provide better services… from figuring out

basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find

most useful or the people who matter most to you online” (Van Zoonen, 2013, p.47) we gain

a picture of how services are defining us as specific “types” of user through our playbour.

The service is sold as supporting individual subjects through a user-friendly interface that

“gives us what we want”, however this data is used by Google, in a similar way to Facebook,

to define a user in a network in order to sell content back.

Essentialising Subjects

I have spoken about affective circuits, narcissism and engagement, however what

does it mean to be affected through this interaction? To understand the significance of

affective circuits in narcissistic engagement I seek to discover what it means to be affected

through this interaction. Here I refer to affect and its impact on notions of identity; as

essentialising rather than diversifying subjects. We can consider that through the closed

feedback loops that Google sets up, a compounding of the individual takes place. In general,

capitalist media encourages self-essentialisation for the purpose of marketing; cosmetic

surgeons claim the discovery of a “real you” through their products and the spirituality

industry claims to help people find an “inner self” through their services (Van Zoonen, 2013,

p.49).

Despite the developments of postmodern feminist theory, the concept of an

“essential self” that resides in individuals is still something that drives consumption, however

this “self” is often defined for us. Within the frame of Facebook, for example, content not only

legally belongs to Facebook, but users are understood as a “vertex or node… [that]… marks

an identity” (Nunes, 2013, p.15). The user is not a multiple but rather an “aggregate”; a

whole combined from disparate elements that are the relationships or “actions and

associations” that converge upon the “vertex” (Nunes, 2013, pp.14-15). The individual is

understood through an “algorithmically generated data profile of contacts and keywords that

defines a user as ‘dividual’ or ‘instance’ within a larger relational database” (Nunes, p.12).

While we are encouraged to creatively communicate ourselves at great speed, and this

behaviour may seem fragmenting, the multiplicity of these performances constitute a whole

from the invisible perspective of the digital spaces we subject ourselves to. This serves to

define and limit our identities despite certain claims for subjectivity; that users can

communicate through social networking “as they so desire” (Nunes, 2013, p.13). Van

Zoonen acknowledges “diversity” as a desirable goal for social and cultural policy but

questions whether this is being achieved. We can consider these aggregate data selves, if

fed back to us through the marketing systems of Google, as “compounding” the individual

through decreasing the scope of one’s content.

1.2 Aim

The aim of my research, therefore, is to “reflect deeply” (as Bishop suggests) on the

experience of affect in my, and other artists’ engagement in digital cultures. I am motivated

to illustrate a situation in culture, where narcissists engage with affective structures, the

differences between artists and users are hard to discern, and a degree of exploitation

occurs that has implications for individual subjectivity as a result. Play, like improvisation and

experimentation, is a feature of practices of both artists and non-artists within this situation,

but to what degree is it critical? And to what extent can play critique as a form of artistic

engagement? I seek to build a “toolbox” of critical play strategies, by expanding on Mary

Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) that investigate how this cultural situation can be “played”. I

will use this myself in producing practical research, but also develop it further as a

contribution to other new media artists, and to digital culture debates more generally in the

form of both artworks and written thesis publications. From engaging with a toolbox of critical

play strategies I aim to articulate an understanding in my thesis of how the notion of “play”

functions critically for artists (Figure 2) and how, or if, play can create a space for “critical

distance”.

Figure 2: Diagram showing where the focus of my research is situated (“?”), and

where it aims to make its contribution.

As I build the toolbox, I will reflect upon the frictions, and even paradoxes, between

notions of “play” and “critical distance”. I explore these notions while building the toolbox,

which comes to include critical play (including artists’ doll play, re-skinning, unplaying and re-

writing), schizophrenia in art, playing many selves, as well as playing with profile data,

algorithms and caricature. These frictions and paradoxes can be tested through the practical

creation of art throughout the research, as discussed in Chapter 3.

1.3 Defining Some Key Terms

Throughout the process of this PhD I will be developing and revising some key

concepts around new media, digital culture, affect, subjectivity and play. Current working

definitions include the following:

New Media Art

Visual art provides an appropriate context to address the cultural impact of new

technology. Through art making or praxis as a responsive medium, I focus on the notion of

critique and critical distance in new media art as a way to expose mechanisms of digital

technology and promote the questioning of pervasive digital cultures. I use a definition of

new media that Palmer (2006) articulates along with Tribe and Jana:

“Tribe and Jana… describe new media art… in terms of ‘projects that make

use of emerging media technologies and are concerned with the cultural, political,

and aesthetic possibilities of these tools.’ The defining feature, as Tribe argues, is

self-criticism in relation to the media used: ‘New Media art almost always takes a

critical position in relation to media culture and media technologies.” (Palmer, 2006,

para.14)

Digital Cultures

In this research, “digital cultures” refer to pervasive, networked contemporary

cultures that intersect with, or use, digital media. Engagement occurs through large

organising structures including social media such as Facebook and Twitter, online games

such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2, or online dating sites and apps like Gaydar and

Grindr. These structures create the space for individual cultures to emerge. In this thesis

these main structures, and their cultures, are explored through research of and with social

media, online games and online dating. These are also the three digital cultures that I draw

inspiration from for the practical component of my research.

Affect and Affective Circuit

My working definition of affect borrows from Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa

Gregg. That is, it is a concept that “arises in the midst of in-between-ness: in the capacities

to act and be acted upon” (Seigworth and Gregg, 2010, p.1). Affect refers specifically in this

research to the forces circulating between humans and other forms. This includes other

humans and non-humans but in particular, machines and data. Affect is here used in the

sense that humans can change (affect) data, and data can in turn change (affect) humans.

This affective feedback loop, between humans and digital data becomes a “circuit”.

Narcissism

I do not discuss narcissism in terms of a mental condition or psychological classification.

Narcissism as a word generally describing the behaviour of people in contemporary capitalist

culture has been discussed by many well-known philosophers, including Marshall McLuhan,

Frederick Jameson and Jean Baudrillard. In psychoanalysis, narcissism involves a “Self-

centredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects…” (OED, 2013).

For Baudrillard the self becomes “delimited”, for it can be reflected back to the narcissist

through any object. As a result of ‘seeing themselves in all things’, Baudrillard’s take on the

narcissist involves their “…inability to detach a delimited self from the circuit” (Fisher, n.d,

para.3). As such, this becomes a breakdown between subject and object; an inability to

discern between the two. Baudrillard claims of the narcissist in capitalism: “All that matters

now is only to resemble oneself, to find oneself everywhere, multiplied but loyal to one's

personal formula” (Baudrillard, 1988, p.41) and expands on this to offer a view of

contemporary narcissism he terms the “fractal subject”:

“[…] one can speak of the fractal subject […] diffracted into a multitude of identical

miniaturized egos […] completely saturating its environment… the fractal subject dreams

only of resembling himself [sic] in each one of his fractions. That is to say, his [sic]

dream involutes below all representation towards the smallest molecular fraction of

himself [sic]; a strange Narcissus, no longer dreaming of his ideal image, but of a

formula to genetically reproduce himself [sic] into infinity.” (Baudrillard, 1988, p.40).

At present, my use of the word “narcissism” refers to a form of subjectivity where one

sees themselves affirmed in external objects. The concept of a “fractal subject” is also an

aspect of narcissism which I refer to throughout the research, particularly where subjects

producing many images of themselves, and curating content reflecting themselves, is

concerned in digital cultures such as social media. Further investigation into the narcissistic

becoming of my own research and practice shall further extrapolate these definitions as they

relate to my research question.

Critical Distance

Given the breakdown between subject and object in a narcissistic structure, one

cannot tell the difference between a “self” and an “other”. A classic example of this would be

in Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, where a simulation becomes “more real” than reality.

This is what I refer to as a lack of critical distance; an indiscernability, a merging or a

blurring. This is exacerbated by affective structures where the body is extended by engaging

in affective circuits; media becoming an extension of the nervous system, or the human

body. Within a scenario lacking in critical distance subjects could either be seen as

“narcissistic” as well as “schizophrenic”. Schizophrenia I discuss in greater detail in Chapter

2.

Playing Critically

To play critically, in this research, points to a questioning engagement with digital

cultures by testing ideas as they apply symbolically through the creation of artwork.

“Critically” often implies negative judgment; however this is not always the case. It can

simply mean a rigorous investigational approach. Play is notoriously difficult to define. Some

have defined play in terms of “games” with fixed structures, rules and goals, but others have

preferred to focus on play as a cultural activity. Brian Sutton-Smith and Johan Huizinga help

us to here define “play” as cultural practices that involve symbolic spaces where real-life

scenarios are enacted. For Huizinga (1955, p.10) play operates somewhat like art, in that a

ritualistic or “other” space, as demarcated by a “magic circle” is set up where players perform

symbolic play activities. For Sutton-Smith, however, play is more integrated into society and

culture at large, and has the potential, through the ambiguity of it being both “real” and “not

real” to change culture. I will discuss this in more detail in Chapter 2, through Mary

Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) which is defined as:

“[...] to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or

more questions about aspects of human life. These questions can be abstract, […] or

concrete […] Critical play is characterized by a careful examination of social, cultural,

political, or even personal themes that function as alternates to popular play spaces.”

(Flanagan, 2009, p.6).

For this research, “play spaces” refer to artists’ play in digital cultures (as well as

users’ play in general), where digital cultures are the “play spaces”, and are set up to engage

users as if in a playful way.

Identity, Subjectivity

When we talk about identities we have “an awareness of what constitutes an

individual self, how that self relates to society and the various characteristics that are

involved in the construction of subjectivity, such as gender, class, ethnicity [and] sexuality

[...]” (Doy, 2005, p.6). Contemporary positions hold that notions of an individual subject or

identity are constructed socially or performed. “Performed” here refers to how people portray

different images of “self” with the knowledge of the different contexts they might be received

in. The feminist theorist Judith Butler has done much to affirm this through the lens of

gender. In her landmark text “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity”

(1988) Butler outlines a position on gender that claims all notions of it are performed, rather

than “essential”. If we speak about an “essential” self we refer to how an identity can be fixed

via searching for its essential core, asking “what makes you, you?”. The post-structuralist

position pushes for gender to be flexible and free floating in the way rigid socially formed

categories of “male” and “female” do not allow. She argues that essential qualities only

appear to exist because of the “stylized repetition of acts through time” (Butler, 1988, p.1).

While this research may respond to gender, it more widely concerns the portrayal of

identities through social media via acts that are performed, or rather, “played”, as I will come

to use the term.

1.3 Structure of the Thesis

This research is practice-led, and therefore practical work and a written thesis will be

produced. The practical work consists of artwork and material experiments through new

media approaches, organised into three themes (see chapter 3). Accompanying this

practical body of artwork, the research will articulate knowledge in a thesis through a

potential structure (with proposed titles) as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Starting a Toolbox: Critical Play Strategies

Chapter 3: Using the Toolbox: Methods

Chapter 4: Previous work and contextualising the practice

Chapter 5: Project 1 “Playing the Subject”

Chapter 6: Project 2 “Playing Communities”

Chapter 7: Evaluating the Expanded Toolbox

Chapter 9: Contributions

Chapter 10: Conclusion

1.4 Scope

Games, Play and Art

This research is primarily about art and play, not games and play. It will draw from

Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) which is a concept of play developed through an art historical

approach. Flanagan intends for this to be used by designers of play experience, but I

consider many of Flanagan’s concepts in terms of “play as method” for artists to produce

work and engage critically, not necessarily for play experience (creating games).

Type of Art

By focusing on the blurred lines between “art” and “users” and the paradoxes raised

by their relationship, I do not at this stage intend to get involved with bio-art, activist art, or

additionally, forms of art that aim specifically to create “new” affective experiences, rather, I

will work with digital cultures as they exist presently and involve myself with related tools and

environments.

Novel Affects

This research is about is about stopping and attempting to understand how we have

already extended our senses in a climate of rapid change, therefore I am not focusing on

creating novel affects or expanding human senses, but on a critical engagement and

understanding of digital affectivity through art.

Behaviour Change

I seek to problematize and test ideas such as narcissism through art in order to reach

understandings about how artistic responses play related affective structures, but the

research is not about behaviour change or providing solutions to “narcissism” or “the

exploitation of narcissistic engagement” as a solvable problem.

2 STARTING A TOOLBOX: CRITICAL PLAY STRATEGIES

The motivation of this research has been a situation of ubiquitous narcissism in

digital culture; a narcissism assimilating both artists and non-artists into a capitalist machine

through creative labour. The problem is not of modernism; of a division between things, but

of late postmodernism; a merging of things, of bodies with data, and submission of such

virtual and mediated bodies to corporations that own, use and mediate this data. This is a

scenario where multiple narcissistic subjects become organised, defined, and essentialised

inside systems designed by others and function to express those systems, not themselves.

A problem for artists becomes how to practically design for experiences that disrupt

this situation in digital cultures, particularly where the body becomes central to the work

through affect. A major challenge here is to design for critical experience in new media work

that references this body and tests the collapsing of standard critical distance (subject and

object divide) between the subject and affective structures described in Chapter 1.

In this “related work” section I attempt to consider this challenge through the history

of art, philosophical approaches, and others’ contemporary work. From these, I build a

toolbox of concepts and approaches to use as the research method. This method extends

Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) (see 2.4) and incorporates ideas such as schizophrenia,

technomadism, working with data, profiles, and caricature.

2.1 Narcissism and Schizophrenia

Before I engage with Critical Play, I consider philosophical approaches to the term

“schizophrenia” as an alternate to narcissistic engagement, and think of it as an approach to

play, or even “critical play”. Both narcissists and schizophrenics have difficulty discerning

between subject and object, “self” and “other”. Christopher Lasch’s work in the 1930s

“theorises capitalism’s total integration in terms of the Narcissus myth” (Fisher, n.d, para.3),

but Baudrillard, Jameson and Deleuze-Guattari have preferred to recognise the breakdown

between subject and object in postmodern culture, and its assimilation into capitalism, as

schizophrenia. For Baudrillard, this is a state of confused euphoria induced by the sheer

number of “circuits” an individual becomes linked to or participates in. Jameson builds on

Lacan in his perspective on schizophrenia, referring to the schizophrenic as a subject who

participates in the perpetual present due to an inability to experience time and language

logically: “The schizophrenic thus does not know personal identity in our sense, since our

feeling of identity depends on our sense of the persistence of the "I" and the "me" over time.”

(Jameson, 1982, p.7). To Jameson the postmodern subject is thus fragmented, lacking in

depth and incapable of achieving critical distance. (Woods, 2004, para.3) The difference

between the schizophrenic and the narcissist, it would seem, is the schizophrenic suffers a

complete lack of identity, a fragmented subject, whereas the narcissist however sees

themselves affirmed in all things.

Despite superficial similarities, schizophrenia, unlike narcissism, has been framed as

a strategy to resist capitalist systems. To Deleuze-Guattari, the schizophrenic is an

archetype of resistance, rather than of participation. The narcissist is obscenely participating,

whereas the schizophrenic cannot participate. Jonah Peretti reflects on the Deleuze-Guattari

perspective, that the schizophrenic, as a “radical, revolutionary, nomadic wanderer… resists

all forms of oppressive power” (Peretti, 1996, para.22). Peretti goes on to highlight

compatibility between this conception of the schizophrenic and Judith Butler’s identity

politics. The two fit well, because Butler advocates a decentred subjectivity, specifically in

terms of gender performativity. Butler’s thinking suggests that we can portray any number of

identities in any number of scenarios, and that we do not need a central, consistent “self” to

subsume our various activities and relationships. As such, Peretti (1996, para.47-49)

believes queer activists, slackers, and postmodern artists to be the best examples of

schizophrenics in contemporary capitalism, because none participate in the same identity

formation (and threatened dissolution) that contemporary capitalism uses to hook people into

a culture of commodities. In the Lacanian sense this a formation that narcissists might seek

to affirm in objects, and fear having threatened by their disavowal. This concept is useful to

us, because it means a “schizophrenic approach”, if we are to call it that, to testing subjects

and their affectedness in digital cultures, is less likely to become assimilated into mainstream

narcissistic structures of “produser behaviour”.

2.2 Playing Many Selves

For new media artist Mark Amerika, the Deleuzian fashion of schizophrenically

wandering around in affective circuits is key to contemporary arts practice. A synonymous

term to schizophrenia (through Deleuze-Guattari) is here is “nomadism”, which refers to a

decentred wandering. Within Amerika’s concept of “technomadism”, a practice of “testing”

via the body becomes a critical research approach; it is a tool for discovery through asking

questions about where the self is located or constructed. Amerika claims, “it’s the artist [as a

self] that is the medium or instrument that is most capable of conducting radical experiments

in subjective thought and experience” (Amerika, 2008, p.75). This is the discovery of new

approaches through the performing artists’ experiences; by testing situations through

becoming different “selves”. He largely refers to this approach as “technomadism”.

A technomadic research approach involves artists acting-out on “whatever playing

field they happen to be on at any given time” (Amerika, 2008, p.76). In Jameson’s

articulation of the schizophrenic, this would seemingly involve schizophrenia through the

privileging of perpetual presentness. In our situation, this “playing field” becomes the digital

cultures artists engage with, namely social media, online dating or video gaming. Amerika

calls upon the image of Eleanor Antin’s “one person art-making machine” and uses the

words of Vito Acconci to foreground the way in which a technomadic artist may engage with

different media given different “playing fields”:

“…if I specialize in a medium, then I would be fixing a ground for myself, a ground I

would have to be digging myself out of, constantly, as one medium was substituted

for another – so, then instead of turning toward ‘ground’ I would shift my attention

and turn to ‘instrument’, I would focus on myself as the instrument that acted on

whatever ground was available.” (Acconci in Amerika, 2008, p.75)

The technomadic “one person art-making machine”, where the body or “self”

becomes an instrument through which all contexts are filtered and responded to given a

relevant medium, could be considered a critical, or at least interrogative, approach. If we

take the position that one can use whatever mediums are necessary in the moment to

respond to a given context, then in an affective scenario, and given digital cultures are

contexts, this involves the testing or play of the self against them; artists must “…step into

the fold and ‘play themselves’ – even if that means having to reinvent their artistic personas

over and over again” (Amerika, 2008, p.82). This introduces the concept of “play”, or

schizophrenic play, as testing the location of an affected “self” in digital cultures, and raises

the artistic medium chosen as reflecting any relevant explorations pertaining to this play.

My own schizophrenic playing of “many selves” is evident in a prior work of my own,

“The Tarot Self Portrait” (2010) (Figure 3). In this work I had attempted to subvert the fractal

narcissist, by assimilating the entire library of the Tarot into my own body. I had been

reflecting on how my own Facebook images came to mirror a library of “possible selves”

back to me, but how my reflection upon these images were plagued with what Amerika might

refer to as notions of “not self”; none of the images are actually “me”. In this example, the

sheer absurdity and tackiness of the poses and costumes break down any notions of

immortality (of replication of these archetypes into infinity, or their application to any human

being) through their clumsy materiality and personalised application. Facing my own self-

portrait here, as a set of objects, I do not feel that any are flattering or self -promoting, there

is a disconnection between me and the outcomes and I do not feel these are necessarily

“me”. They resist my narcissism and instead I ask myself questions such as “oh dear… what

am I?... what are these?... am I this?... is it possible to be immortalised through these

things?” I therefore ask through this disconnected questioning; could this be a playfu l,

sunnily ironic example of schizophrenic practice and “playing the self”?

Figure 3: Tom Penney, 2010, Images from “The Tarot Self Portrait”

An Intermediate Proposition:

My research explores the idea of schizophrenia as a state of contemporary cultural

identification, as a lens in which to frame art practice. I propose that narcissists, as obscene

participants, seek to affirm a self through external representations, and on the other hand,

schizophrenics produce self-representations to test their boundaries against external

representations. This testing, beyond mere affirmation, can form a kind of interrogative

research approach for artists. I discuss this below through the example of Cindy Sherman.

Cindy Sherman’s Schizophrenic Identity Play

As an art historic example in our discussion of narcissism or schizophrenia, the

accessibility of vernacular tools (in this example, photography) lends a “disappearance” to

Cindy Sherman’s work: “I recall doubting Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977-80):

wasn’t she just a narcissist taking pictures of herself all day long?” (Allen, 2011, para.9), but

we have to differentiate here between narcissism as behaviour of creative produsers, and as

a feature of some artists’ work. I suggest that, although it is difficult to tell where narcissism

as self-involvement starts and ends for artists, it could be confused with deliberate strategies

that seek to blur boundaries and disrupt, along the lines of Deleuze-Guattari’s concept of

schizophrenia. Evoking Judith Butler, Sherman plays different roles, producing self-portraits

with cameras, indeed “playing many selves” in order to question what constructs an identity

by confusing the boundary between self and other. In doing so Sherman subverts media

representations of women; “testing” the point where Sherman is herself, and what external

representations are otherwise defining and constructing her. In her work “The Untitled Film

Stills” (1977-80) Sherman dressed up and photographed herself as different “types” of

women in popular film, television and printed media. Interestingly Sherman states ''I feel I'm

anonymous in my work… When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-

portraits. Sometimes I disappear.” (Sherman in Collins, 1990, para.1). Here Sherman’s work

seems more schizophrenic than narcissistic; it is easy to confuse the two. Sherman doesn’t

take these photos to affirm herself, perhaps she does it to find herself. Part of what we see in

the work of artists that play many selves is that they “disappear” into a multiplicity of

performances through their mimicry of external “acts” and media portrayals. While appearing

narcissistic in form, the work operates differently to regular produsing narcissism; it can have

a critical, schizophrenic or resistant component. It therefore functions as a recalcitrant

“activism” towards self-discovery and visibility.

A Contemporary Example

Artists involved in the play of many selves not only disappear into the roles they

portray, but can disappear into the systems that produce them as well. Today our identities

do not only battle mono-directional media such as film, television, magazine and radio, but

digital and interactive media. The “Post Internet” artist Ed Fornieles investigates many selves

through their disappearance into such systems, using social media to examine the “types”

and identities inhabiting it from within. In “Dorm Daze” (2011) also called “The Facebook

Sitcom”, “participants inhabited profiles scalped from real life American college students”

(McNeil, 2012, para.1). A feature of Fornieles’ work is that individuals play other individuals,

not celebrities. Individuals are written as larger-than-life types online; they are the

“celebrities”. For “Dorm Daze” the result was a series of narratives formed from the evolving

discussions between characters. One can read the conversations between members of the

fictional “Orca” or “Sigma Chi” houses, and the various political and religious stereotypes

they come to embody through their exchanges. While the fiction plays out through Facebook

itself, it has informed wider projects and strings of thought. “Animal House” (2011) was a

“series of college party performances which emulated the dorm/frat environment” (McNeil,

2012, para.7) where over 200 people had been assigned roles for what “type” of college

character they would play throughout the event. Projects such as these are opportunities to

consider the identity of communities, which essentially form stereotypes, and how easily the

participants come to embody these by naturally adopting the codes, modes of speech, and

mannerisms that define the roles they have been given. By getting many participants to play

many other participants, Fornieles can get them, by quickly adopting various roles, to

consider their ability to be multiple or other selves. For our discussion this means that by

playing each other, we are encouraged to dis-engage from our regular feedback loops and

consider interfacing with a system from a different point of view; a strategy that involves self-

questioning, hinting at a critical engagement, and understanding the socially coded nature of

our “selves”.

Sherman and Fornieles’ works prefigure a culture of Baudrillard’s fractal subjects;

narcissistic individuals who realise themselves in many constructed, self-focused outcomes.

It becomes important to discern between artists who, through a kind of schizophrenic

practice, “test the boundaries” of who they are through the portrayal of “many selves”, and

narcissists who only seek only to affirm themselves through relation to many external

representations. Mark Amerika refers to this process as one of “play” or “playing the self”. Art

theorist Therese Lichtenstein goes on to notice in Sherman’s later work, that “By self -

consciously watching ourselves watching, by catching ourselves in the act, we interrupt the

gazes of voyeurism, fetishism, and even narcissism. We are no longer invisible voyeurs but

active participants in critical viewing.” (Lichtenstein, n.d, para.15). Moving on from this point,

a popular way to “play the self” today is through an avatar or “virtual other” in digital cultures.

These operate somewhat like dolls as discussed by Flanagan. In the next section I discuss

the concept of Flanagan’s Critical Play (2009) in order to begin considering where exactly

the terms “critical” and “play” fit into our discussion of schizophrenic or narcissistic identities,

or whether a relationship between these two terms is paradoxical.

Strategies Identified for the toolbox: ● Schizophrenia as a conceptual frame for thinking about the testing of a self against

culture ● Technomadism, or ‘playing many selves’, to test identities in digital culture

2.3 Critical Play

Identity Play

Therese Lichtenstein goes on to comment in her interview with Cindy Sherman that a

“…sense of process and play comes through in your last show in that the poses and

arrangements of the mannequins, accoutrements and settings did not seem preconceived. It

reminds me of how children play with dolls” (Lichtenstein, n.d, para.1). The work of Sherman

and Fornieles can function as a kind of identity play; a testing of where an identity starts and

finishes in media culture, and of what informs or constructs it. The vehicle for this has been

through the manipulation of Sherman’s own body, and in later work, dolls which stand in for

a body. As such, a playful approach becomes a kind of “schizophrenia evolved”, where one

turns their own fantasy worlds, nomadic wandering and boundary testing into an

interrogative practice. This reaches a parallel in doll play, which like the media stereotypes,

possible selves and online systems Sherman “tests” herself against, present dolls within

which projected selves can be enacted. Here, play is a way of questioning our identities and

is relevant to the current rapid authorship of profiles, which involve constant testing of the

representation of an identity or what it could be and appear like to others. Artists play when

they create artwork, and designers design for play experience in games and interactive

works. In identity play, however, “the person is testing and exploring the limits of what he or

she is like as a person, including moral standards, values and preferences, behavioural

patterns, skills and knowledge” (Turkle, 1995). Indeed, everyday users undertake a form of

identity play when they navigate their various constructed profiles on MySpace, Facebook

and other social media systems, as well as in the play of video game characters. No matter

which digital culture one is participating in, the concept of play appears to be involved on

some level.

Critical Play and Subversion

“Play can […] function as a tool to understand the self. Many anthropologists

like Sutton-Smith have argued that play is the way children work out social and

cultural norms” (Flanagan, 2009, p.5).

The artist and researcher Mary Flanagan has undertaken research into to framing the

relationship between art and playculture. As a feminist game design approach, Flanagan ’s

Critical Play (2009) explores specifically how players of games (especially girls) have used

doll play, domestic play (“playing house”), dress-ups, and “re-skinning” to critique and

examine their identities in relation to broader human systems. Flanagan discusses “play as

method” for artists, an element of which I interpret here to be identity play as Turkle

describes, however Flanagan goes further. To Flanagan, Sutton-Smith provides grounds on

which to situate notions of play as a critical activity through subversion, which is “the turning

[of a thing] upside down or uprooting it from its position; overturning, upsetting; overthrow of

a law, rule, system, condition…” (OED, 1989, p.88). For Sutton-Smith the dark side of play

emerges from the transgression of a game’s structure or rules, inciting subversion. For

Flanagan this means subversion operates “from within” and possibly ignites cultural change;

play “keeps a species flexible in evolution [with the] potential to help define social norms and

identity” these are through the “use of play forms as forms of bonding, including the

exhibition and validation or parody of membership and traditions in a community” and

Flanagan goes on to say this is “essential to cultural formation” (Flanagan, 2009, p.5). In

“The Ambiguity of Play” (1997) Sutton-Smith organises play into four major categories; play

as learning, play as power, play as fantasy and play as self. As “power play” play involves

the symbolic “practice of real-life functions” such as “bonding and belonging” (Flanagan,

2009, p.4) the play space becomes a symbolic “world” where rules can be changed and

tested to imagine them differently. In a “play as self” this can mean that different bodies

come to represent these worlds and associated changes, as seen in the work of Sherman or

Fornieles. For an artists subversion might involve taking a cultural situation, rather than the

rules set up by the symbolic play space, as the space for play, as many have done through

political intervention, performance and disruption. The work of Fluxus, The Critical Art

Ensemble or Barbara Kruger, would be some examples, and in these scenarios the blurring

of art and life suggests the transgression of a “magic circle” in order to involve “the world” as

the space of play. In this research the “play space” as intersecting with “the world” was

outlined as a situation I seek to engage in, in chapter 1. I now move to look at how identities,

specifically, might be tested in the narcissistic/schizophrenic affective circuit through

Flanagan’s notions of critical doll play.

Art and Doll Play

Flanagan opens much of her discussion through the art historical subversiveness of

Dadaism and Surrealism. Out of these movements Flanagan draws the use of artists’ dolls

or “the peculiar emergence of dolls in twentieth-century art” (Flanagan, 2009, p.37). The

man-sized “marionettes” in Alfred Jarry’s Play “Ubu Roi”, and Hannah Höch’s “Dada Dolls”

are some examples. Emphasis however is placed on Hans Bellmer’s dolls, for their violating

depiction of the female form, which “objectified, fetishised and ultimately degraded the

female body” (Flanagan, 2009, p.42). These dolls however functioned critically in the

Surrealists’ time to highlight issues of desire, fetishism and political unrest. Flanagan’s

reasoning for the use of dolls in art are Deleuzian and Freudian; the presentation of other

“possible worlds” in dolls link reality, (artistic) fantasy worlds and subversion:

“A frightening countenance is the expression of a frightening possible world,

or of something frightening in the world - something I do not yet see. Let it be

understood that the possible is not here an abstract category designating something

which does not exist: the expressed possible world certainly exists, but it does not

exist (actually) outside of that which expresses it.” (Deleuze in Flanagan, 2009, p.41)

The notion of Freud’s “uncanny” is deployed also, which “helps us ground an

investigation into the human fascination with automata and life-like figurines” (Flanagan,

2009, p.41) because the uncanny is linked “to desires repressed from infancy, and [...] this

return to repressed desire is based on a desire for control, a viewer’s or player’s reaction to

uncanny situations can create dread, fear, or fascination out of what on the surface appears

to be an everyday circumstance” (ibid.). The tradition of subverting or re-framing the body in

this way is continued in the work of postmodern artists such as Jake and Dinos Chapman,

who similarly violate the presentation of bodies through life-size dolls, and thus the

expectations we have over ordinarily perceiving a desirable body and the contexts that

construct such desire.

Video Game “Dolls”

Flanagan further links doll play to video games, like that of The Sims series (2000 –

2013). “There is a desire to produce meaningful interaction that motivates the creation of

new worlds” through play (Flanagan, 2009, p.57), and these worlds are accessed through

video game play. Flanagan emphasises the subversive possibility inherent within these doll

play worlds; a way for individuals to play with and subvert the normative and banal structures

of domesticity and consumer capitalism through objects (dolls and dollhouses) that represent

key features of those systems. “The fun of the virtual house is inextricably related to mastery

of the household objects and the human-like dolls that are so very familiar” (Flanagan, 2009,

p. 56). This can function as a critical but enjoyable process. “A great deal of pleasure… is

derived from subverting these set norms and exploring the boundaries of what is, and is not

permissible” (ibid.). When playing The Sims, the player is “put into a controlling position”

(ibid.) over personal anxieties, through the objectification of bodies situated in symbolic

worlds. Flanagan uses a Freudian perspective here, that it is enjoyable for players to enact

their gaze over objectified bodies; satiating a “desire for mastery over the object” (ibid.). Doll

play can here become transformative, symbolically representing an altered version of the

player’s reality. This is not unlike contemporary art, which at many points constructs an

altered vision of reality for others to participate in, as a separate and manageable, symbolic

representation in the ‘other’ space of the gallery. The work of Cao Fei is invoked here (see

2.5), as her RNB City becomes both a video game, and gallery space, that her avatar (her

doll) inhabits. Doll play also has implications for narcissism, in that human beings as objects,

become part of the “world building”’ activity of the narcissist.

Re-Skinning, Unplaying

Flanagan goes more specifically into the subversive strategies of doll play, two of

which are “re-skinning” and “un-playing”. “Re-skinning” is a user-made intervention in

games, a form of modding, where graphics are replaced by users to change the games’

meaning. A notable example of this is for the purposes of “sadomasochism and sexual

experimentation” (Flanagan, 2009, p.109). My own experience with the mods of websites

like “Pandora Sims” suggest this is the case; offering subversions of the game incorporating

nude anatomical features and incorporating sexual and homosexual animations and

interactions, thus breaking the game’s normative boundaries, and changing its nature to

incorporate minority or underground perspectives. “Un-playing” is slightly different, in that

players might exploit existing mechanics to work against the encouraged goals. In the Sims

this might mean trapping a character in a room without doors and setting them on fire, or

making them wet themselves by not incorporating a toilet into the house’s design.

Flanagan’s strategies help us to think about the “play” between the artist, screen, and

exploration of identity. Her reflection on doll play, and the objectification of represented

human bodies in critical doll play, suggests how artists as “players” might treat bodies and

virtual bodies subversively in contemporary digital culture. Of course, many feminist artists

like Maria Abramovic have performed in ways that suggest the manipulation of an objectified

female body, as in Rhythm 0 (1974), but Flanagan’s work applies this to the realm of the

digital, which is highly manipulative in that bodies are easily objectified, altered, and changed

in the windows of our screens. Games offer us manipulable worlds, singularised at a point by

the individual screen, and displayed for the amusement of a player. As such, narcissism and

schizophrenia are invoked; such representations become objects, as extensions of the

narcissist’s body, or enactments of the schizophrenic’s fantasy world.

Strategies Identified for the toolbox: ● Schizophrenia as a form of identity play ● Artists’ Dolls ● Re-skinning as a way to re-imagine the body ● Unplaying to subvert systems ● Doll Play as a form of body objectification

2.4 Critiques of Critical Play

Critical as a problematic term

Flanagan’s research addresses play for the most part from the development of

“radical game design”, which I have not focussed on, as I am using her reflections on play to

consider art. For the most part, however, Flanagan’s is an art historical approach which

looks to the past in considering critical approaches to play. Games and new media art

researcher Ragnhild Tronstad articulates in his article “The Productive Paradox of Critical

Play” (2010) a critique of Flanagan’s research:

“Flanagan does provide loose definitions of ‘play’ and ‘games’ […] leaving

both terms rather open for associated meanings. However, she doesn’t address the

apparent paradox in the concept ‘critical play,’ or how these two terms, put together

like this, must necessarily influence each other. What happens to play when it

becomes critical? And how might critical content be influenced by play?” (Tronstad,

2010, para.6).

While I believe part of the answer to this problem has lied in examining concepts of

schizophrenia, there is still a level of doubt about its effectiveness as a modus operandi. I

here invoke the scepticism of Jameson in his questioning of the schizophrenic, who, if a

victim of their own hallucinatory culture and fantasy constructions, cannot discern between

“real” and “not-real” or “self” and “not self” then how does one’s play function critically? For

Jameson, unlike Deleuze-Guattari, the schizophrenic is not emancipatory. In Postmodernism

and Consumer Society (1991), Frederic Jameson paints a condemning portrait of

postmodern society, the state of art, and its relation to popular culture. “We have seen that

there is a way in which postmodernism replicates or reproduces – reinforces – the logic of

consumer capitalism; the more significant question is whether there is also a way in which it

resists that logic.” (Jameson, 1982, p.12). We might like to assume that playful postmodern

(or “post-postmodern”) art resists this logic, but Jameson’s view is more cynical; the

schizophrenic is not a resistor. He or she is lost, symptomatic of capitalism, and does not

present critical alternatives, only resistant ones. Of creative expression or “playbour” being

enacted within the boundaries, and with the tools of systems designed by corporations, this

exacerbation beckons further “playful research”.

Art and play unresolved

In terms of “play as method” for artists, Flanagan uses the words of Johan Huizinga;

“All art derives from play” (Huizinga in Flanagan, 2009, p.8). Play as a process of making art

can be further be demonstrated by Flanagan’s use of Macleod (1999) "If I had to say that I

had a methodology then I have a method of play which is bringing things in without a pre-

established notion of their use". One of the inconsistencies with Flanagan’s consideration of

“play as method” is that she does not focus on the experience of creating art as a play

activity, rather she focuses on making art to design critical playful experiences. Issues of

what constitutes “experimentation” rather than “play” is not something that Flanagan covers;

for artists, a lack of “pre-establishment” is a common theme when discussing the emergence

of outcomes through play. For Amerika, play in this form takes on a certain unconscious

quality, the aim of “playing a self” is to reveal things previously unknown, and here Amerika’s

referral to playing many selves actually complicates the notion of “critical play”: “Where [is

the artist-researcher] to go and play, the way any great athlete would play when they say [...]

‘I am not conscious when I am playing …how can we encourage more research

methodologies that essentially support the artist not being conscious while playing? Is that

even possible… ?” (Amerika, 2008, p.79) This complicates the searching for a “critical play”

as the nature of being “critical” implies a degree of consciousness; an awareness of one’s

situation and of the correct questions to ask in order to “be critical”.

Case Study of Cao Fei

I illuminate a counter argument here through examining the playful practice of Cao

Fei. In Friedrich Schiller’s “Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education of Man”, 1794, Schiller

discusses the “spieltrieb” or ‘play drive’ in the formation of an ideal state where the

conflicting nature of sense and reason in subjects could be united in freeform play. This

would be achieved by the aestheticization (of beautification) of society and the “aesthetic

education” of human beings, where Schiller’s aesthetics come to contain ideas of freedom

and utopia. 200 years later we face aesthetic societies in the form of virtual worlds where

subjects engage in such (arguably) freeform play, and the boundaries between fantasy and

reality in such an aesthetic culture, are blurred. The imagining, and enactment of fantasies in

these “other worlds” may even be considered utopian, or perhaps, romantically narcissistic

or schizophrenic:

“No matter how much a player in a paper house or in an online world works to

maintain his or her dolls, the desire to return to the place before desire - that is, the

paradise that drives the fantasy play in its first impulse - always lingers.” (Flanagan,

2009, p.57)

The work of Cao Fei is a form of “playbour” and seems complacent in its utopianism,

its hopes for a better future, and its preoccupation with fantasy. Cao Fei is a “machinimist”

(Hjorth, 2013, p.137) who creates art by playing, particularly in Second Life, as well as with

social practices like cosplay. Greeves (2013, para.3) emphasises that “In promoting cosplay

as tactical, Cao Fei celebrates a generation disenfranchised by real life who cocoon

themselves in fantasies” just as schizoids might retreat to internal fantasies to avoid facing a

world of realities. Cao Fei is possibly the well-known artist operating in the virtual game

space, Second Life, and with it problematizes the public intimacy (extimacy) that typifies the

online interaction and play of narcissists and schizophrenics. The intimate-made-public

interactions of Fei speak of a “paradoxical culture of extreme narcissism coupled with an

intense desire for external connection” (Fateman and Greene, 2004, p.86), which

problematises the notion of online intimacy as being one of “extimacy”, which in the

Lacanian sense means that the “inside is on the outside”, or they are one and the same,

implying a lack of the critical distance we seek. Her work is characterised by a romantic

utopianism offsetting the political and economic scenario of contemporary China and its

relation to global capitalism. “Utopia needs to be constructed by us working together” (Fei,

2008, np.) says Fei. Anna Munster identifies a general problem in new media research in

which Fei’s work participates: “Posthumanism gives us some new possibilities for human-

computer engagement, but it often continues to subordinate the sensate body to the

transcendent technological world that is offered via the interface” (Munster, 2006, pp.21), an

interface that allows one to access these fantasy worlds and remain complacent within them.

In terms of narcissism, such external and “extimate” connections convene through a

screen display and become objects of the artist’s (or player’s) world. A critique could be

made here of the utopianism of “social artworks” including those under the pretense of

“Relational Aesthetics” (Bourriaud, 2002), in which we often see relationships and

communities subjected to the expression of an individual facilitating artist, just as how, on

Facebook, relationships, connections, “networking” and friend-collecting serve to constitute

the expression of single individuals via their pages. There is a tendency for online

multiplayer gamers also, to not see other players as people, but as objects in their instance

of the game world that are to be used for the purposes of the game’s objectives and goals

and not for the purposes of social play. In this scenario the external relationships, or

intimacies-as-extimacies, serve to express the narcissist. Given the modular nature of many

game avatars in these environments, it becomes easier to think of them as genetic agents of

a fractal subject; parts copied and multiplied, and through the screen converging,

perspectival, on the manipulative gaze of the player (or artist).

2.5 A Problem and a Gap

My problem therefore is located in conflict between the terms, “schizophrenia”, “play” and “critical”, where “schizophrenia” may not on its own help us to understand what “critical” means, and where “play”, if schizophrenic, does not necessarily function critically. The gap that I therefore must investigate, is how these terms work together, in order to understand what it means to “critically play” as a new media artist.

2.6 Research Question

Given the ubiquity of everyday digital cultures, their affectivity, and the erosion of new media and visual art divisions, how do artists create the space for “critical distance”

through “critical play”?

Or more simply...

In what way is the “play of the artist” in affective digital cultures, “critical”?

Potential Contribution

Ultimately, this research seeks to extend the existing theory of “critical play” through

the expansion of its “toolbox”, which itself will involve many of Flanagan’s strategies as

developed and discussed throughout this chapter. The means of performing this research

will be to use this “toolbox” as the method through art-based research (see Chapter 3). This

will potentially have the effect of extending the notion of play to articulate what it means for

artists as an approach to making art, alongside a creative vernacular, and what implications

this has for a “critical” new media practice.

2.7 Extending the Toolbox: Portraits to Profiles

“The face, according to Deleuze and Guattari, has become a frozen structure

in Western history and culture, perpetuating a cult of “personality” and setting up

exclusionary zones between surface “features” and the depth of “mind” that lies

behind these. The human has subsequently been evaluated and determined

according to this dominant facial system” (Munster, 2006, p.21)

To continue approaching the research question, I look at the notion of portraiture as a

concept in art history combining notions of identity, subjectivity, affect and narcissism, and

how we might “play” with profiles or dolls-as-faces within the Deleuzian facial system. To

Deleuze, a “face” comes to represent its entire body via a “plate of nerves” (Parr, 2005,

p.90); that is, we read what is going on in a body through the expressions of a face. In digital

cultures, avatars and profile pictures as faces often stand in for bodies. In engaging with

related work on the topic of portraiture, I think of “portraits” as “profiles” as a way of

addressing how the body functions as an image constructed or mediated by machines, by

data, and how we might position ourselves in relation to such “data-images”. I then use this

to consider strategies for the creation of playful art outcomes that involve a mechanical

perspective of the subject.

Portraits

The idea of a profile helps us to think about narcissistic play because profiles are

essentially self-portraits mediated by digital systems. We, as contemporary subjects and

users of digital media, sustain our profiles personally, and these are designed in many

respects to promote individual identities. Portraits, like dolls, “stand in” for individuals. In

Joanna Woodall’s text “Facing the Subject” (1997) she discusses the portrait as a “conscious

depiction of particular individuals” that “bring[s] out hidden information”, “reaches an

understanding of its sitter” and which has a “central role as an arbiter of identity and

presentation” (Woodall, 1997). Thus the notion of a portrait stands as a medium, between

the individual subject and its representation to others. Woodall also suggests that, on the

topic of constructing a portrait “…a principal medium is thus precisely the individual’s body-

features”(ibid.). It may be that portraiture is a relevant way to present an individual, its

subjectivity, (or as a reflexive process) its narcissism, but portraits on their own do not imply

the type of interactivity we seek. Although traditional portraits, as images, are arguably

reflexive in construction, we wish to consider the role of the machine in mediating this image,

and therefore ask whether there is more to the portrait than simply a one, or two-way

interaction. The earlier quote by Celia Pearce, on the body being in fact owned by

corporations in any virtual space, foreshadows this discussion of “mediation” by a third party.

Portraits of the XXI Century

The research of Alesandro Ludovico and Bronac Ferran help us to situate the notion

of portraiture in the context of today, where “portraits” are everywhere and can be made by

anyone. “The appearance of our individual faces in other peoples’ screens is now in

quotidian” say Bronac Ferran and Alessandro Ludovico in their analysis of artistic responses

to “representations and misrepresenations of the face” (Ferran and Ludovico, 2013, np.) in

contemporary digital culture. Ferran and Ludovico mirror the definition of portrait that

Woodall alludes to in 1997; that “The portrait’s function has been to represent an identity

through its somatic traits.” (ibid) but they now emphasize the “machine’s” role in the

interpretation of such traits. It would be safe to say that the idea of portrait is now something

mediated and not totally under our control. Surveillance systems, face-tracking software, and

apps designed to distort or re-touch the face all surround the reception of individual faces

today. “Personal profiles lie within bureaucratic archives, are held in passport and ID records

and captured, often trivially, in the documentation of everyday movements by surveillance

cameras.” (ibid). The intention of Ferran and Ludovico is to draw attention to the way faces

and identities are mediated by “machines”, and to strategies that disrupt or subvert the

machine’s ability to recognise individuals, or have an influence over one’s representation,

indeed, to “play” this system.

Use of Facial Algorithms

Ferran and Ludovico describe a number of artworks that shed light on strategies

disrupting the relationship between a human identity and a machine’s treatment of its image.

“…artworks are elaborating on machinic perception of faces, and ‘construction’ of a biometric

identity.” (Ferran and Ludovico, 2013, np). They highlight and seek to subvert concepts of

individuality that are measured, reduced, or quantified by mechanical perceptions. This helps

us take steps towards thinking about how to create artworks that critique the narcissistic

embodiment of personal data. The most important strategy I notice in the works discussed

by Ferran and Ludovico, is the symbolic use of algorithms that judge facial information about

users wrongly, or present them negatively, thus placing the role of the “judgemental

machine”’ in a negative light.

Nick Clegg Looking Algorithmically Sad

This focus on algorithms is present in the popular blog “Nick Clegg Looking

Algorithmically Sad”, in which photos of the British deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg are

analysed and show “scientifically, how his profile can be analysed as sad most of the time”

(ibid). This work is humorous; it shows how the software used to analyse his facial emotions,

and then how it gets it wrong; even if Clegg is smiling, the analysis comes out as “sad”. In

this sense the work highlights that computers can get it wrong, ignoring individual nuances

and forming a blanket judgement of the subject. Whether the authors have tweaked the

algorithm to provide a bias is not certain, but the message remains the same; the work forms

a contemporary political caricature of Nick Clegg through the algorithms it uses, emphasizing

his character as purely “sad”.

Echoism.org

Julia Wolkenstein’s Echoism.org, also discussed by Ludovico and Cirio, is “based on

machine-induced narcissism” (ibid). It is a website where people can upload their face and

have it mirrored; dispelling the myth that we see beauty in symmetry, with the most beautiful

people being symmetrical. Wolkenstein’s site is very simple; submit a webcam image of your

face, and Echoism will mirror it for you using both sides of the image. In this scenario the

algorithm used to mirror the images becomes a similar blanket process rendering its

subjects negatively. Nobody gets special treatment.

Face to Facebook

The idea of a portrait altered by algorithms is expanded in Ludovico’s own artwork.

With artistic partner Paulo Cirio, Ludovico is responsible for the “Hacking Monopolism

Trilogy” (2009-11), which includes their most famous project, “Face to Facebook” (2011). In

the critical new media traditions of hacktivism and artistic intervention, “Face to Facebook”

saw Ludovico and Cirio “scrape” profile data from 1,000,000 Facebook users. This data

included the profile image, name, some personal data and some relationship data of each

user. Ludovico and Cirio then customised a facial recognition algorithm to sort photos of

smiling Facebook users into six simple categories (Ludovico and Cirio, 2013). The six

categories were "climber", "easy going", "funny", "mild", "sly" and "smug" and were chosen

to reflect the type of words we use to judge people from a distance (ibid.). Their system

effectively sorted 250,000 profiles before Ludovico and Cirio uploaded them all to their fake

dating website; “www.Lovely-Faces.com”. “Lovely-Faces.com” was taken down due to great

controversy and threatened legal action, however before it was removed, visitors to the

website were presented with a dating-site-style interface and could browse through the

sorted faces from within the six categories to choose a suitor. The work of Ludovico and

Cirio does an excellent job of highlighting questions about the use of our personal data,

given our complacency within pervasive social networking systems. By using algorithms to

reduce human faces to judgements such as "climber", "easy going", "funny", "mild", "sly" and

"smug" (ibid), and filtering potentially any individual through this judgemental algorithm,

Ludovico and Cirio show us that anyone could be a “victim” of identity sorting by digital

algorithms. The “Face to Facebook” project helps us to consider in greater depth the concept

of an “algorithmic” image of an individual, in a humorous way.

Autoscopia and the affective circuit

Adam Nash, Justin Clemens and Christopher Dodds’ Autoscopia (2009) was “an

attempt to explore the affective cycle established between the material and the networked

self” (Nash, 2012, p.18). Autoscopia produces “search-based composite portraits” (ibid)

using the affordances of Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as more

“insidiously invasive” but publicly available “search engines specializing in background

checks and public record searches.” (ibid). Autoscopia allows a visitor to enter a name that

will be used in conjunction with these engines to produce a composite portrait using images

returned under that name, as well as a written profile constructed in much the same way

using text. Until 2010 Autoscopia also produced second life characters for each search who

“tweeted” their existence on Twitter. Through these searches, and tweets, the Autoscopia

portraits were “recursively feeding themselves back into the results of future searches.” (ibid)

to the point that the profiles have been “continuously running online long enough now that

Google will actually return the Autoscopia page for certain names as the top ranking result”

(ibid). As Anna Munster puts it clearly; “the autoscopic portrait that the site generates of

Barack Obama will become a future element composing his incrementally heterogeneous

data self, both in Autoscopia and in future search engine results for his name.” (Munster,

2013, p.49) as a result “…the trace left by the digital entity may have more power, in the

virtual world, than the trace of its associated material entity” (ibid).

2.8 Profiles as Caricature

Social media synthesises information based on data about individuals in order to

optimise an understanding of one and streamline their networked experience. The creative

artist, however, has every opportunity to subjectively represent faults for the purposes of

critique through caricature. As a strategy, I therefore propose this serves to distance the

artist critically from the critiqued by subjecting subjects and systems to their own play. For

example, in the traditional visual arts hierarchy, caricature is often treated as a low form. It is

something we expect to see in popular newspapers and children’s books. Historically

caricature has been used most effectively by the middle and working classes to critique

aristocracy, government and power structures by rendering key figures within such

structures as grotesque or ugly. We know that in the famous case of William Dobell, his

Archibald winning portrait of Johnny Russell in 1943 was contested in the Supreme Court of

Australia on the basis that it was a “caricature” and not a proper portrait (Eagle, 1996,

para.10). In a practical sense, caricature is about exaggeration or reduction. Probably the

most well-known theoretical articulation of caricature is by Mike Kelley, whose definition

initially “a portrait that deliberately transforms the features of its victims so as to expose and

exaggerate their faults and weaknesses…” (Kelley, 1989) however he goes on to expand

this definition by discussing it in terms of essentialisation. Kelley points out that “although

they may appear to be very different, caricature, which uses deformation in the service of

ridicule, and the idealised, heroic, classical portrait, are founded in similar essentialist

assumptions” (Kelley, 1989 p.22). The key here is that the purpose of caricature is to

critique, not immortalise or affirm the essential qualities that the caricature attempts to draw-

out. It does this by highlighting certain features of the critiqued.

As a subversive tool, caricature is associated with scatology and low humour. It aims

to destabilise its subjects. In ways, a caricature could be seen as a threat, although this is a

different kind of threat to abjection which presents us with elements divorced from the unity

of the body such as urine, blood or severed limbs. With caricature elements are retained

within the unity of the body however they are exaggerated. No information is really added, it

is only highlighted. The threat of caricature lies not in any threat to unity, but of emphasising

what is already there; the “truth”. In this scenario, caricature is only threatening if the subject

is insecure about certain observations of their own body. Kelley articulates; “Caricature is at

root based on the idea of essence, the inner truth” (Kelley, 1989) however this truth is

presented as an ugly one, rather than one that is beautiful.

Caricature as Critical Doll Play

Caricature to me is a critical play strategy, as it places control of subjects and their

representation in the hands of the artist, somewhat like doll play. Artists can subjectively

manipulate and re-imagine their subjects through reduction, distortion and exaggeration. For

me, playing with caricature is a way of taking back dominance over systems that essentialise

us. Artist Carla Adams and I have treated our subjects as dolls subjected to a process of

caricature. This allows us to take control over the subject’s representation in a virtual

environment. We draw over subjects and emphasise different qualities in order to portray

their weaknesses in a digital culture. This system, for both of us, has largely involved online

dating. Our transformations are caricatures that imagine structures as broken and forlorn

rather than functioning. Much of Adams’ recent works have involved her encounters with

men through Omegle; she takes images of the people she interacts with via webcam, and

paints over them so as to mask their identity but emphasise their flawed nature. In “Very Sad

Men” (2012) (Figure 4) the subjects are anonymous but the nature of the colour and shape

in each image is blob-like, crude and unflattering. The colours are sickly or pale. These

caricatures emphasise sadness in each subject from the subjective point of view of the artist,

being the only feature that sings through each. Adams has also recently constructed her

caricatures in sculptural form, using papier maché to create lumpy, sagging versions of her

online encounters. The effect of these caricatures is to render them powerless as objects on

the other side of a screen; reversing a relationship that would normally position the female

as the object of a male gaze. In this scenario, the men become objects as artworks that can

be positioned or played with like dolls in order to subvert the new domesticity of social

media. By imagining this environment differently through caricature, the sadness of

anonymous webcam interaction is emphasised and critiqued by the artist.

Figure 4: Carla Adams, 2012, Images from “Very Sad Men”

A playful approach to caricature was exemplified in my own work “The One Minute

Soul Capture” (2009) (Figure 5). This piece refers to the computer’s reductive role in

processing individuals. This project was framed through my performance as a witch who,

having lost her magic powers, had to use computers to perform dark magic (“The dark arts

of art”). She seized the profile images of my Facebook friends and digitally transformed

them, each in the space of one minute, using quick and cheap filters on Photoshop. This

process was filmed sarcastically as an instructional crafts show, where the witch showed you

how to do it at home using your own Photoshop software. Each subject was reduced to an

unflattering digital caricature. Its outcomes were essentialisations of individuals realised in

digital artefacts, however they were negative depictions rather than celebratory. While this

could be interpreted as a critique of the narcissism of each subject’s self-representation on

Facebook, I had masked their identities through each image and as a collection the work

became more about the overall process of reduction. The gesture of “the filter” became

metaphoric for the subjective essentialisation a computer perceives on its end of the screen-

as-mirror. The framing of this reduction as “dark magic” placed it in a critical light by

rendering it an “evil” act. With a screeching Python-esque voice, shoddy makeup, and

wearing a torn sheet and crocs, the character of the witch who performed the dark magic

became a meta-caricature. As a witch who conflated digital processes and dark magic; who

“became one with the filter”, was a caricature of systems producing caricatures of subjects.

The witch subjected others to her own system; the soul captures became agents of her

expression and the individuals in them had no agency in theirs. A narcissistic “fractal

subject” was invoked, but this was a caricature of one. I critically distanced myself from the

fractal subject by here performing in a role that was not “me”. By my own performances, the

roles I embodied through caricature, and as caricature, because the “play of many selves” as

caricatures.

Figure 5: Tom Penney, 2010, Images from “The One Minute Soul Capture”

Virtual Worlds as Doll Houses

Building upon this, I expand caricature as control to also include the environments,

the “doll houses” that such caricatures operate in. Recently I have created a series of

images based on Grindr that are designed to be viewed by swiping through a self -designed

app. I use the popular new game-building software Unity3D to achieve these caricatures and

build the interactive environment in which they appear. Unity3D presents me with a 3-

Dimensional plane where objects can be arranged, built, scaled, reduced and skinned. By

dropping objects into the 3-Dimensional interface I can imagine whole environments where

objects interrelate in a virtual space and produce relationships that construct meaning, not

unlike the visual arrangement of elements in a painting. When I play around with my 3D

images I feel like I am controlling a kind of video game world; I am used to playing simulation

games where one controls different characters, populations and environments. My Unity3D

worlds become symbolic doll houses; here ones that are caricatures of the systems that

subjects might operate within. My self-designed app that mimics Grindr has been made this

way (Figure 6). I had created a series of male “dolls” in The Sims 3 each with their own

personalities, looks and traits. I then used these as the origin for models that I placed in a

Unity3D world. I have imperfectly used a separate 3D scanning application to reduce the

“dolls” to innacurate, painterly reductions that erase the individuality of each character,

before adding a perfectly modelled iPhone back into their hands; the caricatures are taking

“selfies”. The images have been designed to reflect Grindr profiles by their placement into an

orange frame and a system that organises them to be viewed through a smartphone. Using

only the characteristic orange of the Grindr interface, the same resolution of the smartphone

screen and its swiping gesture, the app reduces the features of Grindr to a symbolic level

and acts as its critical double.

Figure 6: Tom Penney, 2013, Images from “Selfie”

The use of caricature to represent whole interactive environments can set artists

apart from media systems rather than see them operate from within. This kind of caricature;

system-as-caricature, not only has implications for artists but for designers of games and

interactive media. Machinima, and art games, for example, have combined games, visual art

and cinema in the Dadaist tradition of playful subversion. In the spirit of Flanagan’s Critical

Play (2009) knowledge of games, art and new media can combine to create critical creative

outcomes that interrogate our methods of living through social media. A method of

constructing a caricature of a system is to use basic gestures of interaction, such as the

swiping of the finger on my Untitled Grindr app, as symbolic for “interaction”. In a recent work

also made in Unity3D, Fragile Ego (2013) I have exaggerated the feature of the “like” button

on Facebook. By reducing the Facebook environment to two symbolic actions (clicking a

“like” or “dislike” button) viewers are able to inflate or deflate phallic monster characters

contained within a box reminiscent of a Facebook page until they explode. This gesture acts

to form a critical representation of Facebook by emphasising the relationship between “input”

and “ego” (more clicking = bigger ego, less clicking = deflated ego), highlighting this

functionality by rendering it simplified and absurd. An entire system is criticised through two

buttons. This simple system acts as a caricature of Facebook through the emphasis of a

single reductive mode of interaction.

Figure 7: Tom Penney, 2010, Screenshot of “Fragile Ego”

Strategies Identified for the toolbox: ● Thinking of profiles as portraits ● Considering algorithms in the critical treatment of portraits ● Algorithms as caricatures ● Caricature as a subversion of the facial system ● Caricature as doll play ● Caricatures of systems

4 USING THE TOOLBOX (METHODS)

4.1 Practice-led Research

My research is “practice-led”. This means I will produce practical work, as well as a

thesis. According to Linda Candy “practice-led research is concerned with the nature of

practice and leads to new knowledge that has operational significance for that practice”

(Candy, 2006, p.1). This approach upholds that new knowledge can be discovered through

the process of practicing, making, performing and creating. Novel research scenarios are

revealed through the production of outcomes, however the knowledge gained within the field

of practice is the focus of the thesis, not the artwork itself (Candy, 2006, p.1). Therefore my

thesis focuses on the new concepts, problems, philosophy and models of thought made

possible through testing my ideas in art outcomes, as well as reflecting on these outcomes

given the contextualising body of relevant theory and philosophy. The overall aim of these is

to articulate a “toolbox” of concepts and strategies for new media artists engaging with digital

cultures. The “toolbox” is not prescriptive, but rather suggests points of departure and

possibilities for artistic investigation.

As is the nature with art practice-based research, it is an interdisciplinary approach

that draws from relevant literature as well as the researcher’s practice to explore central

themes. Linda Candy continues:

“a research student, for example, would take, as the subject of research the

practice of their own discipline. The research programme would consist of a continual

reflection upon that practice and on the resulting informing of practice. The

examination would be based upon both the results of the practice and on a thesis

concerning the reflections upon the process undertaken.” (Candy, 2006, p.4)

Given this PhD explores the role of play within the affective nature of contemporary

digital cultures, this thesis will deploy philosophical, cultural and new media approaches as

well as literature in order to uncover new creative ways to think through digital cultures’

affect. As Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford (2012) have argued in their Inventive Methods

collection, methods cannot be separated from the research problem at hand.

“It is not possible to apply a method as if it were indifferent or external to the

problem it seeks to address, but that method must rather be made specific or

relevant to the problem… Inventive methods are ways to introduce answerability into

a problem… if methods are to be inventive, they should not leave that problem

untouched (Lury and Wakeford, 2012, p.3)

3.2 Art-Based Research

In Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts, Graeme Sullivan argues that the

“imaginative and intellectual work undertaken by artists is research” (2010: xix). He

continues:

“The critical and creative investigations that occur in studios, galleries, on the

Internet, in community spaces, and other places where artists work, are forms of

research based on studio art practice. Rather than adopting methods of inquiry from

the social sciences, the research practices explored subscribe to the view that similar

research goals can be achieved by following different yet complementary paths.

What is common is the attention to systematic inquiry, yet in a way that privileges the

role imagination and intellect plays in constructing knowledge that is not only new but

has the capacity to transform human understanding” (Sullivan, 2010: xix)

This PhD seeks to invent new approaches to making art and expand upon existing

ones, in order to understand the research gap. Therefore art-based research (a subset of

practice-led or performative research) is the logical approach for this thesis. This process

involves exploring play techniques, as integral to cultural practice (Flanagan 2009; Sutton-

Smith 1997), within art practice. Focusing on the idea of play and affect in digital cultures,

this research (both the artworks and thesis) will evolve around a series of iterative probes

and inquiry. For McNiff:

“[…] a defining quality of art-based researchers is their willingness to start the

work with questions and a willingness to design methods in response to the particular

situation, as contrasted to the more general contemporary tendency within the

human sciences to fit the question into a fixed research method. The art of the art-

based researcher extends to the creation of a process of inquiry.” (McNiff, 2007,

p.33)

This “particular situation” for my research, as suggested by McNiff above, was

discussed in Chapter 1 in relation to new media artists, play, and affective technology within

digital cultures. Throughout chapter 2 I discussed a number of approaches, forming a

process of inquiry in response to this situation, or as McNiff has called it “the creation of a

process of inquiry” (ibid.). This approach draws from an adapted version of Flanagan’s

Critical Play as discussed in Chapter 2, as well as the role of the performing body in artistic

research, and more specific methods within these such as the subversion of faces, and use

of caricature, also mentioned in Chapter 2.

Art-based research as it applies specifically to my thesis will be non-teleological,

emergent, and based on play. It is iterative: artwork is produced which in turn raises new

questions about the scenarios it has addressed. However, this iteration is not seen in terms

of steps towards perfecting a designed outcome, it is iterative in terms of how ideas are

revealed, or how questions are raised. My intention is not to create artwork that solves

problems through iteration. It is rather to create work that raises questions, opening those

scenarios up and enabling critical engagement with them. This process is indefinite, there is

no clear resolution stage, and therefore I have divided my PhD up into three project spaces

(see 3.7) to manage this. What should result is an evolving collection of material thinking that

represents positions on the problems raised. This is the artwork (the practical component).

These stages and positions would not be arrived at through conventional written

approaches, they can only be revealed through making. By reflecting on the outcomes, they

tell me, the researcher, what I am thinking or what my position is on a concept. The thesis as

final outcome is an articulation of the reflections I have made on the material in light of

related work, and its implications for the research question.

3.3 Reflective Practice

Candy has written extensively on what constitutes a practice-led (or based)

contribution to knowledge, emphasising the influence of phenomenology as an approach to

knowledge about human experience, as achieved through practice:

“Phenomenology (Lewis, 1946) has a number of strands, but one important

concept is that, to put it very briefly, the body is important in perception.” (Candy,

2006).

A phenomenological approach becomes key to performative and body-centric

approaches where the knowledge gained by the individual is central to the research,

becoming a kind of “reflective practice” (Schön, 1983). This has grown out of “action

research” (Candy, 2006, p.19), where action and critical reflection occur reciprocally. In my

circumstance, as artworks come to model symbolically scenarios in culture pertaining to

“self”, situations of the body, and attitudes towards media, it is logical that my own body is

central to filtering knowledge as it pertains to my own practice. Earlier I discussed the

schizophrenic artist as someone who “tests” selves inside and out of their body. Rolling here

supports the kind of poststructural approach that Amerika (Chapter 2) invokes through

“technomadism” in his “Paradigm Analysis of Arts-Based Research”, upholding that

"exploring poststructural notions of the self in educational contexts through arts-based

projects that foreground the excavation of the unconscious" [can] "provide an alternative

form of representation for fresh new understandings" (Rolling, 2010, p.106)

Below is my own diagram of a reflective process (Figure 8), showing a situation

before and after (situation’) practically engaging through art research. I begin with a situation

(as discussed in Chapter 1), which involves various motivations for enquiry. I then formulate

a question pertaining to this situation (articulated in Chapter 2), and think through this and

related questions by engaging in the creation of artwork. By reflecting on my artworks,

questions are answered, changed, or new ones are raised, re-framing the original situation

and providing a point at which to articulate reflections and knowledge gained from practice.

Figure 8: Diagram of my reflective process

How to record and gather data to reflect on:

Jenny Moon’s approach to reflective practice involves the self as key to revealing

information about one’s own position on an idea. A key way to gather this data in one’s own

practice is through the recording and documentation of process through a process “learn ing

journal” or diary. For this research, I record my practice via a reflective framework, where

mine is primarily an electronic diary stored in my computer. This also consists of images and

my own artworks, which are mostly digital. According to Moon:

“A learning journal is:

• diverse;

• not necessarily written - but most of the time assume written format;

• generally reflective and accumulated over a period of time with the intention to

learn, i.e. not purely descriptive;

• flexible (it can be structured or unstructured)

• a useful back-up to learning;

• something that accentuates favorable conditions for learning - e.g. space, time,

reflection.

• applicable to all disciplines (not just literary).” (Moon, 2003, p.4)

The reflective journal gives one the space to face questions pertaining to the work

achieved; “A learning journal might be seen as a particular accentuation of the right

conditions for reflection and for learning from the process.” (Moon, 2003, p.3). This also

gives one the space to articulate their own opinions and positions whilst engaging with

broader contexts and theory.

Data Collection Methods:

The primary method of gathering “data” is through the creation of artwork using the

expanded critical play toolbox (see 3.4) and reflecting upon this artwork, forming a reflective

journal as a result. Additional methods include:

● Audio / video recording of processes

● Photographic documentation

● Interviews (if works are interactive and involve other people)

● Exhibiting work in exhibitions

● Library research and reading

● Attending exhibitions and conferences

Evaluation Methods:

The primary method is reflective practice (on artwork and documentation) but also

involves:

● Peer reviewed, or peer curated exhibitions

● Peer reviewed Conference papers

● Reflection on interview footage and notes

● Other publications such as book chapters

3.4 Using The Expanded Critical Play Toolbox

Flanagan has articulated in Critical Play (2009) the notion of “play as method” for

artists as discussed in Chapter 2, which sits well within an emergent art-based method and

complements Mark Amerika’s approach to “playing oneself” (Amerika, 2008) or seeking play

in the presentness of digital cultures. I have considered in (2), her method as it applies to the

term “critical”, as well as how such a method might apply to artists. Although Flanagan could

go into the idea of “play as method” in greater detail, we can expand on the idea of the body

as instrument to consider the playing with bodies (as with Flanagan’s discussion of dolls) as

complementary to Amerika’s approach. This is a way artists can make discoveries through

transformation, reconfiguration, subversion and intervention with their own body and others’

bodies; their subjectivity, and the subjectivity of others in digital systems. Particularly in (2) I

also invoked the image of Deleuze’s schizophrenic as a “player-as-tester” in contrast to the

image of a narcissist as a “player-as-participant”. This became play as testing the location of

a “self” or of identity, as in Turkle’s notion of identity play.

To re-iterate some major strategies of critical play which were discussed in (2), this

includes subversive play in the form of:

● Constructing Artists’ Dolls

● Re-Skinning

● Unplaying

● Re-writing

Methods other than Flanagan’s as discussed involved:

● Schizophrenia as a frame for artistic engagement

● Playing many selves, or technomadism

● Engaging in virtual spaces and with avatars

● Algorithms

● Intervening with profiles as portraits

● Caricature

With these elements in mind, as the artist I will become the “critical player”; the one who

tests selves, the limits of my body (and other bodies) and reflects to some degree, Deleuze’s

conception of schizophrenia. The situation I respond to in digital culture becomes the

emergent zone; the milieu for critical play. The situation (digital cultures) and its actors

(subjects within digital cultures) are what becomes “played”, through various tools and

approaches that I call upon in individual projects as an “art making machine” (Amerika,

2008). My method involves becoming the schizophrenic, critical playing, one-person art

making machine, who tests “alteration” (Bishop, 2012) or affect through the critical play of

bodies including perceptions of my own.

The Materiality of the Toolbox

In keeping with art-based research, and its emergent approach, any number of

materials and tools may need to be deployed to engage in the above approaches. For the

most part, and given the nature of my own practice, my materials and tools involve:

● Using game engine software such as Unity3D

● Using photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop

● “scraping” images from offline to distort and change

● Performing characters and roles using my own body

● Mediating these performances through virtual, video and audio media

● Constructing mannequins, dolls and bodies from traditional art materials (clay, wood,

metal, plastic etc)

● 3D scanning forms and bodies to use in virtual spaces

● Bringing forms, such as avatars, out of the computer via 3D printing

● Using motion capture to bring the physical world into the virtual

● Using social media by tweeting, posting videos and generally engaging online

● Learning how to use code, and expanding on existing knowledge of javascript

● Creating self-generating or algorithmic filters of content

● Drawing digitally and traditionally

3.7 Creative Outcomes in Two Project Spaces

I outline here three project spaces in which I will use the expanded critical play

toolbox, under the larger frames of practice-led, art-based and reflective practice. Outcomes

pertaining to each space will be suggested here. Following the three project spaces is a

validation stage for reflecting upon the outcomes and the overall, abstract contribution to

knowledge given the community of practice.

3.7.1 Playing the Self

(October 2013 - June 2014)

The first project space involves asking where “critical distance” is located where

“playing the self” involves one’s own closed feedback loop. This involves exploring, through

engagement (or playbour) one becomes “compounded” through the aggregation of personal

data, and the receiving of tailored content that has been filtered for the user after the

interpretation of this data. This relates specifically to the digital culture of social media, where

systems like Facebook and Google use data to define users and feed specific forms of

content back to us. This first project asks how one is changed, rendered less diverse, or

more extreme by this process, and whether play functions to critique or simply exacerbate

this structure. I treat my own body, and those of others to an artistic doll play in this project

space.

This project specifically engages with ideas of playful caricature, where one is

essentialised or rendered “more extreme” through presentation. I will draw from algorithmic

treatments of the body and the face to gather data about individuals and “compound” or

“caricature” them. Part of this involves, testing if “critical distance” is achieved where one’s

own body is subject to playful alteration as part of a closed feedback loop. I will also invoke

Baudrillard’s “fractal subjectivity” as a way to think through how the play of many selves

serves might construct my narcissistic or schizophrenic self.

Specific tasks include:

● Engaging with (learning) code and how to use algorithms

● Distorting the body virtually and physically using reductive processes

● Scraping available data from Facebook, Google, or another site to use to inform body

changes

● Playing with virtual representations of self through 3D and digital software

● Inventing my own fake social media pages to scrape data from and engage with

● Developing a wearable system that applies ‘caricature’ to the body directly

● Building navigable game spaces constructed out of profile data

Outcomes include:

● A series of visual “tests” that play symbolically with ideas of “self” and “closed

feedback” through visual reduction, caricature, exaggeration etc

● Wearable or physical prototypes that function to apply reductive alteration to the body

● Playable psychological spaces that reflect the fractal subjectivity of a subject

Ethics

An ethics application has been written for the development of any caricature

experiments that affect the physical body.

Images

Below (Figures 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) are some images from early “play” in this

zone during 2013.

Figures 8, 9: Playing with distorted and reductive 3D models of myself

Figure 10: Using basic character meshes and mixing different modifiers to produce

exaggerated forms

Figures 11, 12: Playing with inflatable costume as a way of thinking through how an

exaggeration could be applied to the body

3.7.2 Playing the Niche Community

(July 2014 - March 2015)

The second project space involves testing the idea that a community, rather than just

a self, is rendered non-critical or essential, particularly those of online dating cultures. I

particularly focus on gay dating apps, including Grindr and Hornet, to investigate how a

community becomes “niche” or “closed off” in its own feedback loop. Ben Light has

researched the construction of homosexual identity on a comparable system, Gaydar.co.uk,

noting that users of it subscribe to versions of homosexuality that may contribute to

“marginalisation in society… through the deployment of strategies based on the

commodification of difference” (Light et al, 2009, para.1).

As a result of niche marketing, “Such conceptions of gayness may be stereotypical

and defined against a heterosexual norm, rather than intersecting with complex identities

that include multitudinous forms of gender and sexuality” (Light et al, 2009, para.5) and that

therefore:

“Through the use of Gaydar.co.uk [and Grindr] individuals write a version of

themselves and of this gay community into being. However, because of the desire to

commodify ‘the difference’ that is gay, predominantly white men, online and offline,

such inscriptions become monolithic caricatures that are obdurate and enrol even

those who do not participate in such arrangements at all or only by proxy.” (Light et

al, 2009, para.9)

I intend to “play this community” and its caricatures, as a performer and as someone

who re-configures the bodies I come across through engagement with the dating apps and

services. There is also potential to consider Critical Play in this environment from a

homosexual perspective beyond Flanagan’s original feminist approach to play. I intent to

locate where “critical” and “play” apply in terms of “playing a community” and its codes of

engagement through playing with its bodies-as-dolls.

Specific Tasks include:

● Engaging with the dating apps and services through different personas

● Exaggerating and playing with different stereotypes, codes of language and

rules of engagement in these services

● Scraping profiles to distort and re-imagine visually (without identifying

individuals)

● Creating interactive and semi-interactive experiments that position bodies

from these profiles as subjected to the manipulation and gaze of the viewer

Outcomes include:

● A series of visual “tests” representing the display of bodies in these

communities

● Documentation of performance and intervention in these communities

● Self-made apps that function as critical “versions” of the original environments

Ethics

An ethics application has not yet been written for this project space

Images

Below are some images (Figures 13, 14, 15, 16, 17) of early experimentation

in this area throughout 2013:

Figures 13, 14: Producing distortable, playable bodies for iPhone screens

Figure 15: Creating a persona and profile that is a “caricature of the system” itself

Figure 16: Early experiment using re-assembled features of the Grindr interface

Figure 17: Early digital composition reflecting a Grindr user and their selfie photo-

taking

3.7.3 Validation and Research Outcome Stage

(April 2015, November 2015)

This stage involves the reflection on knowledge developed from the two project

spaces and articulating the overall contribution to knowledge and practice that has been

made throughout the research for new media artists and digital culture debates more

generally, given the research question and notions of “critical”, “art” and “play”. Practical

work and reflections on practical work need to be re-framed and articulated given new

discoveries and concepts.

Overview of the project stages in a table:

Project 1 Project 2 Validation stage

Research

Methodology

Art-based research Art-based research Reflective Practice

Primary question

to respond to

How can we

critically play a

“self” and the

“fractal subject”?

How can we

critically play a

“niche community”?

Is the developed “toolbox”

useful to the community of

practice?

Digital Cultures

invoked

Social Media Users,

Games

Online Dating

cultures

New Media Artists

Evaluation Exhibition,

observation,

reflective practice

Exhibition,

observation,

reflective practice

Reflective Practice,

publication, peer review

Purpose To account for

challenges to

notions of ‘self’ in

contemporary

digital cultures.

To account for

representations of

niche communities

in contemporary

digital cultures.

To validate the knowledge

and the toolbox of concepts

and strategies within the

appropriate community of

practice.

3.8 Timeline

Month Written Material, Published Works

Practical Milestones

2013 September Book Chapter Submitted (“Playing the Subject” related to project 1)

2013 October 31st: Confirmation of Candidature Ethics Submitted Project 1

Project Area 1 Basic Tests

2013 November 22-24th: Positive Feedback Loop Conference (paper) (“The Body Under Glass” related to project 2)

Basic Prototypes Material Experiments

2013 December 1-3rd: Digital Interventions Seminar (paper)(“The Body Under Glass” related to project 2)

Developing prototypes and material experiments

2014 January Research further exhibition space and conference options

Furthering prototypes and experiments

2014 February Research pertaining to Project 1

Begin considering presentation, Work on pieces with resolved

concepts

2014 March Research pertaining to Project 1

Building resolved work

2014 April Reflective Stage: Project 1 Writing Up Project 1

Completing and finalising resolved work for presentation

2014 May Reflective Stage: Project 1 Writing Up Project 1

Exhibition: Slumps Gallery, Curated by Alana Kushnir

2014 June Conference Submission Research pertaining to project area 2

Make changes or extensions to existing works in light of new discoveries

2014 July Research pertaining to project area 2

Project Area 2

2014 August Preparing for Mid-Candidature Basic Prototypes Material Experiments

2014 September Preparting for Mid-Candidature Developing Prototypes and Material Experiments

2014 October Mid-Candidature Review Begin considering presentation, Work on pieces with resolved concepts

2014 November International Symposium of Electronic Arts 2014, Dubai

Building resolved work

2014 December Reflective Stage: Project 2 Writing Up Project 2

Completing and finalising resolved work for presentation

2015 January Conference Submission Organise Examiners for Completion

Exhibit Work

2015 February Reflective Stage: Project 2 Writing Up Project 2

Make changes or extensions to existing works in light of new discoveries

2015 March Synthesising Research and gathering together outcomes

2015 April Reflecting on all work to decide on what the main issues became after practical research was complete

Validation and Research Outcome Stage

2015 May Conference Submission Planning how to re-visit works to prepare for assessment

2015 June Re-framing the projects with Editing works to reflect new

relevant literature positions and framing

2015 July Re-articulating projects given relevant literature

Re-visiting works to prepare them for final exhibition

2015 August Articulating Contributions to Knowledge

Presentation of works, finalising

2015 September Concluding the Research Presentation of works, finalising

2015 October Completion Seminar Final Exhibition

2015 November Submission of Thesis Official End

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