“the carnival is the people’s second life, organized on the base of laughter”
[Bakhtin, 8]
[Bakhtin, 8]
Mikhail Bakhtin’s analysis on “Rabelais and his world” was the starting point for the parallel study of the appearance, the aesthetics and the symbolism of the carnival during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with those of the digital world of Second Life. This study attempted to identify common traits and differences, and raise questions concerning the way that we deal with the identity, the body and the ideal today.
The aim was to initially approach the experience of being “behind the mask” in both cases, then, to juxtapose the grotesque body of the carnival to the aesthetics of the avatars and finally to raise questions on their utopian perspectives.
In the Middle Ages, people participated in two lives: the official and the carnival life. The latter is the former, only turned “upside down” and “inside out”. The coexistence of these two worlds shaped their attitude towards life and the existence in the world. Second Life is definitely not the physical world turned “upside down”. In fact, it seems to project more of a reflection than a negation of the contemporary environment, nevertheless, it allows us to explore our current fears, hopes and needs and throughout digital individuals to study issues of multiple identities and fragmented selves.
But is this all about cyberspace and its promising digital worlds? Although very critical on the consumerism models of the virtual worlds, Gregory Little believes that the internet has the potential to become a site of resistance and that avatars may offer an “alternative, post-biological discourse of the body”. Throughout his “Manifesto for Avatars” project, he suggests ways of combining visual codes, signifying signs and social images in order to create avatars that celebrate fragmentation, dissolution and hybridity, in order to resist the forces of the capital. The images that Little creates are far from the pop idols and the generic representations described above. By playing with races, genders and age and by combining animal, human and machine characteristics, Little’s avatars could be seen as projections of the contemporary “digital grotesque”.
Images from the Manifesto for Avatars, by Gregory Little, source: http://www.gregorylittle.org/avatars/manifesto.html
WORKS CITED
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich. Rabelais and his world. Indiana University Press, 1984. Print.
Little, Gregory . “A Manifesto for Avatars .” (1999): http://www.gregorylittle.org/avatars/manifesto.html Web. 8 Oct 2009.
The aim was to initially approach the experience of being “behind the mask” in both cases, then, to juxtapose the grotesque body of the carnival to the aesthetics of the avatars and finally to raise questions on their utopian perspectives.
In the Middle Ages, people participated in two lives: the official and the carnival life. The latter is the former, only turned “upside down” and “inside out”. The coexistence of these two worlds shaped their attitude towards life and the existence in the world. Second Life is definitely not the physical world turned “upside down”. In fact, it seems to project more of a reflection than a negation of the contemporary environment, nevertheless, it allows us to explore our current fears, hopes and needs and throughout digital individuals to study issues of multiple identities and fragmented selves.
But is this all about cyberspace and its promising digital worlds? Although very critical on the consumerism models of the virtual worlds, Gregory Little believes that the internet has the potential to become a site of resistance and that avatars may offer an “alternative, post-biological discourse of the body”. Throughout his “Manifesto for Avatars” project, he suggests ways of combining visual codes, signifying signs and social images in order to create avatars that celebrate fragmentation, dissolution and hybridity, in order to resist the forces of the capital. The images that Little creates are far from the pop idols and the generic representations described above. By playing with races, genders and age and by combining animal, human and machine characteristics, Little’s avatars could be seen as projections of the contemporary “digital grotesque”.
Images from the Manifesto for Avatars, by Gregory Little, source: http://www.gregorylittle.org/avatars/manifesto.html
WORKS CITED
Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich. Rabelais and his world. Indiana University Press, 1984. Print.
Little, Gregory . “A Manifesto for Avatars .” (1999): http://www.gregorylittle.org/avatars/manifesto.html Web. 8 Oct 2009.
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