{"id":1030,"date":"2006-09-27T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2008-03-05T14:08:43","modified_gmt":"2008-03-05T19:08:43","slug":"multiple-moebius-personalities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1030","title":{"rendered":"Multiple Moebius Personalities"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning I happened across an interesting though not unexpected bit of advertising (Link)<\/a>: a poster showing a Second Life<\/a> avatar decked out in virtual clothing (the boots being the advertised item) but formatted as a comic book page.<\/p>\n

\"virbootcomicadW2\"<\/p>\n

What’s interesting to me isn’t this particular mash up; there are more interesting things to come which I believe will really<\/em> catch everyone’s attention. It wasn’t the use of videogame characters in comics; videogame screencaps converted to comic book pages has been around for a while. It didn’t even strike me as new that a real person could – as suggested by these images – create a “fictional” avatar\/character, use that character in a different media format, fund that effort through embedded advertising (of virtual goods, no less) and eventually ship tangible goods. It doesn’t stop there. The character could also make its way largely intact into other media channels. I’d already considered that someone will eventually create a dedicated, virtual persona (inside Second Life, maybe) with the intent to manuever it into the so-called Real world and into the mainstream consciousness ala Indiana Jones and Darth Vader. I expect we’ll see an avatar persona not just marketing a tangible product, but acting as the product’s spokesperson within the next year or two (if there isn’t one already). Why not? We already have movie characters doing it.<\/p>\n

No. What struck me is that this fictional persona, because it’s a front for a real person and a little like a muppet<\/a>, could be comprised of one avatar and many real puppetmasters (which I’d already considered – reLink<\/a>) in addition to<\/em> being all these other things. You see, unlike a purely fictional movie character that might endorse a product, and unlike the actor who plays the role endorsing a product, an avatar is a unique mix of fiction and nonfiction. I guess my thinking about Grendel<\/a> lately (wondering why media observers like Henry Jenkins<\/a> don’t discuss that non-character character) and watching Boston Legal<\/a><\/em> last night (a cross-dresser plotline raises issues of character identity), created a mental mash up of sorts and got me to thinking about the possibilities that arise from things like avatar-identity swapping and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

I suspect there is going to be a lot of mash up activity rippling through our lives. Some of them will be relatively straightforward, and some of them will have enough Moebius twists to confuse the hell out of all of us. What fun.<\/p>\n

{Image Copyright \u00a9 2006 Jonny Dusk}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I happened across an interesting though not unexpected bit of advertising (Link): a poster showing a Second Life avatar decked out in virtual clothing (the boots being the advertised item) but formatted as a comic book page. What’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}