Direction
Why Was It So Hard to Let My Tamagotchi Die? 01 02 03  
A thesis, an installation, an animated film


The Installation
Exhibited at the VA Gallery, Montreal.

The installation is presented in semi-closed environment, between two panels, creating a little corner, accessible but in retreat. It consists of a white tent, made of a very heavy and soft piece of cloth draped over a wooden frame hung horizontally. The inside of the tent is hidden. From the outside, one can hear a soft voice calling out to him, saying things like “come inside”, “come play with me”. At first, the voice alternates from being seductive, mysterious and inviting, to a weeping and almost crying tone. On the wall, four white sheets of paper, each one bearing a different names and names of tortures or manners of slaughtering someone or something. Each piece of paper is hung above a transparent plastic bag, containing what appears to be meat, or organ. They are actually the cadavers of the creatures I tortured and filmed. They are the first thing one sees, and I think this adds to the discovery of what is inside the tent. It’s intriguing, repulsive but at the same time sort of comic in a grotesque manner. One is not sure of the nature of what is on the wall, and whether to take it seriously or not. Are these actual pieces of meat? Why are there needles and handcuffs in some of the bags? Why are those things covered in blood? Or is it strawberry jelly?

The tent is not completely closed, and, while it can never be completely opened without undoing one of the knots that hold it together, there is room enough at one of the corners to take a peek. By this, I tried to convey a feeling of voyeurism to the viewer, and also mimic a person to person relationship with the creatures inside. I thought it important to not present them as a show, and put the users in the position of being an audience. I wanted to create an intimate space, which would have been even more powerful, I think, in the case of a complete tactile interaction like I wanted it. On the floor, which is covered with the same material as the tent itself, there are about thirty little creatures, in a comfortable nest of feathers. There is also a screen presenting video footage of those same little creatures being horribly tortured. Images of them being cut in pieces, hung by their hair, being handcuffed and shot. Sounds can be heard, strange half-human, half-animal sounds of pain. There are four different sequences, one for each little cadaver exposed on the wall.


Abstract

When “Tamagotchi fever” hit children around the world a few years ago, I have to say I was quite startled by the phenomenon. The Tamagotchi, manufactured by Bandai, is one the many “virtual pets” to have appeared in the past years. Much resembling a mini palm-pilot attached to a key chain, it has a little black and white screen, in which a little animated character resides. The goal is to feed and take care of it. The tamagotchi grows, asks for food, becomes sick, can even mate with another tamagotchi, and eventually ends up dying. Why would one become attached to a digital animation? At first it was dismissed as “emotional filling” for the lonely. But children are not the most isolated age group in the population. The Tamagotchis also started to be popular amongst adults. I became curious about the effects of such interactions: if we are used to interact with virtual characters in staged relationships, will we slowly change the way we perceive others around us? This question was the premise to this research. This interrogation then became much broader, evolving into a study of the digital media as a part of the phenomenon that constructs our idea of reality. As part of this study, I downloaded a Tamagotchi emulator on my PC, with the strong intention to let it die. To my surprise, I realized it was hard (but also very satisfying) do so.


Introduction

I have never been much of a computer user before entering university. Then I had to become one: no professor would accept a handwritten paper and, moreover, I grew more and more interested in graphic design, and I started learning a bit of web design. After a while of daily computer use, I started to notice little changes in my perception, and my expectations of some everyday things. The most amusing but perhaps also the most revealing one was my reaction, after having missed something, or said something I regretted or after having spilled a drink: I found myself looking for my own personal “undo” (Ctrl Z) button.

This may seem trivial and inconsequential, but I chose it as an introductory anecdote, because it made me realize how much the way we perceive our surroundings and evolve in the world, what we expect of it, what we think is possible, are the result of the way we evolve in the world, what we expect of it, and what we think is possible.

For my research, I will first establish that reality, at least according to the definition I will explain and use in this essay, is nothing more than our perception of it: It changes constantly; adjusting to our idea of what is possible, and what we are able to conceptualize. I will briefly observe different aspects of our reality, showing how they are modified by our uses of digital technologies. I have chosen to organize them in three different themes: our perception of society, our perception of materiality and of our own bodies, and our perception of our emotions in an interpersonal context. This is an introduction to what could be another thesis altogether, another theme of research, but I want to present this vision of reality, perception and digital culture, as it will serve as a conceptual background for my project. I will then present my project, a multimedia installation presented in the VAV gallery as part of “Print me a Limousine” in May. It is the first step to a series of experimentations I intend to conduct, as I will explain in the conclusion this essay. Then, I will talk about the aspect that interests me the most, and the question I had in mind when I was conceiving my installation:

One of the main goals of current technological and scientific research is the creation of artificially intelligent machines. If we create them, then we have the power to set the physical, mental and moral rules they obey. I do not want to determine their nature, but rather explore the consequences of our interactions with them. What happens when we develop meaningful emotional relationships with them? Do we feel we have a moral obligation to these machines? Can we make them suffer? Give them pleasure? If there are really just machines, then why do we react to their suffering or pleasure? In other words, why was it so hard to let my tamagotchi die?


I-Definitions

To start, I think it important to clarify the definitions of some of the concepts I will talk about. I do not pretend to redefine what we call reality, virtual, or tangible. However, they are difficult concepts to grasp, and they seem to not have such a clear definition from the start. Therefore I felt, for the purpose of my study, the need to fix their meaning. I also have to note that being a native french speaker, some of these concepts might seem confusing, because they do not mean exactly the same thing in both languages, or might have different usage.

Reality
According to the online edition of the Merriam-Webster English dictionary, real also means genuine, in the sense of the original, not made up, not imagined, and actually happening. In this essay, I will define what is real as not belonging to the world of ideas. What is real is defined as what we consider to be our world, as well as what we consider “possible”. I think that what we name the real world, what we consider to not be virtual, not be ideal.

Materiality and physicality are very close conceptually. They are what exists in the physical world, what is not ideal.

Tangible is what is physical, but with a connotation of touch and stability. (tangeremeans to touch in Latin). It can be opposed to the virtual as not being a representation. Something that is so obviously there that it cannot be mistaken, or remain unnoticed or misunderstood if put in contact with: “capable of being precisely identified or realized by the mind <her grief was tangible>” (1)

Virtual
What is virtual is what is created by us, but not defined as “not part of the physical world.”: Virtual pets have a physical representation. In this essay, the term virtual is used in opposition to real. The information going through computers is virtual because it is not always there as itself. It is the representation of one particular arrangement of binary code. In the same manner as the virtual painting (2) , it is not permanently here.


II-ideas of society, the body, the others

Merleau-Ponty, talking about a phenomenologist idea of Man’s nature and conscience (with which he disagrees, but at the same time he gives a very clear explanation of it, and that is why I chose to include it). The other (phenomenology) consists in acknowledging an “acosmic” freedom to Man, because he is spirit, and constructs the representations of the very forces that are supposed to act on him. ( 3) And I think “acosmic” is an important word there, implying that man is relieved from dependence to God or anything other than his own perception in the construction of his consciousness. He constitutes his own idea of the universe.

What we think is possible and what we are able to conceptualize is far from being absolute: it is the product our philosophical, conceptual, scientific and artistic culture of our time. Technology plays a part in the shaping of our reality. Being able to see and photograph space, and mostly the Earth, has radically changed our vision the world and of our place in it. After millenaries of thinking we were in the center of the universe, in a privileged relationship with the above, it now appears that we are on a small, infinitely small planet moving very fast in an immense universe… The Cosmos (4) exhibition, held in 1999 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, was a retrospective of various artistic points of view on our world and its frontiers, from 1801 to 1999. It presented a collection of pieces that were all representations of a certain point of view, at a certain time, on the world, and most particularly a vision of its frontiers, and the limits of our exploration of them. These limits are those of our technology, set by the technical possibilities existing at a certain time. Being chronological, the exhibition showed very well how the artistic point of view on the world is influenced by the scientific and technical knowledge and background of which it is contemporary and vice-versa.

This seems to be even more relevant right now, at a time when digital technologies permit the creation of perceptually real virtual worlds. Worlds that are real because we can physically perceive them, and virtual because imagined, constructed by us.

Many of our sensual and cultural experiences can be digitized. They can be freed from time and space constraints, as we know them, made portable. Because the alterations we can perform on them are also possibly seamless, they can be a source of illusion.

Our definitions of society, of the body (ours/others), of emotions (ours/others), are always constructed upon our sensual, cultural and intellectual experiences. In a world where those can be constantly, easily and seamlessly manipulated, what becomes of our relationship to reality?

This first part is an attempt of a study of the image of the real presented to us through new media, our expectations and reactions to it, and to explain why I believe that we recreate our reality constantly.

I have taken our perception of reality as the centre of my study, related it to different themes and aspects of our lives that compose the essential of it. This is not exhaustive, but I thought it would be a good introduction and conceptual background to the second part of this essay.

Our societal reality -This is a study of the way we conceive our society, its institutions and political and sociological ideology.

Our material reality -The mutations of the idea we have of materiality and what we think is physically possible to do with our own body, material but also growingly intangible and modifiable entities.

Our emotional reality -The way we perceive what an emotional and sentimental interaction is.


II.1-Our societal reality

Internet is becoming the main source of information. If mass media changed our social organization and patterns, what happens when we adopt digital networks as our main source of cultural and informational communication?

With the massive use of television, the idea of our role in society, in relationship to others, and our expectations of what society should bring us have changed. The community and the fate of community are no longer primordial. Individual realization and achievement have replaced them in our modern ideology. Television, created a common virtual time and space of communication. I believe it also took something away from us, and it has to do with the fact that distances seemed to be abolished. TV culture seemed to created communities without distance. But they were flawed, and they can’t be socially fulfilling. Watching television seems like a commune experience, but it isn’t quite. Everyone is alone in front of their screen. In the very way it functions, television is not democratic. TV does not need any input from its viewer. The content is predetermined, and imposed on its public. As such it can be easily used to enforce meaning.

Of course one has the choice between multitudes of different programs, or the choice to not watch it at all. But, that does not guarantee choice. Most of the time, commercial (rather than cultural) goals and aspirations, as well as a lack of confidence in its own audience’s mental abilities and tastes, make for a very homogenous style and agenda in TV programming, especially in North America where the public service is quasi-inexistent, or at the most insignificant. The Digital Media permits a certain level of customization of the content by the user. It is in this way essentially different from mass media, and, at first sight, more concerned with the user.

It permits, at the least, a customization of time and space by the user. There isn’t a time of the representation common to all viewers anymore. With television, many people could watch the same thing at the same time, without being in the same place. Now, many people can watch the same/different thing at different times without being in the same place. Common time and place were the factors determining our social group & identity. They were the essential principles of a certain society, a certain culture. If the source of our culture has different spatial and temporal criteria, how will we regroup? Is the web a community? Can a community be created and experienced in without a common space and time? As an example, are online exhibitions a sign of the death of ceremony, the death of the idea of a social event as we know it? (5)


II.2- Perception of our bodies and the material world: Materiality

Before being computed by our brain, before turning the electrical stimulation into visual and sonic objects, there is a processing occurring inside the computer. The process operated by digital media is double. I believe this somehow brings reality and its representations little further apart than traditional analog media did.

The intangible content on the screen is pure light. Its existence is temporary, factor of time and electricity. If, being only composed of electrical inputs, the digital medium is intangible in it essence, all representations of the body in the digital medium are intangible as well. The image of our bodies presented to us digitally goes beyond its materiality.

And it actually changes our perception of our bodies, in many different ways:

Because of the possibilities of virtual alteration that offers the digital technologies, most of the bodies we see, through the media, advertisement and in entertainment, are perfect. Most often they are also unrealistic and impossible to physically attain. No one’s skin is as perfect and smooth as the ones of the models on a magazine cover. And it would seem strange if it were.

Stars, in the form of actors and actresses, or princes and princesses, have existed for a long time, to make us dream, to entertain us, and present us with a certain image or moment of beauty, which, because it is mediated, inherently unreal and “impossible”.

Yet, today, this mediated image is intensified, and more importantly, presented as desirable and possible. Our idea of the body as a permanent and (by our human scale), relatively stable entity is challenged. This occurs in addition to a constant and abundant presence of these images, a presence that renders them banal, common and unremarkable. They become normal, when they are impossible and unrealistic from the start.

And the massive demand for plastic surgery (6) proves it: the psychological barrier to the alteration of our bodies is thin, and the physical one nonexistent. I think it is important to talk about a psychological obstacle because, before plastic surgery could exist, the possibility of an alteration had to be conceived. Here I want to differentiate from already existing forms of alteration like tattooing, piercing, which are seen as an ornament rather than an improvement of the body itself, like plastic surgery is.

Then, there is the idea of beauty and what we make of it, confronted to all those nearly perfect representations. I realize that this could be the subject of another research altogether, and it is not my purpose here.

Using plastic surgery is the result of a refusal of one’s body as it is, and the attempt to change it, in order to conform to a certain image of it, whether this image is dictated by fashion (wanting bigger breast), or provoked by a deep moral suffering, a profound belief to have been born in a body not conform to our idea of it (changing genders).

In a much similar way as plastic surgery is used to “improve” the appearance of our bodies, technology is starting to be used to improve the functionality of our bodies. It is interesting to relate digital, immaterial, changeable, imaginary and surreal representations of the body in the media in relation to those technological developments.

The Australian artist Stelarc’s ?(7) work is a very interesting exploration of the nature of our bodies in relation to technology. His body is the tool of his research, and he explores techniques of alteration and modification of the body, in the search of an added functionality, and a merge with the machine.

In an interview with Paolo Atzori and, Kirk Woolford, from The Academy of Media Art of Cologne, Germany, Stelarc says:
Well of course one shouldn't consider the body or the human species as possessing a kind of absolute nature. The desire to locate the self simply within a particular biological body is no longer meaningful. What it means to be human is being constantly redefined. For me, this is not a dilemma at all. (8)
-I would say I agree with that. The implementation of elaborate technologies to our bodies is, not that different from the use of glasses or dental braces: they are tools made to improve our body’s functionality.
(..) if you are sitting there with a heart pacemaker and an artificial hip and something to augment your liver and kidney functions, would I consider you less human? To be quite honest, most of your body might be made of mechanical, silicon, or chip parts and you behave in a socially acceptable way, you respond to me in a human-like fashion, to me that would make you a kind of human subject.(9)
This interview with the artist is entitled “The Extended Body”. And it is quite relevant: we are the new machines. Digital representations of the body play a role in redefining the nature of our bodies, by letting us envision, as well as develop, its merge it with technology. The image we have of our body is shifting from a fixed (according to our scale of events) entity distinct from its surroundings, to a more open, mobile, changeable one. Technologies permit, directly, by physical additions, or indirectly, by changing our lifestyle, and our cultural frame of mind a reconsideration of the nature and possibilities of our body.

Stelarc’s reflection is quite interesting, in that he does not consider the body as totally separated from the world. Technology makes the limits separating the two becomes intangible:

I think metaphysically, in the past, we've considered the skin as surface, as interface. The skin has been a boundary for the soul, for the self, and simultaneously, a beginning to the world. Once technology stretches and pierces the skin, the skin as a barrier is erased.

On another level, is the apparent proximity of the fact that virtual seems almost touchable is going to scare us off and provoke a return of the real, a new interest for materiality. Are we feeling a new connection with our bodies because we have now so many reasons to feel far from it?

Altering our own body is a source of fascination, even more so when we are exposed to virtual bodies. We want to rediscover the materiality of our flesh. We want to apply those virtual transformations to our own bodies. What becomes of our relationship to the physical, to the material if the artificially constructed elements can be implemented into them, mixed in and then merged? The artificial modifies the real, the already there, to create something new. Do the virtual become real this way?

One of the pieces of Stelarc consists in a performance where he spectacularly suspends himself in the air, using hooks pierced in his skin. One of the interesting aspects of this piece (but this is now only my personal interpretation from now) is that, by suffering intense physical pain, he puts himself in contact with his own flesh and the physical quality of his body.

Intense pain and pleasure enable us to feel our physicality, to realize our materiality. Pain and pleasure attach us to reality. Physical pain leaves us doubtless about the animal and material nature of our flesh, our body.

Even since we started living in a sedentary world, our relation to our bodies has changed. It seems we are at state of this evolution which evolves fascination, experimentation and modification. And it is interesting to notice that it is at a time where information, which is intangible, is one of the bases of our economy, of our culture, of our lives.

We live in a world where most of what we touch is manufactured, or made by us. There is the idea that Man is a different entity than nature, that he is not really part of it, and part of his surroundings. Contrarily to other species, he is able to consciously deeply modify his environment. This is a The opposition of Man and nature, nature being stronger than all, is a well-know theme which becomes interesting in our social context, in which we are growing further from our material quality, from our bodies.

Most of us don’t use their bodies to make a living. I could conduct my research without moving, and it seems that value is put on the information I can produce.

And I don’t have to move to get the information I need: It comes to me, carried infinitely fast by electronic units, taking an infinitely temporary and ephemeral legible form by being transformed into light disappearing when I turn the electricity off.


II.3-Emotional - personal relationships

And, as we use the digital media for interpersonal communication, the intimate emotions they contain are processed. Are some of our emotions changing?

The media has changed, but also the way we communicate individually with each other. I have always lived in a city, and when I wanted to see my friends, I had to call them on the phone, even when the lived a block away. In Belèn, a suburban town in Costa Rica where I went to live on an internship program for a few months, I realized that I could also run into them on the street. Telephone became an unnecessary intermediary. Being able or not to chat with or email somebody has changed and determined certain events and aspects of some of my relationships. It made communication easier, but also different. First of all, I loose a certain sense of touch, which makes the contact physically further, but not emotionally more distant: One does not act the same way, say the same things in front of a screen or in the presence of an actual person. In my case, I feel somehow freer; my inhibitions are reduced, and it makes the relation maybe more intimate. A sentiment that is reinforced by the confidentiality of the exchange: I know that the conversation can not be overheard, or should I say overseen.

In fact, our relationships are determined by the way we communicate with each other, whether directly or through a medium, and they change when the technology changes. Digital technologies may be different because, more than only mediate messages, they can also modify them. However what is more important is that we already use digital technologies to modify messages.

What happens when, to communicate an emotion, a thought, I can, even from a far distance, instantly transmit an image, a sound? What will happen when we can mediate touch? How do I feel others bodies? Most of the people I interact with, the cashier, my friend on the phone, my parents that are far, the guy giving me technical support over the phone, have abstract bodies. Their body is an abstraction because I am never required to enter in relation with it. If I touch them less and less, do they become abstract?

The choice of these themes gradually imposed itself upon me as I was researching my subject.
I tried to narrow down essential aspects of reality, but this revealed quite impossible. I tried to define and explore the way we relate to others as a whole: society, the way we see our own body, and the individual emotional relationships. . I chose those particular themes, because I think that they are tied together by being the defining elements of the relations we have between ourselves, and with our own nature. It’s all about communication, after all: communication in a social context, our nature, and interpersonal and emotional communication.


1. Definition from the online edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (m-w.com).
2. virtual image: an image (as seen in a plane mirror) formed of points from which divergent rays (as of light) seem to emanate without actually doing so. Definition taken from the online edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (m-w.com).
3. Translated excerpt from: “L’autre (la Phénoménologie) consiste à reconnaître dans l’homme, en tant qu’il est esprit et construit la représentation des causes mêmes qui sont censées agir sur lui, une liberté acosmique.” Merleau-Ponty in Sens et non-sens, Paris, Nagel, 1948.
4. For a presentation of the exhibition, go to: http://www.mbam.qc.ca/expopassees/cosmos.html (french) or http://www.mbam.qc.ca/expopassees/a-cosmos.html (english).
5. Some people are already asking the question, as illustrated by this experiment conducted by Students at the University of California at Berkeley and Sonoma State University , the online art exhibit CU: A Tele-collaborative Art Inquiry. Students at Berkeley exhibit their work, shoot a short video of it, and put it online. After viewing, students at Sonoma State University are invited to communicate comments. CU was developed by Rinehart, an instructor of art and technology at Sonoma State, Kevin Radley, an instructor of new genres in the UC Berkeley art department, and Tony Le, a Berkeley student. (Source: Chea, Terence, When Art Imitates Art, Apr. 25, 2000, Wired News (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,35810-2,00.html) The University of Berkeley has some its faculty and student’s works online: http://art.berkeley.edu/rev2/onlineGallery/index.html. The Guggenheim also has part of its collection available on the Internet: http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/
6. In the US alone, “Nearly 6.9 million surgical and non-surgical procedures were performed in 2002. There was 22.8% increase from 1997 to 2002.” This is the outcome of a survey conducted by the American Society of Aesthetics Plastic Surgeons. The number of operations for breast augmentation has increased 147% from 1997 to 2002. This research ranks liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery and rhinoplasty, are all aesthetic, non-medical operations destined to improve one’s physical appearance, as the “The Top Five Surgical Procedures performed in 2002”. (Source: http://www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com/statistics.html#2002).
7. Stelarc (Stelios Arcadiou) was born in Australia in 1946. He has been active since the 60’s as a multimedia artist and performer. His works include “The Extended Arm”, first presented in Avignon in 2000, a performance in which he attaches a third mechanical arm and hand to his right arm. His fingers can trigger a set of predetermined movements programmed into the metallic arm. Source: http://stelarc.va.com.au/alternate_interfaces/aitext.htm
picture taken at http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/
8 . Extended-Body: Interview with Stelarc byPaolo Atzori and Kirk Woolford Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany
9. Idem
10. Idem


Text ©copyright Celia Marais 2003. Thank you very much.