Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Appearance, Absence, Art: The Objet A-vatar

Appearance, Absence, Art: The Objet A-vatar

Garfield Benjamin
Copyright: © 2015 |Pages: 21
ISBN13: 9781466683846|ISBN10: 1466683848|EISBN13: 9781466683853
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8384-6.ch006
Cite Chapter Cite Chapter

MLA

Benjamin, Garfield. "Appearance, Absence, Art: The Objet A-vatar." New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds, edited by Denise Doyle, IGI Global, 2015, pp. 118-138. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8384-6.ch006

APA

Benjamin, G. (2015). Appearance, Absence, Art: The Objet A-vatar. In D. Doyle (Ed.), New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds (pp. 118-138). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8384-6.ch006

Chicago

Benjamin, Garfield. "Appearance, Absence, Art: The Objet A-vatar." In New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds, edited by Denise Doyle, 118-138. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2015. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8384-6.ch006

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite

Abstract

This chapter suggests a model for reconceiving avatar in terms of desire and loss to reassess their role within creative practices and the construction of digital subjectivity. This focuses on the avatar as appearance, as a negotiation of presence and absence, and as a tool for critical art practice in Second Life. By placing the avatar as Lacan's objet petit a, the lost object cause of desire, the structure of the visual and cognitive gaze applies Žižek's concept of parallax to digital embodiment, reformulating a subjective position between physical and digital modes of being. Taking into account the position of the observer amidst the fluidity of contemporary identity, the manipulation of the structures of desire and control can create new experiences that alter our relation to presence and absence in the critical and creative mediation of avatars and its implications for embodiment as a function of consciousness.

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.