Avatar Lives: Narratives of Transformation and Identity

Abstract

A recent UK study forecasting how our identities will change in the following decade noted that until now a kind of inner narrative has provided individuals with an ongoing subjective, internal commentary but through the growth of online social media, identity is ‘no longer an internal, subjective experience, but is constructed externally and therefore is much less robust and more volatile’ (Future Identities, 2013). Arguing from the fields of literature and feminist science studies Susan Merrill Squier observes that ‘no longer stable, the boundaries of our human existence have become imprecise at best, contested at worst’ (Squier, 2004). This chapter concerns itself with digital embodiment and the construction of the self as avatar, and the ways in which contemporary arts practices are emerging through the exploration of digitally constructed realities on new technological platforms. This chapter argues that access to the experience of digitally constructed realities enables us reflect upon how our own privately constructed realities are also created and allows us to shed light on the distinctions between fiction and reality.