studia universitatis babeş – bolyai dramatica teatru, film, media 2

THE EMERGENCE OF NEW MEDIA AND THE DEVELOPMENT …
style continuation and role-play society are MUDs and MOOs. Muds are
adventure habitats, often based on real spaces and modeled on mythology
patterns (weaponry, killing of monsters). Moos are more socially oriented,
with the emphasis on socializing and impersonation. It is a text-based
"virtual reality" system where many people can connect to a common
electronic database and are able to create their own "space”, objects,
characters, and dialog that appear on the screen as descriptions or text. In a
MOO, one also navigates through digital constructions along with characters
designed and directed by others. MOO is a new kind of society, where
thousands of people voluntarily come together from all over the globe. These
communities transform into scenes of real-life simulations, or laboratories for
the construction of both identity and a social body, a virtual citizenry where
both the players and the programmers decide the limits of the society.
“What these people say or do may not always be to your liking; as when
visiting any international city, it is wise to be careful who you associate with
and what you say.” (Disclaimer from the operators of LambdaMOO 11 ).
Besides the fact that these players create characters who have
casual and romantic sex, who fall in love and get married, who attend
rituals and celebrations. “This is more real than real-life” 12 , says a character
who turns out to be a man playing a woman who is pretending to be a man.
In this game, the rules of social interaction are built, not received.
Giannachi quotes an example of Mud player’s interaction consisting
in “fake” identity (hacking into somebody’s avatar) and even rape, which
arose critical moral questions: in March 1992, “a character calling himself
Mr. Bungle appeared in the LambdaMoo living room, created a phantom
masquerading under another player’s name and raped another character.
Although he was ejected from the room, the rapist was able to continue his
sexual assaults until he was finally immobilized by a Moo wizard who
succeeded in erasing his character from the system.”(Giannachi 2004: 91)
Conclusively, the “reality” of the Net and virtual era is one of
dramatic and extreme interaction, as well as metaesthetics in the sense
that it redefines itself by exploring its center as intensely as its peripheries,
its wild zones, its rhizomatic (Deleuze&Guattari) maze of channels that
allow subconscious, as well as superhuman powers to manifest. This reality
is thus a world within which the self is reconstructed as a fluid and
polymorphous entity. Within this alternative, elastic and marketable “reality”,
where the interface boosts the theatre par excellence, a place mediated ad
infinitum, twice above or beyond dissimulation, the self is in its own fiction,
11
LambdaMOO Text source: http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:guCogy2C0qcJ:
web.njit.edu/~cfunk/2002/interpoesia/whereismineralms.doc+stahl+stenslie+a+stone+hurts&hl=en
12 LambdaMOO, idem.
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