Avatars

Jennifer Salane, Sarah Stone, and I (Ardi) will be working on a project that will tell the stories of various online avatars within different contexts. Sarah will create an avatar in Yahoo chat, Jennifer will create an avatar in Second Life, and I will create an avatar in the online game City of Heroes/Villains.

We will follow the "lives" of each avatar in a documentary style souped-up slide show. We will each write a background story for our avatars and use those backgrounds to direct the interactions that happen in our respective communities. We will also give a summary or background information about each of the communities in which our avatars exist. We will also discuss the specific language using practices of each community. The point is to explore the relationships that develop in each community and compare and contrast those relationships and how each online community and each avatar affects the relationships that happen.

Each member of the group will be responsible for gathering the images, chat text, and any other relevant information that deals with her own avatar. As a group, we will compile the information into our digital documentary. I have all of the software we might need to use on my home computer, so we will have to meet at my house to put everything together.

To the anonymous person who asked to be in my group: If you haven't found a group yet, please email me (shadowraven13@gmail.com).

Edit: Carrie Kolb, the anonymous person, emailed me, and she would like to join our group. This would put us at 4 members, but she plays a different online role playing game than I do, and I think she would fit in really well with our project concept. If she joins our group, she would be creating and documenting the life of an avatar in the game World of Warcraft.

Each member already has some experience in the communities in which we plan to create our avatars except for Sarah, but her lack of experience in chatting can have an interesting affect on how she is received by others online.