Best Practices in Banana Time (aka, Is That iPhone Working or Playing?)
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Virtual Doppelgangers: Embodiment, Morphogenesis, and Transversal Action
Presentation Title:
- Best Practices in Banana Time (aka, Is That iPhone Working or Playing?)
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: Virtual Doppelgangers: Embodiment, Morphogenesis, and Transversal Action
Since the Victorian era, hobbies have served as a form of leisure that offer both pleasure and subversively reinforce specific behaviors, value systems, and ideologies of the dominant culture. Activities such as collecting, gardening, or model building utilize many of the same tools and techniques found in the workplace. An analogous relationship between leisure and labor begins to emerge–work under the guise of play. If we fast-forward into the digital age, the tools and techniques of the past are now virtualized. The notion of collecting happens in Flickr and Facebook, gardening in Farmville, and model building in virtual environments such as Second Life. And similar to our Victorian handicrafts and 1950’s soapbox derby, the ideological and economic are intertwined. Yet, what was once an analogous relationship between our labor and leisure is now dialectical. In the world of social media there are no boundaries. Through a brief survey of a few key social media applications and projects created in virtual environments that traverse both business and entertainment, this dialectical relationship will be put on the round table. How affect is produced through these embodied interactions and the role of strategic interruptions in locating sites of agency will be on the agenda. It will be fun.
