Panel Statement

Panel: An Alembic of Transformation: Virtual Reality as Agent of Change

This paper will dis­cuss two stu­dent pro­jects, which were de­vel­oped dur­ing a hy­brid course be­tween art/de­sign and com­puter sci­ences at Sa­banci Uni­ver­sity; both of which in­volve the cre­ation of three di­men­sion­ally em­bod­ied avatars whose vi­sual at­trib­utes are de­ter­mined by data feeds from “Real Life” sources.

In as early as 1999 Frank Biocca’s asked sev­eral ques­tions on how the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the body in vir­tual en­vi­ron­ments might af­fect the mind states of avatar han­dlers: The ef­fects of em­bod­i­ment on the sen­sa­tion of phys­i­cal pres­ence, so­cial pres­ence, and self pres­ence in vir­tual en­vi­ron­ments; and the ef­fects of avatar rep­re­sen­ta­tion on body image and body schema dis­tor­tions. Today, with the wide spread usage of three di­men­sional on­line vir­tual worlds and the ex­tended abil­i­ties to ma­nip­u­late the vi­sual rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the inner per­sona, Biocca’s ques­tions would ap­pear to have ac­quired even greater ur­gency. While such ef­forts usu­ally seem to be ex­pected to work to­wards the con­ceal­ment of iden­tity and/or inner states of being; can a sec­ond ap­proach, one in­volv­ing rev­e­la­tions of the inner ‘self’ that may in fact go be­yond what is avail­able to our phys­i­cal bod­ies also be con­tem­plated? Can such ‘rev­e­la­tions’ bring about change, both in terms of human in­ter­ac­tion but also in terms of self-per­cep­tion?

Fol­low­ing up from Biocca’s sem­i­nal text, The Cy­borg’s Dilemma (Biocca, 1999), this paper will de­scribe the cre­ative and tech­no­log­i­cal processes which went into the ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of these two avatars.

Elif Ayiter is a de­signer and re­searcher spe­cial­iz­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of hy­brid ed­u­ca­tional method­olo­gies be­tween art & de­sign and com­puter sci­ence, teach­ing full time at Sa­banci Uni­ver­sity, Is­tan­bul, Turkey. She has pre­sented cre­ative as well as re­search out­put at con­fer­ences in­clud­ing Sig­graph, Con­scious­ness Re­framed, Cre­ativ­ity and Cog­ni­tion, ISEA, ICALT, Com­pu­ta­tional Aes­thet­ics (Eu­ro­graph­ics) and Cy­ber­worlds. She is also the chief ed­i­tor of the forth­com­ing jour­nal Meta­verse Cre­ativ­ity with In­tel­lect Jour­nals, UK and is cur­rently study­ing for a doc­toral de­gree at the Plan­e­tary Col­legium, CAiiA hub, at the Uni­ver­sity of Ply­mouth with Roy As­cott.

• Elif Ayiter is a de­signer and re­searcher spe­cial­iz­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of hy­brid ed­u­ca­tional method­olo­gies be­tween art & de­sign and com­puter sci­ence, teach­ing full time at Sa­banci Uni­ver­sity, Is­tan­bul, Turkey. She has pre­sented cre­ative as well as re­search out­put at con­fer­ences in­clud­ing Sig­graph, Con­scious­ness Re­framed, Cre­ativ­ity and Cog­ni­tion, ISEA, ICALT, Com­pu­ta­tional Aes­thet­ics (Eu­ro­graph­ics) and Cy­ber­worlds. She is also the chief ed­i­tor of the forth­com­ing jour­nal Meta­verse Cre­ativ­ity with In­tel­lect Jour­nals, UK and is cur­rently study­ing for a doc­toral de­gree at the Plan­e­tary Col­legium, CAiiA hub, at the Uni­ver­sity of Ply­mouth with Roy As­cott.
• Dr. Selim Bal­cisoy After living in US and Switzerland over 14 years Dr. Balcisoy joined Sabanci University, Istanbul as Faculty in 2004 and founded one of the first visual business analysis companies VisioThink in 2006. His main interest is interactive technologies for visual storytelling and decision-making.
• Murat Ger­men  is an artist / ar­chi­tect using pho­tog­ra­phy as an ex­pres­sion / re­search tool. He holds the BS de­gree in city plan­ning from Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­sity of Is­tan­bul (T) and the MArch de­gree from Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy (US), where he was a Ful­bright scholar and re­cip­i­ent of the  AIA Henry Adams Gold Medal for aca­d­e­mic ex­cel­lence.  Cur­rently a pro­fes­sor of pho­tog­ra­phy and mul­ti­me­dia de­sign at Sa­banci Uni­ver­sity in Is­tan­bul, he pre­vi­ously worked for var­i­ous state and pri­vate uni­ver­si­ties in­clud­ing Bilkent, Yeditepe, Is­tan­bul Tech­ni­cal, Yildiz and Bilgi Uni­ver­sity. He has pub­lished ar­ti­cles and photo se­ries on ar­chi­tec­ture / pho­tog­ra­phy / art / dig­i­tal de­sign at var­i­ous mag­a­zines and books, and has pre­sented at sev­eral sem­i­nars, sym­posia and con­fer­ences in­clud­ing SIG­GRAPH, ISEA2009, Mu­ta­mor­pho­sis, To­wards a Sci­ence of Con­scious­ness, CAe 2008-9, CAC2, EVA-Lon­don’08-‘10, eCAADe, AS­CAAD, and ex­hib­ited at over forty inter/na­tional (Turkey, USA, Italy, Ger­many, UK, Mex­ico, Por­tu­gal, Uzbek­istan, Greece, Japan, Rus­sia, Iran, India, France, Canada, Bahrain) ex­hi­bi­tions. Ger­men’s works are in the col­lec­tions Is­tan­bul Mod­ern’s and  Pro­je4L Elgiz Mu­seum of Con­tem­po­rary Art (Is­tan­bul), in ad­di­tion to nu­mer­ous pri­vate col­lec­tions.