THE AETHER COMPLEX
By: Adrienne Cassel
Tags: Ethics, Future, Design, Technology, Surveillance

THE AETHER COMPLEX

aethercomplex.com, image created and rendered by the artist

“If the plastic arts were put under psycho- analysis, the practice of embalming the dead might turn out to be a fundamental factor in their creation.”

- André Bazin

If we briefly look at the emergence of plastic arts we notice a shift away from survival depending on the continued existence of the corporeal body. The process of preservation could arguably be manifested as a means to provide defense against the passage of time. To preserve our bodily appearance is a fundamental need, or a “Mummy Complex,” as Bazin puts it. One could argue that the development of painting and sculpture manifested as a means to capture the form and stow it away from the flow of time. The anthropocentric need to preserve the subject from a second spiritual death is no longer in use, but rather the making of images puts forth a speculative ideal with a temporal future of its own. In the 19th century the creation of photography was thought to have eliminated, or quelled the obsession with realism, creating a fundamental shift between representation, truth, and aesthetic and psychological expression. The photograph was the object itself that determines the veritability by the means in which it was produced; the medium of representation defines the basis of truth and value.

In an increasingly virtual world, our means of communication, self agency, and expression have been relocated towards representational and abstract modes of existence, with the freedom of dynamic shifts of identity and assertion. Online, we have the ability to choose and curate what will represent our presence and individuality. Bazin’s Mummy complex can be applied beyond the advent of photography into 2020 where the fundamental need to maintain a presence that surpasses the body has led to the creation of Avatars and virtual vessels. Avatars are not new. However, the ontological shift from virtual representation to the ability to manipulate and control a 3D object, is significant, specifically in dealing with likeness of human individuals. The phenomenologically passive nature of a 3D object elicits a conversation of who is in control, who is being controlled, and who gets to make decisions about these dynamic bodies?

The creation of an Avatar is one of birth, modification, revision, and reflection. As an avatar is made, she reflects one’s own physicality. Watch the avatar stare at you stare back at her, as if she somehow realizes the limitations of her domain, and you of yours. Reaching into the virtual Aether provides physical reassurance and permanence, reflecting the limitations of Our domain. Simultaneously, the action is a vain one; while the limitations of physicality are transcended here, there is no guarantee of permanence and security in virtual form.

An avatar is made by creating a series of data points in a 3D modeling software that correspond to spatial coordinates. This allows the computer to reproduce a mesh upon which additional programs tell the computer how to render the image based on physical lighting parameters. A 3D model is ontologically a very ‘passive’ object, due to its receptive nature. It is meant to be used and manipulated by a user or developer. A 3D object can be animated, manipulated, morphed, destroyed, etc. It is supposed to receive the action of another agent.

In 2018 I created my first version of my avatar. I spent hours upon hours starting into the mirror, sculpting a mesh from scratch, carving in the smallest details of my pores, and refining my measurements of how I perceive my own physicality. I was birthing myself into a new realm that I believed I could master — I could be an agent of this domain. This piece ended up as a video of my avatar animated via motion capture into a meditative trance-like dance in a non space with a surreal monologue depicting abstract hopes for this new body and domain that I have created. I entitled this piece VOID (Giving Birth to Myself), and showed it at my senior art show for school. Little did I know that this piece would be a defining factor in proving how wrong I was about the security of this new domain into which I had created my own portal. In the back of my head I knew that virtuality would not come with implicit security, however upon further research I understood that the extent to which our bodies are being sourced as sites of information was incomprehensible, even without the modality of avatars.

Not only was my need to create an avatar to engage the desire to be the agent of my own domain, but it was also an exercise to feel secure and validated such that no harm or violation could happen to my body, in contrast to my experience with violation in the physical world.