Goodbye from Artemesia in There

My name is Artemesia. I’m an avatar. For the past six years, I have lived, played and worked in the virtual world There.com. When I say “worked” I mean that quite literally. I did my Ph.D. “in” There.com, studying a group of refugees from the defunct MMOG Uru. I defended that Ph.D. in There.com, with the person who operates me, Celia Pearce, at my side. I am cited as co-author of her book, Communities of Play, and appear on its cover. I have given keynotes to hundreds of people on her behalf in foreign countries when she could not physically attend. If you go to her facebook page, or have her on your chat buddy list, you will see me. Less than three hours from now, I will be gone. And a piece of her will be lost forever.

One of the things I love about anthropology is that if you study cultures, what you find is that very few things that happen online do not have a real world precedent. The destruction of cultures is nothing new. For an ethnographer to suddenly find herself a historian is an-all-too common fallout of Colonialism. But this is a strange reversal: in a sense my friends and research colonized this world and made it their own. Over seven years, There.com’s incredibly creative players brought life to this place, and now that life is being taken away.

 

Over the past few days and nights we have been convening in groups large and small, having parties, exploring places we will miss, appreciating each other’s handiwork, sharing memories and feelings, and discussing where to go next. These moments feel less like a grieving than a celebration…we are celebrating all that we’ve accomplished together, the new cultures and artifacts we created, and the magical experience we all had in this cartoon world. For most of us, being an avatar allowed us to learn more about ourselves, to play, to exercise some freedom outside of our everyday lives, to explore new aspects of ourselves. One of my research subjects once said, “We make our avatars, and thereafter, our avatars make us,” borrowing from Marshall McLuhan’s famous comment about tools. This is perhaps one of the most profound statements about life as an avatar. She made me, and I made her, in an iterative feedback loop. While this is true of all of us, probably no moreso in our case: It was through me her real-world avatar became a Ph.D. and began her adventure as a college professor.

 

In the average MMOG, an avatar dies a thousand deaths, is resurrected, only to go into battle and die again. We were always told that our There.com avatars were immortal. We could fall from tall trees, shoot each other with paint guns, or jump off of “Avie Sacrifice” without no particular consequence except a few contorted animations. But it turns out we were not immortal at all. And this will be permadeath. In a few short hours, I will be nothing more than a pile of bits on a hard drive, asleep forever…unless there is a miracle.

 

And miracles do happen. The group of refugees I first studied have seen their “homeland” reopen not one, not two, but three times, the most recent of which was only a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, we are all looking for new places to settle, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the alternatives: this one has nice avatars but is to buggy, that one is unplayable, this one looks the closest to There.com but appeals mostly to kids. Some of the creators have bought their own serves on a free virtual world development platform, and have taken things into their own hands, eschewing the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune of virtual world companies, perhaps tired of being tossed willy nilly from place to place.

 

I am continually amazed by the resilience of my people; the Uruvians especially, they have been through this before.  Their response, as always, is, well this sucks, what next? But it’s hard to say goodbye. To our avatars, to our history, to our culture, to all the things we’ve created. My friend and I built a massive and highly complicated treehouse classroom complex for our university. I only used it once—only a few hours before the announcement that our world was coming to an end. I was happy to have the chance to have used it if only that one time.

What will happen next? Who knows? I do know that my operator will miss me; I have become such an integral part of her life and her identity…even now, she finds it hard to imagine life without me. We will go into another world, inhabit other avatars, but Artemesia in There will always be “home,” even when she is nothing more than a ghost.

But like I said. Who knows? Perhaps a miracle could happen. In the words of Yeesha, the heroine of Uru: “The ending is not yet written.”

Comments

[Jeffrey Ventrella]

Artemesia, you will live forever in bit heaven. And your human counterpart will continue her work, breathing life into new virtual worlds, building new treehouses - each one more beautiful than the last.

I am honored to have been able to help bring this world into existence, with the first line of code in 1997. While much is being evaporated into bit-heaven, I have leaned so much from the experience, and have made many friends There - including the remarkable Celia Pearce.
-j

[Katherine Milton]

The transworlder in me mourns the loss of this amazing place of creativity and community, while the researcher in me celebrates the lessons we will learn from the diaspora as they migrate to the next place. Living on the digital frontier is not without its dangers. In the closing of There.com we see one of its biggest drawbacks, sudden and irreparable annihilation.

Last night, my Necromancer in EverQuest, Devisri, entered the world of Norrath after a long absence. Those who play EQ on a Macintosh share only one server, making the culture and connection between avatars in this iteration of the game most unique and quite like a small town. I was moved by the emptiness of the place. The once busy and bustling merchant's bazaar is now dotted with sparse few "mule" avatars selling the spoils of their loot. The central meeting place in front of the bank at The Plane of Knowledge, while still active, is largely barren. With the introduction of World of Warcraft 5-years ago, we saw the decimation of the world of the Al'Kabor server as throngs of our friends and battlemates moved often like those of URU, and now for There, as a community, to a new adventure. Perhaps part of that which unites those of us who inhabit both a proximal as well as a connected world is that we must be temporal nomads.

Your work through Artemesia is seminal research in this emergent field. Your understanding and analysis as Celia gives our temporal worlds a voice of balance and legitimacy at a time when so many would dismiss the profundity of the experience. In the late 80's Gene Youngblood wrote about the "creative conversation" and creating the context from which community emerges. Today's "virtual" citizen plays the critical role in this conversation through not only their participation, but more importantly in what they bring away from one encounter and give to another.

BRAVO to THERE.... to URU.....to Artemesia... and to Celia (and others) for risking time and heart in being a part of this unique experience, and especially for sharing your stories with us all. We have grown to understand our own links between each other in a more comprehensive way through your participation in creating both the world and the intellectual artifacts of its place in the canon of digital culture.

- katherine (aka: Devisri (EQ); Phinney (WoW); Smarty (iVisit); and Katherine Barth (SL)

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nice post.. I enjoyed reading.. keep up the good work! God Bless!

[Gracie Kendal]

Hi Artemisia, I have actually never been in There.com, but an a resident of Second Life, I am working on my Masters Thesis using my avatar Gracie Kendal and Second Life as the focus, I think it is relevant to what you are talking about here. www.graciekendal.wordpress.com
Thank you for the amazing post.
Have a great day :))
Gracie/Kris

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