Avatar Roulette

2016

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The video work Avatar Roulette is a live-video recording, countering the perception of the female in the virtual world.

The video features original 3D animations, based on a 3D render of my face, which was then compiled into a few basic human expressions (Happiness, Anger, Indifference) In other words, so is borne an Avatar.

After logging in to various Chat Roulette sites, which offer the user a vis-a-vis encounter with a random stranger, I displayed this Avatar as a fake “videocam” face. Following this, many users (The rough majority of which is male) has ‘skipped’ a conversation,  while others suspected there is another male behind the female-looking avatar, resulting in a verbal and/or written aggression towards the Avatar.

Yet another prevalent approach was that of suggesting the avatar would show the rest of her ‘body’. However, when the user in the encounter would be a female, I have been able to conduct a longer conversation, often leading to mutual voyeurism, with female users actively mimicking the Avatar’s expressions, trying to create a meaningful (if short) conversation, or simply taking a pause in front of the phenomenon.