VIRTUAL IDENTITY

lecture at International festival of computer arts, Maribor, Slovenija, 1998

Stolen Identity

The identity of the subject is manifested on three parallel platforms; one is manifested as a natural fact that is given to the subject by the Second. The next platform is defined by the third party that treats the subject through the dioptry of its perception as an object (the third party is on the surface of the time scale presented in plural as "surroundings"). The last platform is "reality" when the subject experiences itself together with a fiction of how it would like to be manifested to the third party (so called Wishful appearance towards the surroundings).

While the first identity form is present in the field of unconscious and can be neglected in the play of external manifestation, the other two are identity forms or identity appearances dependent upon physical predispositions of the subject (that in this particular context plays the role of the subject to a very limited extent). It is the attachment of the third party's perception on the physical reality that represents the fatal obtacle to the manifestation of the desired subject's identity towards the third party. Exactly at this point the technology of the virtual reality makes a fatal cut which marks the birth of a new, primary, in the very sense of the word., identity that is completely independent of the physical reality, and transits from the existence only in the subject's wish to the area or "reality" although that particular "reality" - in the physical sense - is only "fictional".

The identification of the subject together with his physical appearance is in the eyes of the third party directly connected with the subject's first and family names or pseudonym. The cluster name-object (t.i. subject from the third party's point of view) is a necessary term of identification of the subject's identity by the third party. When the desired identity (which was created by the subject in the reality of the cyber space) wants to be presented to the third party we have to establish the above mentioned cluster name-object (t.i. its virtual identity). The missing link is therefore the name of the new, virtual (pure, desired) identity. In the binary world of ones and zeros that represents the foundation of the contemporary information society it is evident that the name of the desired virtual reality has to be easily connected with the - in the vulgar physical sense - presentation of the virtual identity itself. That is why the cluster name - object can be transformed into another one called intent-set-up page. The logical conclusion is that the subject that has created its virtual identity presented to the third party with its intended name instead of its physical name or its pseudonym.

www.teo-spiller.org

The new body is baptized!