Actor & Avatar : : A Scientific and Artistic Catalog / / ed. by Dieter Mersch, Miriam Laura Loertscher, Lorena Kegel, Anton Rey, Thomas Grunwald, Jörg Sternagel.

• Funder: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
• MitwirkendeR: Beeler, Thabo,; Ben Khelifa, Nadja,; Bradley, Derek,; Brugger, Peter,; Dorfman, Elena,
• HerausgeberIn: Grunwald, Thomas,; Kegel, Lorena,; Loertscher, Miriam Laura,; Mersch, Dieter,; Rey, Anton,; Sternagel, Jörg,
• Author: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
• Place / Publishing House: Bielefeld : : transcript Verlag, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (312 p.)

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? This volume addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of »technical others« and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- I. Avatars -- The Avatar -- Prosthethics. Replacement and Exchange -- Avatarhood and Selfhood -- The Self and Its Avatars in Neuropsychiatry -- The Secret Behind the Actor-and-Avatar Fmri-Study -- Avatar’s Faces in EEG -- “Doppeltgänger”. Body Doubles, or the Shadow and His Ego -- The Avatar’s Body in Game Spaces -- The AIS Have It? Hacking into the AI Avatar Dream -- II. Actors -- The Mask -- Creating My Digital Self -- The Birth of a Digital Actor -- Humanizing Virtual People -- Double Trouble. Digital Avatars on Stage -- In Conversation with Neil Newbon -- Facing Characters. A Volumetric Intelligence Framework -- A New Geometry of the Eye. The Curious Case of Brad Pitt -- On Ali Moini’s Avatar Hacking -- “Tears of Truth” -- III. Dolls, Puppets & Uncanny Tracks -- Get into The Uncanny Valley -- The Mechanical Bride and the Ambivalent Pleasures of the Uncanny -- The Mechanical Bride. Realdolls as Companions and Accessible Objects -- Promethean Shame? Pandora Reframes: Elena Dorfman’s Origin of the New World -- The Artist’s Statement -- Encounters of the Uncanny Kind at the Origin of the New World -- Face Fracking -- Sophia’s Smile. The Challenges of a Humanoid Citizen -- I Married a Puppet -- IV. Digital Encounters -- Mask, Face, Countenance -- A Brief Avatar-Network Theory -- Puppets, Pets or Deputies. On the Relationship between Actors and Avatars -- Engaging Consciousness. Time and Duration in Holly Bynoe’s Compounds -- Emotional Ambivalences. Loving and Hating a Tamagotchi -- Consciousness Performed -- Artificial Intelligence. Traditional Expectations and a New Category of Machines -- The Eyes Have It. The Problem of the Avatar Gaze -- What is Koinōnia under Technological Conditions? -- Appendix -- Pictures of the Research Project -- Authors -- Subtexte