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Good Girl VR: straddling installation art, performance art, and identity politics with a virtual environment

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Good Girl VR: straddling installation art, performance art, and identity politics with a virtual environment

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Content Good Girl VR Straddling installation art, performance art, and identity politics with a virtual environment. By Tonia Beglari Master of Fine Arts Interactive Media & Games Division School of Cinematic Arts University of Southern California August 2018 Good Girl VR 1 of 52 Table of Contents I. Why VR? An Intentional Introduction ................................................................................ 2 Virtual Reality Made Available............................................................................................... 2 Net Art Inspirations for Virtual Space ..................................................................................... 3 Integrating Installation Art and VR ......................................................................................... 5 Performance Art and VR ......................................................................................................... 8 II. The Good Girl Experience ................................................................................................... 9 Contextual and Audience-Centric Usability ............................................................................ 9 Project Walkthrough ............................................................................................................. 10 III. Good Girl Labs as a Practice in Themed Entertainment ............................................... 11 Designing the Physical Space................................................................................................ 13 The Brainwave: A Portal from Physical to Virtual Space ...................................................... 15 IV. Mapping the Subconscious, Personifying Demons and Desires. ..................................... 19 The Practice of Doubling in Feminist Space and Performance............................................... 20 Doubling, Collage, and Good Girl ......................................................................................... 23 V. Technical Challenges of the Hybrid Image in Real Time ................................................. 48 VI. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 51 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................ 52 Good Girl VR 2 of 52 I. Why VR? An Intentional Introduction Good Girl is a VR art installation set in an alternate reality where the artist is in a comatose state. Participants visit Good Girl Labs, a laboratory run by the artist’s followers to study the artist’s body. In Good Girl Labs, visitors are guided by a lab technician to connect to the artist’s subconscious where they can encounter a series of dynamic personas representing a relational map of the social, political, and economic layers of the artist’s American’t life as a queer first generation child of Middle Eastern immigrants raised digital. This paper proposes Good Girl VR as one example to think about how VR can be used in reference to installation and performance art and how such an elite medium can be used to illustrate paraspatial realities and counternarratives. Virtual Reality Made Available As an artist and public internet citizen, I take pride in co-founding Browntourage 1 , a media collective whose bread and butter is being playfully serious so that matters of social justice and critical thinking are brought into accessible everyday realms of style, art, pop and recreation. I identify as someone who places diversity at the center of how I want to work, and accessibility at the center of what I want to make. Why would someone like me be interested in VR- arguably the least accessible medium to experience? The power of stereoscopic 360-degree presence provides an intimacy that has driven people to refer to VR as an “empathy machine.” 2 I see VR as the most verisimilar tool currently available to reestablish experienced reality. For minority artists interested in radical imagination, 1 Browntourage website, http://www.browntourage.com (accessed June 15, 2018). 2 Milk, Chris, “How Virtual Reality Can Create the Ultimate Empathy Machine,” 2015, TED, <https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine> (accessed June 15, 2018). Good Girl VR 3 of 52 the VR medium aids catharsis, rebirth, or subversive power fantasy, where the artist holds the reigns of sensory experience. With VR development itself being free (through software such as Unity, Unreal, OVR api, and Steam) and the grant opportunities made available at USC Jaunt VR Lab, I decided I had to do it one time for the culture. Thus, I embraced VR in this project to experiment with what feedback loops are possible between VR, installation art, and performance art in order to specifically work as a tool for radical retellings of reality from minority perspectives. Net Art Inspirations for Virtual Space Before I knew about VR, I was already drawn to Net Art as an aesthetic style that fills the tabula rasa of a blank website or empty pixels with the artist’s remix of reality. Often mix- matching recognizable, classic, and nostalgic imagery, Net Artists 3 Frankenstein together their own pastel neon version of reality that reflects their perspective, position, and lived experience. In American social-media-verse, this is usually first-world disillusioned millennials making jokes out of what they can’t control. VR- in its ideal form- presents an infinite digital tabula rasa to make surround-sound Net Art in full 3D. For my own expedition in VR artwork, my initial seed of a concept was to implement the aesthetic of Net Art in a 3D landscape from my own point of view. The way artists Itzel Xoco 4 , Molly Soda 5 and Tabita Rezaire 6 place captures of themselves within their own collages, Brown 3 Related Net Art Resources: http://newhive.com/, http://cloaque.org/. 4 Itzel Xoco, fortune-telling.png, 2013, Web, Tumblr, <http://itzelxxxoco.tumblr.com/post/58267624931/fortune- tellingpng> (accessed June 15, 2018) 5 Soda, Molly, 50 Percent Whatever, 2017, GIF Still, <https://artsy-media- uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/TnNfsILCytyVgbcUAPfiVQ%2Fd7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.png> (accessed June 15, 2008) 6 Rezaire, Tabita, Inner Fire: Shadelicious, 2017, Diasec Print, <http://marieclaire.fetcha.co.za/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/Colorism-kills.jpg> (accessed June 15, 2008) Good Girl VR 4 of 52 Girl Net Art (the original name for Good Girl VR) would mix my own image within the context of collages to see what conclusions could be drawn from the references most present in my mind (see fig. 1). From here, I set the concept of a spatial collage, riddled with live action personas reflecting my subconscious. Fig. 1. Tabita Rezaire’s Inner Fire: Shadelicious as part of Exotic Trade solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. Good Girl VR 5 of 52 Integrating Installation Art and VR Installation art and virtual reality can intersect in various ways. I considered three possible dynamics in the making of Good Girl: 1) How installation art could aid VR participants’ immersion, 2) How the methodologies of installation art could apply to VR design, 3) How the affordances of virtual reality could expand installation art practice. For each of these investigations, I position an aspect of Good Girl as a point of research. 1. How installation art aid VR participants’ immersion. For participants, VR is a commitment. Putting one’s self in a headset is a vulnerable act. The headset cuts off the sense of sight, reorients the sense of space, and obscures sound. Meanwhile, the world can see you, but not your context. It takes trust to feel comfortable being in this position. Installation art can ease visitors into the VR experience by setting the framing for the experience for the people inside the headset and onlookers alike. Much like VR, in Disney’s themed entertainment industry, not everyone can do a ride at once. To maximize the experience, Disney’s design for the ride starts in line. The line for Indiana Jones ride enters a cave with relics and introduces riders to props and themed videos that prime visitors to enjoy the ride even more than if they went from regular life to stepping into a Jeep (Lonsway, 123). By actively moving through a cave and relics and being invited to go on a tour, you are already embodying the part of the explorer before laying eyes on the Jeep. When priming and instruction happening outside of the VR context, participants can feel more curious and more secure about what they are invited to do, and therefore more willing to cut off their senses to do so. Good Girl VR 6 of 52 In Good Girl VR, the VR experience is housed within a laboratory installation. Good Girl Labs establishes a context where participants see the comatose body, brain wired with EEG. They read the lab’s mission statement, see the lab’s diagrams, findings, etc. In this context, the VR headset is just another tool in the lab, The BrainWave. Using a head mounted display to connect to the subconscious of the body is an intuitive extension for the speculative fiction of Good Girl Labs. When available, a costumed lab technician is the docent for the installation, guiding participants into the headset. This way, onlookers see current participants as part of the lab study, as do the participants themselves. Participants who are not yet in the VR component are still experiencing the piece in the sense that they can engage with a series of components across media (prints, screen-based experiences, projections, etc.) all working towards a holistic experience. 2. How the methodologies of installation art apply to VR design. The methodology of installation art can vary greatly from that of narrative art and story- driven entertainment. Installation work is generally not tied to a three-act structure, and more tied to an environment. Though an installation may react to visitors, the installation is installed, and therefore has an idle-state of existence not tied to beginning-middle-or-end. Installations with no set run time offer a mode of thinking to VR designers to design a space, rather than a traditional story. As visitors are in an installation, VR participants are inside the piece, so focusing on the ambiance and environment is a way to acknowledge the presence of the visitor and utilize it in a way that a protagonist driven set narrative does not. I think this methodology makes sense for VR in a gallery environment because it allows people to come and go at their own pace and anyone to pick up where another left off. Good Girl VR 7 of 52 In Good Girl VR, I decided to avoid having a strict narrative by positioning the visitor as the researcher of my brain. The visitor can enter my brain, poke around my brain, and leave my brain on their own terms (or until they max out on zapping, whichever happens first). My body is comatose as it would be as a sculpture in an installation, so there is no “character development” on my behalf throughout the piece. Visitors are examining multitudes of a moment in time to draw their own conclusions. 3. How affordances of virtual reality expand installation art practice. The sense of depth felt in VR allows for a liminal experience between physical reality and ability of cg to go beyond the limitations traditionally imposed by physical reality. Virtual environments can be reprogrammed to behave as a non-continuous, recombinatory space. Rather than replicate a continuous 360 space with hyper-realistic audio and visual physics behavior that we already experience in real life, I’m interested in using VR to build out the subconscious of an artist, where audio and visuals can behave according to subdivisions in the space, rather than across a 360 space. In Good Girl VR, you feel like you are traversing different soundscapes based on the visual sub-set you focus on. My subconscious has its own core soundscape. When pockets in my subconscious unfold, visitors can focus in on the pockets which replaces the soundscape. Breaking physical sonic limitations in this way will hopefully feed into the visitors’ immersion into the dream logic that would dictate a subconscious space. It’s this kind of symbiotic mutually beneficial relationship between VR and Installation art that I want to achieve. Good Girl VR 8 of 52 Performance Art and VR In addition to occupying a space between physical reality and imposed reality, the stereoscopic 360-degree presence of VR opens a liminal medium between video art and performance art. I mentioned how Tabita Rezaire, Itzel Xoco, and Molly Soda have made Net Art collages with their own image. Rather than treat myself as a layer within an image or video, I wanted to treat my filmed image as a face to face performance, akin to a durational performance but within a virtual set sharing space with the participant. In virtual performance space, performance artists could multiply themselves, melt into pieces, teleport- essentially take their own capacity to generate experience through performance beyond the physical limits of gallery space or earthly physics. My VR subconscious is home to varying performance art personas. Participants experience them life size, in instant succession. I would not be able to handle such a performance live, so I find that VR provides healthy way for performance artists to not continuously exert themselves per each participant. They can practice and add visual effects like in video art, while still maintaining some level of intimacy for the participant. Yes, it is not truly a live experience, VR offered the most intimate medium to document my personas, while allowing for out of this world effects and collage integration. Summary: Good Girl VR as a test case. In this section, I established my design intentions for Good Girl. These goals approach VR as a creative medium to straddle performance art and installation art with a virtual environment. To summarize, the goal is a feedback loop between the installation and the VR piece that heightens immersion for the participants to contextualize performance art personas Good Girl VR 9 of 52 which themselves are enhanced by virtual affordances with CG effects and archival quality. Advancing this corner of the frontier is so exciting to me, but I do not like the raison d'être of my projects to be testing the limits of where the technology is now. As mentioned in the introduction, I am interested in radical retellings of reality from minority perspectives be it Magical Realism, Surrealism, Absurdism, or Social Realism. II. The Good Girl Experience VR is not consumed in a vacuum. To enact the project, I have to think about where it will be shown, who my audience is, and how they will see it so that I can design an experience that is well situated. Contextual and Audience-Centric Usability Good Girl VR is meant to be a work that is experienced in a gallery setting or installed at an event such an interactive art party. Community art and music warehouse parties like FEELS in Oakland (hosted by Wine and Bowties) do a great job of putting on local talent in a way that they are free to express what they think. The art-appreciating millennial audiences are my target audience, but interactive technologies are not reliably accessible and therefore not relevant of a platform. Having the Good Girl Labs installation around Good Girl VR can entice people and call attention to itself in these environments. Alone, a headset might be dauntingly associated with techie gentrifications or dystopia in these communities, if recognized at all. When technologies associated with AR, VR, MXR may not be familiar to my audience, being enticed to engage is step one. Step two is knowing how to engage. In a gallery or at an event, there isn’t a lot of time to devote to something as uninteresting as reading instructions or Good Girl VR 10 of 52 training in a tutorial. To address this, Good Girl VR has very simple controls. “One button” gameplay has been a challenge from the accessibility community. Since Oculus Touch controllers already come with many buttons, we made any of the buttons work the same way. We want participants to feel the controls are intuitive, so that learning how to use the system does not take them out of their act as a lab researcher. As far as getting into the headset, or operating companion content there are printed materials that we kept as brief as possible and purposely designed to fit within the diagesis of Good Girl Labs: a welcome message from the lab, placards with diagrams recasting the VR headset as The Brainwave, etc. This way, even if you are familiar with VR headsets, these materials continue to add value in world-building. Project Walkthrough • Approach: From afar, participants can make out a lab with a body on a table. • Arrival: Upon arrival, participants can read a Welcome message explaining the body and lab’s mission statement. • Invitation: A headset with instructions for “The BrainWave & Neural Activator” invites participants to study the artist’s subconscious. (With a lab tech’s guidance). • Initiation: In headset, there is Good Girl Lab’s connection screen. The participant must confirm they are ready to connect to the artist’s subconscious. • Connection: Once connected to the artist’s subconscious, a void with bubble-like neural nodes surrounds the participant. • Research: Participants use their controller to re-charge neural nodes. This temporarily displays what was happening in that area of the subconscious, so participants can reverse- engineer the artist’s last waking situation. Good Girl VR 11 of 52 • Termination: The study ends at the will of the participant, or if the participant maxes out the available charge brain can handle - whichever happens first. • Reflection: Participants can fill report or check their suspicions against the Thought Log (A screen-based companion experience, collecting thoughts that expound on images evoked in the VR piece). III. Good Girl Labs as a Practice in Themed Entertainment Zapping someone’s brain isn’t something you do every day. There is a generic default trope of a laboratory that we could conceive of in our minds where this practice regularly happens. Sadly, I can’t say that such a laboratory is necessarily something that I would want to be part of or feel comfortable re-enacting. Good Girl Labs is different. It’s my speculative response to studying the states of mind. A fantastical parody, Good Girl Labs attitude lies somewhere between a fangirl group and sensual domination in a fairytale world. The lab is made up of “believers” who are practically spiritually dedicated to their faith in Tonia and figuring out the reasons for her alleged brain death. In this way, participants can feel assured that the lab is on Tonia’s side. They come off as her sidekicks and minions, though they are badasses in their own right. For participants concerned about where they stand regarding the bioethics of informed consent when it comes to entering Tonia’s subconscious, the sensual domination aesthetic of the labs hints at the relationship between Tonia and the lab. In kink and bdsm communities, sensual or soft domination involves subordination that is ultimately playful and pleasure-focused more so than pain. Soft dom is usually the newcomer’s introduction to flirting with BDSM, with blindfolds, cuffs, etc. The playful domination combined with the cyber-femme fangirl support Good Girl VR 12 of 52 results in a theme that is meant to let participants suspend their traditional associations with labs and run with this fantasy world where their curiosity encourages them to take part in researching with the lab without feeling like they are doing something wrong. Fig. 2. Good Girl Labs’ Lab Technician Mood Board by Tonia Beglari, Collage, Good Girl, 2018. Good Girl VR 13 of 52 Designing the Physical Space At a minimum, the Good Girl experience encompasses two tables and two chairs. The Tonia body double is laid on one table and the other table is used for research materials. The chairs are for the lab technician behind research table and participant researcher between the research table and the body (see fig. 3). The following includes two companion components that could complete a Good Girl install: 1. Thought Hiway The Thought Hiway is a screen-based experience for a pc or laptop in the lab that can be played by any participant before, after, or independent of the VR experience. It is a database of pieces of thought that have been collected throughout the subconscious. The database is stylized according to the Good Girl Labs aesthetic with a 3d ring of neural bubbles (mimicking the ring of neural bubbles in the VR experience that house each performance persona). Participants interested in studying the Thought Hiway can connect two of the neural nodes to see what has been picked up along the axis between them. Similar to how astrophysicists monitor certain areas of the universe for varying airwaves, these snippets have been picked up at certain frequencies in certain areas of the brain. Using this interface, participants can place the world of each persona in conversation or juxtaposition with each other resulting in a multidimensional review of the intersectional repercussions on Tonia’s identity. The struggling attempt at a multilectic interface via stacking dialectics mimics societal and human struggle to process “paralogical” dynamics that are a daily subconscious phenomenon (Walden). Good Girl VR 14 of 52 Fig. 4. Screenshot of Good Girl Companion Content Thot Hiway, Tonia Beglari, Software, 2017. 2. Subconscious Assemblages I always imagine my subconscious as one big collage. But what if this big collage itself, was made up of traversable mini-assemblages in the form of found art still life? I imagine different “monuments” or “landmarks”. Some would be straight forward for example all of my love letters, or id cards, or stuffed animals, or select AOL Instant messenger chats or voice mail messages. Others would be less straightforward a blended junkyard of imagery, pain, pleasure, and waste, or a forest of textures I’ve felt. When listed like this, it becomes obvious the layers of existence these forms could take. A series of big prints is possible, hung from clothesline as if taken by a Good Girl Lab’s field-scientist for processing. A series of interactive art pieces is also possible, so people can read specific notes, listen to messages, touch textures etc. These could be Good Girl VR 15 of 52 displayed with tablets connected to a Petri dish or executing off of a digital copy of the bit of subconscious where this was found. Fig. 5. Screenshot of Granular Prototype, Tonia Beglari, Software, 2018. What about traversing an open world in VR? And having everything in one long VR piece? Remember, my target audience does not own a VR headset. They are at a gallery or event and they are new to VR. They not only appreciate context to build out the immersive environment around the VR piece, but they don’t have the time to spend an hour in a headset while others wait in line. Factors such as time-spent and low barrier to access were meaningful factors in my design process for what makes it into VR. The Brainwave: A Portal from Physical to Virtual Space The core component of Good Girl labs is the connection into the artist’s subconscious. We gave the VR headset component a diagetic name and purpose. Known within the world of Good Girl VR 16 of 52 Good Girl labs as The Brainwave, this emerging technology is something the lab is very proud and excited about, and it is not expected that visitors will have had experience with this fictionally top of the line “science-ware”! Using speculative design to avoid being tied down to existing mechanisms for literal brain research allows The Brainwave to act as a gateway my own fantasy and imagination as a designer to open up, along with encouraging visitors to enter the magic circle, and to suspend their disbelief for the purposes of studying the grander questions in mind. 1. UI and UX in the Subconscious The Brainwave is a simple interface for participants to enter and observe my subconscious. Instead of diving into a boatload of constantly changing information- participants enter the headset to see a Good Girl Labs connection screen. The connection screen area is all white with the Good Girl logo and connection dialogue. This simplicity lets people to adjust to the VR environment and get familiar with their controllers before diving into the subconscious. Fig. 6. Screenshot of The Brainwave Connection Screen, Tonia Beglari, Software, 2018. Good Girl VR 17 of 52 Once ready to bring on the experience, participants press any button to enter the subconscious. The subconscious fades in around the player. The initial state of the subconscious is a simple idle state that reflects the personality of the subconscious’ owner. A neon gradient background replaces the white, and the participant’s controllers are also re-decorated and styled to fit the theme of the subconscious. Filling the void around you are various bubbles laid out to mimic a molecule mesh or neural network. This experience flow slowly gives the participant more and more to take in so that they are not overwhelmed by content or choice while blinded in a 360 environment. Fig. 7. Screenshot of The Brainwave Within the Subconscious, Tonia Beglari, Software, 2018. Once participants take in the subconscious, they figure out what to do. Their controllers are their only tools, and button-press is all they have done, so they point their tools at the few things around them: the bubbles. Each bubble contains a different charm and is a different color. Good Girl VR 18 of 52 When pointing at any one bubble, an aim-line appears. Clicking any button while pointing at a bubble will maintain a flow of electricity to the charm within the bubble to reveal the neural content within. The interaction design is intentionally simple, so people can figure out what to do on their own and by picking up on what actions cause what effects. This way people focus on the content triggered, rather than how to trigger it. 2. Recombinatory Environmental Storytelling When Participants attach electric charge to a bubble, they reveal the content within. In its idle state, Tonia’s subconscious has no brain activity, and therefore no electricity flowing. The participant is connecting their controller to the different charms, a complete circuit which temporarily reveals what was happening in that part of the subconscious. After zapping many bubbles, participants can begin to piece together a narrative of what was going on in Tonia’s mind. Independent games like Her Story or Gone Home have used this same approach of pre- recorded content with a pre-set narrative that the participant finds in some way and pieces together to draw their own conclusions. In Good Girl, participants can attempt to establish what the state of mind was for Tonia at the time of her pausing. While the VR experience does not explicitly state any conclusion, what that can be drawn from the environmental design and interactions is that the current state of Tonia’s subconscious is like a frozen computer where you can see the last running processes, but not communicate. Participants are only seeing each process one at a time. But at one point, everything would have been running simultaneously. The overload of push and tug this placed became too much for Tonia, who left with this thought puzzle in her wake. The believers created Good Girl Labs to uncover the conditions of her loss, Good Girl VR 19 of 52 but there is no easy fix for layered matrices of structural issues of social, cultural and economic capital. Fig. 8. Screenshot of The Brainwave, Zapping to Activate, Tonia Beglari, Software, 2018. IV. Mapping the Subconscious, Personifying Demons and Desires. My content goal is to design a self-ethnography through my virtually projected subconscious as a form of research on the political, social, cultural, and economic layers of this American’t life. It is a process-driven work in the sense that I broke my state of mind into a system of pieces, and an experience-driven work where visitors can try to put together the pieces. In my attempts to spatially map out my own state of mind and what affects it as a young brown girl millennial, the result is pulling me in all kinds of paradoxical ways. Made in collaboration with friends including Symrin Chawla directing and Sepehr Mashiof composing, this simultaneous self-interrogating and self-dissociating autobiographical work is my most personal to date. Good Girl VR 20 of 52 The Practice of Doubling in Feminist Space and Performance When developing the personas eminent in my subconscious I was unknowingly implementing a practice known as doubling, a poetic technique for recomposing subjectivity for educational purposes. In his dissertation, Paul Walden outlines the use of doubling in the poetry of Adrienne Rich as the referential inhabiting of alter-selves as a means to perform a micro- ethnography which can triangulate the poet’s subjectivity through the self-geography created as a result. Doubling acknowledges the paralogic rhetoric that intersectional identities grapple with, as it can be difficult to find one’s own logic unity outside of the situational currents that dictate our daily lives. Doubling’s use of the personal to acknowledge the political and political to explain the personal puts it as a bridge between the personal practice of Expressivists and objective study of Social Constructionists. Through inhabiting the different selves, the artist is able to transform the currents which form and inform their daily performative personhood in an effort to find holotropic wholeness (Walden, p. 218). I took Walden’s theories on poetry and find they apply to spatial works and performance art. Good Girl VR 21 of 52 Fig. 9. Self Portrait by Marison (Marisol Escobar), 1961-62, Sculpture, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. In the world of sculpture, Self-Portrait by Marisol (1961-62) was the artist’s first of a series of “self-portraits” in the form of what art historian Cindy Nemser termed, “collaged sculptures”. She employs the doubling method as only three of the seven head carry a resemblance of the artist. She positions herself within the “collective social body” of women in consumer society. Marisol has said that her sculptures are of memories and families both real and imagined. In Threads of Identity: Marisol’s Exploration of Self, author Emily Williams rightly Good Girl VR 22 of 52 reads “different guises and methods that subtly critique societal roles and norms, all presented through the lens of the artist’s acute wit.” Fig. 10. 12 photographic black and white prints by Maria da Garça Lopes Rodrigues of the performance Tina America (June 27, 1976). In the world of performance, Brazilian-born American visual artist and curator Regina Vater created Tina America in 1975: a one-woman performance taking place at museums and predating Cindy Sherman by a few years. Developed after she had spent some time in the New York arts scene curating, Tina America was debuted in Brazil. Vater's work is known for its Good Girl VR 23 of 52 feminist themes and questions regarding culture and identity as evidenced in the range of personas shown in fig. 10. Doubling, Collage, and Good Girl Everyone carries their own images of themselves and others who come in and out of their subconscious. I wanted to partake in the practice of doubling to map out the balancing act of dealing with these haunting voices in a performative way with an experiential format. To form a subconscious aesthetic, I place performance art personas within a net art inspired collage. Doubling and collage are both answers to addressing the paralogic outlined by Walden. A collage can place disparate or contradictory images or styles in relation to one another. In this way it can force viewers to try to reconcile dynamics. It is a good medium for the indecisive or inconclusive, to take inventory on one’s self. Collage does not need one consistent logic or aesthetic. In Good Girl, I seek to composite my personas into collages to achieve a multilayered reading that not only complicates my identity on a whole, but also complicates each persona’s individual elements. I will now go through what I came up with. 1. Personas of Public Opinion The following three personas were developed in thinking about outward conceptions of identity and what is required to function in the impersonal public spheres of wealth, success, politics, and Americanism. The Newscaster The Newscaster is the sugar-coated mouthpiece of political (or apolitical) propaganda. She dictates the attention of the people, deems their concerns, and directs their blame. Good Girl VR 24 of 52 Newscasters have their own tropes of vocal intonation, hairstyles, stature, props and expressions. Serious blows to the character of a whole religion of people are delivered in tune with the Newscaster chorus. It makes me think, how much of this is pretend? What are the distinguishing factors between the Barbie 6’o’clock news set and the real thing? In Trump times, the voice of opinionated public figures talking in unfact-checked circles has managed to sweep the nation and swipe an election, while genuinely influencing the common American psyche to completely misunderstand Islam. Newscaster: The Concept I will craft a speech the vast majority of which is comprised of points made by Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and conservative commentator Tomi Lahren. Place Newscaster within an homage to the Barbie 6’o’clock news set to highlight the performativity. Glitches to demonic recitation literally break the facade and position the Newscaster as a vessel of grater evil- reflecting how the artist perceives the impact such news carries (see fig. 13). Newscaster: The Look Our direct sources mentioned above were maintained as real-world inspiration for the patriotic conservative styling: Tomi Lahren, Kellyanne Conway (see fig. 12). For the satire “whiteface” references, I pull from the delicious world of drag queens whose over-identification and over-performance playfully question given dynamics. Good Girl VR 25 of 52 Fig. 11. Newscaster Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 12. Newscaster Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Includes Drag queens Lil Miss Hot Mess speaking at a news conference last Fall, and Rick Gerharter, LADY BEAR: UNTITLED #354 Lady Bear, photographed by Keeney + Law. Good Girl VR 26 of 52 Fig. 13. Partial Screenshot of Newscaster Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. The Entrepreneur The Entrepreneur persona is the recent success of the industry, the buzz of disruption, coming to your schools, conferences, keynotes, meetups and roundtables with anecdote after anecdote, catchphrase after catchphrase of hot tips and tricks to making it. The Entrepreneur is the latest libertarian iteration of American bootstrap poster boys. Their earnest excitement is enviable, especially for me. Why? Because after watching a whole series of these speakers, I have unintentionally run aggregate analysis and distilled the major patterns they share. • Mobility (e.g. Free to move to the location that will provide upward mobility). • Unabashed confidence to ask for what you want. • Friends & Family able to provide a safety net. • Energy, availability, and eligibility for networking and meet-ups. Good Girl VR 27 of 52 • Mentors. All of these patterns are exclusive in that they assume a base level of privilege. It became very clear to me studying that there are reasons why breaking into an industry is hard. Not everyone can move freely to any city to work, be it for legal, family, budget, or safety reasons (for me, being in a diverse city is very important). Some people were raised to feel shame for asking for what they want, especially if it is women asking men. Some people are providing the safety net to their family, and do not have an external bed of support to jumpstart their business. I’m trying to be a bridge between an industry that has a diversity problem and a subculture of minority qpoc 7 artists. The last thing I want to with my free time is give up partying within the subculture to network with people who do not share my values and take their way of life as a given. It takes an extra layer of energy to put on a happy face and anxiety to hope that you are not being misread by people whose politics you don’t know. But these bar conversations are allegedly where the seeds of deals are planted. Entrepreneur: The Performance I perform as The Entrepreneur giving a supercut of phrases, the majority of which are sourced from tech keynotes and my own notes from talks from school visitors. The slides themselves are taken care of with CG to take it to a level of absurd spectacle (see fig. 16). The delivery channels jazzercise infomercial levels of empty motivation where the untailored uniformity of what is said underlines the performativity of it all (see fig. 14). 7 An abbreviation used by queer people of color to self-signify. Good Girl VR 28 of 52 Entrepreneur: The Look The look of the Entrepreneur was based on keynote talks in the tech and VR industry. Be it Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Chris Milk, its a safe casual style. Our satire references for “white-face” looks were pulled from race-aware comedian Dave Chappelle’s white characters on The Chapelle Show, Snoop Dog’s Todd, and Nick Cannon’s Connor (see fig. 15). Fig. 14. Entrepreneur Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 29 of 52 Fig. 15. Entrepreneur Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 16. Partial Screenshot of Entrepreneur Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. Good Girl VR 30 of 52 The Smasher The Smasher is the angst and the irony. They are the reaction against imposed or false expectations. The Smasher swears they do not have a gun. Walter Benjamin writes about how legal violence is decided by the state, who can interpret acts of resistance as violence. Judith Butler’s lecture “Interpreting Nonviolence” ties this phenomenon Benjamin describes to the lack of grievability for those who are resisting. She specifically applies this argument to Middle Eastern detainees in Precarious Life. The Smasher is an angry assertion of grievability, motivated by the dehumanized stereotypes. The assumption that the Smasher is violent, moves them to react in a way that can be read to be violent, since being peaceful in the eyes of the state means having grievability ignored. Ironically, the actions of the Smasher mirrors how Anti- Americanism finds it’s recruiting grounds in the hate and judgement spread by American Imperialism. Don’t worry though, the Smasher’s goal is not to live out said self-fulfilling prophecy of terrorism. The Smasher wants to reassert her own identity rather than to have the subjecthood of herself and per people be interpellated through vile ideology when hailed by strangers, showcased as witness footage compiled in this scene (Althusser, 1971). Smasher: The Concept The Smasher breaks into the wreckage of the artist’s ingestion of the American imagination which insists on painting her with a gun in her hand. Offended, she breaks the guns on associated paraphernalia to make space for her own self-interpellation. Set to a song sampling the lyrics “and I swear that I don’t have a gun,” the energy released in this scene references the release of moshing from the punk and metal movements similarly using physical movement for a Good Girl VR 31 of 52 mental release. This persona is an angsty release of the pent-up paradox of living life where the Newscaster paints you one way, and the Entrepreneur acts like it’s all gravy. Smasher: The Look The Smasher’s look queers and subverts that of typical combat. Her military camo uniform is genuine, but tie dyed, and camo war paint is also rainbow colors. She is here, she is queer. She is loud, she is proud, and she is ready to break your pre-conceptions to assert her own. Fig. 17. Smasher Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 32 of 52 Fig. 18. Smasher Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 19. Partial Screenshot of Smasher Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. Good Girl VR 33 of 52 2. Personas of Private Life These next four personas regard two identity driven subcultures I am part of in my personal life: Iranian culture and queer culture. Between them, they draw four quadrants between natural beauty of each subculture and the artificial practices seemingly required to access that beauty. Ghost Auntie In Persian culture, there is beauty in nature. Poetry and traditions constantly referencing the moon, stars, flowers and fruit. Some Aunties can personify this beauty with a soft seductive elegance. The ones who dance at the family parties they also cooked the food for. Access to Persian culture can be beautiful like the sweetness like rose and saffron. The Ghost Auntie is the apex of Persian femininity that guides and haunts. She is at once an ideal to be strived for, but you never know when she will bite. At her best, she offers the freshest of food, fruits, femininity, and folklore. At her worst, she is the messenger of a gossip and judgement endemic in Persian community. I want her acceptance, and to experience the natural bliss of the romanticized poetry of a Persian Goddess, but also the expectation scares me. Ghost Auntie: The Concept Dress as the idealized Auntie of my imaginary, while highlighting the beauty of Persian culture through the case of the Nowruz Sofre (New Year’s spread). There are many variations on the seven items of the Persian New Year’s spread, but the one I went with yields from Zoastrian concerns with the natural elements. Rosewater (Water), Candles (Fire), Apple (Earth), Mirror (Air), Goldfish (Animals), Wheatgrass (Plants), and Painted Eggs (Humans). The Ghost Auntie interacts with each item on the spread, conjuring, summoning, and manifesting the symbolism of Good Girl VR 34 of 52 each as a testament to her prowess. With a dark-side in her eye, she still manages to make me yearn for what I love about the culture. Ghost Auntie: The Look As someone who grew up in America, most of my association of Persian beauty is mixed with what I end up getting through traditionally painted miniatures, Orientalist renderings, the dreaminess of Farschian paintings, and the highly mod style of Iranian public icons like the pop queen Googoosh and literal empress Farrah. I wanted to put a contemporary almost drag take on a cross section of these looks. Fig. 20. Early Auntie Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 35 of 52 Fig. 21. Auntie Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 22. Screenshot of Auntie Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. Good Girl VR 36 of 52 Body Hair In Persian culture there are a lot of beauty practices expected from women. Refusing to follow them is not as much seen as an act of protest as a lack of caring. Some of the few fights I’ve had with my own mother have been about body hair or wearing eyeliner. She is also very relaxed compared to some women who run an intense full-face modification and body hair thread/wax/bleach/tweeze/laser regimen. In Teheran, it is common for women to get nose jobs, wear contacts, etc. I find it ironic that this level of modification is seen as beautiful when it comes to women, yet in food and nature the fresh and nature is so beloved. Body Hair: The Concept The Body Hair persona silently and sadly waxes off her body hair in an act bordering self-torture from her own internalized gender expectations. Larger than life CG hair removal and beauty accoutrements surrounds her, mimicking the daunting size of her taunting inner thoughts. When the hair is on the ground, she gathers the hair into a puddle and cries into it. After mourning the abject part of her rejected, she rises and collects herself by starting the makeup regimen. Painting her face white and lips red, she becomes hastily possessed with indoctrination into the practice ends with a knowing smile. Body Hair: The Look Sitting at the vanity, the Body Hair persona is wearing an exaggerated bodysuit of hair to elevate the daily practice to a ponderable performance. I bought extensions and glued sections to velcro that could be ripped off the bodysuit. Paint is used for the makeup to exaggerate the dress- up of it all. Her hair is in a bonnet and her nose is covered with bandages, an icon in the streets of Good Girl VR 37 of 52 Iran signifying one’s stature to receive a nose job. Inspiration taken from certain uncanny beauty looks of the performer Boy Child. Fig. 23. Body Hair Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 24. Body Hair Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 38 of 52 Fig. 25. Screenshot of Body Hair Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. Club Kid Like the Body Hair persona, the Club Kid look also represents a preening process, and in that sense represents artificial aesthetics of the queer scene. At queer club nights, it is often best to come with the look. Looking too normal, especially as a newcomer, will actually make it tougher to meet people because it is associated with heteronormativity. However, the club kid aesthetic can come with its own hierarchy. Yes, it is fun to be creative, but it is a lot of work. Club Kid: The Concept The Club Kid is getting ready to go out. Putting on music, she is mentally transported to her fantasy of ruling the club, but also can’t decide on what look will exactly communicate what she wants to convey. She still carries a confidence throughout the process, fueled by the music. Good Girl VR 39 of 52 Club Kid: The Look The Club Kid look is a literal throwback to club kid culture. Her look choices are meant to be gender bendy and loud. Styling makeup and hair here were under club queens Bebe Huxley and Love Bailey. Fig. 26. Club Kid Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 40 of 52 Fig. 27. Club Kid Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 28. Partial Screenshot of Club Kid Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. Good Girl VR 41 of 52 Queer Love The Queer Love persona represents the fantasy of natural beauty of crushing on a lover. The goal is that easy breezy pure love, where you be who you are without caring about what people think. It can be hard to be out in the open with your love when part of a culture that doesn’t traditionally approve. It can be hard to find love within an underground subculture without first fitting into the local queer community as referenced in the Club Kid scene. Queer Love: The Concept The queer lovers are on their bed-throne of a floral kingdom. They are literally loving in broad daylight. They are thriving, and the flowers are flourishing, they could lay there for hours. The lovers are both brown-skinned femmes. At a point- the Ghost Auntie persona appears grinding sugar over the couple, a ritual in Persian culture to do at weddings. This ideal family endorsement would be crucial to being able to fantasize comfortably with your lover without concern. They are surrounded by hearts filled with close-up POV footage, since every crack in a lover’s skin becomes meaningful. Queer Love: The Look To highlight the queer love as something so natural, the looks don’t go overboard on makeup or outfits. The clothes are plain but serene and the colors of flower petals. To literally draw the parallel, the lovers are wearing large floral temporary tattoos, with glitter. Their fingers are sprayed to look dip-dyed as a nod to lesbian intimacy. Good Girl VR 42 of 52 Fig. 29. Queer Love Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 30. Queer Love Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 43 of 52 Fig. 31. Screenshot of Queer Love Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. 3. Personas of Retreat The last two personas deal with coping mechanisms. One represents an internal retreat into thoughts and isolation and the other represents an external retreat into belonging. Both forgo one’s own body by falling into stasis. Both are therefore not sustainable. Workaholic Working provides a way to distance myself from the factors of my identity politics within my personal and public life. It is a retreat into myself where I can forget that I even have a body, and instead of being concerned about myself, I become concerned with the problems of the work. A finite project where I have agency and can decide or find solutions. Good Girl VR 44 of 52 Workaholic: The Concept Sitting on a bed on a tower of books, the Workaholic types and types away, debugging away and ignoring the errors. The longer she works, the more she covers herself with books until her head is under, yet the exposed arm is still trying to work unaware of the effects on her wellbeing. Workaholic: The Look The Workaholic look is wearing a nightgown with a blood stain that goes without noticing. It is the stain of her trauma that she is ignoring. Her makeup is as fragmented as her identity- muddling up her emotions and frazzling her mindset. Fig. 32. Workaholic Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 45 of 52 Fig. 33. Workaholic Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 34. Screenshot of Workaholic Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. Good Girl VR 46 of 52 Nature Whenever I feel confused about what I am doing, who I am trying to impress or follow or why, I try to retreat through an external escape as a coping mechanism. Typically, this means retreating to entertainment. I grew up on cartoons and toys and I do not feel between-identities when under the weight of cartoon nostalgia for a kid culture that I was unarguably a part of. These commodities do not care who I am. They perform for whoever wants to consume them, but the problem is that it is so consumerist and capitalist. Nowadays I am finding new belonging in nature itself. I like staring at the clouds, waves, stars, etc. and thinking about how I am a spec in this cosmos. Sadly, these externalizations of identity are temporary and do not address the specificities though they provide temporary relief. Nature: The Concept The Nature persona combines her natural state of retreating to nostalgic cute media with appreciating literal nature. She lies on a mountain stargazing as toys flow through the landscape and cartoons twinkle in the sky. Nature: The Look The Nature persona wears the same stained nightgown as the Workaholic, but they each deal with the metaphorical traumas in their own way. The makeup on the Nature persona is made up of primitive blocks since she is going back to the building blocks of her upbringing and of nature itself. Good Girl VR 47 of 52 Fig. 35. Nature Narrative Design, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Fig. 36. Nature Makeup/Wardrobe Mood, Good Girl Design Docs, Tonia Beglari, 2017. Good Girl VR 48 of 52 Fig. 37. Screenshot of Nature Final Render, Good Girl VR, Tonia Beglari, 2018. V. Technical Challenges of the Hybrid Image in Real Time Good Girl exercised my mind. I had think at a cross-section of mediums by incorporating a new one. As stated in my introduction, I want exhibiting and performing artists to see this as a use case for considering how VR could incorporate into their own practice. For those who are interested in taking a similar approach, here are some technical challenges that I faced and would beware of before taking a plunge. • Storyboarding: Developing a strategy for storyboarding in the round can be difficult. Avoid getting trapped in 2D or 180* thinking just because the storyboard frame. Multiple views might be necessary. Good Girl VR 49 of 52 • Pre-vis: An animatic storyboard is the easiest way to pre-vis if your composition communicates as you wish before investing in production. This can easily be done in Unity with primitive objects just to get a sense of how a frame feels. • Blocking for easy compositing: Measure all dimensions of sets (ex. camera height, distance of camera to furniture, and furniture). Ideally, 3d models could be made of scenes as points of reference or mattes when compositing. Otherwise much of your time will be spent guess and checking the placement of objects since you can’t tell the depth of the objects on the screen and will need to constantly check in the headset. • Shooting for easy editing: Different camera setups have their own advantages for different situations. The JAUNT One Camera allows you to upload the individual memory cards to the cloud to be run through their proprietary stitching algorithm. While it is great that the stitching is taken care of, ordering off the cloud can get expensive the higher the resolution required. This can be more than worth it for capturing environments or action happening across the 360* frame. Since Good Girl had singular personas on Green Screen backgrounds, it may have been a cheaper yet higher resolution solution to use two DSLR’s to shoot 3D footage within one frame and then composite those into the 360 CG environment. Jaunt Cloud offers H264 and ProRes downloads. The ProRes stitches take up a lot of space and require a really stable internet connection and patient tending too. • Building the CG Environment: Pre-rendered 3D components will need to be rendered stereo spherically to match the footage for compositing (equirectangular lat-long format with stereo packing top/bottom for each eye). We used Redshift Renderer in Maya because it is so fast and comes with built-in stereo spherical support. Mental Good Girl VR 50 of 52 Ray is slower and requires DomeMaster plug-in for spherical support. One problem is that Redshift is limited by dynamics. It relies on installing the open-vdb format (manually or using software like Soup) to be able to read the dynamics of Maya fluids, water, etc. which could be essential for vfx. • Compositing Live Action: We used Adobe After Effects which now natively includes Mettle Skybox materials for compositing our CG renders with our live Action footage. It has “Plane to Sphere” effect to place 2D stills into a stereoscopic environment, but the VR converter that lets you drag and drop things into place using After Effects 3D support only builds scenes with monoscopic output. • Rendering Hybrid Image: Since our personas ultimately needed to go to a game engine we needed H264 renders but at a large size for the stereo packing (3840x3840). Adobe can’t render H264 that big normally, so an extra step is needed to render to Animation JPEG Codec first, then use software like Handbrake to convert to H264 after the fact. • Realtime VR Integration: Unity natively supports playing to VR. There is a VR checkbox in Player settings, and the skybox can be a 360* video, but Good Girl VR needed different areas of the environment to play back different content, so we used the AV Pro plug in. AV Pro can handle stereo packing of video or transparency packing (top/bottom or left/right), but not both simultaneously. We could have made our own shader to process our own four quadrants packing and rendered the videos with left-eye, right-eye, left-alpha, and right-alpha. One thing to watch out for here would be how big the video is then (7680x7680) and how processing it into four could impact playback performance. Good Girl VR 51 of 52 • Spatialized Audio: AV Pro can pipe audio to a scriptable Audio Source. Since we wanted non-linear space with non-continuous audio behavior, we combined AV Pro’s Audio Output Script with our own custom scripting so that we could get imaginative audio building our own version of how audio works in the subconscious rather than based on regular spatial physics. This list is long- as should be expected when incorporating emerging technology with multiple other processes simultaneously. Sometimes the biggest challenge was the mental one. How hard is the process versus the payoff? Outside the Animation cubicles of our school there is a signed Space Jam poster. It makes me feel better about all of the wild tech problems we encountered because I know that at that time it must not have been easy to combine looney tunes with live action, while playing basketball and demanding amazing music. Yet, it has always been one of my favorite movies so I’m so glad they made it, and I’m out here making Good Girl. VI. Conclusion Good Girl VR functions as a speculative work imagining a world where VR and interactive technologies are accessible tools of creation, self-empowerment, and healing for intersectional oppression. I hope that the success of Good Girl VR will become its own self- fulfilling prophecy- where Good Girl becomes my proof of concept to further fund more works in collaboration with underrepresented artists, musicians, and community members to be able to give more people the temporary sense of creating their own worlds rather than being displaced by it. Good Girl VR 52 of 52 Works Cited Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. (Verso: 1970, p.11) Benjamin, Walter. “Critique of Violence”, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Ed. Dementz, Peter. New York: Schocken Books. (p.277-300). Butler, Judith. “Interpreting Nonviolence.” A Levan Annual Distinguished Lecture. USC Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles. 22 Jan. 2018. Lecture. Butler, J. (2006). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence / Judith Butler. London; New York: Verso. Lonsway, Brian. “Entertainment Capacity.” Making Leisure Work: Architecture and the Experience Economy. Routledge, 2013. Wadden, P., & Harris, Victoria Frenkel. (1998). Doubling and the Holotropic Urge: The Dialogical Rhetoric of Subjectivity in Robert Bly and Adrienne Rich, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Williams, Emily, "Threads of Identity: Marisol's Exploration of Self" (2013). HIM 1990-2015. 1795. http://stars.library.ucf.edu/honorstheses1990-2015/1795

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Creator Beglari, Tonia (author)

Core Title Good Girl VR: straddling installation art, performance art, and identity politics with a virtual environment

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 08/14/2018

Defense Date 08/14/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag identity politics,installation art,intersectionality,net art,OAI-PMH Harvest,performance art,virtual reality

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wixon, Dennis (committee chair), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member), Watson, Jeff (committee member)

Creator Email beglari@usc.edu,toniabeglari@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-70733

Unique identifier UC11672277

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Legacy Identifier etd-BeglariTon-6753.pdf

Dmrecord 70733

Document Type Thesis

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Rights Beglari, Tonia

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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