A Historiography of virtual worlds: Thinking through those things that remain (original) (raw)

Abstract

This paper will return to research previously undertaken by myself within ‘early’ virtual worlds at the turn of this century - even though many of these worlds are still in existence and in the light of questioning any form of teleological evolution. I will engage with material gleaned during such research, which is mainly comprised of screenshots, for at this time, it was the screenshot that was my only means of ‘documenting’ my travels ( although I will be questioning any assumption of their evidentiary status). I will ask how this visual material worked with, and against, other imaginary constitutions of the virtual world that were in play during this period (Damer 1997). I will also critically consider how I should re-constitute them in current writing: are they now artefacts, passive things that speak of the past, or active agents in the ongoing historiographic marking up of these worlds? In doing so I aim to acknowledge the work of those who have explored virtual worlds from a cyber--ethnographic perspective to recognise their invested participation in the co-creation of these media environments as worlds. Celia Pearce, for instance, speaks of her discoveries from the situated positions of researcher and through her avatar-identity of Artemesia (Celia Pearce and Artemesia, 2009). However, I extend upon (and critique) such work by drawing on the approach of media archaeologists such as Erkki Huhtamo (1997) and Thomas Elsaesser (1998, 2006) to develop a method alert to material processes and the historical constitution of these media environments as worlds. I argue this approach can elucidate what might have been missed, suppressed or occluded in the marking up of these ‘worlds’ by researchers and what might be said of the ‘events’ this ‘research material’ seeks to capture when they occurred on virtual terrain that has since been modified and even erased.

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