Lag Limbo...

Here is my disembodied avatar form trying to manifest itself in a location that resembles some sort of waterfront cemetary.

I tried to log into Second Life today and the sluggish bandwidth available to me in IRL (In Real Life) limited the scope and scale of my usual telepresent agency. Being unformed and unable to move is actually a process that many avatars unfortunately have to cope with in Second Life.

However, being lagged down in liminal limbo is not really an obstacle to my academic research.

As a matter of fact, I am very curious to note what happens when an avatar cannot be properly embodied in a realtime virtual world such as Second Life. Does the obvious immobility and etheric nature of my avatar form more accurately reveal (and represent) the essense of fluctuating levels of telepresence ca. 2008?

This temporal state of being somewhere in-between the dimensions of "here" and "not-here" has been discussed recently with regards to the sporadic agency-state commonly known as AFK (away from keyboard).

In my specific case, I felt for a few minutes in-world as if I was actually AFA (away from agency) since I was trying desperately to interact with the virtual world but without much (perceivable) luck.

I guess it was not too much of a big deal to be denied a sense of immediate agency since this current situation also reflects my present state of mind - waiting...waiting...waiting...

I am waiting for interviews to happen...maybe I will finally score my first interview in a few days with Jeffrey Ventrella on the subject of avatar body communication/language.

I have asked many other interview subjects and hopefully, I can schedule some interviews with them very soon but for now, I wait....

Somehow, I managed to teleport my avatar to another location...

....and wait....


....and wait....


...and wait....at least I have found a formal interviewing area to wait in...



...even after waiting several minutes in Second Life, my cached memory was still unable to detect exactly where the interview room was....sigh!