Knowledge Bank

A recent and growing branch of media studies would be a critical approach to video games. Advancing technologies have fostered the developments of 3D virtual worlds, and within those worlds, virtual selves. People began to cultivate a presence on the internet over a spectrum of mediums. What is hard about the virtual self is there doesn't seem to be one consensus on how to define it in relation to our actualized selves. Is it an extension of our identity? Is it a form of self-expression? Is it a new identity entirely? I plan to examine the virtual self in the context of a unique musical online presence: the band the Gorillaz. The Gorillaz is a rare virtual band comprised of four original animated characters. They are the sort of virtual selves I would consider as new identities entirely, even if inspired by certain traits of their creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. We will spend much time examining the Gorillaz's presence as a band on the internet, especially in referral to Henry Jenkin's work in convergence culture. I will then examine the virtual self and will refer to the work done by William Echard on virtuality. In his article "Sensible Virtual Selves: Bodies, Instruments and the Becoming-concrete of Music," Echard uses Deleuze's "theory of virtuality as a starting point for rethinking music, instrument and body." Which begs the question, what is a virtual body, if not the avatar? The avatar is a virtual body that occupies the 3D virtual worlds, and depending on the program, may have the ability to interact with other users in this virtual world via avatar. Much of the literature on avatars assumes the avatar interacts solely with other avatars in their own 3D virtual space. But within the context of the Gorillaz, this assumption fails: The Gorillaz's avatars are occupying our personal virtual spaces: our Instagram feeds, our reddits, our Spotifys, places where even we do not have the advantage of a virtual physical presence by avatar. How, then, do we read these avatars' interactions with fans who do not have a virtual body themselves? To further complicate this conversation, I would like to compare the relationships developed through, or maybe by, avatars to the concept of the parasocial, or single sided, relationship. But it is here with the bodiless fans where I would say it is more useful to consider the virtual self an extension of the actual (physical) self. By that logic, though, it seems the only thing preventing a virtual extension of self becoming its own unit would be the possession of or lack of a (virtual) body. Here we might stumble into coming full circle by realizing the parallel role of a body actualizing a virtual presence online and, as Echard points out, in music. And it is here that the Gorillaz live.