Exploration 5: Data Visualization Analysis

 

    For this exploration, I started by keeping a drawing journal in which I drew my gaming console for a week. So far, I used drawing to reflect on my gaming experience, but I have not yet focused on my gaming console – which is the vessel for my gaming – from an artistic lens. In my problem statement, I have emphasized my gaming console as apparatus from a new materialist perspective of the impact of non-human agency on my self -making. So, during the one week that I have kept drawing my gaming console, I have tried to analyze the ways in which I make kin with it. Even though my first intention was to look at my gaming console as a still life when drawing, I could not help but think about the video games it holds in its body. I cannot see it as still life, my gaming console is also an extension of my avatar selves. My self-making process is not merely abstract but physical because, in a way, the gaming console represents the physical consequences of how I embody avatars.

            Drawing my gaming console daily helped me analyze my interaction with each button and joy-con based on the games I play. While some avatars require just pressing one button, others require the usage of multiple buttons and the joy cons. The movements of each avatar are embodied in the buttons of the gaming console – and they are vessels for me to embody the avatars as well. The way I handle the gaming console is different each time I embody a different avatar – from the way I hold it to the way I keep pressing buttons and moving the joy-con. Accordingly, the way I was drawing my gaming console was different each day as well. I was not specifically thinking about avatars while drawing but I was rather more aware of how I was feeling mentally and physically in the process of drawing my gaming console. Focusing on my own bodily sensations rather than thinking about avatars while drawing helped me see the relationship between my body and my gaming console even better. My embodiment of different avatars happens in this relationship between my body and my gaming console and the drawings I did help me analyze this kinship.

            New materialism and affect theory are going to be the main areas I will explore in my action research project regarding my self-making through avatars. In this exploration, I tried exploring these areas through drawing my gaming console and the drawings became data for me to become visually aware of how I make meaning of the gaming console itself. To me, avatar self-making is not merely virtual but also very physical and its physicality includes the gaming console, my own body, and my drawing journal. And I am not sure if there should be a hierarchy between these three elements – my own body becomes just one of the elements and definitely not the most important.









 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Exploration 4 – Layered Analysis Layer 1: Code to Disassemble and Reassemble Layer 2: Inquiry Prose             My journal writings and notes in Layer 1 focused on dialogism and self-making through the avatars I am embodying in the video games I play. In looking at my gameplay with them, I documented some screenshots and I also looked at random gameplay YouTube videos about the video games I was playing. I chose to focus on three video games and three avatars. As a matter of fact, one of the avatars I have chosen to focus on is one that I have not played with, at least yet. The video game’s name is Celeste , and I learned about it from a gamer friend. I became fascinated with the story and the music; I played the game for a bit but did not want to continue playing because it seemed too hard. However, I did not stop engaging with it – I watched gameplay videos and reviews on YouTube and became obsessed with its soundtrack....
Read more

Exploration 6: Reciprocal-Reflexivity

                     For this final exploration, I have decided to reflect on one new action that I want to implement in my mini action research study. Since Exploration 1, I have looked at the different ways I could gather data from my ongoing gaming and artmaking practices. At first, I was unsure if action research would be the proper method for me to pursue because I did not see my ongoing practices of gaming and artmaking as “actions” – in the sense that requires an intentional change in action research. The further explorations I engaged in throughout the semester proved me wrong. My perspective towards my ongoing practices has changed, and I learned to look at them through a critical lens. To give an example, in Exploration 3: Narrative Inquiry, I re-visited a distant gaming memory back from my undergraduate years, and I re-interpreted it through comic-style drawings. Going back to that memory and using drawing to narrate it...
Read more