Figures 7-8: Employees in Belgium (left) and in Slovenia (right) watching the virtual protest, (IBM SL Protest Organization, 2007).
When the protest came to an end, 550 IBM employers had signed the online petition (Against outsource from IBM to AT&T) and 1853 avatars had participated at the virtual demonstration. Unlike the real life demonstrations, where protest organisers and
authorities always end up disputing the number of participants, in the computerised world everything is monitored and as such measurable and clear. Here anything can be expressed in numbers and then converted in data so that it can be analysed in detail. As Bill Wasik argues, “in viral culture, we are all driven by the rating, the numbers, the Internet equivalent of the box-office gross” (Wasik, 2009, p. 15). In this way, activities and behaviours can be transformed into statistics and thus be “objectified” for different purposes. In the case of the IBM protest, the record of more than 1800 people opposing the company (and their live broadcast online) cannot but have strongly affected the final outcome. Although many of the protesters chose to keep their real life identity secret, there was no doubt that behind each one of those avatars there was a real person who wished to join the crowd and support the common cause.
4.5.2 The Kiss Artwork Demonstration: a Virtual Demonstration Triggered by an Incident in Second Life
The IBM Global Protest may have been the first case that transcended the limit between physical and virtual demonstration; however protests referring to incidents within Second Life have been occurring almost from the beginning of the “world”. An
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interesting example is a protest against Linden Lab for the censorship of an artwork. On June 23, 2010, Second Life celebrated its seventh year of operation and, as in previous years, an official anniversary party [SL7B] was organised by the company, Linden Lab.
Resident volunteers along with the company’s designers created a region especially for this occasion, and artists, designers and residents were asked to submit artworks that would surround the events. When the installation titled "Susa Bubble", made by artist Rose Borchovski (Saskia Boddeke in real life), was rejected by Linden Lab for alleged nude content of an image called “The Kiss” (fig.9), a number of protesters gathered in Borchovski’ s land in Second Life to demonstrate against the censorship of the work and support the artist. Linden Lab never gave in to the protesters’ demands, and "Susa Bubble" was never set up at the party grounds (it is now hosted at the University of Western Australia Second Life region).
Figure 9: The “Susa Bubble” installation, (pj_trenton, 2010).
Soon after the incident, a number of Second Life residents were organised and assembled on to Borchovski’ s land to rally against "Thought Police" (fig.10-1). They also created signs, t-shirts and other objects to dress their avatars and liven up their protest. After a while the case crossed the boundaries of Second Life world by
appearing in multiple blogs and electronic magazines and opened up the discussion on the freedom of artistic creativity within virtual worlds and cyberspace in general.
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“The worst part of censorship is not that which is censored, but the climate of self-censorship it imposes on all artists. Art is about having a voice. Art is about thinking differently and about thinking from fresh perspectives. When artists are not allowed to have a voice, culture is not allowed to progress.” Rose Borchovski (Cremorne, 2010) The artist blames Linden Lab for keeping a safe and sterile environment within Second Life that gives no space for expression and critical thinking. She describes the figures of the installation more as sexless creatures and caricatures telling a story, rather than a display of naked human bodies. The point, as she argues, was not to make them look real, but to create these symbolic forms that would tell a story4. Among the supporters of the action was the British film director Peter Greenaway. Greenaway is a Second Life player himself, and has incorporated the imagery of avatars and Second Life in pieces of his own art. In fact he has collaborated with Rose Borchovski to create a movie filmed in Second Life, which he incorporated into his theatrical production "Blue Planet" (Au, 2010). Greenaway signed a statement directed at Courtney Linden, the company staffer who helps manage the SL7B, and passed it around in Second Life through Rose
Borchovski. He sees Second Life and the creative activity that takes place there as a continuation of the physical world and therefore he asks for sensitivity on the part of the company:
“Whatever else you think you may be doing with Second Life, you have created a very sophisticated tool that combines traditions of painting with cinema and the graphic arts in present tense terms that permits visual expression of language like never before. Do not underestimate what you have created - but to remain creditable you simply cannot enforce reactionary hypocritical standards that have been so discredited over the last five hundred years.” Peter Greenaway (Au, 2010).
The overall mobilisation however did not succeed in affecting Linden Lab’s perspective on the subject. The company gave out a response, via its community manager, that
4 “The story of Susa is a sweet but savage story, told in image and text, sound and installation. It is about our dark inside, but also shows how vulnerable and lonely we all can be. My art shows a naked body, but it is not about nudity or sex.” (Rose Borchovski in Cremorne, 2010)
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denoted the persistence to its initial positions, simply referring to the terms of use for the specific region5.
Figures 10-1: The “kiss” demonstration. (Left: Au, 2010, right: SaveMe Oh, 2010) Apparently within a virtual world a group of avatars can oppose to a multinational company within the world, but they cannot fight its constitutive rules themselves. In the case of “The Kiss” artwork, Linden Lab, which constitutes a much smaller scale
company than IBM, did not show any will to change its plans and positions despite the demonstrations. The Second Life Terms of Use are here presented as fixed and non-negotiable, the ultimate starting point of the world. In a way the company undertakes the role of a god-like persona, a superpower that has set up the order and the general rules for its operation and will not negotiate on them. Therefore in an artificial world it is the legal framework and not the ground that provides the foundation for anything to be built. The terms of use appear to provide a steady, non-negotiable ground. Within Second Life the power of the [avatar] crowd can hardly affect the interior established order.