Dopplegangar

The extension of the self is often nearly as complex as the individual’s understanding of his or her own psychological makeup. When one considers the self he or she is determining his or her own perception of that interminably morphing and amorphous construction. There is very little empirical evidence to warrant a unified summation or representation that conforms to concrete thought, but rather a skewed and subjective synthesis more indicative of the meta-cognitive processes. In other words, it is the method in which the individual reaches the conclusion of the self and not the conclusion itself that is suggestive. The authority of this meta-cognitive approach is then further propagated when the understanding of the self manifests itself outside of itself, within the social and demonstrative spheres. Or, as Lacan would suggest,
This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infant stage… would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other…
It is only when the self is placed in consequence to the other that its meaning is made in a legitimate and substantive way. This manifestation of the self can present itself in multiple ways, but cyberculture has given this representation a conduit in which to not simply exist, but to evolve as a character in its own right. Ones avatar goes beyond the static representation permissible in the pre-cyberculture age precisely because the avatar is nearly as malleable as the thing that it represents. A self-portrait is unchanging (unless you’re Dorian Gray) and representative only of a snapshot in time whereas an avatar is a lucid reproduction of the I, perhaps more similar to a moving picture than to a photograph. With this theory in mind the critique and understanding of ones avatar then becomes a dialectical projection that has the capability of references many points in time in a web like relationship. It’s no longer a singular manifestation that the critique is examining, but rather a montage that makes its meaning through the “other” that Lacan suggests.
In realizing my own avatar, I had much difficulty getting beyond the daunting theoretical and meta-cognitive significance of doing such. None of the available templates on the internet captured what I would imagine my avatar to be. As humans we have a natural diversion to “pigeon holing” ourselves into a typecast for fear of being misrepresented and I am far from an exception to that thought. I finally decided to create an avatar using the most base and simplistic template that I could find, which happened to be on the website doppleme.com (the irony did not escape me). The avatar that I created was the one in which I believe best represents my own version of the ever changing nature that an avatar can posess. I chose to create a “dopple”(gänger) ex nihlo; a representation of me as tabula rosa that lends itself to an identity easily changed and manipulated. The dopple is less representative of a snapshot in time, and more similar to a prime point on a graph in which change can be easily plotted and analyzed.