Manifesto!!

The key objective or ‘mission statement’ of our project is to show how one can loose themselves in the virtual world in the pursuit of perfection.

This developed from our ongoing ‘blonde blogs’ which gave us an insight into how accessible, extreme, and possibly unsafe the internet can be. We found that just by being ‘blonde’ we are subject able to a very appearance driven side of the WWW that can be very consuming.

With this objective in mind, we thought of the best possible ways in which this could be shown. We decided after research, that the virtual game ‘Secondlife’ was a very popular example of how some modern day people are leading ‘unreal’ lives as a completely different person or the person they wish they were.

An eye opener of this fact was a programme on Channel 4 regarding a middle aged man who lived his life as his ‘Secondlife’ character ‘Chris’. As a result of this obsessive playing, his marriage and social life failed. The worrying reality was that he actually wanted to be ‘Chris’ and had no regrets. This led him to spiral out of control and over time was emotionally and physically affected by his life as ‘Chris’.
As ‘Chris’ he would date, shop, buy houses, travel and even have sexual intercourse with other virtual characters. This developed into spending 17 hours a day on ‘Secondlife’ living as the virtual character and getting satisfaction in doing so.

Another purpose in developing this idea was the research into adverts on the internet. We were shocked with the quantity of image improving advertisements; for instance, MYA, a breast enlargement company often has moving pop ups, which has quotes such as: 'It's the best thing i ever did, ever,' and 'Make Yourself Amasing.' on the popular social networking site, Facebook, which is accessible to anyone, aged 14-100, not the best image to be showing a 14 year old girl with low confidence. Although we were concerned about how accessible these were, we were also amused by them and decided to take a more comical approach in our piece.
The virtual world advertises that anything is possible. Appearance is changeable, age can be a lie, the weather can be what you want it to be. We focused on using this comical advertising in our piece to give the audience an insight into what they too can be apart off. The advert became a way of the audience seeing one girl's tale and how they could become just like her, by taking on this idea, of advertising across the internet we could create an ironic advert, with a giant warning for the obsession the internet brings.

Due to this obsessive and overwhelming research, we were fascinated with how a game could result in such obsession. We decided to join second life as our own ‘Light blonde’ and ‘Dark blonde’ personas and create a story of how one girl’s innocent game can turn into an obsessive pursuit for perfection….

The characters were key in symbolising are two contrasting views of for and against the internet.
AmyG Thor is our innocent, ‘just like you’ character. We created AmyG as a brunette, ‘normal’ young lady. The image was not aiming to be untrue but to actually be very real. The thought process of this was that we are aiming to relate with the audience who may be innocently joining the game unaware that the appearance of their character has such an impact on their gaming experience.
We are then introduced Elle Bernst, who is the virtual representation of the ‘ideal’ beauty.
Elle has large breasts, small waist, and blonde long hair. She is also a veteran of ‘secondlife’ and takes great pleasure in leading AmyG through her beginning stages of her transformation. We wanted the audience to question if this representation is actually true of her player or not.
Our key aim was too show how AmyG’s transformation from an innocent ‘true to life character,’ evolves into a false representation of what she wishes to look like, her own idea of perfection that comes in the form of Elle. The purpose was to then show this transformation become more extreme. Elle encourages AmyG to show how simple it can be to become more beautiful and teaches her what to do.
We then see AmyG with new blonde hair and then the extreme of huge breasts, her image of perfection.

To explore the real and unreal we wanted to show the audience how realistic the game can be and how AmyG becomes more and more consumed by the ‘Secondlife’ world. The graphic worlds within 'secondlife' helped us in our story. They allow our character to visit London, New York, and Paris. This consequently fuses together the fantasy of a game, with the reality of real life. This gives the user a sense of living their chosen persona and removes the awareness of ‘playing’ a game, which is regularly felt in other games.
For AmyG Thor and her player, ‘Secondlife’ feels and becomes very real and reinforce our ‘mission’ of showing how one can loose themselves in virtually.

The last scene was the end of the transformation. We wanted the audience to see AmyG gain her physical ideal and loose her previous self. We felt that making AmyG want to change more about herself such as her breast size, reinforced our aim of being consumed by the persona. She couldn’t stop wanting to improve herself. The irony is that, with the help of Elle we wanted AmyG to go to the extreme and once she becomes her idea of perfection we wanted to show how it then reflects in her actions.
Elle wants to go dancing, however, AmyG pole-dances. She transforms into an overtly sexual persona which is in complete contrast to her players true self at the beginning.
We wanted Elle to symbolise perfection for both AmyG, but also the audience. We wanted her role in the piece to fairly disturbing and damaging to the character of AmyG who symbolises ‘the innocent player’.
To reinforce this objective, the final scene was key to achieve our ‘mission’ We wanted Ell….to observe AmyG, much like a master watching their apprentice. AmyG, while pole dancing then comments on how ‘she’s never felt so good’. We wanted this statement to emphasize the complete transformation into what she believes she want to be, a blonde, big breasted pole dancer. The player in our story is seen to have lost themselves to the persona of AmyG Thor. We wanted to make the point that escapism is fine, but how far is too far in the pursuit of perfection in the virtual world, instead of trying to live your life in the real world. Nobodys perfect, and thats the way it should be.