Nor is there one feminist way to conduct an ethnography, there are conflicting viewpoints on this issue, is striving for a distance between you and your participants the point or the necessarily the correct mode of action?

Feminist research is just starting to enter into the realm of the digital subject and digital identities for the last 30 years, but within those 30 years the major push for understanding digital subjects and the ways in which the digital effects the identity of the women was during the 90s as it coincided with the dot-com bubble.   Donna Harraway’s influential piece The Cyborg Manifesto (1991) was the first feminist text to address the ways in which technology shape human life.  Ending the duality of human vs technology, The Cyborg Manifesto takes feminist analysis into a third space of viewing, transgressing duality in all forms, and provides the beginning formation of a language to critically engage in the ways technology is ever present and part of our life, forever.  This text specifically is incredibly important to feminist researchers who are engaging in the questions of online identity.  Early feminist work trying to answer the question of “online identity” during the 90s focused primarily on text based communication, from the online communities of chat, message board forums, fan fiction culture, etc.  Feminist publication has primarily been focused on the text based age of identity performance (Harcourt, 1999) Or, when work is done in terms of female interactions with video games themselves, feminist research has primarily focused on representational politics and the ways in which female’s are overtly sexually objectified in video games (Storla, 2011, Kennedy, 2002) Another area feminist research has, in the past, been most interested in, is the ways in which female perform an identity within the realm of massively multiplayer online role playing games, such as World of Warcraft (Bessière et al, 2007).  My goal as a feminist researcher is to take the conversation to the next level and begin studying first person shooter(FPS) communities and the ways in which females find alternative pleasure within a rampant sexual harassment culture.

There is a variety of intertextual communication that happens within the culture sphere of FPS console communities.  Some of this intertextual communication happens merely visually and there hasn’t been a language to accurately describe moments that almost defy text based language.  Instances such as physical sexual harassment of the female gamer during game play, for example, is something only accurately described in video format.  This is due primarily to the techno-visual nature of the harassment for it takes on multiple forms.  How does a researcher accurately explain the emotional, physical, and degrading act of physical virtual sexual harassment in the material form of a researcher paper?  How is this experience accurately depicted so that the reader can begin to even get a glimpse of understanding of the physical and emotional toll of those being harassed?  Without the visual format of the harassment, how does the reader get that call to action and understand the institutional oppression of female gamers within this hyper-real space of performance?
When dealing with research problems revolving around identity, performance, and experience within the “digital” realm of online gamer communities, the material research format is not cohesive to the underlying principles of feminist ethnographies (Stacey, 1998).  Feminist ethnographies try to be transparent within their research process, reflexive of their own positioning during this process.  Yet, in the material format of feminist ethnographies, the structure of the paper is problematic and contradicts these core principles within feminist ethnographies.  The sections of feminist research paper force the researcher to create a linear narrative structure of the research process and findings: abstract, statement of research problem, literature review, methodology (or theory), data, analysis, conclusion.  This linear structure forces the researcher to not be fully transparent about the research process and offers little space for reflexivity.  It also assumes that the research conclusion and analysis is “the truth” of the lived experience of those studied as well as assumes that the reader will then fully understand the lived experience of the research that is being discussed through the eyes of the researcher.  This structure also assumes through the literature review that a variety of experiences can conclude to similar ends and because of this, the qualitative methodologies can then be quantified accurately through multiple experience.  Especially coming to the mode of thought from cyborg feminism, this research format is still stuck within a dualistic nature of researcher and participants, oppression and non-oppression, subjectivity and collective identity and digital and non digital.

I do not think abandoning the literature review is the answer to a digital interface of research papers.  It still can provide insights into past research and modes of application for the researcher engaging in unfamiliar practices and territories, as well as give the reader a brief historical look into the discourse revolving around the topic.  It also contributes further into a collective discussion of feminist issues and reaches out to the broad feminist community and allows for curious individuals to begin a dialogue of their own.  However, I am cautious and encourage other feminist researchers to think critically about the ways in which the literature review is structured, in terms of knowledge building, and the language used to summarize the texts they are referencing.  It is in my opinion to allow for the linking in of the full text article in which the researcher is referencing, so, if inclined, the reader can read the primary texts themselves and come to their own conclusion on what the particular author is trying to get across to the reader.  This also highlights the transparency within the research process as well as answer to the need for open access within academia.

The human species are cyborgs and we are transforming into a comfortable existence of digital identity and digital lived experiences.  I recognize the virtual as another form of reality an almost hyper-reality in which the modes of social relations are experienced in a greater context on multiple levels, layers, codes, communications, visual, textual, auditory, performativity and everything else still yet to be considered.  We can no longer separate the digital from the human (as if there was ever such a distinction), nor assume linearity of information is always the best choice for communicating research.  Especially in terms of our existence as digital subjects today as we are mediating vast amounts of information and layers of communication simultaneously.  This cultural shift of the immaterial and material modes of existence of the human species is more present today than in the 1990s and will continue to grow and become symbiotic in the future.  Feminist researchers need to understand the cultural needs of the cyborg, the need for transparency, information sharing and non linearity in order to address how the cyborg understands, plays with, codes and deconstructs information.

The next part of this paper will look at the choose your own non linear adventure paper I did located at i-m.co/victoriahford/interface.  Where it succeeds and where it fails and where I envision this format of research to develop into.

INTERFACE AS A FACE: THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE “DIGITAL” OTHER

For the research format experiment I chose to undertake the form of a hypertext choose your own adventure.  Looking at the graph above it becomes clear that the the non linearity of current research papers and practices were destabilized.  Even in terms of “endings” where there was no inner-linking into the website itself, there was still linking to information outside the confines of the website that was created allowing the reader to continue on their own research endeavors and expand on their own knowledge of the subject, if they so choose.  The links were bolded and striked through.  The reason for this, aesthetically, is because I wanted to make a comment on the current material research format of the paper, which cites the text in which they are referencing, but does not offer the article.  This form of citation provides the information only superficially and assumes that the reader will have the economic or accessibility to the journal papers they are referring  I wanted to highlight that aspect when I was citing a piece, but use them as a link to the actual article (if it was available online) or at least to the wikipedia article if no pdf of the source text could be found.  Traditionally this information would not have been accessible to the reader (the reason for the strike-through), but in hypertext it becomes available.

My research topic for this experiment was an analyses in the ways that the interface of first person shooter lobbies acted as a type of “face” in the Levinas sense, and could act as a moral guidance for the responsibility of the other.  Levinas argues in his text, that the individual subject can not come first, but the other must come first.  This is how the individual understands their own subjectivity through the other.  Using this as a theoretical lense, I tried to bring in the multiple layers in which this manifests itself in the digital.  There were multiple ways in which I could continue this rather broad topic, do I want to look at it politically, socially, apply a psychoanalysis lense to the further development of this topic?  Instead of focusing on merely one of these three areas of analysis, I decided to let the reader choose.  If they choose the political route they could have focused primarily on the military industrial complex, the complicated nature of violence and community and it can lead to the other areas as well.  Sociologically takes the reader into areas of “violence” as well as auto ethnographic short stories.

Of course, this means more information and work for the researcher themselves, but, if it was used as a way that users could attribute their own links and knowledge to the “paper” it would have been more beneficial as well as enhance the transparency of the research process and allow for the community in which I was studying, first person shooter communities, to create their own (even at times) contradictory understanding of their lived experiences.

I personally do not think that the paper was interactive enough.  Due to my own coding limitations and lack of understanding, I wasn’t able to make a fully interactive paper.  While the hypertext feel of it seems to harken back to text based adventures, in the future different levels of activity, perhaps in forms of small games, broader and more extensive choose your own adventure paper, would be a better fit for the format.  Especially since I am talking about first person shooters, video game identity, etc. it seems artificial to not have these elements within the paper itself.

Based on the topic, the hypertext choose-your-own-adventure paper will look different.  This is the point, some will call on more visual information, link into chat rooms themselves, forums, message boards.  Some may have the community involvement and others may be based solely on the work of the singular.  There is not one format the hypertext choose-your-own-adventure paper will take, welcome to the internet.

We also visited the newly discovered mass grave, 35,000 bodies were found in total.  A lot of those that would be in that grave would have been related to the villagers that CFI works with.  It was so sad.  Actually, that doesn’t even really describe it, how do you describe mass genocide?  To be put to death and your body left with no dignity.

The villagers who lived near by had a feeling that there might be a mass grave around there because when it would rain heavily, sometimes body parts (bones) would come up and wash into their village.  Wow.

The next day we left Siem Reap early to visit Phnom Kulen.  “Lychee Mountain.” it is also considered a scacred mountain in Cambodia, the birthplace of the Khmer empire where King Jayavarma II declared independence from Java in 804 a very long long time ago, I can still remember…You can read more about it on the wikipedia page here

It is gorgeous there. In the river, Chup Preah, a shrine of fertility was carved into the river bed. Lots of Shiva everywhere. It’s mindblowing that artwork and sculpture done in the sandstone on the river bed.

On the top of the mountain there is a huge reclining buddha.

There is also this magnificent waterfall that will make your heart stop and realize how beautiful the world is. I swam to it & almost passed out because of its beauty. I kid you not.

Tomorrow we get our work on with CFI to really go over the filming project. I have a lot of shot lists down, but we shall see.

I can’t wait to see Angkor Wat

I’ve used that one before

the understanding of something
I’ve never understood before
Makes me feel like I’m outside
just peaking through the door

Moonlit sonatas
And bottles of Wine
Beer and Frenzy
& a good old time
Summer is lonely
& school sucks
I just want to be pretentious
It’s all in my blood
Not that I’m better than anyone
I just understand things in my world
Of course I’ll let you in

And I facilitate,
What I don’t know great
As we concentrate
Failing to hesitate

Whispering my emotions
Flooding them oceans
Understanding little about why
I’m floating and one minute
I’m falling because she’s calling
Telling me now that I am not allowed
Those pillow side fears
Silly tears
As I take it all in
This has been my sin
Preaching these words
I could do no wrong
Practicing the slurs
Didn’t you heard
That bitches on my dick
Fornicate with their once dead masters
Always inside they share
That light about what they wish could
Have been right
Yet here we are
Knowing little and nothing
Fidgeting
Forgetting those whispers
Snobbish bitch

There is no room on this bed not for you
not for me
It has been evaded by the kingdom
The animals, they run this house

Our biggest fear is that in our age
We will repeat the same mistakes as our parents
Over protection can lead to mistakes
and we make mistakes
And pray for the army to march in

A sigh of relief

I’ll always make you smile

And you’ll drive me crazy
All these heels have been broken

Those hills we will be walking

If only you knew  all those journals
Contained pages upon pages of my love for you

I lived a large part of my life in the state & I have to say it was wonderful closure and reopened a longing to return. We stayed in a small town outside of Newport called “Lincoln City”, staying at the Gleneden Beach WorldMart with Thomas’ family. It was an amazing week at that beach town.

1. I got so much sleep in.
2. We all went on amazing adventures, from eating so much cheese at Tillamook, to hiking to TWO different waterfalls, visiting lighthouses…It was a blast.
3. Going Crabbing. Okay. Crabbing is amazing. I got so many Crabs. I might need medication.
4. Got an awesome Tan
5. Hot tubbing
6. Great Food
7. Amazing company
8. Settlers of Catan
9. GOT TO SEE MY BROTHER. Who i haven’t seen in like 67 years. So now my life is complete.

Below are pictures. Enjoy the adventure.

This is what brought me home. Alone, young wanderer,
my days on the road.
A banjo, I can not play and a dog that does not obey
I am brought here.
You whispered
I was brought here

My handwriting is not worthy of historical documentation
But we continue to turn the pages
You ask me to be your wife
and I’m taken a back.
How could You be so selfish?
When our Brothers and Sisters don’t share the same luxury.
And Yes, this is more important than love, because blood runs thicker than water and we begin to wander.

You whispered.

I was brought here.

WE DO NOT FUCK ON VIDEO.  We would at least like to get paid if we did.

Also prepare for this site to undergo routine maintenance. This minimalism is killing me.  It is time FOR REALS to have some color in here. This lack of color stuff is so god damn white-washing it makes me sick.

I have Yoga today. I’ve become addicted to Kundalini. Seriously. Also so far I’ve lost 14 Pounds. That’s a lot of  poundage.  I can’t wait to begin strength training. Still got to shed some of these poundages though.

Until next time.

Looking at this now, narcissim is all I was aiming for. My thoughts are no more important than anyone else, but yet I hold my opinions as the ultimate truth, that keeps getting fucked with, bent to, and warped or “evolved” (I hear it’s the new way to describe oneself) into other truths.  And sometimes truths once held, then cast out, come back to you.  They tell me, hey it’s time to come back to the dark side.

Why yes Lord Vader, I never strayed.

The devolution begins.

But stray I did.  I left this website to rot in the graveyard of unforgotten web domains, taking up space on the internet and not really contributing to much of anything.

This is about to change.  I am tired of paying for something I don’t use.  My intellectual pursuits of half-hearted academia need to be documented.  My personal, even if trivial, experiences must be written down.  While I do keep handwritten journals (And so many too!) I find it easier and faster to type down my thoughts then hand write.  Often, my hand writing is disjointed (even more so than my type!) and that is saying a lot.  I barely write in English when I hand write. Such a depressing thought, especially considering that English is  the only language I speak.

Pathetic for a so called “Global” citizen. Le sigh.

I can’t even speak the language of science.  Sometimes I feel like a lost cause.

While my self deprecation continues, I must retaliate with some good news.

I’m CalArts bound in September.  I’ll be getting my MA in Aesthetics and Politics and there is a big part of me that wonders why I got into such  great school. It makes me wonder how I am so lucky.  Then I realize I fucked up a lot. But this has all led up to this moment.  Satnam.
Speaking of Satnam, I have been taking Kundalini Yoga and this has helped me quite drastically develop into the so-called spiritual being that I am.  Our instructor tells us to connect with our version of God.

This makes my head swirl. Not just with the rather mundane question of “What is God.” More like. “Fuck, does it make me less of a person because I do not have my ‘version’ of this  ‘God’.”

All the same, take me away brain.

Would life be simpler if I could just lean and intrust all my problems into something. Whether it be the Unified String Theory, Buddha, God…what have you…?

I don’t even like the idea that I live on forever through my thoughts that are passed on from one individual to the next.  That seems narcissistic and rather self serving which  just isn’t my thing.

What is the purpose of this blog post? Nothing. It is just a public rambling of my experiences and thoughts. I am digging this.  I like sharing this kind of stuff with strangers. It makes us seem less strange.