Part 1 & 2: Set up and Design your virtual identiy

Active Research Assignment: Virtual Worlds

The virtual world that I decided to be part of is Yoville through facebook. I tried to make my avatar look as close as I. Yoville is part of the Zynga Game Network and  according to Wikipedia is located in San Francisco California. It is an online virtual game, where players from all over the world can go on to play games earning money to spend on clothes, food, or to decorate your own apartment or house. The game is design to be played from Facebook, Myspace, or Tagged.

My virtual avatar is named Mimi by the entrance of the apartment.

Part 2:

1. Mimi is living in a apartment and for money she works in a factory.  She has to make money to buy clothes, furniture, a home, and any other things.  When I think about how I want her to live her life, I was thinking how I would live my life if i had my own apartment/studio and was able to work to buy my own furniture and stuff. Her character is lively, spirited, and very creative. I want to be able to decorate my apartment very cool, creative, and have crazy furniture that i know i wouldn't have in real life.

I have an icon that can make her dance, show expressions, and a bow where I can type to chat with others. I make money by visiting others by playing tick tack toe or I can go fishing, race cars, and sell what I have. When I signed up for Yoville I had to choose between a male or a girl avatar. Then once I had finished deciding I had given a variety of option of clothes, and hair styles to choose from. I tried to make her appear as close to my own appearance.  I liked the different choices of skin color and hair styles. When I was done with my appearance I was place in my own apartment. A girl, who seemed to appeared to be the guide, showed me through arrows around. I had a box of items stored, a list of friends below, events, a icon for the rest of the town etc.

My Digital life

I am woken in the morning by the music playing on my alarm clock radio, I get up holding my phone in my hand and check my texts, it might sound silly but its natural for me. I text on my way to get wash up and text on my way back to my room. After getting back from washing up I head to my computer and check my email. I check to see whether my teacher had sent us information for the days class, or if the class is canceled. While I get ready for school I turn on my tv to watch the news and to check on the weather. On my way to school I sometimes use my ipod to listen to music but I choose not too most of the time, because when I wear my earphones I feel alienated as appose to when I don't I know what goes around me.

I do love technology because it allows me to stay close to my long distant friends, families, allow me find locations when I'm lost, call for help, keep me sane when I wait on long boring lines, when I'm around annoying people I can play games on my phone or listen to music but I honestly can't keep up with how fast everything advances. Constantly companies are competing on who has the better coolest phones, computers, games, T.Vs! Its nuts, I honestly can't keep up, I am a poor college student who hasn't even paid for all of my books this semester. I had a nokia phone for 5 years until my friend convinced me to get a new one. Its not the coolest phone but its not thick and heavy. I try to keep myself up to date online but when it comes to my phone I just need a phone that allows me to call and tell time.

I have allowed technology, the digital media to manage my life. Over the summer I broke my phone and I felt out of place, I didn't know what to do with my time. I was able to keep in contact with my friends over the computer but when I went out if I was out and I wanted to text someone, what then? And what if my sister was using my computer? I realized that I didn't talk to my friends over the phone as much as I use to when I was in high school before texting was allowed. The only people in the my parents home that used the phone to talk were my parents. My parents use a lot more analog than I do. My parents call me to see how I'm doing, I would simply just text. We can't always rely on our technology especially art students, the more we put into the computer the less we work with paper, its important for students to know how to draw on paper as well as how to use the computer, we need both to succeed. We need a balance, we have to be digital as well as non-digital to function in the world.