Redefining The Real

Redefining The Real

James Curcio

Reality as fiction? Fiction as reality? In this day and age, it seems we need to re-evaluate what these things even mean. We have moved beyond post-modern ponderances of “the reality of the simulacra” (or copy) to something more immediate – are our relationships with individuals, conducted through electronic medium, any more or less valid than those that occur outside of those confines? Should we feel just as hurt if they die? Feel just as cheated if it turns out their death was merely a part of some elaborate game, or conversely, if real deaths are written off as part of a game of a more sinister kind?

One of the first articles we ran here on Alterati (Guising Along The Web) made reference to this distinction, at my request. A character in a virtual world (SecondLife, in this case) is approached by another. They talk briefly,and then, because of a hotspot that the characters happen to be standing near and an accidental mouseclick, one of the characters is giving the other a sensual body message. “Stay back you jerk!” the other screams, disengaging and then quickly leaving the location. Most likely, she will never speak to him again, and on some level, she feels, or plays at feeling invaded. What actually happened here? The event may be virtual, but the emotion is as real as any other. So then, to what extent are our emotions themselves learned games? How real is the ‘reality’ of Reality TV to the participants? Obviously these things raise more questions than we can answer.

Let’s not just deal in the abstract though. Allow me a moment to give you a first person account of something that may have been along these lines… Several years ago I was contacted by an individual referring to himself as Agent 222. Some of you may notice that this follows the idea of “evolutionary Agents” from ;Join My Cult!, as did he. Yet, he claimed, he had been using a very similar concept to the “Mother Hive Brain” himself, and had a growing clan in Argentina. We went back and forth from there for months, collaborated on many projects, including the Bedtime Stories With the AntiChrist Show #2 (his band submitted the guitar and vocal track playing under my ’ritual’ for Agent 156). Our initial back-and-forth even made it into Fallen Nation. He asked me to send updates, which he dutifully translated for his group down there.

Then a message appeared on an earlier incarnation of Frequency 23. Someone claiming to be his friend wanted to let all of Ray’s friend’s know that, while exploring underground tunnels of some kinds with several other members of the group, the area flooded and they all drowned.

This was obviously something of a shock. I experienced the same emotions anyone would experience when a unique acquaintance unexpectedly dies. After exploring the sites associated with the project more deeply (back then, there was one up in English which no longer appears to be active), I started to get a strange queasy feeling in my stomach. It seems that for weeks leading up to their death, they spoke of a ‘reckoning’ of sorts, and of making “the ultimate sacrifice.” Was my friend ‘Ray Khalidbahn’ a.k.a. ‘Agent 222′ creating a fictional drama to practice a ritual of death and rebirth, was he a fool kid, or another Jim Jones? Was it coincidence? After some processing on the matter, I put this outcome into Fallen Nation as well, either in homage to him, or simply as a record of the event, I am not entirely sure.

All the same, the rules of the story had to be upheld. That sub-plot had to resolve itself. Now am I playing “the game” too? Did I fictionalize a real event, or realize a fictional one? Fuck if I know.

The questions that these events bring up are seemingly endless. Had these individuals martyred themselves for real or in effigy as the culmination of a work of art? Did I really have a friend named Roy at all? How could any of us find out, not knowing the real names of these people, separated from us by thousands of miles? The only thing I knew was that bothering to find out, to really dig in and research this, would turn me into one of the crazies. I decided that I experienced what I experienced from him, and he was as real (or unreal) as anyone else we fool ourselves into thinking that we know. Take what you can from the experience, move on.

For my part, I’m all for integrating fiction and “real life” in new and original ways, and I think the surface has really only been scratched with that as a living, evolving art-form in many ways- but I couldn’t help feeling uneasy about the possibility that I was being ”tampered with.”

I didn’t like the feeling that the death of someone you develop a relationship with, even one just through the Internet (and something of a language barrier), could just be a plot point for someone. Suppose for a moment he was fictional… Did that make his death unreal?

The emotions were there. Where is the line?

Some might say that the line is in the intent. If someone knowingly intends duplicity, for instance developing a relationship as a part of a story, then it is a lie. Those who unknowingly play their games are being real. But that doesn’t hold up. Don’t we say the aware individual knows what he’s doing? What if the intentions of the former are genuinely attempting some sort of positive change, for instance through the “play acting” of a ritual or interactive theatrical performance, such as what the Foolish People do?

See, all of this raises many uncomfortable questions. They aren’t questions I can answer, but I do feel that there’s a real value in asking them, and exploring it. Not everything in life that is comfortable is good for us, and not everything uncomfortable is bad.

I have one final thought on this. If fictional reality can be swapped out for reality, the inverse is also true. This is something else I played with in Fallen Nation. The character Agent 506 tries to create an “alternate reality game” about a kid who gets locked up in a mental asylum on trumped up charges (of a sort), hoping that some fanatical gamer will be nuts enough to break the very real individual out of the very real mental asylum (thinking it’s just part of the game).

This, of course, was itself within a work of fiction, a play in three acts, after which everyone, even the dead, brush themselves off and prepare for another role. Rather than suggesting this as evidence of the “Dark Side of ARGs,” replace the words “fanatical gamer” with “fanatic,” and consider recent world events and tragedies. The War in Iraq. Katrina. Scientology and other mind control groups… How likely is it, do you think, that we are living inside Wag The Dog?

If the real is what we experience, then the real is what we collectively make it to be. It would seem that soldiers, police men, and criminals alike are playing a much higher stake and more ‘immersive’ game than any ARG players I have ever encountered, including the shifty, obsessive ones. Even in the social sciences, we often refer to cultural roles as ”games,” we talk about children establishing the rules, the boundaries, from those around them. From there we enter the world of grades, we enter the world of financial concern, yet these too are games- games which often yield results very different than what nature herself would yield. You ace the video editing final, but fail because you didn’t show for class four times and you get an automatic F if you miss more than three. You get straight F’s in Jazz Harmony ear training tests, and yet ace the class because your prof sees you as a talented soul who just won’t ever develop perfect pitch. (Both of these happened to me, obviously.) The world of office politics or drug smuggling, all games with the laws of nature often taking second chair to the game dynamics we humans impose. The winners are not determined by what is right, they aren’t even determined by what is real- they are determined, by definition, by the rules of the game. Sometimes, nature plays umpire. But other times, as I mentioned, she turns a blind eye.

Again I ask, where is that line?

What if there isn’t one at all…

(I will be exploring some of these questions soon with John Harrigan, the artistic director of Foolish People, in relation to their own explorations of the line between fiction and life.)

Editors note: If you are here in relation to the ‘conspiracy’, we also recommend reading this series when you are finished. There is a link to the next part at the bottom of each installment.