Lotte - Draft Thesis Outline

Lotte - 1st Draft Thesis Outline

General introduction:

Identity and sexuality are the major subjects in my work. More specifically I am interested in the way we view and shape our sexual identity through mediated spaces. I look at these spaces through different lenses, to create a distance from its explicit content, to re-contextualise it. The digital space as a space/place for sexual encounters has been the main focus of my work for the past years.

My interested in these subjects started with webcam site’s like chaturbate.com and myfreecams.com. These are website where webcam-models earn money by performing (sexual) acts. Visitor’s can tip them in ‘tokens’, which are converted to dollars. In my research and work I mainly focus on cis female performers and cis male spectators and moderators. Moderators are people that keep a chatroom ‘clean’, it’s a form of free labor, in return for private shows and/or ‘friendships’ with the performers. I emphasise the word friendship here because it is seen as a medium of exchange. During my research I came across performers that work from home (e.g. their own bedroom, living room, etc.) and performers that work for and from webcam studio’s. Cam studio’s are company’s that hire webcam models to work for them. They provide a safe environment and ‘sets’, colourful rooms set up with lighting, a webcam, a keyboard and a mouse, a screen and a high speed internet connection, from where the cam models can work. Sometimes theses companies also provide hairdressers and make-up artist. Most of these companies are situated in Bulgaria, Romania and Russia. The rooms that are created within these studio’s really intrigue me. A lot of rooms have names like ‘Los Angeles’, ’Hollywood’ and other names referring to the western world which probably sounds attractive to work in. The rooms are filled with kitsch and cliché ideas of what richdom looks like. They are in themselves liminal spaces, almost like you step into a virtual reality box. A room created just to exist in an online digital setting, for the spectator not one to be experienced offline or unconnected. Sometimes they are even provided with a green screen. At the same time these spaces are corporeal, they hide things in the corners that the webcam can’t reach, sometimes they even hide an ‘operator’; a person, often a guy, present in the corner of the room talking as if they were the webcam model. They also translate requests to the models and moderate the chatrooms.

Introduction 


1. Background:

The internet changed the way we have sexual encounters. Webcam website’s make a gross 2 billion dollars out of the 5 billion dollar porn industry. . Web-camming creates a new form of intimacy. It’s not a traditionals sex job, not a relationship but rather something within that. For this thesis I look at this online space as a liminal space and compare and draw parallels between these digital spaces and the corporeal spaces. In what way does the liminal digital world shape narratives that explore our sexuality and intimacy? What inhabits these spaces, how are they represented? What forms of intimacy arises from them?
 



2. Thesis Statement:

The representation of corporeality create new forms of intimacy and sexuality. Engaging in online sex asks for us evoking a body (Waskul 2005). This is done through webcam images but also through typed words, speech and other forms. This online digital space also trickles down into the corporeal world. It determines the condition of these spaces. What relationships does this mediated form of representation create and what do the spaces they are set in tell us? 


Chapter 1 Architecture

Offline

Home / Studio
( close reading maybe?) * Space
What do these spaces say without the digital translation and context of a website.

* decorations
* Personal Belongings

Online

Home / Studio
* Profiles
* Chatboxes (automated messages & gifs e.d.)

Chapter 2 Moderating

Home / Studio

The division between moderators.. Moderators who work as fans for the girls who work at home. Moderators who work in direct contact with the models who work from a cam-studio, sometimes even in the same space, also double function as a translator.

Chapter 3 Narratives of online encounters.

“The internet is a natural environment for liminality and ekstasis, a place where self and society must be made to exist in a process where both are translated into the convention of the medium.” (Waskul 2005)


• What are specific traits of digital spaces for sexual encounter? How do these attributes exist online? 

• In what way does the liminal digital world shape narratives that explore our sexuality and intimacy?

• The digital world one that is eminently suitable for exploring our sexuality because of it’s liminal qualities.

Sources

Sites Used myfreecams.com chaturbate.com ambercutieforum.com 1 The money generated by cam sites is hundreds of millions of dollars at least, and possibly upwards of $2 billion annually, according to industry insiders and analysts surveyed by Newsweek. 2 "They’re defining a new kind of intimacy. It’s not traditional sex work, not a relationship, but something in between.” The Purchase of Intimacy, Viviana Zelizer,  3 Waskul (2005)The looking glass