Adventures of Identity: From the Double to the Avatar

Recent developments in image-making techniques have resulted in a blurring of the threshold between the image world and the real world. Immersive and interactive virtual environments elicit in the perceiver a strong feeling of being incorporated into an autonomous world. Such incorporation can be conveyed by the “avatar”, a digital proxy through which the subject interacts with synthetic objects or other avatars. By convening scholars from different disciplines, the colloquium aims to critically address these multifarious issues, discussing the problematic and controversial status of the avatar, which is in urgent need of definition.