UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Transcoded Identities: Identification in Games and Play Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0394m0xb Author Juliano, Linzi Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Transcoded Identities: Identification in Games and Play A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theater and Performance Studies By Linzi Michel Juliano 2015 © Copyright by Linzi Michel Juliano 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Transcoded Identities: Identification in Games and Play By Linzi Michel Juliano Doctor of Philosophy in Theater and Performance Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Sue-Ellen Case, Chair This work foregrounds how technologies create and emerge from sociocultural, economic and political discourses. My use of transcode, a term introduced by the semiotician A.J. Greimas and carried into the digital realm by Lev Manovich, refers to how cultural elements such as assumptions, biases, priorities emerge within programming code and software. It demonstrates how cultural norms persist across different mediums and posits that, in many ways, the capacity to be flexible defines cultural ideologies. At the software level, programming languages work like performative speech: grammar which produces effects. When cast as speech, coming from a body (or bodies) instead of hardware, information structures can be perceived as acting within regimes of corporeality; when cast as software, information structures demonstrate and advertise the capabilities of hardware. Although often aligned with veracity and stability in its proximity to (computer) science, software is not culturally neutral. Building on this this foundation, my dissertation challenges the notion of democratic virtual space by showing how normative—limiting and limited—categories of identity continue to emerge in media despite methodologies like keyword tagging and crowd- ii sourcing and customizable avatars in videogames. Foregrounding lived identity is necessary to analyze media architectures and representations, such as videogames, software structures, and online forums. As one example, avatar customization sequences in videogames (and some social media sites), conflate identity with visuality and notions of a stable self. This flattens the lived experience of racialization, for example, and the nuances associated with affiliation and identification to mere taxonomies of color. A wide range of critical theories such as performativity and transnationalism, globalization, digital theory and construction, sexuality and erotics, cultural difference, gender codes/coding, and intellectual property persist across this work. I bring together work by Ian Bogost and Diana Taylor, which respectively introduce concepts of procedural rhetoric and vulnerable archiving processes subject to external influence. In so doing, I show that social identifications are inextricable from sites investigated here, including interactive media, site- specific installations, and live performance. iii The dissertation of Linzi Michel Juliano is approved. Rachel C. Lee Sean Metzger Sue-Ellen Case, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Transcoded Identities 11 Chapter 2: The Data Body: Affect in Biomedia 51 Chapter 3: # Agency: Flickering Signifiers and the Limits of a Tag 88 Chapter 4: Disidentification by Default: Queer Games, Queer Play 123 Bibliography 166 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am humbled by the talent, wisdom, support, and generosity of my committee. Rachel C. Lee has supported my work from the beginning, adding insight, bringing me into her graduate student research group, and lending me professional advice. Her passion and fiery intellectualism has been contagious and inspiring. Carol Sorgenfrei, teacher of everything from theories of transgression to intercultural performance to grammar, has also been a wonderful ally to have along my research and writing. I am very grateful to have taken courses with her before she was granted her deserved emeritus status. Sean Metzger was a late addition to my committee, but made up for any lost time with his thorough feedback on my work. Ramesh Srinivasan also provided useful insight and professional mentorship. Parts of chapter 3 are based on a publication co-authored with Ramesh (“Tagging It: Considering How Ontologies Limit the Reading of Identity.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 15.6 (2012): 615–627.), in which he guided me through the publication process, added material on Linnean taxonomies and helped with sign-posting. Courtney B. Ryan has been by my side though this process: a coach, a sounding board, a friend. Lindsay Brandon Hunter, with whom I completed my Master’s program at New York University, has surpassed any and all expectations that should befit a colleague and friend. Indeed, the collective of students, graduates, and administration from Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA has truly made my program my “home” for the past six years: Julian Cha, Sarah Ellis, Jacey Erwin, Tony Fitzgerald, David Gorshein, Barrett Korereat (SAO extraordinaire), Ameet Parameswaran (who shared my apartment and made me zucchini sticks), and Lisa Sloan. vi Other graduate students also pushed me along the path towards completion. I owe my sanity to the efforts of Bonnie Zucker, Charles McDaniel, Gail Fox Adams, Marie Berry, Inês Saccheti, Jon Gillespie, Jennifer Guzman, Lauren Harrell, Laila Hualpa, Andrew Jewell, Román Lújan, Lynette Schulman, Mike Stajura, and Kendra Weber. Adriana Baranello, Susan McKibben, Lisa Sloan, and Cynthia Wang helped me clarify my ideas and sentences along the way. They will always have my respect and gratitude for giving me confidence and friendship throughout the typically lonely process of completing a dissertation. Amber Hollingsworth and I have bonded over much more than Taco Bell and cats; she has edited my emails and, at times, my perspective, to make everything better. Deepest of thanks go to Fischer and Portman Juliano. “Deep thanks” could not begin to cover my debt to Michel and Pat Wilds, Mike and Erinn Juliano, and Troy, Jennifer, Luke, and Taylor Hartrick. Thank you for your love and encouragement. Last, but certainly not least (by any stretch of the imagination), my advisor Sue-Ellen Case has shown me what it feels like to think beyond my limits. I have matured from the lessons she implicitly gave through her scholarship and her mentorship. She has aggressively helped fund, supported, interrogated, re-written, re-interrogated, edited, and all-around improved my scholarship. I attribute any success that comes from this work to her. All errors in the manuscript that follows are, of course, solely mine. vii VITA Linzi Michel Juliano (b. Shim Mee-Yung) Education: 2007 M.A. Performance Studies New York University 2006 B.A. English, Philosophy, Theater (Spanish minor) Whittier College (also attended: Rio Salado Community College and Richmond University in London) Publications: 2013 “Crafting Croft: Avatars, Identity, Representation” In Media Res: A Media Commons Project 2012 “Tagging It: Considering How Ontologies Limit the Reading of Identity” co-authored with Ramesh Srinivasan, International Journal of Cultural Studies 15.6 (2012): 615–627. 2012 “Digital: A Love Story; Bully; Grand Theft Auto IV; Portal; Dys4ia (performance review).” Theatre Journal 64.4 (2012): 595–598. 2010 “Becoming Transreal (performance review)” UCLA Center for the Study of Women viii Conference Participation and Invited Talks: 2014 “Media and Performance” Working Group Organizer: American Society of Theater Research (ASTR) 2013 “Digital Humanities and Theater” Discussant: (ASTR) 2013 “Controlling Codes: Mediatized Bodies and Ludic Performance” Panel Organizer and Presenter: Performance Studies International 2012 “Flatness and Flexibility in Videogames” Discussant: ASTR 2011 “Media Currencies and Taxonomies” Discussant: ASTR 2011 “Transcoded Realities and Digital Augmentation” LGBT Emerging Scholars’ Panel, Association for Theater in Higher Education 2010 “Xatrian Crux: Bodies at Play” Discussant: ASTR 2010 “Performance and/as Identity” Guest Speaker: Whittier College, “Applied Philosophy” 2010 “Suicide Girls: Self-Freakification and Raunch Empowerment” Panel Presenter: Comparative Drama Conference ix INTRODUCTION This project employs performance theories to examine identifications embedded within software design. Exploring the structures of digital representation, both visual and architectural, I suggest where and how computer interactivity overlaps with processes of social performativity. This study traces the significance and signification of racial and queer identities as they have been transcoded (or excluded) within software architectures. My project falls into the area of critical code theory, and spans the broad range of digital humanities, drawing from disciplines such as English, comparative literature, sociology, information science and digital media arts. While critical code theorists such as Mark Marino and Mark Sample regard coded procedures as textual operations and programming scripts as performance, the use of critical theories of performance to understand these procedures has been largely absent.1 Further, while the intersections of queer and ethnic strategies of representation have been largely