UC San Diego Researcher Explores Gender, Humanity and (Virtual) Reality
In an age when biotechnology has made it possible to alter the fundamentals of our food supply, our energy sources and even our genetic makeup, one graduate student at the University of California, San Diego, is pushing the limits of what it means to be human by exploring the intersections of biotechnology, art and virtual-reality in an immersive, durational performance titled "Becoming Dragon."
http://media-newswire.com/release_1080405.html(Media-Newswire.com)
The project is also a means of questioning the one-year requirement for "real-life experience" that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive gender confirmation surgery ( also known as sexual reassignment surgery ). While researching the project, Cardenas began hormone replacement therapy and is composing poetry about the experience. The poems, titled "Notes on Psycho-Neuro-Endocrinology" and "Notes on Becoming," will be included in the opening night performance.
"The general theme for my project is to explore the possibilities for transformation, to ask the question, 'Is change really possible, or do you get what you're given, and that's it?'" Cardenas explains. "I'm asking if it's possible to replace this real-life experience requirement with Second Life experience, but I'm also asking a question that is somewhat rhetorical or fantastical: Could you really become your second-life avatar?
