4: (An early glimpse of the metaverse) Bringing the Body into Virtuality 1995–2000
Chapter 4 of my 2005 PhD Thesis ‘A Journey of Integration’
Note: Much of this chapter is about the now ancient text-based virtual world of LambdaMOO. Years ago I wrote a resource page on how to access it. Much of it is probably out of date now but it might help you get there if you want to try. LambdaMOO Resources.
Bringing the Body into Virtuality 1995–2000
In May 1995 I attended the second Virtual Futures Conference¹ at the University of Warwick, where I was introduced to networked virtuality through the medium of the text-based virtual environment LambdaMOO.
At a workshop organised by the Australian cyberfeminist performance artist Francesca da Rimini, aka GashGirl, I had my first experience of being inside the machine not as an isolated individual but as part of a community. The writing of Correspondence had been a very isolated experience but at this conference, for the first time, I met other artists who were interested in the same aspects of technology I had been working with for so long. Equally important, I was also introduced to the internet and its potential to connect not just one-on-one, but one-to-many, and many-to-many. I immediately began to experiment at LambdaMOO but it was some time…
