The Brighton and Sussex Sexualities Network (BSSN) is an inter-university research network aimed at supporting research and researchers who work on issues of human sexuality within the Universities of Brighton and Sussex and the wider Sussex area. On 15th September 2011 I will participate with my workshop “Queer cybersex and virtual sexualities”. This workshop is about exploring the role of queer sexual practices in contemporary digital culture and making more visible transgendered, queer and virtual sexualities through the use of technology tools. By introducing a short history of cybersex and exploring the possibilities of virtual avatars the objective is to learn about representations of gender in the new media from the changing practices on pornography and sex relationships.

Cybersex is a virtual sex encounter in which two or more persons connected remotely via computer network send each other sexually explicit messages and images describing a sexual experience and exploring their own body. Cybersex is commonly performed in Internet chat rooms but also in online video games or other virtual environments as Second Life. Since cybersex can satisfy some sexual desires without the risk of a sexually transmitted disease (STD) or pregnancy, it is a physically safe way to experiment with sexual thoughts and emotions, also an ideal way to try any kind of sexual activity by choosing avatars with ambiguous sexual characteristics.

The great potential of cybersex make it possible for non-stereotyped representations of the body. It calls on us to reflect on what a pornographic image is, what sex work is, what gender is, and what the whole point of feminism is, according to the foundations of Post Porn movement.

This workshop is open to all kind of participants, but researchers on the construction of sexual identity will be especially encouraged to participate: Submissions here. A first version has been developed in the University of Oxford. It comes from a study supported by an exercise on making a Machinima scene (animation with characters from a video game) to find different possibilities of sexual roles in video games as an easy virtual space. 

Participation in the exhibition of the Low Lives 3 Festival, on April 30th,  with the videoperformance “Machinima Sexual Choreographies”, 1 minute 28 seconds, color, stereo.  It was supported by the New York State Council on the Arts.

In the early years, when there was a female character in a video game, she was shown in a submissive position. The female characters that attained hero statuses were weird, the others were princesses or wise older women. We could say that the games were  dominated by male heroes. Some time ago, gender representations in video games has changed but not too much. Anyway, through Machinima we can create a new association, mixing characters that are not designed to interact in a certain way or giving them a different mood.

Nowadays, video games are able to spread messages beyond the argument of the game, join art works projects or turning themselves into Machinima; the convergence of filmmaking, animation and game development. Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans, scripts or artificial intelligence. In Machinima it is almost impossible to know if there are more authors from masculine gender or feminine gender, because it is usual to have a nickname and an avatar that is very different from their real appearance.

My name is Marisol Salanova, I’m a Spanish independent curator, art critic and researcher in media art. I’m exploring the role of audio-visual remix practices in contemporary digital culture and I proposed Machinima as a kind of Remix Cinema in a workshop at the University of Oxford, where I was studying the way of make porn movies on Machinima because it could be an exemple of “Post Porn”  - for my PhD research on Post Porn Iconography - and we could learn about representations of gender in the new media from the changing practices on Pornography.