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On the belief in avatars: what on earth have the aesthetics of the Byzantine
icons to do with the avatar in social technologies?
Falk Heinricha
a
Aalborg University, Denmark

Online publication date: 26 May 2010

To cite this Article Heinrich, Falk(2010) 'On the belief in avatars: what on earth have the aesthetics of the Byzantine icons
to do with the avatar in social technologies?', Digital Creativity, 21: 1, 4 — 10
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14626261003654236
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14626261003654236

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 Digital Creativity
2010, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 4– 10

On the belief in avatars:

what on earth have the
aesthetics of the Byzantine
icons to do with the avatar
in social technologies?
Falk Heinrich
Aalborg University, Denmark
falk_h@hum.aau.dk
Downloaded At: 07:51 24 February 2011

Abstract 1 The portrait picture as an avatar

This article looks at the digital portrait used in the form
of avatars in various online worlds and communication
networks. It describes an ongoing modal shift from an
ontological understanding of the portrait towards the
portrait as performative acting.
In accordance with the Western semiotic divide
between representational fiction and material reality
proper, the avatar-portrait is often still described as a
representation that depicts the subject on the basis of a
conceptual segregation between the living subject and
the portrait. But the avatar-portrait functions as embodi-
ment, thereby fulfilling a mainly performative purpose
that triggers the participant’s belief in the other’s avatar.
The paper looks at Eastern iconology, where the iconic
portrait is an energetic transmitter in which the depiction
and the depicted converge in the belief in the realness of
the picture. Key concepts such as prototype, archetype
and inverse perspective are discussed and applied to the
art piece Can You See Me Now? by Blast Theory.
Keywords: avatar, icon, performativity, communi-
cation, belief
The subject of my investigation is the portrait
avatar as used in various online worlds. My defi-
nition of portrait avatar is very simple: a digital
picture of, or by the user, used as an avatar in
social online domains (like, for example, Face-
book), various art pieces or some applications
for mobile phones.
The method applied in this article will be a
comparison between portrait avatars and some
distinctive features and aspects of the Byzantine
icons. The reason for this comparison lies in my
observation and hypothesis that the portrait is
shifting from a reflective to a performative func-
tion. I am very well aware that this seems to be
old news, at least since the notion of performa-
tivity has been discussed at length by post-
structuralism and performance studies. Thus, I
merely wish to contribute to this ongoing devel-
opment by concretising and differentiating the
notion of performativity and agency. I will do
so by looking closely at the portrait picture
used as an avatar. At the same time, I want to
point out the ongoing cultural and epistemic
displacement of the function and significance
of the portrait in general.

ISSN 1462-6268 # 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14626261003654236
http://www.informaworld.com

This ongoing displacement can and should be
seen as the result of technological advancements
(e.g. the internet and smart phones) and the
implementation of digital calm technology in
every domain of everyday life. However, although
clearly based upon technological and scientific
epistemologies and methodologies, our use of
those technologies seems to render a modified
belief system. I want to emphasise the term belief
and discuss this assertion later. In a way this
changed belief system contradicts the very onto-
logical foundation of technology. In my paper for
the DAC09 conference (Heinrich 2009), I discussed
the dissolution of the epistemic and ontological
reality–fiction divide brought about by our use of
those aforementioned technologies. In this article,
I would like to discuss the notion of belief and
‘performative embodiment’ as one aspect of it.
Let me start by describing my main example,
Downloaded At: 07:51 24 February 2011
which will be followed by a short introduction to
Byzantine icons. Subsequently I would like to
discuss the notions of index and prototype, agent
and patient, as described by the anthropologist
Alfred Gell.
1.2 Can You See Me Now?
As my main example I will use Blast Theory’s art
project from 2001: Can You See Me Now? I chose
this piece not because it is a game but because of
its exemplary blending of virtual and urban
Figure 1. Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now? Reproduced with permission of Blast Theory.
5
On the belief in avatars
spaces. This blending lies, in my view, at the root
Digital Creativity, Vol. 21, No. 1
of the functional significance of the avatar-portrait.
Can You See Me Now? is an urban gaming
project that effectively combines and juxtaposes
urban, material spaces and their virtual represen-
tation on screen. The game consists of two
parties, so-called runners and players. Runners are
flesh and blood persons located in well-defined
real urban districts chasing virtual avatars; they
are represented in the virtual space by avatars.
Players, who can participate in the game from a per-
sonal computer, do so by controlling their own
virtual avatars, which are chased by the runners
(Figure 1).
The communication between those ontologi-
cally different realms is done by conventional PCs
on the side of the players. On the runners’ side,
communication is made possible by PDAs, with
GPS navigation systems and auditory transmission
devices. The PC and PDA give access to the virtual
data representation of the very same urban space,
depicting in the older versions a cartographic.
Depiction in newer versions includes a 3-D image
that consists of both the player’s and the runner’s
avatar in the form of a simple icon of a running
man (the interface for the players look different,
using anthropomorphic silhouettes).
One can criticise my conflation of portrait
photos and pictograms/silhouettes: no mimetic
personalised form connects the player with his
avatar. However, the runners in the urban space
 Heinrich
are chasing absent, yet distinct players. Further-
Digital Creativity, Vol. 21, No. 1
more, the rules and structure of the staged game
assign a well-defined function to the avatar.
These rules enable concrete action, which gives
the avatar a performative, embodied status
(which can be difficult to see when looking at
photographic portrait).
2 The concept of the Byzantine icon
Clearly, the culturally determined perception of
portraits is changing. Portraits used as avatars
on interactive online sites do not invite contempla-
tion but reaction. Maybe a look at Byzantine icons
can help us to disclose some of the hidden impli-
cations in this cultural shift.
The Byzantine icon is originally a ceremonial
and performative part of the Christian liturgy.
Painted mostly on wooden tiles or as frescos,
Downloaded At: 07:51 24 February 2011
these icons depict holy subjects such as the
saints, Mary or Christ himself. It is simultaneously
‘a scenic representation and presentation’ (Bek
2003). This duplicity is at the core of Eastern ico-
nology since it contains two functions at the same
time: it is both a visual representation (of the
depicted venerated person) and a concrete materi-
alisation (of the depicted and their supranatural,
eternal forces). Liturgical veneration as ‘dramatic
enactment’ (Bek 2003) reveals and, more impor-
tantly, operationalises a ‘likeness in essence’
between the depicted (presentation) and the
depiction (representation), making the icon an
energetic transmitter for the believer more than a
reflection in a Platonic sense. Consequently, the
icon is a kind of material carriage, transmitting
the believer’s veneration to the depicted and vice
versa. In this way, the icon materialises the saint;
hence s/he becomes part of this earthly world.
In the orthodox worldview ‘man must always
relate to the spiritual through the physical’
(Auxentios 1987). Auxentios writes that this
‘physical spirituality’ allows ‘that [the icon] con-
stitutes a real image of that which it depicts. The
image is in some way a “true” form of the proto-
type, participating in it and integrally bound to
it’ (Auxentios 1987). A prototype (or archetype)
is the energetic essence of the depicted and the
6
icon thus the material medium for it. As Hans
Belting expresses it: ‘The difference between the
image and what is represented seemed to be abol-
ished in [the icons]; the image was the person it
represented, at least this person’s active, miracle-
working presence’ (Belting 1994). The image
and the depicted person conflate in the archetype,
in one presence.
This is hard to grasp for a Western mind like
mine, since our cultural mindset seems to be
moulded by Alberti’s and the Renaissance’s
window metaphor (Alberti 1977), which stresses a
divide between reality and mediated representations
of it. Veltmann writes that modern art has to be seen
‘as a means of separating subject and object and
hence creating aesthetic distance’ whereas he con-
siders orthodox (oriental) ‘art as a means of brid-
ging the subject and object’ (Veltmann 2001). The
Western divide positions the onlooker in a very
distinct way, namely in front of the picture, while
the linear perspective tracks the onlooker into the
picture. By constructing a division between rep-
resentation and material world, the onlooker’s
view establishes a virtual counterpart of the onloo-
ker in the represented world of the picture. Pictures
are utopian realms, non-places.
3 The inverse or reverted perspective
The inverse or reverted perspective of the
Byzantine icon does quite the contrary. The
depicted person and architecture seem to come
out of the picture into the realm of the human wor-
shipper, who is situated in the vanishing point.
Icons do not create utopian, fictitious spaces, but
transformations of material places. They, too,
represent something or someone, but they project
the represented into the viewer’s space and not
the other way round.
One could argue that my description of paint-
ings as windows into a remote space and time
may be right concerning paintings of landscape,
urban scenery and depictions of concrete narra-
tive situations. However, when it come to
painted or photographed portraits, this virtualisa-
tion and transportation of the human viewer into

Downloaded At: 07:51 24 February 2011
Figure 2. Pantokrator, a sixth century encaustic icon from Saint
Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai.
the pictorial space seems to be wrong, since the
represented human figure often looks out at the
viewer, thereby establishing a direct communica-
tional space, which consequently is embedded in
the space of the onlooker’s material presence.
This objection, however, does not take context
or settings into account. The museum or exhibition
hall setting diminish the direct interactional
encounter between the portrait and the viewer.
Here the viewer is asked to contemplate firstly
the painterly craftsmanship and the aesthetic sen-
sation and secondly the psychological content of
the depiction, which lead to an act of interpret-
ation. The focus of art appreciation—as I would
7
On the belief in avatars
claim—lies first of all on the content: who is or
Digital Creativity, Vol. 21, No. 1
was this person? The exhibited portrait becomes
a kind of host or guardian in the fiction/reality
divide, enticing the viewer in a hermeneutic
process into the fictitious realm of representation.
On the contrary, the runners in Can You See Me
Now? carry their PDA showing the cartographic
urban place, which is right in front of them. The
material realness of the urban place constitutes
the background for the image and avatars shown
on the little screen. The PDA screen is an intrinsic
part of the reality of the runner.
4 Performativity
At least since post-structuralism and its discussion
and accentuation of the concept of performativity,
the picture has been seen as an utterance with ‘real’
pragmatic effects. Pictures do something. I do not
want to deny this at all. On the contrary, my argu-
ment is based on the concept of performativity. But
I see a distinct difference between the concept of
performativity presented by exponents of post-
structuralism, in which the performativity of pic-
tures and texts exerts a kind of long-term influence
on human bodies, mindsets, cultural identities
and behaviours. The portrait-avatar forms part of
very concrete interactions, being reminiscent of
Austin’s speech acts (1992); with the difference
that at least one human being is substituted or rep-
resented by an avatar. Both are ‘actors’ in a defined
performance setting. Here, I am following Richard
Schechner (1985, 2006), who sees the marked per-
formance space as one of the main properties of
performativity. The Blast Theory runners run in a
well-defined and transformed urban space, Face-
book users read and write within a very structured
interface, etc.
5 Art and agency
Also, the Byzantine icon has a precise function
in the religious ritual of veneration. The icon
effectuates intentionality, and ‘is effected’ by the
worshippers’ intentionality.
This is very much in line with Alfred Gell’s
anthropological theory on art and agency (Gell
 Heinrich
1998). He heavily draws on the significances and
Digital Creativity, Vol. 21, No. 1
functions of idols (cult images and objects) in
mainly non-Western cultures. He sees idols as
indexes (re-)presenting prototypes (the depicted).
The relationship between index and prototype is
established by an act of abduction by both the
artist and the recipient. The artefact as index encom-
passes and reveals social intentionality. All four
elements of this relationship (index, prototype,
artist, recipient) can have an active or a passive
attribute as either agent or patient, thereby creating
various types of artefacts and interactions (like
artists’ art, patrons’ art, sorcery, possession).
A full presentation of Gell’s very intriguing
theory is beyond the scope of this presentation,
but let me apply some of his main ideas to the
subject of my investigation: the avatar-portrait.
The avatar is clearly the index, presenting the
prototype, which in most cases is a living person
Downloaded At: 07:51 24 February 2011
(e.g. the players and runners in Can You See Me
Now?). The sender (the runner) is the primary
agent, his/her index (avatar) the secondary agent.
The recipient (the player) is the primary patient,
the target of social intentionality. The player’s
avatar is the secondary patient. The runner
relates to the avatar-patient by chasing it down.
The player’s avatar is a performative index of a
non-non-existing entity in the urban space.
The attribution of passive and active, ‘agent’
and ‘patient’, is, however, not fixed, since it is
shifting all the time in an interactive process; in
our case the very physical actions of running,
chasing, hiding and escaping.
6 Beliefs
Our communicational experience patterns and
communication technology claim that this
action – reaction cycle occurs between human
actors by means of avatars. In the case of online
or mixed reality realms, this is not odd, since we
seem to know that the avatar is a virtual stand-in
for a living human being. In the case of religious
acts of veneration this seems very odd, since the
icon is supposed to ‘be’ a dead Saint—and that
is (for scientific minds) not possible.
8
There is only one explanation for this (that
satisfies my Western mind): the existence of an
interaction system. This interaction system
cannot, however, consist of the worshipper and
the icon but of the communicational acts
between the worshipper and the icon itself. This
needs a script that controls the acts. If that is
valid, it can be concluded that it is the execution
of a script behind the ritual of veneration that trans-
forms the icon into a saint.
If we apply this explanation to the online avatar
phenomenon, we can deduce that the interaction
occurs between the online user and the other’s
avatar, and not between the user and the other
user, who is represented by his/her avatar. The
user and the other’s iconic avatar form part of an
artificial interaction system, which distributes the
agent and patient attributes.
This means that the game Can You See Me
Now? does not establish only one interaction
system, but two different systems: one, where the
runner is interacting with the avatar of the player;
and another, where the player behind the monitor
is interacting with the runners’ avatars. It is only
our faith in the reliability of data transmission that
makes us believe in the interconnectedness of
these two interaction systems. No, my Western
mind says, there is no mysticism at all, just data
transmission. Hmm. One thing is sure: in the
moment of (inter-)action we have to believe in the
realness of the avatar—like believers.
I do not want to claim that the religious icons
and avatar portraits demand the same kind of
belief, surely there is a difference between believ-
ing in the other human being’s representation and
the deity’s being inside the material icon. Still,
while communicating in miscellaneous online
and mixed reality worlds, the user/participant has
to believe in the realness of the avatar, or more cor-
rectly, the very act of communication occasions
this belief.
7 Embodiment or the creation of
bodies
But how is this realness constructed? We know
that avatars are portraits, mere representations,

nothing more. And we know that digital data
transmission occurs on the basis of descriptions,
being a translation from the one ontology to
another. The crucial point is that the describing
machine (computer program) consists of the
same informational alphabet as the described
content (Finnemann 1998), which makes the
transmitted content extremely vulnerable. Com-
municative understanding is, seen from this
point of view, based upon extremely unsecure
data that not only detaches time and space but
also the very content from the communicational
act (Luhmann 1997). This may be the reason
simulation and recreation of face-to-face inter-
action is still the objective of technology and
many online spaces.
Alfred Gell asserts that the worshippers of
idols know very well that the idol-artefact is
just dead material, a stone or a piece of wood.
Downloaded At: 07:51 24 February 2011
They do nevertheless engage in rituals, and
while doing so they believe in the power and real-
ness of the idol. The same could be said about the
Byzantine icon. The believers know that the icon
is a painted picture on a wooden tile. We, too,
know that the avatar portrait is just a visualisation
of digital data, even more intangible than the icon
or idols, yet connected to the materiality of the
digital device. Gell claims that the interactional
aspect of the ritual prompts the correlation
between the index and prototype. The ritualistic
predetermined interactions establish intersubjec-
tivity between the worshipper and the idol on
the basis of looking and being looked at. The
worshipper does not only look at the idol; in the
very act of looking at an anthropomorphic
statue or image, the viewer sees himself looking
through the eyes of the other. The idol looks
back, so to speak! Of course, this can be
doomed as psychological projection and primi-
tive animation, but it can also be seen as the
effect of an external system that is necessary
for intersubjectivity to happen. The interaction
with idols make Gods and spirits appear, like
the avatar makes the fellow person behind the
avatar appear.
Both the so-called primitives and we ‘know’
about the existence of ‘the other’!
9
On the belief in avatars
Can You See Me Now? simultaneously con-
Digital Creativity, Vol. 21, No. 1
structs two different avatar – player relationships:
a usual one, where the player in front of a
monitor controls his/her avatar’s whereabouts in
a digital simulation; and an inverted one, where
human ‘runners’ situated in a material reality are
depicted as primitive avatars on the portable
screen. The inverted setting augments the physical
realm with a data-space.
The important thing, though, is not the
relationship between the person and his/her
avatar, but the predetermined rule-bound relation-
ship between the runner and the avatars of the
other players. This makes the runners run. It
motivates the runners’ belief in the chased
player’s existence, but not the certainty of the
player’s existence. Now, the avatar of the chased
other is real. The very action of running constitutes
the communicational interface. The runners
know that they are chasing but mere ghosts; never-
theless the runners chase them as if they are real
individuals. While running, the avatars have real
bodies (despite the fact that they cannot be sure
about the existence of the player; the players’
avatars could be ‘run’ by a computer).
It is therefore not the certainty of the other’s
existence but the specific intentionality rep-
resented and effectuated by the avatar that
slowly changes our perception of portraits.
8 Conclusion
In Byzantine iconology, ‘the icon touches on the
reality of God’ (Auxentios 1987); in Blast
Theory’s piece, the players’ avatar-portraits palp-
ably touch on the reality of the runners, thereby
conflating reality and virtuality. It is in and
through the player’s actions that the avatar portrait
emerges as a prototype, thereby dissolving the dis-
tinction between subject and its representation and
between material and virtual reality. The avatar-
portrait as archetype surpasses our understanding
of a technological medium, since the iconic
picture constructs a direct material and sensory
relationship between people in the act of com-
munication, despite the fact that communication
technology only transmits measurable data based
 Heinrich
on physical laws (e.g. measurable parameters of
Digital Creativity, Vol. 21, No. 1
the voice).
The digital iconic avatar seems to undermine the
Western epistemic distinction between the human
subject and pictorial representation, questioning
the notion of the body as a mainly biologically
defined entity. This subsequently calls for a revision
of the humanistic concept of identity, which has—I
would claim—its foundation in the material
human body as enclosed entity. On the contrary,
the (technologically extended) performative body
transcends those biological limits due to an act of
belief within predetermined structures.
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Falk Heinrich, PhD, is Associate Professor at
Aalborg University, Denmark. There he is
affiliated with the research group and educational
programme ‘Art and Technology’. He teaches
digital aesthetics and artistic methodology. He
has worked as an actor and theatre director, and
his theoretical investigation continues to
develop in close relation to practical, artistic
work (interactive installations). His current
research interest is ‘performative aesthetics’ and
his work—focusing on notions of affect, pres-
ence, beauty and communication—attempts to
form bridges among certain discourses in the
human sciences, sociology, engineering and
neuro-science. He is the author of the book Inter-
aktiv digital installationskunst—teori og analyse
(Copenhagen: Multivers, 2008).