Immerse is looking for writers

Immerse’s May/June 2022 issue is Avatars, Assets & Access. The shiny baubles of Web 3.0, NFTs and crypto have offered tech and business writers who cover digital worlds plenty of material on the creation and valuation of virtual objects. These pieces range from the informational to the advertorial, and cover a tonal range from entertainment to speculation. Articles on digital avatars tend to focus on questions of identity (the ability to try on or roleplay in new identities, for example), without examining their makers, sources or component parts.

Deadline: 1 April 2022

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Immerse aims to offer a creative discussion of emerging nonfiction storytelling. With a curious and critical eye, Immerse covers an array of topics: artificial intelligence, equity in tech, networked activism, nonfiction games, and more.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We are interested in examining the influence of different conceptions of personhood, objecthood and the drive to reproduce photoreality on immersive nonfiction storytelling projects. We are also interested in how immersive and emerging forms of nonfiction interact with and in turn affect identity, aesthetics and notions of reality. We are seeking proposals for pieces of 1200–1500 words that critically and imaginatively reflect on these topics for a general interest audience:

Personhood versus objecthood of avatars
Avatar builders, avatar makers, avatar sellers
The IP, moral and property rights implications of selling and owning avatars
The high cost of purchasing NFT avatars, especially when connected with an NFT community
Design of non-playable character avatars
Cloning function in social VR
Context collapse and deracination of characters across different settings
Unstable identities associated with (in)ability to transfer avatars across different platforms
Financialization of the avatar as persona
Financialization of the ability to customize avatars (gestures, clothes and other assets)
Third-person versus first person POVs
Asset builders, asset makers, asset sellers
Role of brands and embedded advertising
Implications of source material for scanned objects (inadvertent monocropping)
Digital twinning of reality
Persistence of photorealistic aesthetics
Software and hardware that enable the scanning of reality
And additional related issues

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN SUBMISSION

Write a short introduction about yourself
Include a paragraph highlighting your writing experience, relevant credentials and publication credits
Attach links to your strongest work or portfolio, and online profile.

COMPENSATION