<nettime> sondheimogram [x4: confusion, moving around, notes, partitioning]

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

               [digested @ nettime -- mod (tb)]

Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>

     Confusion 
     Moving around gets harder and harder   
     Notes by an Space-artist   
     Partitioning, naming, unknown  

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Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:59:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Confusion 

Confusion


The exhibition arena hall and skysphere are clumped, colluded, coagulated,
confused, contorted, convoluted, complicated, occluded, obscured, obfu-
scated, and obstructed - to such an extent that editing at this point
becomes almost impossible; an editor, myself through Julu or Nikuko (Alan
Dojoji), literally can't see ahead, with or without mouselook, sufficient-
ly to isolate and link individual prims. Everything is spewing against or
towards everything else and the high-speed movement (rotatory, linear, in
combination) of objects results in jumps from position to position; they
remain ungraspable. It's also increasingly unclear as to what constitutes
an object in the first place; particle spews are everywhere, as are alien
permissions that refuse to be modified.

There are also slow-ups as a result of increasing bandwidth; Second Life -
in other words my access to the representation of the virtual world -
almost grinds to a halt at times. Think of over 2000 particles each carry-
ing a video texture and moving at high-speed from sources that are also
moving at high speed, among say, 300 three-dimensional and partially
transparent prims (also moving, etc.), and you get the idea. So there is a
shift in attention, from proper construction or deconstruction to the
maintenance, management, and configuration of a miasma which can barely be
grasped in whole or in part.

I think of this as a form of information implosion where everything gets
out of hand, or a war or sex zone where it's impossible to walk or think,
or Pliny's uncle's death (and other devastation) when Vesuvius blew: What
does one do in such a situation? How does one do it? One false step or
click and you're underwater or in the skysphere (which is a bit quieter
than the thirteen channels of sound competing for your attention on the
ground floor - not to mention video, if you have that turned on as well),
finding or fighting your way back and to what? - More of the same, an
incandescent Las Vegas teetering on the brink of the apocalyptic with no
way out, and possibly no way in for that matter. Because the entrance
itself shimmers, dances, and roars, and it's easier to fly through the
melange than to attempt walking or running in - neither may be possible
from time to time. Then consider this, and what do you do or see when you
get there? Some things, some prims, moving out of the way, vanishing or
almost vanishing - it depends on size and location. And for that matter,
you might not be able to recognize the vanishing at all - there are always
things coming in to take their place, coming at you, furiously fleeing
you, or so it seems. The wonder for me, other than the beauty in coagula-
tion, decay and concentration, is that all of this occurs within a small
and somewhat stabilized space, a column in a sense, ascending from ocean
through deconstructed architecture to skysphere - neither above the
skysphere nor below the ocean nor beneath the ground - anyway - all of
this occurs in a relatively contained space, and yet seems everywhere,
everywhen, a concussion of simultaneities which appear self-defining, and
simultaneously topologically/topographically open ad closed, a machine
extending from micro- to macro-cosm, and yet doing nothing but high-speed
processing and representation of scripts that appear to be running amuck,
but are in fact quite logical from the interior, if in fact there is an
interior, which is also, in the midst of all this craziness, up and down
for grabs.

1005 total 6, yesterday 6, 1008 total 6, yesterday 3, 1012 total 3,
yesterday 3, 1020 total 3, yesterday 7, 1023 total 7, yesterday 3, 1030
total 3, yesterday 7, 1034 total 7, yesterday 4, 1051 total 4, yesterday
17, 1056 total 17, yesterday 4, 1060 total 4, yesterday 4, 1066 total 4,
yesterday 5, 1073 total 5, yesterday 6, 1082 total 6, yesterday 9, 1087
total 9, yesterday 5, 1088 total 5, yesterday 0, 1097 total 0, yesterday
8, 1107 total 8, yesterday 10, 1114 total 10, yesterday 7, 1120 total 7,
yesterday 5, 1122 total 5, yesterday 2, 1129 total 2, yesterday 7, 1133
total 7, yesterday 4, 1134 total 4, yesterday 0, 1145 total 0, yesterday
11, 1148 total 11, yesterday 3, 1152 total 3, yesterday 0, 1152 total 3,
yesterday 3, 1154 total 0, yesterday 2, 118 total 28, yesterday 49, 123
total 49, yesterday 5, 133 total 5, yesterday 9, 167 total 6, yesterday
28, 178 total 28, yesterday 10, 211 total 10, yesterday 33, 317 total 33,
yesterday 105, 317 total 33, yesterday 105, 330 total 105, yesterday 12,
347 total 12, yesterday 17, 366 total 17, yesterday 18, 391 total 18,
yesterday 25, 404 total 25, yesterday 13, 412 total 13, yesterday 7, 439
total 7, yesterday 26, 448 total 26, yesterday 9, 451 total 9, yesterday
2, 482 total 2, yesterday 31, 489 total 31, yesterday 6, 588 total 6,
yesterday 98, 610 total 98, yesterday 21, 670 total 14, yesterday 11, 762
total 3, yesterday 88, 843 total 88, yesterday 81, 858 total 81, yesterday
14, 878 total 14, yesterday 19, 949 total 62, yesterday 8, 965 total 8,
yesterday 15.

To access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22

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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:53:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Moving around gets harder and harder   

Moving around gets harder and harder


On the ground floor you may teleport to the ground floor.
You may teleport from the ground floor to the skysphere or ocean inlet.
The ocean inlet is filled with prims with proximity scripts that have
desperately, it seems, tried too get out of the way.
You can hardly find your way there to the two spheres that send you
back to the surface.
On the surface you can barely find your way to the two spheres that
send you back to the ocean inlet.
Almost everything sends you somewhere else.
Almost everywhere sends you somewhere else.
Almost everywhere may send you almost everywhere, including where you
are, right now.
But to get there, you must enter, and enter everything.
And to enter is almost impossible, as flight is almost impossible;
remnants of skyspheres obstruct your every move.
You might try to fly around the slowly turning skyspheres.
You will most likely be caught in the slowly turning skyspheres.
If you have the proper gift, you can fly directly to the skyspheres.
Flying as such, you will move upwards along a chain of enormous
remnants of skyspheres, end on end, slowly wheeling in the sky.
You will find you cannot enter the skysphere from below or through the
sides; you must enter through the top, lowering yourself.
You will then stop flying, and walk around the cone penetrating the
floor, and you will walk with wonder.
You will walk with wonder at the solitude and beauty of the space.
You may touch any of the objects in the skysphere and you will be
transported back to the ground.
Or you may fly out of the top of the skysphere and move away from the
surface and look back; you will be amazed at the particle
streams and sky-writing that emanates from it.
Or you may fly out of the top of the skysphere, move slightly to the
sky, and allow yourself to fall beautifully down and into the
exhibition space, where you will right yourself in order to look about.
Within the exhibition space you will find everything and nothing to
see as your path is obstructed by objects and particles desperate to
get out of your way.
These objects that are desperate will end up at least in part within
the ocean inlet which you may have just visited.
There are songs and noise and as you move from one place to another
within the ocean inlet or exhibition space the songs and noise will
change.
There is video which streams across and within the streaming particles
and you may turn the video on and off and the space of the exhibition
utterly changes.
But you will barely see anything unless you separate your viewpoint
from the viewpoint of the avatar or set your avatar to mouseview, in
which case you are tied to the avatar bending
and moved by objects and streams blocking hir path, ascending to hir
or descending upon hir.
You may find some of those objects sending your avatar down into the
ocean inlet which you may or may not have already visited.
And you must beware of the trap by the stairs leading into the
exhibition space, the trap which sends you into a part of the ocean
inlet from which there is no return, none except for your teleporting
back to your home space which you may or may not have set, and from
your home space you may then teleport back into a safer area of the
exhibition space.
There are so many traps like this, so many distorted and occluded
views, so many shadows.
And so many shadows and peripheral darkness even in the middle of a
dark dark day.
So you will walk around or through the shadows which depends on the
nature of the shadows day or night, whatever time it is in the
virtual world.
But it's all blooming, buzzing, confusion; it's all wildness that seems
almost random; it's all bright lights and dimmed space; it's a small
space you cannot lose; it's a small space that can lose you.
So you will be careful and your reward will be great, no, greater than
that, and that with wonder.

http://www.alansondheim.org/ buzz and buzzy jpgs
http://www.alansondheim.org/buzz.mp4

to access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22

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Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:34:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Notes by an Space-artist   

Notes by an Space-artist

[rewritten from a previous text; it seems that avatar/body is transparent-
space, inhering space, dynamic and malleable space -]


As space-artist, we are our space Jennifer-Julu-Nikuko-Travis-Alan and our
space is us, both controlled by motion-capture behaviors using remapped
sensors and moving at ultra-high-speeds among other spaces, landscapes,
virtual worlds in the real, online, in one's mind.

But our space is unique, our space is tissue, our space transforms
backwards and forwards at perceptually instantaneous speed between frames.
Our space is alien.

Jennifer: "our space has slimy space movement, wormlike shape-shifting,
at warp high-speed perceptually conflated with itself, our space is
speed-alien, malleable and originating tissue. as originating, our space
is demiurge, producing and reproducing, originating worlds and gatherings
of the true world."

Julu: "our space is disparaged body or bodies, our space is OTHERING,
here and there moving asymptotically among fractal intrusions, our space
prepares the appearance of twisted connected topologies, limit-sets of
behaviors, topological counterexamples and distraught spaces piled upon
themselves at warp-high speed."

Nikuko: "our space is implicate orderings, twisted among themselves,
still connected or with connections' memory, tangled as if untangled,
messed as if unmessed, abject, as if clarified, our space is cephalic or
ocular, eyes and doubling eyes, gendering and originating, producing and
reproducing."

Travis: "our space is detritus machine, residue-machine, with symbolic
input, language input, bvh input, ascii input, inchoate output, our space
is ALIEN-BETTER-LEFT-UNDEFINED, that is _alien << inchoate_, symbols
effaced by behavior-gatherings, the true world, asymbolia.

Alan: "our space is un-is, truly disconnected topologies, connectors gone
with interior body viewpoint, resulting sheaves, surfaces, in relative
positions, holding relative positions, but the manifolds are open, broken,
think of chimera composites."

Jennifer: "in other words, in the true world of gatherings, our space is
open and gathering from within, closed and coherent from without, as-if
our space, as if Jennifer-Julu-Nikuko-Travis-Alan, as-if but not as-if,
not really, in the true world really a gathering."

Julu: "in other words, we are true world being."

=

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Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:57:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Subject: Partitioning, naming, unknown  

Partitioning, naming, unknown

Something about the aging body and the objectification of parts.
About the parts not working autonomously but calling attention to
themselves.
Calling attention to themselves in a manner of naming of parts.
Naming of parts that no longer work without pain and subterfuge.
Subterfuge as parts transform into prosthesis and it's just a matter of
time.
Prosthesis as parts and therefore body can no longer be taken for granted
but become things in a world of things.
Things as life begins to drain from organism and organism becomes
evanescent.
The mind becoming evanescent almost luminous as it too requires naming,
transforming, bypassing, prosthesis, and clarity.
Clarity obtained in the realm of truth and the assertion of a true world
of inscription and presence after all.
The presence of walking into a virtual world and the pleasure of seeing it
for the very first time.
The first time recognizing that the body is a collocation or colloquium of
parts and not continuous.
Not continuous and an unnatural and sutured phenomenological horizon.
The first time of an unnatural and anomalous virtual world and then
changing and transforming into the impression of purity and continuity.
As if it were pure and continuous and as if this were transferred back and
forth from the physical to the virtual body and back again.
Until the virtual body is known as the back of the physical body and until
all these and many other bodies exfoliate and coalesce.
And coalesce into a body both inscribed and uninscribed as if caught on
the edge of coding and decoding, noise and rupture, cancellation and
presence.
Cancellation and presence, always the wonderful presence of taking-for-
granted, the body, the world, the word, the code, the real virtual, the
virtual real.
One might in fact say virtually real and not necessarily really virtual,
or some other chiasm whose nexus is all that remains of speechlessness.
Or speech for that and other matters, becoming clearer that the aging body
is always already the aging body, the sutured closed manifold of the same.
The same as if it were different, but always the same.
The same as if it were different, but always the same.


http://www.alansondheim.org/hite1.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite4.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite5.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite6.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite7.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/hite8.jpg

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