The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Short Reviews of Books I like after Incomprehensible Message


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*GAS `reg' section*
*GAS `expr' section*

I've been thinking about two books that fascinate me -

kari edwards, iduna, O Books, 2003
Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan, Swoon, Granary, 2001

initial notes on the pda -

the two books - fieles within the virtual as well as delineations of
desire
intimacies formied by protocols within swoon first
in depth presence of digital community

the emotional flooding at the gates

kari in the midst of sea of concept and turmoil

ik k words graphically at crosspurposes

in g and s emotional flux

both Boons

bring daniesl raster - lebbeus woords - inti plau

Now onto it. Both books connect with virtual semantics; kari's overlays
are multitasking readwrites and interspersions; the references are rarely
to online per se; but underlie everything written; "'I have sex with open
impact cryptic numbers at play- / grounds, screaming out;'" [...]
"artificial arms and digital fault lines"  - the fault line between
faultline -

While writing this the connection stuttering more than usual, quite more,
I can't readwrite what I say -

In Swoon, the huge and mur-key communication protocols modes portend the
bodies of the initiates to the extent that embarrassment ensues across the
modalities.

I wanted to mention David Daniels - all three of the works have underlying
rasters.

Swoon might be the most important poetics work written at the hinge of the
millennium; emotion fluxes through the filters of communicative
strategies. There are numerous works dealing with online persona,
psychology, psychoanalysis; there are almost none in which the culture
manifests itself without description. Dibbell comes to mind slightly,
almost evanescent, but that's a story within a MOO; Swoon's narrative is
broken and open-ended.

The two of them fiercely query each other, there are moments quite clearly
written for eternity & the conceivable tablet, there are others that slip
out often in despair or old relationships fissure/ reinscribe themselves.

There is absolutely nothing like this except and to a paler extent what
millions are doing online right now or wish they were doing without such
ability to reflect or cohere.

kari's work is more reflective, almost the non-intimacy of language
gridding or obfuscations such as you might find in Dom Sylvester Houedard,
but this is all arranged, arrayed. iduna writes through itself; unlike
Swoon, there's no possibility of resolution, and the words chunk
themselves through in a manner similar to the border language surrounding
page centers which resounds early Clark Coolidge but more relevant, the
languaging occurring through online writing and interferences sidetracking
and tending elsewhere.

David Daniels - look up the work online - you will find language gridding
carefully assembled through digital wording in yet another fashion -
someone on television tonight used the Etch-a-Sketch for sportsplayer
delineations - this is - this work is - simply brilliant, Daniels an
original biography and portraiture, you must locate it.

How to locate these through bookfinder, amazon, google, abe, depending on
the publication degree and appearance.

I see all of these works as harbingers of new semantics troubling the
horizon, more than, say, the generative poetics or poetry which often
reproduces what has already been accomplished in the static sphere.

A book I do want to mention with no relation to what has gone before -

Danna Scott's Boxing, The Complete Guide to Training and Fitness. I know
Dana and her techniques are brilliant. From the back cover: "A licensed
amateur and professional cornerperson who has been training amateur
fighters for several years, she has worked in various boxing venues
throughout the country including Madison Square Garden and has been
featured on Lifetime Television and MSG sports." If you want to
proactively learn about boxing, this book is it.

Still reading the official blender gamekit by Roosendaal and Wartmann, and
strongly recommend this. As I mentioned before, it comes with ten games
you can take apart, reassemble, etc. I've been using bits and pieces.

The Vimalakirti Sutra, translated as The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti, by
Robert A.F. Thurman. But is it holy? How does this term operate in
Buddhism?

And still with British romanticism, The Lake District, an anthology by
Norman Nicholson, and The Grasmere Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, edited
by Pamela Woof. The latter's much more interesting than William's work,
and the latter ties in psychogeography.

Anyway - perhaps sketching out a field here? which would be that of the
structured body, the protocoled body whose expressive and somatic domain
involves semantics filtered by the virtual.

I could go on; I've been thinking about this as intensely as I can. The
boxing, Sutra, Words-worthy, are distractions. The farther afield...

"To create a fake user for an action, press SHIFT-F4."

I've failed you ...


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