Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0804160244020.25670@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Let's begin, reassemblage
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:44:20 -0400 (EDT)
Let's begin. Let's begin with the idea of reassemblage, structure of new identity, new equalization between A and A; let us use the sign ~ for identity, i.e. A~A reading as A is identical to A. Let's think of this in the true world, as dynamic process, something Whitehead pointed out years ago; in this case, A~A is temporally dependent; what act _identitizes,_ constructs the perception of the object on both sides of the sign? In reassemblage, this video for example, _humans_ are still, stillborn; immobile, they refuse appearance on both sides of ~; they're unary, full of digital equivalence but nothing else. In reassemblage, this video for example, the subject, that is the viewer, is produced in the midst of a mirrored hall which deconstructs as it reveals; what move, what apparently move, are bodies filtered and re- filtered, beginning with the bvh (biovision hierarchy) files of a dynamic lacrosse player; the dynamism of such a player is embodied in the static file which produces, at the other end of the transmission, a simulacrum of dynamism. Let us attach this movement to two bodies and two movements, and let the bodies reconstruct from other memories, of two dancers embodied as one with a third biovision file; let these memories produce stills modified by suturing software constructing final objects attached to and replacing anatomical parts of mannequins which are the first two bodies. So there are four or six bodies: two separate bodies of the dynamism of a lacrosse player, each with attachments constructed from numerous bodies temporally sliced but configured from the choreography of two dancers. Let us begin then with reassemblage, a placement as if upon the originary scene of two dancers, in fact two other dancers, who appear as if lifelike in background; upon this, let us assemble the deconstruction of the appar- atus described in the previous paragraph, an assemblage that demands reassemblage on the part of the subject-viewer. One might think of this as an analogic/analog background of inert substance, as if there were no editing in the digital image-photograph, no punctum - both of which appear clearly upon close viewing. And against this analogic/analog background, think of the assemblage-in-need-of-reassemblage as imaginaries of dance and lacrosse, dance surmounted onto lacrosse, captured or seized by lacrosse. These imaginaries are productions solely of the discrete or digital (here used somewhat synonymously); they might-as-well-have-been assembled in another way, or an augmented or diminished or otherwise filtered way, or a foreign way altogether, not at all related, just as the discrete towards a jump cut promises or is premised upon the potential for anything appearing on the other side of the river, most likely not the river but an element taken from elsewhere, an otherwise element, foreign and unaccounted-for element, an uncounted element in fact. So this discrete appears to produce within the viewing, the need for reassemblage, the lowering of anomaly, something to make sense of it all. And it's clearly produced with a configuration or armature pre-determined; there's something of human bodies there, something of embeddings and prosthetics. Who does this predetermining, what are the compressions, the protocols, the exemplary decisions as to the parameters required in the construct of a maquette-mannequin? Here, in other words, is the history of the fecund universe parlaying among subjects and objects, melding and obfuscating divisions until, like the sleazy or tawdry processes they might as well be, everything becomes simultaneously messay and true world and here, in other anysigns, or none at all, they are. http://www.alansondheim.org/myforestdream.mp4