The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

finalgame of divas


The poetics of community in relation to temporal sequences and emanent
representations / inhabitations. (two 'breakthrough' videos in a series.)

"We must therefore recognize that what is designated by the terms
'glance,' 'hand,' and in general 'body' is a system of systems devoted to
the inspection of a world and capable of leaping over distances, piercing
the perceptual future, and outlining hollows and reliefs, distances and
deviations--a meaning--in the inconceivable flatness of being. The move-
ment of the artist tracing his arabesque in infinite matter amplifies, but
also prolongs, the simple marvel of oriented motion or grasping movements.
Already in its pointing gestures the body not only flows over into a world
whose schema it bears in itself but possesses the world at a distance
rather than being possessed by it." (Merleau Ponty, Signs)

What is the form of finalgame? It may be proffered as a Poser 7 file for
download, manipulation; it may consist of a series of images your or I
might produce with Poser 7; it may be an exemplary video such as
finalgame.mp4 or less compressed, finalgame.avi; in any case it is a
dynamic object, four-dimensional, used either for further manipulation on
the part of the viewer/subject, or for re-presentation in any number of
media, after such manipulation. Codework and dynamics interpenetrate.

Now in finalgame, three doubled motion capture files (each produced by two
humans simultaneously inhabiting varied elements of a single body) are
combined to provide emanent momentum; the emanent itself is composed of
three temporal sequences transformed into dynamic objects: 1. Single
images of a lacrosse player in 'typical' game poses; 2. Multiple 'snaps'
of a lacrosse player in a set of poses, combined into a single dynamic
object; and 3. A single 'snap' taken over six minutes of a woman walking
back and forth in front of the scanner. The first corresponds to a
traditional painting or photograph; the second to animation deconstructed;
and the third to both radar and other scans of dynamic behavior, and the
deconstructed psychology of internal time consciousness. These dynamic
objects are carapaces replacing the 'human' avatar elements of the emanent
who now wears time.

In divas, three to four motion capture files are simultaneously graphed
and played on a single grid; each of the files again is produced by two
humans simultaneously. The style is that of the DIVA viewer; the motions
construct communal interaction as doubly-inhabited bodies are situated
within the playing field.

In both videos there are varying interrelationships among single actants,
multiple actants, multiple sequences, and dual 'inhabitations' of a single
behavioral matrix.

http://www.alansondheim.org/finalgame.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/divas1.mp4