Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0804302139320.2623@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: finalgame of divas
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:39:56 -0400 (EDT)
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