The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

June 26, 2008


The performance (Sandy Baldwin and myself) went extremely well last night. 
The choreograpy was great. I also used chromatic harmonica, flute, and 
keyboard. Sandy had avatar theory automated with high-speed scrolling 
text; I used repeated text chunks from the avatar plays I've written. 
Sugar Seville and I recorded some of it. We have a second performance at 4 
eastern daylight time (1 pacific) today, Thursday - see below. Please 
come.

Some debris -
Nikuko avatar configuring sculpted body prims
http://www.alansondheim.org/holding.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/holdin2.png
dark faciality http://www.alansondheim.org/facial.jpg
3 study maquettes
http://www.alansondheim.org/vgimage2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/vgimage3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/vgimage4.jpg


Odyssey presents:

THE ACCIDENTAL ARTIST

Alan Sondheim

Opening with performance June 25th 10pm EDT and June 26th 10pm CET
location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22

VIDEO PERFORMERS: Foofwa d'Imobilite, Azure Carter, Kira Sedlock, David
Bello, Alan Sondheim.

PERFORMANCE: Sandy Baldwin, Alan Sondheim

Thanks to Sugar Seville, Sandy Baldwin, NYSCA, Frances van Scoy, Virtual
Environments Laboratory at West Virginia University, Gary Manes


WRITE HOME: ACCIDENTS HAPPEN! Poor little avatars hide behind poor
little avatars! Avatars ab/use! Avatars don't need air! You can't weigh
them! They don't know the meaning of the word! THESE avatars don't know
anything! They're weighed down by coordinates! They can't fuck! Their
prims bend, smash! Smashed prims are prims. Hello, hello! Video and
performance spewed from a laboratory of virtual environments. IN MY
WORLD, THERE ARE NO ERRORS, ONLY SEDUCTIONS!



The human figure's place in art gets turned inside out here in this
world of unfolded and refolded geometries. What remains of the body in
the domain of the virtual? What survives the transition? Could this
still be called a body? Where are we going in this crossing over into
bits, why are we going there/nowhere and what does it say about the
nature of human desire? At what point does a beautiful accident become
a tragic mistake? Is there truly such a thing as a mistake?

A pioneer in virtual worlds and networked environments, Alan Sondheim
brings his latest work to Odyssey http://odysseyart.ning.com/, an
international community of artists working on 2 servers in the
networked 3d virtual world called Second Life. An autobiography of
Sondheim's career as an artist can be found here http://www.alansondheim.org/COMPBIO.TXT





This exhibit is being presented in the networked environment Second
Life on the Odyssey simulator. To view this work you must have a Second
Life account and avatar, which is free of charge and takes about 30
minutes to set up and learn the basic functionality. To set up an
account, go here: http://secondlife.com/ Once you are logged into
Second Life, click this link
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22 in your web browser and
the Second Life client will teleport your avatar to the location of the
exhibit. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate your avatar
through the exhibit and be sure to press play on both the audio and
video buttons located on the lower right of your Second Life client.







avatar : noun
Etymology: Sanskrit avat�rah descent, from avatarati he descends, from
ava- away + tarati he crosses over
1: the incarnation of a Hindu deity (as Vishnu) 2 a: an incarnation in
human form b: an embodiment (as of a concept or philosophy) often in a
person 3: a variant phase or version of a continuing basic entity 4: an
electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user
(as in a computer game)

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