Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0806260304520.7201@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: The Accidental Artist performance tomorrow etc.
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:08:48 -0400 (EDT)
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)