The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

July 21, 2008


flatblack imaginary


flatblack which is absence determined by video surfacing, coating,
video membrane, salve, video cortisone, video of the stuttered shuddered
tiling, sputtered or shattered video, splattered video or video spew:

you can really find your way around here

several thousand equivalent images

http://www.alansondheim.org/ nest jpgs
http://www.alansondheim.org/shade.mp4


==========================================================================


Research Directions for the past few months (thanks to Sandy Baldwin,
Frances van Scoy, New York State Council of the Arts, National Science
Foundation)

1 Access Grid (thanks to Frances van Scoy, Gary Manes)

a. Circling the planet, routing data (slightly similar to bang path) -
developing visual / audio feedback and resonances. Changing instrument
timbre. Charting routing speed in ms.
b. Phenomenological studying of classroom/board/transmission rooms.
(Visual lobby/room surfing.)

2 Choreography (dance with Foofwa d'Imobilite, Kira Sedlock, Azure
Carter, thanks to Heather Ahern)

a. 'Psychogeography' - using landscape as participatory.
b. Avatar imitation/extension (Kira: 'avadance') for projection,
recording, etc.
c. Face-dance: Scowling, imitating, etc.
d. Technology:
i. Using Very Low Frequency (VLF) radio: atmospherics (played back in
Second Life (SL).
ii. Vibration sensor used to record sound of dancer's movement.

3 Other (thanks to Gary Manes, Frances van Scoy)

a. VLF recorded in various areas - what are the anomalous signals
generated elsewhere?
b. Haptic Devices: What occurs at mathematical limits defined by computer
limitations (i.e. sin(tan(x)))? How does a user experience these limits?

4 Scan (thanks to Gary Manes, Frances van Scoy, Azure Carter, Foofwa
d'Imobilite, Kira Sedlock)

a. Three-dimensional spatial scanning with small laser: manipulations of 
bodies, body images, tantric articles. How are bodies changed or perceived 
as changed (shelling as example)? How can the tantric object be virtually 
'extended' into space?
b. Three dimensional temporal-spatial scanning with large laser: Body
multiples, fluid temporality mapped onto proscenium which interact as
totality, i.e. becomes an object for other bodies, real and virtual.

5 Mocap (thanks to Gary Manes, Frances van Scoy, Azure Carter, Foofwa
d'Imobilite, Kira Sedlock, David Bello)

a. Distributed or rearranged sensors (physical reconfiguration of incoming
data).
b. Reworked interface to change mathematical mapping functions from data
to bvh files.
c. General concept of FILTERING as fundamental characteristic of organism,
intelligence, any perceiving or sensing.
i. Bandwidth issues.
ii. Bias issues.

6 Second Life (Thanks to Sugar Seville, Gazira Babeli, Ian Ah, Sandy
Baldwin)

a. Five month residency in Odyssey, continuous changes almost on a daily
basis.
b. Thinking of SL as malleable space or 'liquid architecture' - creating
environments impossible and inconceivable in a real physical world.
i. Entanglement and invisible objects.
ii. Mappings of video and audio on invisible objects.
iii. Shadow-objects which coalesce.
iv. Objects playing with womb-like enclosures, continuous particle
generation.
c. Performances from the Biovision Hierarchy (bvh) files from motion
capture equipment, inconceivable/untoward/wayward/contrary gestures and
behaviors.
i. Behavior collision.
ii. Obtrusive or obstructive behavior.
d. Phenomenology of lived body in untoward spaces.
i. Broken or stuttered spaces
ii. Spaces that remap themselves.


===

rounds

yes, well it's possible to take a ride on these things, you might go
somewhere perhaps in the best circles, Julu's sloughing her skin again,
she's doing it for anyone, you can't catch it, it disappears, there's
always another, you're in the middle of the stream, you can step in it
twice, you can step in it more than twice, you can repeat yourself, you
can repeat yourself exactly, can't you. so you might take a ride, one
shadow to another, let's call them shades, slightly more accurate, forms
of ghost-traps, they'll bring you in, you'll emerge with nothing though,
hardly a memory, something on the order of repetition-compulsion, perhaps
osmosis. life is one skin after another, they're all the same, they all
appear the same, something different perhaps to the utmost, but a kind of
mechanical equivalence, they're not identical, pseudo-random calculations
ensure that, however close one might think of them as such. there's a
cliff between the random and the pseudo-random, and that cliff is percep-
tion. make no mistake about them = make no mistake about them, nothing
goes forever, the Net is fragile, tenuous, at best; it's always about to
collapse, it's about collapse. here's where death comes into play: what's
about collapse stays on the side of collapse, not death, which is a word
and I will stop that when I die, until then, round and round

http://www.alansondheim.org/merryround.mp4

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