Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0807250236170.29869@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: experimental mathesis
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:36:49 -0400 (EDT)
experimental mathesis Today we began working with Azure repeating, as best she could, a dance figure she created; it was relatively simple and involved the whole body. each repeat was sent through motion capture into a filter designed by Gary Manes. The filters were as follows: 0tan, .01sin, .0001tan, 1tan, .01tan, 10sin, 10tan, 100sin, 1000cos, 1000tan, 10000sin, 10000tan, 100000tan, 1000000000sin; there were some duplicates as well, for controls. The results were studied in Poser and Second Life. Azure's performance was documented with an antique Sony Mavica camera set to multiburst; see http://www.alansondheim.org/ mocapdance series. A sample Poser video using a number of linked bvh files: http://www.alansondheim.org/mathtest.mp4 A video of Nikuko in Second Life moving through a bvh sequence that appears surprisingly 'alive' in the usual sense: http://www.alansondheim.org/alive.mp4 A video of Julu in Second Life motivated by a convoluted bvh behavioral collision (simultaneous enactment of two or more bvh files); the skin is surplus sexuality, theater, which also appears widespread at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22 ; the Julu video is at http://www.alansondheim.org/throb.mp4 Because of the relative mathematical complexity of mapping three-dimen- sional behavior with motion capture software, the visual results vary widely from filter to filter; as in early crystal radio tuning, there's no smooth differentiable curve as constants and functions slowly change. There are so many patterns in nature! Beyond the usual simple and complex tilings, there are non-repetitive tilings re: Penrose and others; there are fractal and chaotic regimes as well. We can also mention all sorts of 'monstrous' curves. Given the complexity of human behavior and dynamics, however, I think it's fair to say that the occurrences here at the Virtual Environments Lab are deeply unpredictable; while the filter is relatively rigid and secure (in these cases), the results are tempered with the exigencies of muscles and bones and gravity, as well as creativity, skill, intention, and so forth. A filter can exaggerate, i.e. increase time and space contrast, minute differences, but it can also diminish them to the extent that a kind of collapse occurs - the limit of course being 0, reducing everything to equivalent quiescence. All of this is fundamental and basic to the calculus; one might metaphorically consider what's happening in these videos as a _double movement,_ of human behavior in the first place, and shape-riding in the second. And how far must one go through the process, only to return again to the semblance of organic life? And what is the point of the journey, involving code and protocols, the real and the virtual, concrete substance, organic metabolism and mobility, as well as an overriding abstraction and impulse to re/produce something elsewhere that is once more identifiable within the comfort zone of lived experience? These videos/stills always surprise, always seem to offer something to be studied, from perception to a language of perceiving, and from the habitus of deeply lived environment to insistent anomalies in dialectic with problematic and overarching form.