The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

July 29, 2008


Trails


I can see if someone has come into the exhibition space in Second Life;
they leave a trail behind them, objects and spews that slowly disappear -
in the meantime, the space is oddly denuded.

I want to explain why the space looks like an acid trip, why it's so
crowded, so preposterous. And the reason has to do with anti-art, or
non-art, making something that construes an environment instead of
presenting an object or installation for contemplation. The objects in the
SL exhibition have depth; they're not pieces or scatter pieces or process
work - they're environment, an environmental space close to useless,
replete, fecund. What appears to be actions are trajectories, complex
interactive fields that mimic sentience.

Objects and spews head toward the depths; Julu is down there among them,
moving in and out of the way, looking for the teleport sphere to return
her to the surface. The teleport sphere is a phallic object, contained,
curtailed; it is the only sculpture in the neighborhood.

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

Think of the space, spacings, as an ensemble of interrelated ecological
niches; there are local customs, nestings, vectors, behaviors and behavior
collisions. The space is utterly transformed through participatory move-
ment that environmental resonates.

It's only this way that complex and alien phenomenologies assert them-
selves - there's no piece or artwork presenting one or another problema-
tic, only a skein or membrane simultaneously tending towards thought and
its absence.

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