Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0807290015470.6828@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Trails
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:17:25 -0400 (EDT)
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.