The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

September 14, 2008


Moving around gets harder and harder


On the ground floor you may teleport to the ground floor.
You may teleport from the ground floor to the skysphere or ocean inlet.
The ocean inlet is filled with prims with proximity scripts that have
desperately, it seems, tried too get out of the way.
You can hardly find your way there to the two spheres that send you
back to the surface.
On the surface you can barely find your way to the two spheres that
send you back to the ocean inlet.
Almost everything sends you somewhere else.
Almost everywhere sends you somewhere else.
Almost everywhere may send you almost everywhere, including where you
are, right now.
But to get there, you must enter, and enter everything.
And to enter is almost impossible, as flight is almost impossible;
remnants of skyspheres obstruct your every move.
You might try to fly around the slowly turning skyspheres.
You will most likely be caught in the slowly turning skyspheres.
If you have the proper gift, you can fly directly to the skyspheres.
Flying as such, you will move upwards along a chain of enormous
remnants of skyspheres, end on end, slowly wheeling in the sky.
You will find you cannot enter the skysphere from below or through the
sides; you must enter through the top, lowering yourself.
You will then stop flying, and walk around the cone penetrating the
floor, and you will walk with wonder.
You will walk with wonder at the solitude and beauty of the space.
You may touch any of the objects in the skysphere and you will be
transported back to the ground.
Or you may fly out of the top of the skysphere and move away from the
surface and look back; you will be amazed at the particle
streams and sky-writing that emanates from it.
Or you may fly out of the top of the skysphere, move slightly to the
sky, and allow yourself to fall beautifully down and into the
exhibition space, where you will right yourself in order to look about.
Within the exhibition space you will find everything and nothing to
see as your path is obstructed by objects and particles desperate to
get out of your way.
These objects that are desperate will end up at least in part within
the ocean inlet which you may have just visited.
There are songs and noise and as you move from one place to another
within the ocean inlet or exhibition space the songs and noise will
change.
There is video which streams across and within the streaming particles
and you may turn the video on and off and the space of the exhibition
utterly changes.
But you will barely see anything unless you separate your viewpoint
from the viewpoint of the avatar or set your avatar to mouseview, in
which case you are tied to the avatar bending
and moved by objects and streams blocking hir path, ascending to hir
or descending upon hir.
You may find some of those objects sending your avatar down into the
ocean inlet which you may or may not have already visited.
And you must beware of the trap by the stairs leading into the
exhibition space, the trap which sends you into a part of the ocean
inlet from which there is no return, none except for your teleporting
back to your home space which you may or may not have set, and from
your home space you may then teleport back into a safer area of the
exhibition space.
There are so many traps like this, so many distorted and occluded
views, so many shadows.
And so many shadows and peripheral darkness even in the middle of a
dark dark day.
So you will walk around or through the shadows which depends on the
nature of the shadows day or night, whatever time it is in the
virtual world.
But it's all blooming, buzzing, confusion; it's all wildness that seems
almost random; it's all bright lights and dimmed space; it's a small
space you cannot lose; it's a small space that can lose you.
So you will be careful and your reward will be great, no, greater than
that, and that with wonder.

http://www.alansondheim.org/ buzz and buzzy jpgs
http://www.alansondheim.org/buzz.mp4

to access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22

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