Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0809140051520.10788@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Moving around gets harder and harder
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:52:21 -0400 (EDT)
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