Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0810050318540.7023@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Crashland
Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2008 03:19:14 -0400 (EDT)
Crashland You don't have to lift up the things, you just put them where you want, then edit them. You check 'physical' in the right box, and watch them drop. They never break, they can't break, air currents don't mean a thing to them. But they fall and fall and whatever they land on, they're turned around sometimes, sometimes they just sit there. I add scripts to make them go around, turn faster and faster if nothing happens - scripts to make them move up and down or any other direction, sometimes they fall over, usually they fall over after a while. They'll go over the wall, land somewhere else, and sit there, or be returned by the software if they're on someone else's property. Sometimes they'll go out of the gamespace altogether and they'll be returned or not. Sometimes I have to get down there and take them back or delete them. Either way, my inventory keeps getting fatter and fatter, economy is always surplus here. When they fall they might clatter and the best thing to do is have several fall onto one another, they'll tilt every direction until something teeters or topples or does something weird, maybe it will slide a little and something else will do something, maybe it will slide a little further or a little back. I don't worry about destroying anything, there's nothing to destroy and even if something sits on someone's piece for a little while nothing happens, the piece is fine, and what sits there just looks out of place until I go down there and take it out, delete it or take it back as I said and then I can do the whole thing over again. So this is a practice for the denouement when all the objects fall, and it's fun to figure out what should fall first, the highest or the lowest, what might fall fastest although they seem to have a kind of standard speed they hit rather quickly like a falling body and then they stay that way until they land and when they land there's none of the bending or tearing or moving about limb by limb you might find with an avatar like myself, but just the thing rattling and rolling and as I said teetering and tottering and doing this and that which might be a nuisance to others but which is fun to watch. I think this is nicely in keeping with the physical world, I mean in the physical world what if a black hole suddenly opens next to you like Pascal thought and what if everything suddenly got weight and gravity and maybe other physics in this space and then there's a kind of a mess to deal with and maybe clean up or just let it lie there and document it. It's hard to document because what's happening moves fast and you have to slow frames down or take stills and hope for the best, which usually isn't, but it's enough to go on to give you some sort of idea about the whole thing and the best part of it is that you can't returning to the beginning whatever you do because there's too much chaos although it looks as if the non-physical objects just keep going on their merry way so you can practice over and over again. It's fun to watch the stream of light as I change things, I just point and then begin the process, someone else might know what's happening and think wow, I have to get out of the way, but of course they don't, nothing much happens, you saw that when I fell, I just fell and fell and started repeating myself, I flailed the same way over and over again like the program says, who knows what I was thinking, until I couldn't fall any more. So you're safe whatever you do and you can keep thinking and talking or whatever even when you hit the ground, there's not that much to it, it's not eternal but it will last a good while longer, I think, enough so I can say to you at the end of the day which comes three or four times at yours, so I can say to you, it's lasted long enough, it's been a good time and a good space, it's been a good trip, I'm still here, and I'm still here, I'm still here. - Julu Twine http://www.alansondheim.org/ crashland jpegs http://www.alansondheim.org/crashland.mp4 http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22