The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

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