The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

October 24, 2008


Big Dance/Climb video from Interrupt Festival -


Performance by Daniel Byers and Foofwa d'Imobilite in Providence, RI,
video by Alan Sondheim and Azure Carter. Climb, Daniel Byers, parcours,
Robert Kim, dance/choreography, Foofwa d'Imobilite, memory of avatars,
Alan Sondheim. The vertical span is about 40 meters high. Do check this
video out! Compression's fairly high but it's beautiful anyway. -

http://www.alansondheim.org/climbs.mp4

Dedicated to the Ones I Love: 3 video/performances from Brown University
Interrupt Festival plus text


From 'The Thunder -- Perfect Intellect':

[...]
For, it is I who am acquaintance: and lack of acquaintance.
It is I who am reticence: and frankness.
I am shameless: I am ashamed.
I am strong: and I am afraid.
It is I who am war: and peace.
[...]
It is I who am peace:
And because of me war has broken out:
And  a an alien: and a citizen.
I am riches: and she who has no riches.
Those who exist because of my sexual intercourse are
unacquainted with me:
And it is those who reside in my wealth that are
acquainted with me.
Those who are nigh unto me have not recognized me:
And it is those who are far away from me that have
recognized me.
On the day that I am nigh [unto you, you] are far
away [from me]:
[And] on the day that I [am far] from you, [I am
nigh unto] you.
[...]
It is [I] who am restraint: and unrestraint.
It is I who am joining: and dissolution.
It is I who am persistence:
And it is I who am weakening.
It is I who am descent:
And it is to me that people ascend.
It is I who am condemnation: and pardon.
As for me, I am free from sin:
And the root of sin derives from me.
[...]
I am mute and cannot speak:
And great is the multitude of my speaking.
[...]

(from Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures)

Julu Twine inhabits me: and does not inhabit me.

Foofwa d'Imobilite, dance/perform, Alan Sondheim, chromatic harp.
http://www.alansondheim.org/columharp.mp4

Foofwa d'Imobilite, Azure Carter, performance/dance, Alan Sondheim
channeling Julu Twine inspiration, Daniel Byers, camera
http://www.alansondheim.org/rifollow.mp4

Foofwa d'Imobilite, dance/perform, Alan Sondheim, Second Life,
Azure Carter, voice: section of LIVE PERFORMANCE at Interrupt,
Brown University
http://www.alansondheim.org/interrupt.mp4

And if you haven't seen it:
http://www.alansondheim.org/climbs.mp4 (this has been recompressed)

Sex and missile, details and mistakes


People say I should document the installation, oh but how? Now a sexand-
missile component has been added for example above the granite well in the
courtyard, best documented from within the well, looking up into the night
sky perhaps, but this component is miniscule, hardly present, a detail in
chaos which grows day and night.

Now perhaps to document would be to remove the entire installation and
store? Perhaps it would be to list the details of every file and script,
from texture to repetitive avatar motion. Worlds are always already
stillborn; they fall apart when examined and it's impossible to examine
them in the first place, that's called death.

So here is a detail which is flattened, the same way that levels are flat-
tened; time is now bound to it, bound to the file or to the clock driving
the re/presentation of the file. The file is released by virtue of history
- in other words, the history of the (absent) camera and its (previous)
movements; there's nothing to guarantee the linearity of the original /
originary time, which might well have been suppled, however coalesced into
the machinic equivalence of frames in the final construction.

One might then think of this as the memory of a non-existent documenta-
tion, therefore the stand-in or doubling of a documentation which was at
first full, fecund, replete, liquid and malleable. And you might find the
documentation, at least at the moment, this moment, within the thing
itself, the installation still current, the sexandmissile for example
waiting for your presence to explore in three, if not four, dimensions,
what has clearly been laid out, so recently.

http://www.alansondheim.org/sexandmissile.mp4

Second instance, third mistake (for it is all in error, what has been set
in stone or file) from a particular vantage point, this looping which
curls over the screen, in fact might be considered an efflorescence of the
imaginary.

http://www.alansondheim.org/loopy.mov

And third instance, third mistake, when something appears by chance (by
chance from the viewpoint of the subject) in-camera, some anomaly or
instant, captured by the built-in camera (not screen capture; controls and
cursor are eliminated) - as if these details were there for the taking,
not the result of chaotic happenstance.

http://www.alansondheim.org/ blue jpgs

All this documentation over nothing.

( Slurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22 )

Generated by Mnemosyne 0.12.