Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0810312320210.11650@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: weights and spidesrs
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:20:49 -0400 (EDT)
weights and spidesrs reds spidesrs worlds in the making http://www.alansondheim.org/read1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/read2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/read3.jpg the difficulty of hi-speed physics: sending objects back to the database in Second Life http://www.alansondheim.org/curled.mp4 here's what happens: It's a small screen because compression found it difficult. large-scale objects are positioned and dropped, fly off. some remain grounded for a while; these "lucky ones" are given a chance to live - the physical attribute is unchecked, and they remain placed, awkwardly, adding to the jumble. Gravity plays its role, but only so far. the site appears less and less designed, more and more as if an alien force has taken over - and it has, one might be considered a simulacrum of the real, designated by weight. So weight connects the real to the virtual, but only so far; weight's abstracted, unlike the avatars themselves, which are only empty images. Weight isn't an empty image, weight's not an image at all, weight's only what's made of it, and what it makes of an object. Of course an object has to be elevated; situated snugly on the ground, nothing at all happens; it might as well be virtual ...