Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0811060207220.5077@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Images and Commentary
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 02:07:34 -0500 (EST)
Images and Commentary (This might be the clearest exposition I've been able make re: the Second Life installation. The commentary is just that, a kind of epistemological description. The world of the show, the true world or virtual or dream or real world, comes through, I think. And from this perhaps to the show itself, where everything moves, and contemplation is more difficult, close to impossible at times, and hopefully rewarding.) http://www.alansondheim.org/mur01.jpg Julu write in the sky of Second Life; in the skysphere, the writing, the digital itself, is endlessly duplicated. The simulacrum of distance leads to the vanishing point of writing, literally unadulterated space. This could be any future in which dimensionality leads to dimensional collapse. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur02.jpg A similar image; it's clear, through a consideration of the difference between the two, that the opticality is the result of an intersection of a disk with a sphere; unlike the sphere, the center of the disk is striated. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur03.jpg Julu as hermaphroditic writer hirself, endlessly duplicated; the wryting (of the body) swings out as wrything. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur04.jpg The writing gathers thickly into tiled kanji; each stroke extends in width as well as length. A second illusion: that of pipes among Julu and hir processes. This first set of images is variants among a basic configura- tion. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur05.jpg The sphere/disk contraption is populated by Julu, torso, cone, an image of myself as fundamental structure (on one hand) but vulnerable to swarm (on the other). Of course the cone falls through the bottom of the image, lands nowhere, just something teetering as if it provided an axis (it does not). http://www.alansondheim.org/mur06.jpg Color differentiates sphere from disk, and sphere becomes oddly heraldic - a shield or boiler interior, documentation of the metaphoric. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur07.jpg A second view; oddly in this one, it's possible to see the broken remnant of another disk to the right of the first; it too circulates, almost entirely outside of the sphere. By now this series is exhausting itself and it is getting close to the time when one moves on to the promise or premise of new directions. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur08.jpg One disk seen through another. The texture map between two images of Yamantaka is based on skin around the vocal cords; one sees through speech to hungry ghosts, murmurs almost gathered into words, the inchoate lost in itself. I'd call this image beautiful, but that worries. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur09.jpg Exterior shot of sphere (foreground), major intersecting disk with parti- cle emission from the center (the phonemic) and other ascendent disks, implying that the series, like Brancusi's column, might continue forever. In this case, in the absent of gravity, mountainous height is easily in reach - without, however, any indication of the sublime. The sublime is no longer that which disappears, but its ghost is at the end of teleportation - everything portends an inconceivable clarity miles up in a sky which is just as airless below sea level as it is anywhere else. The disks revolve at varying speeds, and appear to revolve forever; the energy driving them comes from the reading/writing of servers and local machines, one might say by a circuitous route. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur10.jpg Looking down the same chain from above; the disks radiate two types of particles, two physics only partially responding to the simulacrum of weather. The disks are deliberately off-kilter; everything in the instal- lation wobbles, as if about to break loose - in spite of being totally determined by a relatively obdurate database. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur11.jpg Archaeology of older objects held in stationary positions in the sky. These objects do not move; they exist as extensions of the land coordin- ates, although close to a fictitious kilometer up. The shapes are 'troubled,' as if from half-dreams or hypnagogic images. Everything around them moves, but they are a form of written history. The history extends back no more than five months, but it is present in quick-time fast-for- ward process. Think of it! Moving around, among, inscription, as if inscription were part and parcel of the world and (avatar, human) body itself (it is). http://www.alansondheim.org/mur12.jpg Another view of the previous using the light palette of the Hudson River School or Illuminists. The object are situated against embers; wheels are visible, as are landscape elements by other artists in the distance. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur13.jpg Collusion of spaces and times: Static objects, disks, mutoscopes, emis- sions,, all under the watch of Julu Twine, who had a role in their creation. The communality of objects is evident; everything is in groups, regular or irregular, symmetrical or apparently scattered - Wolfram's cellular automata, via Rudy Rucker, come to mind. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur14.jpg Beneath the gallery installation, a view within the water, looking towards the sea-bed. The image is complex and moving at furious speed; many of these objects have hurtled from the surface in relation to the presence of an avatar (proximity switching) - others remains as denizens of the ocean. Things appear as part-objects as they rise above the floor of the gallery or sink into the ocean surface. This is possibly the most successful of the scapes, carrying the weight of the true world, dream and real and virtual, inscriptive and inert, within it. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur15.jpg We are back in the sky (perhaps there have been inadvertent teleports); the archaeology is now visible from below. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur16.jpg And from the side. This mapping reveals tiling strategies; as in the sky- sphere, I'm photographically present on a rectangular object (which is out of place; it's one of the architectural building-blocks of the now decon- structed museum), a problematic punctum mirroring the skysphere cone. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur17.jpg An odd image in the process of configuration/construction: the heart of Nikuko (Alan Dojoji), a female figure without the attachments that will dwarf her and appear less than a second later. She has just landed as the database approximately reconstructs her previous position - hence her awkward stance. Unlike Julu Twine, she is responsible and in charge of the exhibition; she can place objects where she wants, alter the video and sounds, and do other basic tasks (including banning avatars) which are impossible for the other. She's necessary for building, but with the attachments, it's almost impossible to see around her. So she drops objects and begins them; they're finished by Julu Twine, who comes in lean as caretaker, designer, and artist. This image almost never appears by the way, so fast are the clothes (object attachments, in this case large partially-visible objects and particle generators) placed on the armature; it was a database error that allowed me to snap the image. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur18.jpg Mapped sky disks in irregular positions. These are the lower disks just above the exhibition space. The pink texture is that of an avatar body; without modification it might form the basis for Julu's hermaphroditic morphing. Note the skin textures between the kalaidoscopic sky writing images; these are from vocal cords and (male) groin. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur19.jpg Stacked and wobbled upper disks with mapped sky writing. This indicates the general architectural strategy of disk alignment - almost, but not quite, synchronous wheels or gears. Sometimes the disk fall or disappear, as if part of a natural world (I have no accounting for this). http://www.alansondheim.org/mur20.jpg Another view of the same; in this one Julu Twine appears as inscriber and the particle emissions from the disk centers are clear. These emissions use the same configuration as the particle writers of both Julu Twine and Nikuko; they stand in for smokers on the deeper beds of the ocean near tectonic rifts. Out in the light of dusk, they do nothing but revolve, inert, useless, magnificent, sublime perhaps but only from the periphery, a kind of neural distance as fantastic as anything else here. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur21.jpg Yet another view, with the skysphere, still carrying its yellow tinting below (this was later changed to neutral grey). The horizon itself has air above featureless cloud. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur22.jpg Nighttime illumination of disks; in the distance, Nikuko (Alan Dojoji) can be seen. She controls the disk images and permissions, as mentioned above. Particles and her full regalia are visible. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur23.jpg Looking up from the installation space. Architectural flats are visible on the periphery. Another video is visible in the center of a horizontal disk. It's close to noon. The edges of fast-moving transparent objects are visible. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur24.jpg In this image, there are four or five intersecting disks, all linked, all slated to disappear (without a trace, i.e. they're not 'returned from off world') shortly. The disks carry very complex video texturing; the result is the kind of jumble that fascinates me, a tangled somewhat spherical landscape (but not quite spherical, not quite landscape) that doesn't resolve. Another texture of Yamantaka, one that doesn't map video, is visible on part of one of the disks. The scene is dusk again. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur25.jpg A similar shot as the previous; in this one, the spherical shape is broken and distorted, and an architectural flat can be seen moving at high speed in the upper portion of the image. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur26.jpg A general dusk view with complex video texturing near the entrance to the installation. This gets close to the appearance of jumble (fourth stage in Wolfram's categories, the gnarly, through Rucker); this is an almost impossible space to negotiate. Note that the disks themselves intersect and distort one another. In this view, objects coalesce, disappear, frag- ment, erupt, and so forth; it's impossible to unite them - it's also impossible to separate them. Clarity disappears in favor of the amphi- bolic. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur27.jpg A general view of the teetering wheels in the installation; many of these will disappear within twenty minutes or so. Most of the wheels have corrupted surfaces; Julu avoids the purely symmetric and its effect. Real crystals are rarely perfect and are paralleled here by occlusions and distortions of all sorts. http://www.alansondheim.org/mur28.jpg This is an earlier view of the entrance before more complex elements were added and/or transformed. Note the roughly spherical objects; these are forced skyward by avatar presence. As mentioned in another text, they may be forced indefinitely upward, but seem to eventually return to their original position, almost resting on the ground (as if they were resting on the ground). http://www.alansondheim.org/mur29.jpg The final image in the series, taken from beyond and slightly below the sea wall bordering the Odyssey land tract and exhibition space. The cone on the left, texture-mapped with an image of a penis, teleports to the sky-sphere and moves, piston-like (and bad metaphorically) in and out of a well. The black skein-object to the right aligns with the ring- and moss- objects, all of which are partly invisible, membranes or skeins somewhat demarcating territory. Think of everything here moving at very high speed, Julu buffeted about by objects beneath her as well as those visible in the image. It should be noted that a few objects shuttle slowly back and forth and others slowly revolve, as if in court dances; these aren't grounds but mutual interferences with the fast-forward ones. Cones and disks wobble, Yamantaka carrying prayer-wheels carrying Yamantaka, hungry ghosts resid- ing just beyond the screen. All screens are dream-screens and all dreams are screens. Julu Twine looks on; the position of her arms indicates she is trying to remain upright, focused, on nothing and everything at all. (I hope this elucidation indicates that the images from the installation aren't random, that the installation coheres within and without the pseudo-random, that reason and reasoning are problematic in the face or alterity of negotiation (which does not necessarily imply a strategy within the symbolic), and that there is meaning in the madness, madness in the meaning, and that the world is gnarly, distorted, always already incomplete, and somewhat beautiful and deadly.) | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ | To access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist: | http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22 | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org | sondheim@panix.com, sondheim@gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285