Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0811082248400.28397@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: The Sundry What-if
Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 22:48:52 -0500 (EST)
The Sundry What-if Experiments go awry or wayward, changes damage or destroy objects, some things go off world, some vanish. Here are results/documents of today's session, a kind of reporting or phenomenology of the what-if: http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence01.jpg An almost invisible Julu Twine rides the red disk just about to disappear. The disk has a script; proximity raises it about 50m. The disk began on the installation floor, rose to this height when Julu Twine sat on it: What if Julu Twine sits? It didn't rise indefinitely but it finally left Second Life, permanently; nothing returned to the Lost and Found in Inventory. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence02.jpg Red disk from below, Julu riding on the other side. Everything revolves, but the disk alone is unstable. Eventually Julu will rise and the disk suddenly flies off, magic disappearance trick. Later I'd return to the installation to see if it reappeared in its usual position or somewhere somewhat above it - no such luck. At least not yet. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence03.jpg View of Julu riding the disk, closeup; wobbled diadem wheels revolve at right angles behind her. The entire scene shakes on the screen, Julu's movement affecting the camera. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence04.jpg Something entirely different: Julu wears several wobbling diadem wheels simultaneously. S/he's lost in the midst of them; they're generating male organs; images of females and males, distorted, abound, are tiled, the whole forming an incandescent Tiepolo. Once I discovered the viewpoint, I continued to experiment - from sliver of open sky to architecture and ceiling. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence05.jpg The smaller figures fill, fulfill the space, sperm within the matrix; you must imagine all of this wildly circulating - you must also imagine a certain blindness: It's impossible to see beyond or behind hir in any viewpoint - s/he's flying blind. The body extensions, which are the body itself, are enormous; Julu remains at the center of hir universe which is the universe, there is no other within and without these whirlings of worlds of fecundity, abjection, birth and death. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence06.jpg But Julu was inconceivable; I moved hir away from things, into the night- time sky, then withdrew from hir and at a safe distance turned around and took this image - enormous cosmic Julu, an inflationary universe within an invisible embedding space, the usual topography of Second Life. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence07.jpg Another closer view; the interlocking diadems are clearly visible but hir body proper is not. Technically I had to experiment with glows, interior lights, to get this image - it was easy to saturate, overpower everything with untoward illumination. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence08.jpg Julu with diadems detached enters the skysphere; here hir body contorts by virtue of revolving diadems and the sphere itself. S/he's lost in deity, Yamantaka, in the midst of hir own corporeality. S/he came here immedi- ately after the diadem experiment - now s/he's working with something else. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence09.jpg A general view of the current installation with Julu Twine and attached diadems. This tableau is complex; a cone, which rises and falls to the ground near the seawall in front of the installation, is linked to a number of objects - all of them revolve together, around the fulcrum of the cone. This extends diadems and other sculptured elements into and above the sea itself - even though the elements are individually now off- world, they're linked together in a way that grounds them. The revolving is abject and confused; it intersects with all of the other whirled elements in the installation, as well as with Julu Twine's elements. One can't tell - Julu can't tell - where body and diadems begin or end. There are different epistemologies of the virtual here, different extensions of body and topography, which together appear inconsistent and contrary. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence10.jpg Another view of the same setup as the previous image - the diadem on the left is sweeping through Julu, the ocean, and the landscape in general; unlike detached and independent diadems, this one seems ghostlike, as does Julu's - they intersect without any sort of mutual interaction. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence11.jpg Another view of Julu within the wheeled diadems which extend hir body. In this image, s/he is animated by a bvh file from the altered motion capture equipment - the body distortion distortions the diadems around hir, although it's difficult to tell from within. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence12.jpg Another interior view showing the complexity of the interlocked diadems. The textures, tiled images, form a sememe or partially-closed system completing and generating meaning. Dynamically, the images are for the most part unreadable; they move at enormous speed. The photograph becomes a kind of evidence, an analytical tool which doesn't get at essence but creates it. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence13.jpg Julu Twine's hermaphroditic body intersected by intersecting detached diadems in the skysphere. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence14.jpg Same as the previous, emphasizing the hands again in an untoward position due to hir movement from the bvh file. Skulls and eyes from the original tanka are watching. http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence15.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/excrescence16.jpg These two images are taken at a relatively enormous distance from Julu; they're odd, reflecting odd behavior within Second Life - almost all the elements visible are original architectural elements within the installation building - what's left of the elements, those that remain in their proper setting. The only other things visible are the teleport spheres in the gallery - these spheres were generated with Second Life, i.e. not uploaded, and in a sense are native to the space. It's clear that something is occurring, but it's not clear what. It's only clear that a question is raised and somewhat, not entirely, answered - What if - what if only the original elements remained in the space? What if diadems were attached? What if varied textures seem symbolic within a narrative sememe? What if one object extends another safely out of world? What if an object that moves away from avatars is ridden by one? What if diadems collide as if grasping an avatar body? What if diadems are attached to objects attached to an avatar body? (Everything shortly disappears, except for the immediate attachment.) What if? What if? What if?