The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive


Sabat. The Ruin.

The objects are static, nothing moves; smoke pours forth, smoke gathers
video. The static objects construct archaeology; one wanders among yes-
terday's fury. In the sky, everything is as it was; on the ground, moire
becomes you - it's your movement that makes screened patterns transform
among themselves.

This is a wonderful environment to wander around in, if you can find your
way around.

This is what one is accustomed to - sculptural installation filled with
optical amazement.

Perhaps the site is a ruin. Perhaps the objects are left behind. Perhaps
the spews are exhausts. Perhaps this is a remnant of enormous activity
over a long period of time. Perhaps there was a drought. Perhaps there was
an economic collapse. Perhaps there was nothing left to trade.

There was nothing left to trade. Virtual monies inflated beyond anything
anyone dreamed of. They couldn't be shored by real monies. Behind the
scenes, real monies dry up; servers and routers falter, storage becomes
creaky, bad sectors flourish on hard drives. The virtual world shudders
and shakes. Everything moves jerkily if anything moves at all. The spew
continues because the spew requires no intervention. The world is static.

It's as if embers glow forever. It's as if dynamics becomes museology.
It's an archaeology of the trace. It's a trace which disappears as servers
wink out. It's a memory and these still images and videos below.

It behooves you to go into the site while you can. World-wide, everything
is chaos. There is respite in the ruins. Nothing worse can happen, can it?
And their strange beauty, so uncanny. It's how you imagined things from
the very beginning. It's the stuff your dreams were made of. You know it's
a conjuring trick but you're mesmerized. You know it's prims and protocols
but you're seduced.

Visit the site while you can. This is the future minus the steroids. This
is a form of wandering and who you may come across. There have been 1302
visitations to date. Perhaps there is a visitation now and you are missing
it. Perhaps you have never wandered in inconceivable spaces and you are
afraid of them and there is so much to learn.

But there is a hiatus now and you have time to learn and time to visit.
The slightest gap, almost a liminal space, you're worried about the
future, you're worried about your future, but just for a moment, you have
a bit of time, you'll sit back, relax, you're curious, you'll take the
time, time is all you have, it's all any of us have, the dollar slides,
dolorous, the site remains, everything is still there, a few things moving
up in the sky, but everything waiting for you, everything waiting for you.

http://www.alansondheim.org/sabat.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/ sabat jpgs

Everything silent, everything waiting for you -

To access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22
email archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/

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