Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0812042136180.13775@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: The Accidental Artist installation in Second Life
Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 21:37:13 -0500 (EST)
( Some recent images of Julu Twine (Alan Dojoji with Sunflower Aichi and MinDBlinD Setsuko dancing in SL w/ avadance movements (these are quite beautiful) - http://www.alansondheim.org/ dis png series ). ) The Accidental Artist installation in Second Life Opensource Obscure suggested I send a description of the SL installation to the SL blogs; s/he offered send it hirself, if I provided a descrip- tion. I've been thinking about this - the description is below. I might add that this is probably one of the few times - if not the only time - an artwork in Second Life has been tended for such a long period (half a year); that its constant deconstruction provides a way of thinking about being-virtual in the first/last place; that it dies into thinking about the relationship between inscription and culture; that it develops a poetics of the virtual as well; and that it might be fun. I'd appreciate it greatly if you would pass this description along. The exhibition will be up in one form or another until the end of February. ==== Alan Sondheim has been working on an installation which changes almost daily at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22 . Called The Accidental Artist, it's based on a deconstruction of the Odyssey gallery space and a phenomenology of 'utterly alien' objects which can't be easily assigned symbolic meanings. The piece is huge and has five layers to it - an undersea space with high-speed movement beneath the gallery floor; the exhibition space itself; the outdoors space in front of the exhibition space (up to the sea-wall); a 'sky-sphere'; and a series of objects above and below the sky-sphere. Almost everything moves in the installation, but Sondheim has stilled most of the objects in the exhibition space itself, so it becomes a kind of archaeology of past movement. Some of the objects in the sky and beneath the gallery flee from any avatar in the vicinity; they can be pushed indefinitely high up in the sky. Sondheim says the work represents a sexualized space, a mind-space, a space which always has to be negotiated (it's not easy to get around, but there are any number of objects that teleport you from one place to another), a space dealing with the phenomenology of the body, and a space which can only be realized in Second Life - none of the movements and objects could exist outside a virtual world. Sondheim also makes it difficult to say what is an object, and what's not - almost everything emits peculiar particles that rise lazily like smoke in long trails. The sound itself mirrors this, with eerie songs about avatars by Azure Carter competing with local sound emitters presenting bits of Sondheim's music. At times, Sandy Baldwin and Sondheim (or Sondheim solo) perform in the space; the avatars are also complex with their own sets of movements. Sondheim has worked extensively with motion-capture equipment at West Virginia University - this included Gary Manes' rewriting of the mocap software itself and remapping the sensors. The result is that his avatars (Julu Twine and Alan Dojoji) perform movements and choreographies drawn from real life, but impossible in real life - arms and legs fly through themselves, for example. The resulting 'dances' have been used by performers in real life as either backdrop or choreographies themselves. Do check this out - there's nothing else like it in Second Life, and because of the constant changes, it's hard to know what to expect next. =====