Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0902111646090.6788@panix1.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Performance Notes, Beam Me Up performance today
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:46:56 -0500 (EST)
Performance Notes, Beam Me Up early preparation (Julu Twine and Dojoji dance): http://www.alansondheim.org/ddaance.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/dddaaance.mov (images with Sandy and myself will follow later) the performances in Odyssey are most often a mess. it's almost impossible to negotiate the space. performers and objects are equivalent and difficult to distinguish. metaphors include debris fields, information implosion, opera, mania. sexuality is cut and distributed on high-speed jagged edges. language and movement transform into subject. language and movement are relays and dissipations. the futures of virtual worlds lie in the inconceivable. virtual sexuality transforms the gaze of pornography into cartoon dynamics - what dominates is social intercourse, semiotics transformed from vision to vision-movement. the social becomes physical; the physical becomes social. you lose the smell of the thing; you lose the thing. an implosive economy of permissions, domains, parcels, server and land capacity. filtering options constricting and regulating land and particle rendering. always to set a landmark, teleport out of there. nevertheless bound by someone's concept of physics, virtual and otherwise. physics of ostensible three-dimensionality and ordinary phase rules. no magnets but seduction of voice and image beckoning you onward. the performance is a gaping maw in the gaping maw of Second Life. all orgasms possess kernels of fantasy, terror, loss and recuperation. this is a beautiful installation which will be rendered harmless in its absence. the width of a skin is a pixel. the width of your body is four centimeters. the metrics of your body dissolving in membrane, tissue, skein, touch, ignoring the fallow screen. the last words I ever hear will be your voice. in an instant you are in my arms, in an instant I am in your arms. to find me you must touch me through the flurry of skins and prims. you find yourself when you fuck all that you hold dear. for an instant, the onslaught of existence. there is more in the air and beneath the surface, there are surfaces as the world flees from you everywhere. I made the world flee from you and I can return the world, as I write the world which is my world, in and out of existence. your presence is my cue, your presence is my clue. come join me as words will never hurt me, worlds will never hurt you, words are all there is, in this tiny space, words are all there is. words are worlds are words. in an instant, everything swept away, universal maw, annihilation. the universal maw, survival in chaos. the performance performs chaos. beyond this, annihilation. I write the death of the word. I write the death of worlds, death of the world. I write the death of the world, death of worlds. THE NOWHERE DANCE "We'll teleport people into an installation which has been constructed over a period of eight months. It represents nothing of architecture, fantasy, or surrealism; it's a space unlike anything in the real world. It's difficult to move through, a field of alien processes which has a life of its own. Sandy Baldwin and I will dance through and around it - on the ground, in the air, and on the ocean floor. Part of the dance will be based on learning to move around; part will be based on adding to the clutter."