The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

LAST DAYS OF ODYSSEY INSTALLATION IN SECOND LIFE (and a couple texts)


Please note that the Accidental Artist at Odyssey is coming down in a few
days, after close to nine months! I'd appreciate it if you have the time
and energy to look at the installation in its final form. You might have
to fly around the place or teleport, but it's pretty spectacular; it goes
up to a height of around 980 virtual meters. Please do check it out - it's
unique in Second Life and probably has taken longer than any other work to
assemble. Thanks, Alan

| To access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist:
| http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22

i
story found inserted into a book by Jung:

"Write a story about a disheveled homeless man who gets on a delayed
train and starts talking to himself. The passengers think he's crazy.
So when he says 'get off the train' the child takes him off. No one
listens and the train crashes. The homeless man and the girl start a
friendship."

ii
Julu: hello 23-Feb-2009 19:26:59 GMT
Julu: now again 23-Feb-2009 19:28:02 GMT
Julu: oh no! 23-Feb-2009 19:28:18 GMT
Julu: hello here we are aren't we 23-Feb-2009 19:28:35 GMT
Julu: yes we are 23-Feb-2009 19:28:49 GMT
Julu: but at my end... 23-Feb-2009 19:29:03 GMT
Julu: what has gott wrot 23-Feb-2009 19:32:42 GMT
Julu: not much hello today 23-Feb-2009 19:32:50 GMT
Julu: no? 23-Feb-2009 19:33:08 GMT
Julu: no 23-Feb-2009 19:33:14 GMT
Julu: not really 23-Feb-2009 19:33:28 GMT
Julu: but wait, not a moment to lose! 23-Feb-2009 19:34:22 GMT
Julu: honestly, I meant every word of it! 23-Feb-2009 19:34:37 GMT
Julu: hold on, hold your houses! 23-Feb-2009 19:34:54 GMT
Julu: here we go again! 23-Feb-2009 19:35:15 GMT
Julu: but... 23-Feb-2009 19:35:36 GMT
Julu: what I mean.. 23-Feb-2009 19:35:56 GMT
Julu: but here is something else 23-Feb-2009 19:36:07 GMT
Julu: before the virtual, the material - capital is virtual, its effects
and ecology everywhere, its actions within the practical-inert. on one
hand then: a tendency towards online virtualization and all that implies -
on the other, the opposing flow of (virtual) capital and its corrosive
effects. 23-Feb-2009 19:36:16 GMT
Julu: suddenly... 23-Feb-2009 19:36:29 GMT
Julu: a collapse... 23-Feb-2009 19:36:32 GMT
Julu: there you are... 23-Feb-2009 19:37:25 GMT
Julu: now 23-Feb-2009 19:37:33 GMT
Julu: or... 23-Feb-2009 19:37:44 GMT
Julu: I'd argue against that certainly! 23-Feb-2009 19:37:52 GMT
[Julu left the session] 23-Feb-2009 19:47:49 GMT
[Julu joined the session] 23-Feb-2009 19:50:20 GMT
Julu: I just was alas eliminated for delay 23-Feb-2009 19:50:40 GMT
Julu: la la la sorry! 23-Feb-2009 19:50:45 GMT
Julu: I am speak to myself yes? 23-Feb-2009 19:50:54 GMT
Julu: perhaps I am answer from you as well, alas 23-Feb-2009 19:51:02 GMT
Julu: but now look!, everything is normal more! 23-Feb-2009 19:51:17 GMT

==

Notes on e-poetry for an online seminar at De Montfort University 2/23


If you go to http://www.alansondheim.org/howard/ you'll see the materials
I used - the talk was on e-poetry and virtual worlds. (Please note there
are references to the Odyssey show; again, it's only up for a few more
days - please check out http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22 .)


the virtual, writing, inscription: intertwined dynamics, presencing,
virtual and material strata

the linearity of writing melds with the passing of time, constructs the
diegesis and the inhabiting of a text.

hypertext jumps you in and out of choice / reading and I think as a result
is problematic - you're making choices within a production of the text,
but you're taken out of the text to make the choices.

in virtual worlds, moving creates the dynamics of choice so that you're
seeing or hearing signposts and signs, as if within the word, within the
world, not within / without / within / etc.

in virtual worlds, languaging appears always dynamic and in any number of
modes - it's the pleasure of the living text (to the extent that anything
lives or survives in the virtual).

so there's a power and an incredible simplicity in working in Second Life
for example - the database and software does almost all the work for you.

the next steps are portals - productions between virtual worlds or sectors
of virtual worlds or real worlds; eventually all sorts of intrusions will
be possible.

there are also behavioral signs. if you look at sprayed1 or swirl or
vortices or writingmachine or kanji in the /howard/ directory, you'll see
all sorts of ways for writing in the sky. these use either intrinsic
motions scripted for objects, or extrinsic animation files scripted for
avatars. the animation files come from altered motion capture files.

most of the image files in the /howard/ directory contain texts attached
to objects. if you look at slscript.txt you'll see how these are done.

For the most recent texts, look in /howard/ at recent.txt - this contains
my 'pertinent' writings from the last 2-3 weeks; for some of them I used
the chat at DMU or chat within Second Life, as a compositional structure.

Hi - the site's already been messed up; I've written Sugar etc. to see if 
something can be done, but the work there isn't as I intended it, and I'd 
appreciate it if you ignored the installation at this point. Thanks, Alan

We've been (Sugar and I) working on getting the installation open again - 
hopefully will be ok for the next three days, check it out, I've got a 
migraine and am in a state of abject retiration


| 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