The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

my failures in second life

spending too much time in second life
designing too many things in second life
in a single installation in second life
changing too many things too often
documenting with too many photographs and videos
with too many texts and audio files
hiding out too much of the time in my installation
writing over and over again about second life
forgetting second life is a tiny little world
forgetting there's more to life than second life
not applying for grants and exhibitions in the real world
not looking after myself in second life
thinking too much inside the box
hoping uselessly for grants and commissions to support my habit
kludging and never learning scripting language
never entering second life in my dreams
pretending that second life has some ontological status
thinking i'll never die in second life
never finding real publication for the second life texts
never getting past moderated email lists with my second life texts
never really getting audience or readership
never really having extended dialog about the virtual
misrecognizing my second life work as having philosophical implications
thinking my second life work somehow extends the nature of the virtual
feeling too hopeless and too close to death even when in second life
and never releasing second life into first life and never calming down
hoping uselessly that my second life work will exist
at least for a short time after i no longer work in second life
and hoping uselessly as well that my work will continue
and exist somehow in spite of the ephemeral nature of data-bases
being unable to attract outside attention for my second life work
being unable to feel i've accomplished anything at all
and feeling useless participating in issues of governance going nowhere
feeling useless in second life and then feeling useless in general
thinking i've wasted nine months of my life for an invisible project
never having the means to attend conferences and seminars
and almost always presenting second life from a distance
as if the virtuality of second life conjured up the virtual
and as if the virtual always begets the virtual
finding it impossible to really suture between second life performance
and live performance
and never having access to adequate technology to explore this area
never meeting the sysadmins who own and control second life
and never understanding the structure of the second life data-base
never working sufficiently well with the gaz stand-alone application
and never really exploring the open-sim application
feeling i haven't enough knowledge to contribute to open-sim
feeling lost there and finding no one really to collaborate with
who might extend my work or our work into open-sim and develop it in
depth in second life itself
feeling clumsy with my avatars' dance moves and not understanding
how to develop even the simplest avatar facial expressions and
body attitudes
finding python, ruby, java and c++ basically opaque
feeling like an idiot confronted with the simplest programs
that i can only change in my dreams no matter how many ideas i have
above all realizing the foolishness and isolation of all of this
and being cut off from galleries and exhibitions, real-world
installations portals between second life and the rest of the world
so that whatever i do remains in the tiniest corner of the world
no matter first or second or third or fourth life
while i wait to die or second life to die or both of us or my work
to be corrupted elsewhere as data-bases and files disappear
since another failure is my inability to get hard-copy for just
about anything i've tried to do in the past year or so
whether to get books published by academic presses
that might actually find their way onto book-store shelves
or to get reasonable off-line video disks and printed graphics
or for that matter to get a teaching job that might put food on the table
or health care for both azure and myself or building repair or something
to end the hysteria which seeps into my life when i think of these things
when i think of all my failures in second life
and the failures engendered in the real world by virtue of second life
or the failures engendered whether or not second life played any role
in them and i tend to exaggerate how much second life is responsible for
my failures which are my own
my tawdry installation is such a jumble it's called the accident
after i called it the accidental artist but the installation itself
seems an accident and in any case second life won't last forever
and i'll last a lot less and there never will be afterwards
failing by writing too much and hoping at least one person has read
the texts or what i call the imaginary audience
poetics and nettime keep my work off their lists
in second life i might have used too much server time
who knows but my health is poor and i'm closer to anita berber
than poor b.b. closer to valeska gert than mary wigman
i failed to bring them into second life
they all ran away from second life
they were smart and smarter than me
they did things in memory
i've been spending too much time in memory and my data is in memory
my data miscarried
i'm lost in my data and my data miscarried

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