Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0903200104580.16226@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: my failures in second life
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:05:58 -0400 (EDT)
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 http://www.alansondheim.org/ scribble pngs