Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1006011223150.9898@panix1.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: ELO seed talk outline - Second Life phenomenology
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2010 12:23:53 -0400 (EDT)
ELO seed talk outline - Second Life phenomenology Second Life is a coherent system, based on mathesis, energy expenditure dynamics; it is not a collocation of levels; Heisenberg does not apply (except by crude analogy). Second Life is theoretically a space of total control; control extends to physics as well. There are boundaries, but no differentiations in Second Life. Physics and earths are afterthoughts at best. Permissions are equivalent to cosmological constants under the sign of capital. In Second Life, everything is inscribed, and inscription is everywhere consistent. Its description is its fundamental ontology. It is split; constants are by consensus. There are no basic forces at work; motion is the result of redraw, rewrite. The virtual world is chosen; it is also intended. The virtual world lies within a potential well; it has both internal and external boundaries: it _runs_ at a designated clock-tine; it is a construction within the social; it is, in other words, a fabric. Virtual worlds are split from the real (guided, protected, within the literally circumscribed, circumprogrammed, potential well), and split in terms of decision trees (this - and not that - gravitational constant _chosen_ for example). And virtual worlds are always already as-if; there is nothing else to them. As-if what? As if they're dynamic, as if the illusions were real. Real how? As-if one might turn away from the screen, unplug everything, and fly. Leakages between real and virtual - neither polarities nor entirely independent: the body, inscribed, is already virtual; the virtual world, embodied, is already real. The bridge between them is the uncanny; both reals are imaginary. Leakage is abject - as if there were leakage, as if there were virtual/real polarities. So we might say: Real life - immersive, fundamentally dynamic (potential stases) - inter- nal: operated _in._ Immersive: inhabited within the space-time manifold, such that contradiction or contrary is always a process; in the real, nothing contradicts anything. In real life, there is no server roll-back. Second life - definable, fundamentally static (real mobility) - external operators: operated _on._ How definable? Every element has been placed, intentionally; every element carries permissions and attributes; every element may be removed; every region, every thing, every world, may be rolled-back. Think of a phenomenological horizon of entangled information, present but readable only in very limited ways. Within Second Life, there is only within; the safe-words for escape are quit, abort, shutdown, delete. Within, there are signs among universal inscription: Writings: found: signs within (readable) scripts signs above or connected to objects (think avatar names, other) signs on object textures universal signs as video on parcel according to privileged texture universal signs as videos on parcels according to media textures ad hoc: chat, instant messaging < > indexical voice < > ikonic definable Dynamic inscriptive regimes (always involves the subject/viewer): narratological styles with avatar and object movements, textures diegesis, avatars moving or being moved (controlled-by) indexical signs of violence, sexuality, and so forth: identifications sutures arousals < > projections < introjections > jectivity < > immersive objects and part-objects: seductions, lures, impediments Everyday Life: indexical objects, models, simulacra, re-enactments: absolutely unnecessary _every_ movement or object in a virtual world that close parallels movement or objects in physical reality - is already a re-enactment