Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1008201603580.29354@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Essay, Humlab Artist-in-Residency project in Second Life
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:05:18 -0400 (EDT)
Introductory Essay to the Humlab Artist-in-Residency Project in Second Life ( Created for an installation at Humlab, Umea University, Sweden. ) I begin with the original project description. Notes are bracketed. Project name - either Well or Brane - The first refers to something that is low/beneath the surface - but reflects the sky; it also taps into something hidden. The second references a dimensional object in string theory that may or may not exist. From Wikipedia: "Originally string theory was a theory of 1-branes called strings. By the mid-1990s it became apparent that the theory could be extended to also include higher dimensional objects. Typically these objects are non-perturbative features of the theory (meaning they do not appear in perturbation theory)." Think impossible or inconceivable objects, objects nonetheless that may be fundamental to the cosmos - think fundamental ontology. Avatar names: My first avatar is Alan Dojoji. My second avatar is Julu Twine. [ Originally, Julu Twine was simpler in appearance and accouterments and was used for building and everyday tasks. Then for a reason I no longer remember, Alan Dojoji took up the role, and Julu Twine was outfitted for complex movement, self-installation, and performance. Now both perform; Alan Dojoji is the everyday avatar as well, and for the most part is simpler. Even with avatars, there are bandwidth issues; the more complex the avatar, and the greater number of particles s/he emits - the more bandwidth is taken up, which affects slower machines and the Second Life parcel in general. The avatars go in and out, taking their self-installations all about. ] Description of installation: Well/Brane is both installation and performance space. with the former, I want to extend the idea of "negotiated space," a space in SL that is inherently uncomfortable, impossible to move through. Negotiated space, which is also a supple and continuously-changing architecture, first appeared in my Odyssey installation, "The Accidental Artist" (also the name of a publish-on-demand book produced by Fort/Da Press). The basic concept is that, within the space, one is utterly lost, among the 'alien.' [ The concept changed; I was less interested in negotiated architecture than negotiated performance, and what I've termed "ontological mashup." Negotiated performance references inordinately complex movements and costuming - which is activated (i.e. moves on its own, has scripts attached. I wanted to explore not only inconceivable movement, but a kind of inconceivable movement that might reference our own condition in the world - what happens when we carry destructive ecologies with us. A series of oil and "oilamina" videos and still images resulted; the avatar became hir own ecological catastrophe. I related this to the odd and abject sexuality and fluidity of the BP oil spill videos, creating "spills" and spews in the Humlab space seemed to wash away landscape, consciousness, and intentionality. There's a buried politics at work here, based on the majesty of large-scale environmental catastrophe and the horror that ensues. ] The space Well/Brane is narratological, since objects will possess labels or signs appearing in the vicinity of avatars. It will also be aural, and in this sense more complex than the space in the first installation. Using the Beta 2.01 viewer (and its successors), I should be able to directly add webpages and videos to objects - videos that are differentiated from each other (in the first viewer, "media" allowed objects in a region to play only one video at a time). This gives me the opportunity to develop a narratology from within, based on differences among videos - not just, in other words, what occurs in a specific video, but what occurs as a result of difference among them. The same should hold true for audio. [ The narrative elements I used were based on several sources. Aurally, I've worked with music, spoken narrative (both my own), and natural sounds recorded in Colorado; these sounds have been remapped into the Humlab space, creating interlocking realms. Visually, I've worked with language and signing texture-mapped on objects - the language constantly changing (it's imported from external directories). With all of this, the "ontological mashup" described above becomes evident - it's hard to tell what the _origin_ of speaking or writing is in the space - i.e. _who_ is speaking, and to _whom._ Offline and online worlds are deeply entangled - which is to say that inert and idiotic (Rosset) physical reality becomes deeply entangled with online abstract and completely constructed virtual reality. A visitor to the site - or someone watching a performance with this material - follows a complex diegesis which stumbles and backtracks upon itself. The nature of language and communication are called into question as signs appear and disappear at high speed, the avatar's gestures seem corrupted, and the negotiated performances seem completely out of hand, certainly out of touch. All of this is also connected to issues of body and sexuality; with texture-mapping, I was able to create reference points, intensifications, Barthes' puncta, as a kind of seduction. So whatever happened in the chaos sometimes seemed to resolve around sex, around flesh or meat, around bodily contortions reminiscent of everything from torture to sexual ecstasy. But these resolutions never held; what's visible is always in the midst of a turn towards an other (Other) that remains both internal and external, as if there were a coherence - where in fact there isn't any, and as if there were inhering - whereas things tend to disperse, fall apart, turn out not to be things at all. ] This work will continue to use modified bvh animation files; at this point I want to use both older ones, and newer ones created directly in Poser. I want to explore "behavior collision" more systematically: an avatar following more than one animation structure at a time. [ I stayed with the older files; I was more concerned with audio, with video texturing, with interspersed texts, with the problem of narrative - the imaginary of narrative - within virtual worlds. All of this adds up to a phenomenology based on relevance theory and attention economy. Relevance theory is concerned with the hermeneutics of an environment - how are complex spaces interpreted, and what is relevant within the interpretation. Relevance is related to action and function: How one behaves in a space is connected to how the space is read. Attention economy references the "bandwidth" of attention - one might say the political economy of attention - of the performer or online/offline spectator. (The online spectator may be _within_ Second Life, or observing Second Life in a public demonstration, i.e. on-screen.) One only has a limited time to do anything, see anything, exist; the attention economy considers how this time is deployed, actively or passively. Within the Humlab installations, videos, and graphics, the issue is connected with negotiation - is it worth moving through an overly-busy space? What are the rewards? How does one _feel_ moving this way? What are the detriments? What is the politics of what might be read as overcrowding and ideological confusion? ] I envision several public performances, with Foofwa d'Imobilite and Sandy Baldwin; the results will be documented in video, audio, and stills. [ These performances were carried out at Humlab and in a space in East of Odyssey, with great success. Foofwa d'Imobilite performed in front of a screen projecting videos from the Humlab space; Sandy Baldwin worked with me "in world" - in other words, within Second Life. ] The points of all of this: 1. To further explore dance/choreographic/behavioral issues in SL. 2. To further explore these within complex negotiated environments. 3. To explore media-modified environments with contradictory video/audio materials. 4. To explore narratologies and performances in these environments. 5. To relate all of this to a developing philosophy of difference and contradiction. [ This was done. I feel like a pioneer in virtual worlds, creating utterly "alien" performances, spaces, and avatars - i.e. without reference in our real, physical reality. Second Life gives me the opportunity to create, in a sense, ab nihilo; by doing this, I feel I can return to the older phenomenological states of bracketing - not taking the world for granted, but exploring all manner of other worlds. We are so used to considering avatar and virtual worlds as mockups of our own, emphasizing surrealism and fantasy - here, I explore worlds and states that aren't mockups, that are something other, something unaccountable. This is exciting research / work / art, and as far as I'm concerned, on the forefront of exploration into virtual spaces. It's filled with wonder for me. It draws me in, and I hope, draws you in as well. ] - August 20, 2010