Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1203010246310.11554@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: smallest object, last day at Eyebeam
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 02:48:49 -0500 (EST)
smallest object, last day at Eyebeam http://www.alansondheim.org/smallestobj1.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/smallestobj2.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/smallestobj3.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/smallestobj4.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/smallestobj5.jpg this was my last day of my Eyebeam residency; for the occasion, I made the smallest objects with the 3d-printer, a variety of the sculptured organism I created earlier. this time, the fundamental sphere was set at a different angle, resulting in a more problematic image, one harder to read but easier to slide into one or another anthrocentric category. it lives as a virus of the uncanny; it carries signs, inscriptions; it seems untethered. my life is reflected in it. my last day at Eyebeam was taken up with a very productive meeting about the identity of the organization. I'd run out from time to time and check on the machine. when I finally removed the ground plate, the heated interior was comforting. I felt at least this thought, these thoughts, were hardened. outside a cold rain fell. from Eyebeam I took away, the idea of a home, or a dwelling, an inhabiting, an acceptance, lateral communication that opened up whole territories; I bought books on sale, listened as much as I could to everyone, and listened to the building itself in so many ways - radio and audio spectra, from subaudible murmurs through VLF atmospheric spikes, power grid noise, up to around 400 mhz. everything in the building talked to everything; everything flowed, the residents and staff and fellows flowed. the smallest object isn't all that small, almost an inch across; its size was governed by the amount of modeling and support material left in the machine. I went down to 1% and maybe 3%. I wanted the forces of the world to gather around the object. I was unsure about the object. I felt it belong within the imaginary, would always be imaginary, would carry the tone of a _radical optimism_ about the structures and formations of the world. now, in the middle of another sleepless night, I photograph it in ordinary and ultra-violet light; no secrets are revealed, but the nub-like, inert and numb, quality of the world is revealed. that is, to repeat, its structures and formations. perhaps I can sleep this time, now, perhaps I'll never wake again. temporarily, the object is a presence. temporarily, I type, repairing errors as I go along, senseless as I make some sense.
