The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

dwelling, audio fluidics, software

http://www.alansondheim.org/verra.png
(luke damrosch software)
http://www.alansondheim.org/verra0.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/verra1.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/verra1.mp3

once the space is determined by the software, the position of
the player, the musical instrument or instruments, the physical
architecture of the playing space, the speed of sound in air
which is temperature and humidity-dependent, the direction of
the player and instrument, the characteristics and direction of
the recording apparatus, ambient sound, characteristics of
reflective surfaces, the instrument acoustics including the
acoustics of different registers and chordal qualities if
present, the software programs parameters, the parameters of the
computer, the characteristics of the microphone or magnetic
pickups or other transducers - once the space is determined or
in-determined by all of this, the performance soon transforms,
or from the very onset, into a series, choate or inchoate, of
adjustments by the player, who moves from living without to
dwelling within the acoustic and fluid space and architecture
always supple and modified by the physical movements of the
player in the space, so that, perhaps with repeated entries and
inquiries, the dwelling becomes somatic, entangled and within
and without the body and mind of the play, who now discovers,
moves through the wellsprings of discovery, the subtlest
characteristics or attributes of the instrument and the space
and the player's body as a slow dance or quick dance or
flashdance among them, producing work for and within that space
and that instrument and all those elements that makes up the
space, one might think even of playing the instrument and the
space or playing the body and the instrument and the space, or
playing the player within the dwelling of the player, so that
the discovery of the player, for a fragile and perhaps even
mysterious moment, becomes ecstasy or elsewhere or a locus of
unimaginable wonder, something the player, for the rest of the
player's life, within remains silent and strong within, an
unimaginable memory, wordless, formless or the memory of form,
soundless or the memory of sound, among the human and all other
forms of living for the duration ..

Gnostalgia

http://www.alansondheim.org/gnostalgia10.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/gnostalgia.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/gnostalgia04.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/gnostalgia06.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/gnostalgia08.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/gnostalgia11.png

working on a performance venue with/for Sandy Baldwin
in Second Life on my usual platform, I decided to revive
older works, miasmas, spheres, walls, make everything
transparent, everything so that I might proclaim, I am
the stuff of dreams, working and walking through walls
and spaces, among physics and choreographies, among
particles and particulate matters. so much so that the
Alienware gaming machine I'm using began stuttering, so
much rendering on the fly to handle, an impossibility,
as if the breath were taken from us, human and avatar
alike. it is true I control nothing, these are the
thinnest of sheaves of the enlightenment in these dark
and darker times, some think psychedelic, I think
originary, primal, what would have been before us, the
absence of eyes, of sight, the absence of hearing,
taste, touch, all those other senses huddled in the
well of gravity. you must look through, around the
margins of the image, just there on the other side is
something similar, is not me, not us, something just
there, the volume at infinity, something similar