The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Theoryland!: On Gamespace / Edgespace (for an upcoming talk)


http://www.alansondheim.org/theorylandb.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/theoryland.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/theorylanda.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/theorylandc.png
http://www.alansondheim.org/theorylandd.png

Together with the misery that ensues working inconceivably
against the grain of the real - that is to say, the boundary
conditions:

1. of the edgespace itself and the transformations occasioned by
the edgespace; and

2. of the interiority of the edgespace - within which objects
and protocols are conserved/observed.

So within 2. there is a work, a level of _skill_ necessary to
produce, articulate, quest - skill that operates within
consensual boundaries, even to the extent that they're broken by
hacking, shortcuts, etc. Here in 2. the issue is that of
etiquette.

In 1. the situation is different; at the edgespace, what occurs
is not an _event_ but collapse or murmurs of _procedures_ within
fold catastrophies - always on the verge of failure. The
edgespace is also _sedimented_ - to the extent that sediments
can be entangled - one might move for example to a new physics,
the gamebrowser might crash, there is always something new, some
new anomaly at work...

I think of the interiority, that is the gamespace, as a space of
etiquette which is always a space of the blank - not smooth
striations, but a phenomenological ennui, since falling through
this space leads only to more quests, more hordings, within a
containment that takes on the semblance of a _carapace._ That
is, one is shape-riding, share-holding - there's an economics
involved, structures of rules and protocols, protocol suites -
all porous, hackable, all resulting in signs, signifiers, within
the gamespace - all intrinsically related to an other economics
of exhaustion.

The edgespace borders on the universe. The edgespace _gapes._

Who or what moves in the edgespace? What terrors, anguish, what
absolute creations and annihilations? And as well, what
temporalities, what fictitious _points of origin_ - everywhen,
everything, on a sliding scale - a scale in the form of the
_law,_ not of justice. Justice has no place within or without
the game, within or without the gamespace.

Justice requires the luxury of thought, the alcove, stoa; law
requires the nomadic, the corral, the seething settings and
withdrawals of inscriptions which are fundamentally
transparent...

The edgespace is _indescribable,_ just as anomaly exists as
instantaneous, as seizure, nothing more.

But _here,_ it is where everything, everywhen, begins.