Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1508141402140.7624@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Theoryland!: On Gamespace / Edgespace (for an upcoming talk)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2015 14:04:12 -0400 (EDT)
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.