Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1610112316460.20550@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: webartery@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Notes for Panel Talk for Unconference Conference
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2016 23:19:38 -0400 (EDT)
Notes for Panel Talk for Unconference Conference, Brown University, Modern Culture and Media, October 15th http://www.alansondheim.org/normanbird14.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/normanbird41.jpg Afternoon Session 2:30PM - 4:15PM, Studio 4, Room N330, Granoff Center, Brown University Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Realities: Immersive Media Frontiers Jack Mason, Alan Sondheim https://sites.google.com/a/brown.edu/moving-media/unconferences https://sites.google.com/a/brown.edu/moving-media/home Outline VR: 1. We are always already virtual. 2. Culture and the construction of the virtual exists all the way down. 3. Reality is always mixed. Avatars: 1. Avatars are entangled among embodiments (abjections) and signs. 2. Avatars exist all the way down. 3. Myth, avatar, and virtual worlding are always mixed. --------------- 1. Advantages of using virtual worlds. Suppleness, universal audience. 2. Rough guide: packaged movements, avatars, objects, variable physics. 4. Ideas of Gamespace, Edgespace, Blankspace 5. What happens at edgespaces? Everything is still contained 6. Blankspaces and the imaginary 8. dynamics, category theory, morphisms and arrows, objects: think of gamespace/edgespace/blankspace as dynamic, striated: how do these meld? gamespace as kernel edgespace: regions of contestation again circumlocuted. blankspace: contestation of the imaginary. vr: variety of approaches avatars: background figurations Directories Gamespace Wall: (see Blankspace as well) Cine: ontology of projections Ididit: inaccessible constructions in OpenSim Lastdawns: isolated figure in Localhost OpenSim Learning to Dance: gamespace imitating gamespace Mouthmouth: avatar with broken space speaking about leaving Numbhir: anguish/talk from safespace Qtise: improvisation on death in gamespace Theykeep: one of the ISIS pieces Blankspace Blizzard and extracts against Light at the End Speech of God and Thinking: text projections into gamespace Other things: Wall, Struct, North, Virtual Futures Edgespace Distorted avatar materials Including NYUMocaps, Mocaps, BodylosesBody, Carrying From Here: distorted escape The Ruin: Changing body shapes of avatar Bombing: alien objects in sky Insizing: alpha-layer removal of landscape Avatars Badchat: clotted text (improvisation in real time) Bulb: extreme mapping Chanterelle: double avatar dance/movement vr: Antenna: virtuality w/in the real: VLF Vvllff: the same w/ Kira Sedlock Vibration2: vibration of body and space connects to QincaveD: virtual speaking of the space (frequency raised) in relation to speaking of the instrument Organon: insertion of the virtual into the real Car: insertion of the real into the virtual: dis/place/meant Kyber0: insertion of the real into the virtual: regress Wrytprogram: dialog among virtual/real: performer as adience AAGGDouble1: the virtual-real pathways: global circumnavigation Floodwall: ontology of history and information in relation to the real Timemit: (echo in stationary landscape): splaying of time Twotheaters: mixed proceniums in real and virtual Suicide: mixed phenomenologies of real and virtual GAMESPACE / EDGESPACE / BLANKSPACE In this talk, I focus on concepts of blankness, geography, gamespace in virtual worlds, and what I term edgespace - the limits of the gamespace, where language occurs and seethes. I argue that the phenomenology of the real comes into play when living spaces are abandoned, where broken geographies are signs of a future already present. I present instances of digital language production in such spaces, working through virtual worlds such as Second Life and the Macgrid, as well as self-contained Open Sim software that can be run on most computers. The edgespace is always uneasy, tottering, catastrophic; it is the space of the unalloyed digital, where things no longer operate within a classical or modernist tradition. Increasingly, this space characterizes our current place in the world, with its fractured media histories and environments of scorched earth, environmental depredation, and slaughter. We can work through and within such spaces, developing (as perhaps Occupy did) new forms of production, resistance, and digital culture. Blankspace is a flow within and without edgespace; blankspace is the magic slate, entangled projection and introjection (jectivity), the voice of the philosopher, (non)construction of the artist entangled in the abject vocalizations of everyday life, the susceptibility of the world to global migration, warming, genocide, violence... The virtual is an imminent transform; the real is an immanent transform. (I doubt I can cover all of this but I'll try.)
