----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
(In addition to the below, I have a new cd/vinyl combination coming out
with ESP-Disk. There will be an upcoming film screening of my films in NY,
and I have a residency/ exhibition at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design in Halifax in the late fall. Finally, Sandy Baldwin and I are
performing for the ELO conference coming up in Paris. I'm still scattered
as ever, focusing on the darker side of the body and death in relation to
the Net, social media, technology in general. I've become incrasingly
concerned with biological extinctions as well. Apologies for the formality
of the following, I love the idea of these bios - Alan)
Alan Sondheim was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; he lives with his
partner, Azure Carter in Brooklyn NY. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from
Brown University in English. A new-media artist, writer, and theorist,
he has exhibited, performed and lectured widely.
Sondheim finished a successful residency at Eyebeam Art and Technology
Center in New York in March 2012; while there, he performed with Foofwa
d'Imobilite and Monika Weiss; created a series of sound pieces based on
very low frequency radio and building vibrations; produced a number of
'dead or wounded' models of avatars usings 3d printing technology; and
worked on a series of texts dealing with issues of pain and its relation
to the virtual. He continues to work on these themes, which he presented
at SXSW Interactive 2013. This year, he spoke at HASTAC on animal and
plant extinctions and similar themes at HASTAC and Subtle Tech.
Sondheim's writings include Writing Under (West Virginia University Press,
2012) the anthology Being on Line: Net Subjectivity (Lusitania, 1996),
Disorders of the Real (Station Hill, 1988), .echo (alt-X digital arts,
2001), Vel (Blazevox 2004-5), Sophia (Writers Forum, 2004), Orders of the
Real (Writers Forum, 2005), The Accidental Artist (Fort/Da),
Azure/Nature/Digital (Blue Lion, 2009), The Wayward (Salt, 2004), and Deep
Language (Salt, 2010) as well as numerous chapbooks, ebooks, and articles.
Sondheim's videos and films have been shown internationally. He
co-moderates several pioneering mail lists, including Cybermind,
Cyberculture and Wryting; Jon Marshall published a book-length ethnography
of the first.
Since January, 1994, Sondheim worked on the "Internet Text," a continuous
meditation on philosophy, psychology, language, body, and virtuality. The
Text is coordinated with multi-media work on various websites. In 1999,
Sondheim was the 2nd Virtual Writer in Residence for the Trace online
writing community (Nottingham-Trent University, England). In 2008,
Sondheim had a solo installation and nine-month residency at the Odyssey
exhibition space in the virtual world Second Life; he currently works in
the Odyssey sim. He recently completed a Second Life residency through
Humlab, University of Umea, in Sweden; this was accompanied by a gallery
installation at the university. He has performed for LowLives and the
Virtual Futures conference (both 2011). Sondheim has worked on augmented
reality pieces with Mark Skwarek; he continues to work with motion capture
files created at Columbia College, Chicago; and has been creating complex
performances in both OpenSim and Second Life.
In 2004,Sondheim had a five-week residency at the Center for Literary
Computing and the Virtual Environments Laboratory, under the directions of
Sandy Baldwin and Frances Van Scoy, both at West Virginia University; in
2007 he was a six-week resident of the same. In 2005 he was resident
artist/writer at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. He produced two
cds at the latter (his older recordings have been reissued by ESP-Disk and
Fire Museum). Two new cds and a vinyl record have since appeared with
FireMuseum, a record with Qbico, and another cd with Myk Friedman for
Porter Records. Sondheim has played live in numerous venues around New
York and Philadelphia, both solo and with others. His instruments include
oud, saz, pipa, guitar, cura cumbus, violin, viola, sarangi, ghichak,
suroz, flute, and chromatic harmonica. In 2008 he was on an eight-month
National Science Foundation (NSF) consultancy at WVU. His research is in
the art and aesthetics of codework, body and behavioral modeling, virtual
environments, and avatars in general. In 2007, Sondheim was also the
recipient of a New Media New York State Council of the Arts grant.
In 2001, Sondheim assembled a special issue of the American Book Review on
Codework, which was seminal in its genre; along with Mez and Sandy
Baldwin, he co-edited an online issue of Leonardo. Codework was the
subject of a major workshop at WVU in April, 2008. In 1999-2000, Sondheim
was second virtual-artist-in-residence in the Trace online writing
program. Sondheim has taught at a number of schools, including UCLA, RISD,
NSCAD, Brown, and SVA. From 1994-2012, Sondheim worked with the Swiss
dancer/ choreographer Foofwa d'Imobilite; their work premiered across
Europe and the U.S. Sondheim's own laptop performances have been widely
seen; most recently he has been involved in online avatar performance with
Sandy Baldwin for live audiences in Paris, London, Basel, Portland OR,
Providence RI, and elsewhere. In January, 2010, Sondheim, along with
Foofwa d'Imobilite and Azure Carter, opened the season for Dance New
Amsterdam in Manhattan; in 2010, he performed as part of a series at Mt.
Tremper in upstate New York. Sondheim and d'Imobilite have worked on a
series of dance/performance DVDs, including Aletsch, and three disks of
performances in the Alps.
In 2006 Sondheim had a large exhibition at Track 16 Gallery in Los
Angeles. There have been other installations at the Grand Central Art
Center, West Virginia University, and Arena/Uqbar and OCAD, the last two
in Second Life.
Sondheim's digital work is archived at Cornell; his tapes and other
materials are archived at NYU's Fales Collection, Bobst Library; and much
of his curatorial and written work is archived at Ohio State University's
Avant Writing Collection in Columbus.
Relevant URLS:
Eyebeam blog from the residency begins at:
http://eyebeam.org/blogs/alansondheim?page=24
email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
web http://www.alansondheim.org/
music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ or
http://lounge.espdisk.com/
Alan Sondheim
432 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York, 11217
USA
Phone: 347-383-8552
Email: sondh...@panix.com , sondh...@gmail.com
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