Arm and Hand Access Grid Worldwide Tour http://www.alansondheim.org/armandhand.png https://youtu.be/j9CPU9XP5ys video from nearly before or after 2007-2008, early experiment using the access grid which allows multiple cameras and microphones from a single location to connect to the same at another location. designed for invisible walls classroom use, the setup is complex. we used the access grid at the virtual environments lab at west virginia university in a number of ways; one of the main ones involved bouncing an audio/video signal around the world through other nodes, back to the lab in morgantown. by using video feedback, i.e. the camera and mics aimed at the receiving monitor, we were able to create closed circuits or loops from morgantown through various other sites, including one in new south wales, australia. in other words, the usual video feedback occurred, but with delay occasioned by each layer looping the entire globe. we used azure carter as subject for he most part, looping sound and site and motion; in this earlier experiment (which btw involved multiple computers in morgantown as well; the software was complex), we used my waving hand for proof of concept. the delays and color shifts were the result of the signal travel. the procedure reminded me of the even older email bangpaths that allowed one to send a file anywhere through specified nodes. in those days, not very long ago, i was also thinking about net weather, the conditions of the routers, interferences, bad connections, local gaps, and so forth; i remember being able to tell the 'state of the net' in a particular direction by the rate and interruptions of packets. michel serres' book on the parasite was in the back of my mind, as was the collection of texts on the very early net by peter salus. the only originality i could claim here is the use and present/presencing of the body itself, the somatic and almost punk register of the process or piece, something i continue to think about and work through. because we have our bodies have us and it's the appearance of this momentary thickening we call a lifespan that's dependent on the permeability of the world's fabric. this quote from a letter by dylan thomas to pamela hansford johnson, in october 1933, is relevant i think: "I fail to see how the emphasizing of the body can, in any way, be regarded as hideous. The body, its appearance, death, and diseases, is a fact, sure as the fact of a tree. It has roots in the same earth as the tree. The greatest description I know of our 'earthiness' is to be found in John Donne's _Devotions,_ where he describes man as earth of the earth, his body earth, his hair a wild shrub growing out of the land. All thoughts and actions emanate from the body. Therefore the description of a thought or action - however abstruse it may be - can be beaten home by bringing it on to a physical level. Every idea, intuitive or intellectual, can be imaged and translated in terms of the body, its flesh, skin, blood, sinews, veins, glands, organs, cells, or senses." (p. 27 The Notebooks of Dylan Thomas, ed. Ralph Maud.) the gendering is a problem of course, but the thinking of earth, what i consider emanant, emanation or effluvia, avatar imaginary or dissipating rootedness, relates well to the body immersed within the access grid, or rather the imagine/imaginary of the body traversing the access grid, and i, we, they will stop here. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
