Somatic Ghosting 2 - the "pure circuit pure loop" -- (new texts, rewritten texts) -- (background and other materials for a talk at London ICA) http://www.alansondheim.org/purecircuit.png https://youtu.be/V7uj5nUGueM VIDEO "impure circuit, impure space, impure vector field; it's prosthetic space itself that speaks here, a second skin, uncanny body, the circulation of the planet. i love the expulsion of agency in all of this, or the shell of agency, its bouquet. original 2008, again from WVU VEL, thanks to Frances Van Scoy, Sandy Baldwin, Gary Manes, Azure Carter. welcome to the network always already in the process of dissolution. again, signals sent around the world through access grid nodes, planetary orbits." But it wasn't dissolution; prosthetic space is fecund, replete, a process of the production of somatic ghosting, neither present nor absent, again neither here nor there, as if a wormhole (but of course neither a wormhole nor a black hole). Similarity of Scale 2 http://www.alansondheim.org/crimp2.jpg The Matrix Piece - Thinking about the flatness of the ontology, up and down - closure, system within system - surface geometries, topologies, change, nothing more - Produce this live? Video? Ongoing? So how does this relate to somatic ghosting? There's no room for ghosts within the digital - only within a second-order representation - etc. So flat. In spite of AI, Life and other games, dead in the microbiome maelstrom of the planet. Then below - two earlier works and descriptions: sending this around the world - two examples which still take my breath away. http://www.alansondheim.org/armandhand.png https://youtu.be/j9CPU9XP5ys video Beginning the work with the Access Grid, a minimum 3-computer multi-audio/video/location large-scale Internet-2 conference application - this was over a decade ago. So we were able to bounce signals around the world, picking the path; here are two experiments - presented again - examples of somatic ghosting - what is carried by the digital are problematic and uncanny emanations of the body or the space of the body - the ghosting shape-riding the digital streams, neither embedded nor adjacent - as if it was fundamentally alien (which it was and is) - some quotes in order: "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. we used the access grid at the VEL at WVU in a number of ways; one of which 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 the most part, looping sound and site and motion; in this earlier experiment (which btw involved multiple computers in morgantown as well), we used my waving hand for proof of concept. the delays and color shifts were the result of the voyage. the procedure reminded me of the even older email bangpaths that allowed one to send text anywhere through specified nodes." "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. & access grid around/above the earth, atmospheric channeling (relates to VLF radio, lightning VLF antipodal channeling, etc.) & I've continued to think about emanation, hence somatic ghosting - uneasy mix of ontologies at work - ( see also http://www.alansondheim.org/emanent.rtf ) _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
