somewhere staying alive
culled from De Montfort discussion (thanks to Tia Azulay, Peter Howard, Jaka Zeleznikar) (2/23/2009 original) First, we'll stay here? Yes, stay here Hmmm... I thought you could enlarge it, but this is fine. Second, is everyone here now? And third, how long are we on for? You can enlarge it here, but not there - at least not last time I used it ah, ok isn't here, but she may not turn up. So we may as well start. Should I begin then? It's after I assume, ok hi + its here We have as long as you like. And it's . in UK Well, one of the things that's interesting - as a way of beginning - is the state of the economy, Ah I see, Wow, well-saved then! There are all sorts of issues of property and ownership there of course and a fluid economy that translates for some into real dollars this is why I'm sceptical on worjibn in a cloud so to speak - no control over own data I've been getting by with a little help from my friends so I've been using it. So that's the background of the slight delay. Now - What I've been thinking about - is that the virtual allows incredible flexibility in writing and writing practices, which I've been working throuh of course. If you've looked at the images or been to the site, you've seen all sorts of languaging everywhere and the language can follow you, interact with you, etc. I'm a poor scripter but the possibilities are endless. So on one hand the economic crisis and capital which is doubly illusory - first, as a result of bad loans etc. - capital that wasn't there, phantom capital and second as a result of the intrinsic nature of capital - the phantom of capital, the abstraction which is aligned with concrete objects and/or other transactions in the real and virtual it's against this that we're all working and as you know, capital in relation to the brute economic real - roofs over people's heads - is in a state of corrsion, dissolution So in regard to writing - I've always thought of it as always already virtual, just as the material body-for-us is virtual, inscribed and ther's a dynamics involved in this, a similar dynamics to that functioning in Second Life but that may just be my pessimism talking so when we think of writing we're thinking always of diegesis, carrying or inhabiting the reader - so writing as linear - it's inhabited, inhabited by whome? by the reader, by the writer, the diegetic that's constructed in a kind of mutal dialog otherwise one might as well (not) consider mute signs without meaning the point of thinking about this for me - is that within virtual worlds there need not be jump cuts. You can teleport, but you can also move concretely so to speak within an environment where text, symbols, sounds, etc. emerge and disperse - you're really dealing with a three-dimensional textual environment where you still have choice of course, but it's not a matter of moving in and out of the text, but traveling within it or virtually inhabiting it with an avatar which seems to me to be something else altogether. You remain within the text which is iin three parts - the text of the environment itself, the environment as text the texts that are presented as language within the environment and the dynamics of those presetned texts as they move within tne environment in response to your movement there's also the level of scripting that underlies everything of course Well the real world is idiotic. As in lonely? to the extent that it's obdfurate, that it obfuscates text and inscription that text and inscription are at best temporary in a cosmos which pays no attention which for us is where the effects of capital might be the most acute, shutting down communicatipn systems, but also affecting housing, the ability to find food, one might think that shelter is simultaneously inscribed and obdurate in this sense (I haven't thoght this through) We assume for the most part we're reasonably healthy, at least enough to communicate, but that will probably be less and less true? in virtual worlds, languaging appears always dynamic and in any number of modes - it's the pleasure of the living text (to the extent that anything lives or survives in the virtual). so there's a power and an incredible simplicity in working in Second Life for example - the database and software does almsot all the work for you. the database / software does the work - you can refine things so you're working with larger building blocks, pre-assembled, not in-world so to speak but in your own database. the next steps are portals - productions between virtual worlds or sectors of virtual worlds or real worlds; eventually all sorts of intrusions will be possible. "productions"? things betwen real life so to speak and virtual worlds so to speak you can have video in SL pumped from RL and interacted with in SL and then that projected back or projects among different sims, different virtual worlds why "surplus" money? Because these experiments at this point are at the higher end of art/tech and cost - and there's no return. For example there are a lot of dance tech departments and initiatives at the moment, but these are all superstructural so to speak - they don't pump the economy really how much does art in general "pump" the economy> Well not death, you hopefully have copies on your hard drive. My own work is you Ning, Youtube, my directory, - machines, external hard drives, and DVDs - most people I know keep stuff like this - I don't know! Do you? It's obviously a trickle-down effect but slow... no problem absorbing all over the place, not giving back ok, back. , hope jou get better soon! Yes, I saw it in the text file I got interested in three-dimensional "writing" by having an object or avatar move in the sky leaving streams of particles What is the significance for you of its being -D? Depends on how adverse! Thrives as religion does in adverse circumstances... That I can create a sense of wonder, at least for myself, watching these things in motion, the kinds of dynammics and enveloping I'm used to in the real world, but not in other forms of inscription... Definitely thrives, but arte povera of course, not high tech For myself I want to explore the possibilites of the virtual as long as I can Sorry - was looking briefly at the site - I can do some simple command line It's magic = the command line. and it gets interesting to mix this with language all the words in English or Hebrew? thinking of language as performative - in some ways the command line seems alive, more so than real life conversation! But then it usually gives you just what you ask for. because your word become flesh visibly? Scripting in second life could be thought of as command-line stuff - so when an avatar say approaches an object and the text changes, it's a kind of performative yes () I've used the word "wryting" to imply a kind of writing - which I think actually comes from net.sex - that involves, implicates the body in a way that can't easily be seen as abstracted, distant, or virtual the shape of the "y" in "wryting" makes me think of "writhing" for some reason I work through that as a pun - writhing as a state of the body which implies a repetitive movement but the body on the verge of being out of control so that what's inscribed tends to "veer off" do you think it involves the body more than writing in the real world, or in a different way? do you consicer motion tracking a writing? one reason net.sex was so interesting to me is that it had concrete affects in the real world, and a sense of discomfort - affects or effects? or both? because of the dynamics, possibly more than writing in the real world - if you have two people communicating through chat for example they're engaged... motion tracking is a writing to be sure - it's writing bvh files for one thing... effects, sorry what are bvh files? probably is! you can actually go in and edit the files by hand - they're text, ascii. that way we produced those 'inconceivable' movements that are in a lot of the video Is that up on your site? That's interesting. At one point I played around with changing the < to > etc. - this won't register one of them did - anyway changing all the arrows to their opposite on html pages sorry about foggy description give me a second please wow, gorgeous voice - Azure? areas that may well collapse in the future - they're based on the economy - so what I try to do is move through these spaces, see what I can do, what sorts of phenomenology I can pull out of them it takes me places (bad metaphors) that I haven't been before There are all sorts of places to work with scripts - some of you might have worked it's hard to articualte in short chat lines but what about the tactile in d text? There are all sorts of 'tactility' in Second Life - which might be the easiest way to approach. There are ordinary objects that just sit there. There are objects that are phantom that look solid but you can walk through them. There are transparent (invisible) objects that block your way. I meant real life tactility - with user tactile interface More interesting to me, there are "physical" objects - which act as if they're subject to gravity - and these you actually do feel (others might not) - like text of the blind ah well.. In this sense, I think my work has a lot to do with limits - the limits of music improvisation, of textual comprehension - I worked at - is that open to see allrady? These borderline areas are fascinating, just as they are in text. the chilren stooren stoo ren stoo watching them out of the town; watching them out of the town; watching them out of the town; An there's little to earn, an many to keep, there's little to earn, an many to keep, many to keep, they trimme the lamps as the sun went the lamps as the sun went the lamps as the sun went own; own; own; An at the squall, an they looke they looke they looke at the shower, at the shower, at the shower, They looke the night-rack came rolling up ragge an an an brown. brown. brown. An en, an waters eep, - the software took out the spacing - anyway it makes for an almost "magical" text for me - I know what I did to modify Florian Cramer's script, but I have no idea why it's doing exactly what it's doing - I'm just fascinated by it. i find it interesting how we create meaning out of broken letters/words/grammar The same in SL - I've overloaded the gallery area with objects - yes! - that make it almost impossible to move into the space - so what happens is that the space can't be taken for granted, but has to be "negotiated" in different ways I should mention the work of Gaz here - s/he's the only artist I really like in Second Life and the work's brilliant - you can find it online - I'll take a look and it does things again that are impossible or inconceivable in RL - s/he literally changes your avatar body - there's a book = Gazira Babeli - that has a lot of images - i find it hard enough to change my own avatar body... and I think s/he is getting a sim of hir own to set up on. ... or my own real body, for that matter... I literaly felt ashamed when my avatar drop got naked ) S/he's managed to control avatars simultaneously from one site - ...entropy rules.. a master programmer - most of the time my avatar is naked - it's fascinating andreally opens up the idea that you can do things in virtual worlds that are literally unimaginable elsewhere most of the time people play around with fantasy, symbolism, surrealism, in these places, and I find that boring especially when you can create things that are utterly different than what you're used to. Someday I want to meet a programmer who could take, say, Blender and make it produce - or higher-dimensional objects - the real llimit in SL is the limit of three-dim,ensions which are taken for granted when (through projection down to the two-dimensional screen) there's no reason to stop there Why? why is it called body art? Why contested? body artist used their body as a primary expresive material (sort of) because it's not taken for granted, but used expressively as says, sometimes dangerously so exploring the limits of the body etc. (I once wrote "I write myself into existence. Marina Abramovi. was one from my geo I write myself out of existence." like menstrual art - painting in menstrual blood, etc? It's almost as soon as something is named, it's defused... gush, newer thought on that why on hold? One of my students was working with her blood in the late s there ... the menstrual taboo... there's immense power in that I think, yes, and also moving inside of oneself, and dealing with all those issues Mary Douglas write about in Purity and Danger - one of my favorite books - , sorry about thi thing word sorry about what? we = he - I had nothing to do with performances, typo, sorry ?? no prob we had couple = HE had ... Is there anything you would want to discuss while we're online? - couple of what? (I've lost it!) yes what's not considered normal is bringing menstruation to a kind of forefront - look at the injunctions in Leviticus for example to what "lies beneath the surface" (Sandor Gilman) - there are phenomenologies that circulate among all of these that I think in a way kind of drive the virtual as a site of the 'pure' for most people - - giving everyone a reason to consider them lesser human beings (like women), no doubt. building blocks of the holocaust just as online re=enactments are 'pure', emptied out yes as more people "go" virtual, more people "go" towards that state of decathecting from the problematic of the real why not look for it? but you had to sleep in them, eat and drink in them, you could be wounded etc. in other words, you had upkeep, you were always aware of your body whereas in SL, you just login and logout and there isn't even a standard (common, supplied) gesture for sleep awareness of the body is something one often loses while exploring the online world, I find you disappear in a magical swirl of particles - which brings into play the phenomenology of magic itself, and the avatar as a (deathless) simulacrum , absolutely - but this also occurs in real life. most of the time we're communcating, we're leaving our bodies behind one way or another. don't you think it's text what done that to us? in general before writing, we had to use our bodies to communicate? or weve done it through text we still do I think we're not faced with the other person in any radical sense in the real if I ask someone for a date, I take my life in my hands, especially if I'm ! scared out of my mind! being turned down affects the very core of my being, or seems to people in committed relationships still have online affairs as if they're games - my experience wasn't (lesser) being but (far greater) being - and they're not games and real life relationships dissolve as a result. ... but the taboo operates at a subconscious level.... that's why i say it's complex we don't have the tools to deal either with purity or the virtual. yes I agree the headlines for those articles were very misleading..... i think the comparison was that online networking is less good for you than real-life interaction because the real thing triggers chemical responses that are good for you... something like that [I must go away for a / minute] The claim was that there are physiological effects in real interaction that don't happen in the virtual. in RL it would have been a disaster (for me, I'm weak) Obscenity's interesting - it literally lights up other areas of the brain than normative language processing... [I'm back] maybe my cells are dead there or something I wonder about the report - certainly I can be aroused online, angry online, etc. The pheronomes aren't there but the rest is, so I'm curious about it. My cells are probably too active. I have to stop firing them (in both senses of the word - I need what's left). maybe it's all in the pheronomes... .. the health, i mean.. It could be. Because audio and visual clues are both available online. But then "you can smell fear" etc. ... and that's not particularly desirable In a way, people think that "scents" themselves - odors, smells - are "dirty" - you just have to see the commercials on the television here... which may have something to do with the power of live poetry readings - .... maybe feelings of anger, disappointment, being misunderstood, etc. are heightened due to the lack of the non-verbals, so there is more negative chemical activity than positive or something.... highly speculative one is in a room with a lot of other bodies... and they've gotten married .... that's a phenomenon I've heard of... vaguely... but can't imagine it I konw some of them, some have children now ... but i'm mostly a solitary wanderer on the web... ... ah, and present yourself better? maybe less better, but without embarrassment - it's unclear where a "real you" exists if one does at all... yes, thank you very much , and and too... well, in real life most of us are not in touch with our real selves, or don't have much integrity in presenting our real selves That's true I think, - at least it is for me bye - and thak all of you again for interesting talk! bye and thank you so much! Bye all, talk to ya through the wek week me too, I'll sign off now _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
