Alan, you're living in my heart. Love, Willy On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > Passive-Aggressively Blowing My Own Horn > > =================== > > Early on, around 1994-5, I developed the concept of 'rewrite,' the enunci- > ation/announcement of online presence - an ontological performative funda- > mentally changing the way humans communicate. > > I developed the concept of 'defuge' to indicate a kind of disinvestment or > staleness that psychologically characterizes aspects of online and offline > life. > > I worked through the 'inscribed body'/'body of inscription' in relation to > 'culture all the way down,' placing the semiotic register across all > species, and this in relation to an examination of the phenomenology of > culture itself. > > I worked extensively with the idea of 'third sex,' produced solely through > the dynamics of a linguistic register in various social applications; in > this respect, I further developed the concept of lag as seductive lure. > > I did early work on MOOs and talkers, creating what would later be called > codework pieces, by manipulating the database labels of both; I also > worked on a phenomenology of talk/chat applications, ranging from MOOs to > IRC. > > I created a number of codework pieces, interfering in IRC channels, > rewriting talker and MOO databases, and so forth. > > I created the word 'codework' to reference a style of writing in which > code-bones are apparent, scrabbling the surface and depths of texts, and > in this regard was a forerunning of flarf, early on google-scraping and > working with perl programs and unix/linux scripts to reconstitute texts, > drawing new extended meanings out of them. > > With the help of Florian Cramer, I extended the structure of the Chinese > Thousand-Character Essay into other texts, using a perl program that kept > only the first instance of a word, in its proper order; I operated upon > Genesis in this fashion. > > I have worked with one of the longest-running art projects online - the > Internet Text, which I add to daily, and which was started at the begin- > ning of 1994. > > In Second Life, I have constructed a new and extreme style of artwork, in > which real-life textures are combined with 'alien' shapes and spaces, > having no basis in the real world. > > With Foofwa de Imobilite and Azure Carter - we have pioneered a form of > dancework called 'avadance' from avatar movement, and this movement itself > has been pioneering, using software- and hardware-altered motion capture > equipment to create 'inconceivable' mappings of human behaviors. > > Through Gary Manes, I pioneered in the creation of dynamic filters for > motion capture processing; these parallel graphic filters in image-proc- > essing programs, but they transform both time- and space-coordinates. > > Using Blender, I have created avatars without any human or organic feat- > ures whatsoever, adding human behavioral patterns to them, in order to > examine the phenomenology of behavioral 'reading' without cues from a body > image itself. > > In music, I have pioneered new guitar techniques, as well as extended the > possibilities of instruments such as Alpine zither, hegelung, and cobza. > > I have written one of the first extended works dealing with body abjection > and discomfort, centered on cancer, through the use of codework and other > textual manipulations. > > Early on, I created a series of raw texts from net-sex - texts which led > to the concept of 'wryting,' inscribing the body itself as projection and > introjection; this led to the concept of 'jectivity,' indicating the > psychological and psychoanalytical flows between agents, screens, desire, > and programs. > > Along the same line, in an extended text called Textbook of Thinking, I > created a 'ruptured' analysis of the obscene and the abject as existing in > a different register, within or beneath the linguistic - this deeper > register (related to Kristeva's 'chora') underlies human communication and > behavior. > > Early on, I wrote on textual interfaces in linux, and their phenomenolo- > gies; I also analyzed talk and ytalk in linux/unix as representations of > the body on-screen, in terms of screen 'real estate.' > > Through textual avatars such as Nikuko, Travis, Alan, Jennifer, and Julu, > I worked through psychological and psychoanalytical issues of projected > identities; these characters appeared anywhere from talkers to IRC to > email to newsgroups to Second Life. > > In terms of philosophical issues, I wrote extensively on the relationship > of the 'analogic' and 'digital' registers, using the abacus as a starting > point; this also has led to a series of purely philosophical texts, such > as Sophia and Philosophy, which utilize conceptual organization as a way > to structure analyses of the real. > > I have written as well on the fundamental entanglement of the real and > virtual, within the phenomenology of inscription - an entanglement that > virtualizes and mirrors any ontology, within any other. > > I have written what might be the deepest analysis of Second Life from > within - that is, an analysis of virtual worlds and worlding, in a series > of texts gathered in The Accidental Artist. > > In dance, I have created a series of 'possibilities' using VLF (very low > frequency radio) in order to create a dialectic between choreography/ > movement and the 'invisible' radiating world at large. > > (I should mention my early video- and film-work, based on new techniques - > for example, in the early 1980s, I created a 16mm (sound) film a week, > using multiple in-camera processing, layering optical soundtracks on the > fly, and so forth.) > > Within the sociology of postmodernism, I have analyzed the social in terms > of radiations and dusts, using these to model transmission (both basic > and parasitic) and reception across a variety of spectra. > > Along the same lines, I have written on the phenomenology of VLF, short- > wave listening, and similar things which emphasize hunting virtualities in > worldings that are always already continuously evanescent and vanishing. > > Early on, I created artworks using Quickbasic and Basic, to create images > that scattered from within, as well as fractal traces using a phenomenolo- > gy of measurement - these led to considering the boundaries of the visual > in relation to the boundaries of the world, which was also built upon a > re-examination of inscribing between x and -x in set theories. > > Earlier still, I created pieces that involved 'driving in 4-space' - > moving through four-dimensional space - the image was flattened to a > 2-space vector screen. > > And slightly later, using UCSD Pascal, I created 'active-editing' programs > that would take textual input and transform it on the fly; this led to an > analysis of parasitism and noise in situations where it seemed imperative > to transmit a message through a hostile environment. > > These same techniques were used, within the past few years, as a way to > interfere with three-dimensional modeling programs, so that it became > almost, but not totally, impossible to reconstitute the original image > from the scan - and this led, in turn, to reworking avatar bodies them- > selves in second life, producing anomalous and unreadable structures > motivated by avatar 'intelligence' within them. > > And so forth. > > =================== > > So where is this work? Scattered among chapbooks, print-on-demand books > (which are never available for review or perusal), within the Internet > Text and at the website I use to temporarily store files (temporarily - > given the limited storage I have). There are archived materials at the > Ohio State University in Columbus; there are materials that will be > archived at New York University in Manhattan. There are over twenty-five > hours of films still at Filmmakers Coop, where they sit and decay. There > are several cds, and three non-publish-on-demand books, none of which > discuss any of the above. There have been a number of manuscripts which > continue to gather dust. At one point I self-published several dvds and > texts, but that proved impractical. > > What happened? My work is difficult to grasp; it moves too quickly among > disciplines and (artistic) communities; almost all of it is non-academic > in style; it's unsellable; it's parasitic on email lists, and appears (as > this text appears) only as noise; it's sent to /dev/null one way or ano- > ther; at times it appears too neurotic, sexual, intense, moribund, diffi- > cult, or depressive; it takes far too much time to read and/or process; it > seems to short-circuit itself; I'm socially awkward, etc. etc. > > What will happen? Surely nothing until after my death, and then, if the > works survive on someone's machine, something might come of them; however > by then, they'll most likely be outdated. > > This can only end on an "ah, well...". > > =================== > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >
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