As long as we don't go homeless...
Apologies for self-promotion; sometimes it seems necessary. Besides there's always the delete/kill/abort/dev\/null - alan On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, Ann Non wrote: > 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 >> > == email archive: http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ webpage http://www.alansondheim.org sondheimat gmail.com, panix.com == _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
