do you have to be smart to do art? (sorry to answer your question with a question. this statement may or may not help. somebody call me a spambulance) CODEBREAKER
Alan Sondheim wrote: > > Language and Object > > > A texture, tested.png, is created with the phrase "i don't understand > you're saying" overlaid with the word "ALIEN". The texture is applied to > numerous objects in the Second Life environment; the texture is also > inserted in the particle generation script. When an avatar sits on a > scripted object, particles spew out, carrying the same text as the objects > themselves. The result is a fireworks display of tested.png spews from > tested.png emitters. The display is like nothing in physical reality; at > the same time, it's tethered to the "ALIEN/i don't understand what you're > saying" text. > > The problem, theoretical and practical, is this: How does alienness func- > tion, given the self-referentiality of this text? (Or, in fact, any text > at all? For it isn't so much the specific content, as the act of scanning > and reading familiar graphemes, words, and so forth, that sets the scene.) > Does the act of reading take away from the mise en scene (as alien, other > worldly - as elsewhere and elsewise) reducing it to a form of concrete > poetry - or does the mise en scene "alienize" the inscription - and, by > implication, any inscription, itself? > > The former seems to be the case; as relevance theory has it, a determin- > ation occurs, creating a steering-mechanism as habitus for the viewing > session. Think of this as a detour or masquerade, the habitus within a > potential well, keeping everything in order. > > In the real world, disguise of anomaly is equivalent to a problematic > shift to the familiar. Thus anomaly may be constantly hidden: a bomb as > lunch-box, for example - and the real as classical logic, with quantum and > cosmological anomalies kept at a distance. This references the phenomeno- > logy of nearly autonomous levels, without which life would be, literally, > at a loss. > > In virtual worlds, we can experiment with all of this - keeping the alien > or familiar at bay - with (mostly autonomic) gestures whose stakes are > high in the real, gamed and (presumably) lower online. Thus the virtual is > the safe world/word for the real, until the real overwhelms us all.* > > http://www.alansondheim.org/tested.png > http://www.alansondheim.org/alientalk.mov > > *And when this happens, inscription disappears, there is nothing further > to be said; without memory or organism, the flat world shudders to a halt. > > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
