[ digested @ nettime -- mod (tb)]
Alan Sondheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Railroad Club
The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation
outline of emanent research (current work at wvu)
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Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:19:32 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Railroad Club
Railroad Club
Images from open house, Morgantown model railroad club, embodying cuts
from one scale to another, from human to true world, from mind to emanent.
Who would call this the postmodern? One might locate something else here:
not the cut but the suture, not disparity but deep memory; the locales
represented, real and imaginary, conjure the West Virginia landscape of
the 1950s, in the memory of many of the club members. What better than a
photograph than a reconstruction in which everything is punctum, intended?
The photographs are of the text, of this text; they're weaker without it,
they go elsewhere, I'm pulling them back in. I'm pulling them back in to
indicate multiculturalisms and emphases on locale and habitus tend both
suture and division (these people, these others) in favor of _listening_
and its phenomenology.
But listening is skew-orthogonal, again, to the _style_ of the images,
based on any number of photographers and trajectories.
Now what do I see when I do not know what I see? Certainly aspects and
entities are present within the true world filtered through the history of
photography and photographers who have no responsibility for me.
Where are the passengers in this life? Where are the passengers in the
life of the other?
You can already feel the economy of the land, extractive industries, pov-
erty, environmental pollution, mountain-topping, strip-mining, deep-min-
ing, feed stores, small towns in the hollows, grey dust, what's worn is
worn, what's not is brought into play through deep memory's suture which
even bends, transfigures the landscape, someday we'll all rise to the
surface.
I will live forever
I will live forever
I will live forever
As a hungry ghost
As a hungry ghost
I will live forever
I don't remember the exact name of the railroad club or the members. Some-
one named Mike, I believe, made the larger mine model. I came in as a
tourist finding nameless things. the models were both outstanding, depres-
sing to an outsider. The images appeared as images, imaginary, with what-
ever context I might bring from the outside; the social depth was absent.
I turned to the jump-cut.
The jump-cut was of the visual, that disparity of mind and scale. Railroad
switching systems were fundamental to the development of the Internet.
Evidence of electronic skein was everywhere. Jump-cut sutured into dream-
scape, dream-screen, displacement/condensation semiotics. What is of truth
or tending towards the indexical in the images applies as well to the vis-
ual in general, compounding of memory, suture, cut, surface. Whatever one
sees is surface, surface-only; x-rays report on deeper surfaces,
translucent or transparent to invisible light.
The photographs bother me, as if theory needed image-propping beyond the
diagrammatic. But what can the image hold, if not an arrangement that
might be constituted as evidence? If a diagram is indexical or symbolic,
the photograph resides elsewhere; evidence stands for nothing and hardly
represents itself, nor is it pointing towards something across ontological
or epistemological lines. On this level the photograph simply reports as
Bazin might have it, on what-is, or rather the what-is and thetic con-
strues within the dialog of image production. In any case, the postmodern
is left behind, or rather, is relegated to analyses of socio-economic
phenomena where the theory works wonders; think of postmodern geography,
Harvey or Roja for example.
What would postmodern geography make of mountain-topping? And then its
representation which makes the wrecked landscape somehow graspable,
something to walk around, replant with meadow or pasture?
I think of tantra, mandala, Jefferey Hopkins' introduction to the Kala-
chakra Tantra (Kalachakra Tantra, Rite of Initiation, Dali Lama, 1999).
Hopkins walks/writes the body of the reader through the mandala ("Notice
the entryway at the eastern door, wider than the doorway, with a three
storied portico above the entranceway. Each of the stories of the portico
above the entryway has four pillars across the front, thereby creating
three room-like alcoves on each story. In each of these eight alcoves are
goddesses of offering; the middle alcove in the first story on the eastern
side has a black wheel of doctrine with a buck and doe to the right and
left." And so forth.) Now think of the Morgantown railroad club images in
the same or different shimmer, think not of the imminent/immanent identi-
fication of entities within them, but of paths through or around or by
virtue of these entities, which themselves are processes (one doesn't live
forever, the tracks are constantly changing). Is there a meditation here,
emission or spew that is sourceless except for (in spite of) the corners
or frame of the image? Can one imagine a habitus, inhabitation? Is there a
seeing that moves through memory near and far without the supplication of
the signifier? This is what literally remains to be seen, and brings the
essay to its clothes.
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail01.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail02.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail03.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail04.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail05.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail06.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail07.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail08.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail09.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail11.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail12.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail13.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail14.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail15.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail16.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail17.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail18.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail19.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail10.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail21.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail22.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail23.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail24.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail25.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail26.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail27.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/rail28.jpg
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Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:10:04 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation
The Beautiful Throbbed Emanentation
The following is a culmination of certain directions associated with mo-
tion capture - in particular, operating too near and too far from the
receiving antenna, with mixed sensors. In both positions, the configur-
ation generates furious behavior as clusters of sensors shoot to ragged
infinities and back again. Heads may detach and the cartoon integrity
returns as such. The reading, however, is different, as is the jectivity;
the reading is external, jectivity internal. The reading searches for
coherency: which body belongs with which organ? Jectivity follows organ,
head, and limb paths, identification with approaching, consummating,
withdrawing, churning. This is Brownian motion, but radically integral.
So what is being modeled? For one thing, slow-simple movement, carefully
seducing, caressing, antenna and sensor alike. For another, electronic
jitters which threaten to break apart the world.
In all of these instances there are two or three figures; at times, they
duplicate or fall behind or beyond one another; at times they ingest one
another; at times flail uselessly apart; at times, entangle. They cohere
and the video/project/ion is one of cohering, hysteric communality at the
catastrophic limit. Sheave-skins, which are usually reserved for too-close
caress or voyeurism in Second Life, split constantly here; wounds heal,
reopen, the body channels the body. Mind-only emptiness, no mind running
these emanents into the ground.
Violence, abjection, arousal, caress, tumescence, thickening, cutting of
the sheaves. Sheave-figures which I am sure will soon be independent of
our desire or construct.
(This is some of the most advanced video/mocap work I've done; I'm always
amazed that both beauty and wonder can come out of such poverty. It's the
machines which are talking, which are rubbing against one another, which parlay
communication into visionary ekstasis. I must learn, I continue to learn, how
to listen, how to see, what is proffered, what is not within my powers of
conjuration. Magic is magic because it always come from the Other. I have lost
expectation.)
Abjection is the most difficult. How to dis/comfort and fetishize, hold
and release simultaneously. These emanants do this naturally, as Azure
Carter, original model, follows suit.
http://www.alansondheim.org/throbbed.mp4
Abjection is the most difficult, less so as the camera moves in, cuts through
sheaves. For the viewer there is the level of the subterranean bvh code in
dialog with the exigencies of Poser models, but there are also levels of organs
and affect, and it is the breasts and hands, high-speed maternal display, that
provide tremulous scaffolding:
http://www.alansondheim.org/wideinternals.mp4
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Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:36:56 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan Sondheim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: outline of emanent research (current work at wvu)
outline of emanent research
(note while the notions of 'code,' 'coding,' 'decoding,' codework,
underlie almost everything below, they're not explicit - nor are the
actions of reading and writing. the actions can be considered emergent
phenomena, and the notions as primitives in the sense of members of a set,
etc. again, the analog and digital phenomenologies are implicit as well,
as are the (related) concepts of abjection and purification. the analyses
of these comes out through praxis, attention to detail, thinking through
mandalic structuring until the scaffolding leads, not to silence, but to
tending. this should be clearer as the work progresses.
i should note that the following is both a constitution of my usual/cur-
rent directions and most likely too ambitious. the trajectories circulate
around formal systems and their psychoanalytic/psychological receptivi-
ties, around emanents and 'true worlds,' around edge phenomena which turn
towards the uncanny and abject, around languages, bodies, sexualities,
communalities, and inhabitations. i have increasingly worked through
buddhist philosophies, the analogic and digital at the limits, notions of
'dis/eased' philosophies, deathing and uneasy worlds. now that i have a
clear time to think through these things, the outline below is useful as a
guide; for that matter, it's a guide to the past few years of the 'inter-
net text' as well.)
I. motion capture: this conjures up external behavioral characteristics
translated into internal processes (penetration, scale, displacement,
torsion, according to various geometries). think of mocap behaviors
operating within a constrained field with strange attractors / catas-
trophic jumps. continue to develop mocap with new multi-valent sensors
and software rewrites:
1. turning nodes on and off
2. combining nodes
3. mathesis such that node1 = f(node{n not = 1}), or such that
node1 = recursively f(node1)
4. multivalent sensors such that sensor(x) = sensor[{n}]
what are the emergent images here?
what is the possibility of constructing bvh files with additional nodes
determined mathematically from the hardware set? or mathematically from
extraneous data?
what is the possibility of other organic models (i.e. than human or
animal forms)?
IA. data remappings
entry of bvh files into blender:
1. modeled onto abstracted forms
2. modeled onto parent/child forms
3. modeled onto metaball forms
blender file outputs:
1. entry into cave environment: static or dynamic
2. video output
3. what is the possibility of gaming output here? (moving around emanent
environment)
3. second life output: static or dynamic/interactive
IB. interiors
1. standardized interiors: sheave-skin, sheave-organism
2. constructed 'model' interiors: solid, transparent, penetrable,
impenetrable
3. abject fluxed interiors: how should these be constructed?
IC. interior narratologies
1. abject/purified narratologies and emanent interactions
2. abjected/purified contents of dis/ease, dis/order, ecstasy, ekstasis,
catatonia, defuge, death/immobility, sexuality, speech/murmured/
whispered/cried/screamed, body formed/deformed
3. tantric/middleway theoretics
ID. choreographic mocap (see above)
1. additional issues of jump/leap, exhaustion, tether
2. video/photographic output as well as bvh
II. scan
phenomenology of scanning, causality across scanned lines
IIA. small scanner
1. head/speech phenomena dissected
2. schizophrenias and beam-splitters
3. reflections from coils, air condensers
4. static tantric buddha image: sutured, stitched-displaced, node
combinations and splits
5. wounds, scars, lips, genitals, ears
output into .obj files into blender/cave
output into video/still image files
within blender: solve the issue of disappearance/transparency
IIIB. large scanner
1. interior scans: rooms with bodies, reflections, dance-studio,
scan-choreographies
2. exterior scans at bretz coke ovens, persona rapid transit (in motion),
soccer fields
3. mobilized body scans in inert environments: reading 2d -> 3d, nature of
the inference.
3. environmental scans with mobilized and peripheral bodies
5. narratologies of such bodies: violence, chase, jump/fall, etc.
6. choreographic narratologies
III. access grid (open source internet 2 group messaging/environment)
1. distant interaction with emanents
2. readings of the corporate / corporate bodies: photographs/video
3. theory and discussion, levinas, leder, lingis, etc. at the distance
of telecommunications
IV. cave and second life
1. performance and documentation
2. working/running within emanent interiors
3. and so forth
V. goals of the above:
1. what does it mean to be in-carnated within the real/virtual/
true world?
2. what are the edge-phenomena/plastic and static limits of the body?
3. of the geopolitical body? of the political-economic body?
performance: abu-gharayb modeling in sl
performance: abu-gharayb modeling in choreography
4. what are the signifiers of bodily arousal/violence/meditation?
how are these constituted within the real/virtual?
5. readings: what does it mean to read the real body? the virtual body?
6. what are the ontologies and epistemologies involved here?
ontological status of the so-called virtual -
schrodinger's cat paradox and collapse of the wave function as model
for simultaneous analogic/digital readings -
seeing through microscopy (tunnel, scanning, optical, etc.):
are ontology and epistemology equivalent at the limit?
(are analogic and digital equivalent at a parallel limit?)
VI. medical model
1. internals and externals, static/dynamic. remnants of the visible
human project, gendering of the visual/internal
2. comfort, dis/comfort, ease, dis/ease, hysteria and abjection/fluid-
ity (laycock's 1840 essay on hysteria, kristeva, chasseguet-smirgel)
3. dis/ease, hysteria, and so forth of emanents
distorted emanent behavior and body image (gaz)
distorted surface textures and behavior-collisions (sondheim)
distorted worlding, 'bringing one out of the true world' (etc.)
4. medical model and technology
5. psychoanalytics and technology, psychoanalytics of emanents
VII. radio
1. vlf - very low frequency - body interferences with antenna
reception, phenomenology of body coupling with antenna
2. scanner - social, continuous socio-political landscape description.
3. sw - anomalous signals
4. long-wave - anomalous signals
5. crystal - the receptivity of inert materials, primordial radio and
primordial radio culture
6. phenomenology of the antenna/field: materiality of the world as
electromagnetic channeling
VIII. emanents within fieldings, choreographies, edge/boundary phenomena
VIIIA. praxis of edge/boundary phenomena
1. analogic and worn emanent boundaries
2. edge / boundary phenomena - physics and psychophysics of the game-
world edge in second life
3. phenomena of the sheave-skin and sheave-skin internals
4. phenomena of medical models in relation to edge/boundaries
VIIIB. praxis of edge/boundary phenomena with hardware/software
1. edge phenomena in literature, codework, mathesis of the text
(cramer's and reith's programs)
2. edge phenomena within the motion capture software, poser, blender,
calculations for example of sin(tan x) as tan x nears the
asymptote
3. generalization of edge phenomena into the dialectic between tacit
knowledge (polyani) and error (winograd/flores)
VIIIC. live choreographies:
1. foofwa and soccer (edge phenomena, dancesport, etc.)
2. foofwa with crystal radio, vlf radio, etc. in large field
3. sexuality of ballet (nude ballet, classical or genre figures),
gendering of roles, ballet as emanation
4. anita berber narratologies ('annihilation: to the limit!')
5. foofwa dancework at coke ovens
6. 'body-contouring' of dance/geography
the geography of dance, dance of geography, dance geography
7. 'body-contouring' of dance/technology: dance at the limits
of the machine
IX. world-constructions
1. what constitutes worlds? constructing?
world of the text, inhabitation/dwelling/building (heidegger,
dufrenne)
2. what constitutes the true world? worlding?
'true world' in which lines/angles are 'trued' (affine geometry),
'true world' in the sense of 'trued' phenomenologies within which
virtual, real, and ikonic are blurred and interpenetrating, somewhat
equivalent, and within which traditional epistemologies of symbol/
sign/signifier/signified/index/ikon etc. break down (kalachakra
tantra, jeffrey hopkins)
3. 'reading' underlying (substructural, configuration files, guides)
organization of mocap/scan through surface phenomena
(and the relationship of this reading to waddington's epigenetic
landscapes)
4. who is world? communality, consensuality?
the problem of other minds and the problem of consensual other minds
(group hallucinations, vijnanavada, dwarf sitings, ufos, etc.)
X. outputs:
1. video and film (in practice, usual issues of apparatus/spectator)
2. digital and silver photography (digital/analogic and analogic/digi-
tal divides - potential well on one hand, grain on the other)
3. series of short papers/descriptions
4. series of performances (individual and collaborative)
morgantown and elsewhere across real geographies
anywhere across virtual geographies
5. formal presentations at wvu (spring and perhaps fall)
6. formal presentations elsewhere
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