First Artist-in-Residence ->> Alan Sondheim

Yoshikaze (http://slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/105/200/25) provides "Up-in-the-Air" Residency for SL artists. Our first artist-in-residence is Alan Sondheim, who will be working at Yoshikaze on Humlab sim for 4 months.  The below is the description of Alan's project:

Either Well or Brane -

The first refers to something that is low/beneath the surface - but reflects the sky; it also taps into something hidden.

The second references a dimensional object in string theory that may or may not exist; from Wikipedia:

"Originally string theory was a theory of 1-branes called strings. By the mid-1990s it became apparent that the theory could be extended to also include higher dimensional objects. Typically these objects are non-perturbative features of the theory (meaning they do not appear in perturbation theory).

Besides the fundamental string (or F-string) of string theory and its magnetic dual, the NS5-brane, the most important type of branes that appear are the D-branes. Different types of D-branes appear in different theories. Dn-branes with even n appear in type IIA string theory where as the odd Dp-branes appear in type IIB string theory."

Think impossible or inconceivable objects, objects nonetheless that may be fundamental to the cosmos - think fundamental ontology.

Description of installation:

Well/Brane is both installation and performance space. with the former, I want to extend the idea of "negotiated space," a space in SL that is inherently uncomfortable, impossible to move through. Negotiated space, which is also a supple and continuously-changing architecture, first appeared in my Odyssey installation, "The Accidental Artist" (also the name of a publish-on-demand book produced by Fort/Da Press). The basic concept is that, within the space, one is utterly lost, among the 'alien.'

The space Well/Brane is narratological, since objects will possess labels or signs appearing in the vicinity of avatars. It will also be aural, and in this sense more complex than the space in the first installation. Using the Beta 2.01 viewer (and its successors), I should be able to directly add webpages and videos to objects - videos that are differentiated from each other (in the first viewer, "media" allowed objects in a region to play only one video at a time). This allows me to develop a narratology from within, based on differences among videos - not just, in other words, what occurs in a specific video, but what occurs as a result of difference among them. The same should hold true for audio.

This work will continue to use modified bvh animation files; at this point I want to use both older ones, and newer ones created directly in Poser. I want to explore "behaviour collision" more systematically: an avatar following more than one animation structure at a time.

I envision several public performances, with Foofwa d'Imobilite, Sandy Baldwin, and others; the results will be, as usual, documented in video, audio, and stills.

The points of all of this:
1. To further explore dance/choreographic/behavioral issues in SL.
2. To further explore these within complex negotiated environments.
3. To explore media-modified environments with contradictory video/audio materials.
4. To explore narratologies and performances in these environments.
5. To relate all of this to a developing philosophy of difference and contradiction.

Avatar name:
My main avatar is Alan Dojoji.
My avatar performer is Julu Twine.