Some photos from Alan Sondheim's RL Humlab show & presentation

After more than four months' residency at Yoshikaze on SL Humlab sim, Alan Sondheim generously presented his work he had done at Yoshikaze at RL Humlab.  Yoshikaze and Humlab organised a show with his work on 11 screens at RL Humlab between 15-22 September, 2010, while at the same time Yoshikaze's studio in SL became open to the public.  Here are some photos from RL Humlab exhibition.  At the opening, Alan was present from New York via video link.

Alan Sondheim Exhibition

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency presents

Alan Sondheim

15 -22 September, 2010
@HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

Opening hours : 8AM-4PM (Weekdays)

Opening : 2PM-4PM, 15 September, 2010
Artist present via video link from New York

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency is glad to present work by Alan Sondheim at HUMlab, Umeå University in Sweden.  The exhibition runs between 15th and 22nd of September, and will show A. Sondheim's work completed during his residency at Yoshikaze on HUMlab Island in Second Life.

Yoshikaze "Up-in-the-Air" Residency is a new Second Life residency programme run by Sachiko Hayashi together with sim manager James Barrett from HUMlab, Umeå University.  Alan Sondheim has been Yoshikaze's first artist-in-residence since 20 May, during which time he has produced tremendous amount of work of highest quality in Second Life.  These works, which have been documented as machinimas, audio files and still images, will be shown on eleven monitors in HUMlab's brand new exhibition space at Umeå University. 

Alan Sondheim:

"For the past several months, as a result of the HUMlab residency, I've been working on avatars and installations in the virtual world Second Life. My main concerns have been the relationship between narrative and architecture, the relationship between language (inscription) and a 'natural' virtual world, the creation of installations that have no referents in the physical world, and the interrelationships among body, sexuality, language, and virtuality….
The images, videos, and documents in this exhibition reflect the varied stages of the installation and performance work. I'm fascinated with the idea of creating the inconceivable, working always in dialog with the software and hardware themselves. And I'm driven, above all, by two things - a real sense of wonder about the world, and the desire to know as much as I can about its structure and phenomenology. Serious play in virtual worlds is an amazingly productive process in this regard, resulting in what I call 'ontological mashups' that seem to constitute the very substance of our being."

In conjunction with HUMlab exhibition, Yoshikaze Studio in Second Life will be open to the public.  Between 15-22 September, anyone in Second Life can visit http://slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351/ to experience Alan Sondheim's work inworld. 

Yoshikaze Curator: Sachiko Hayashi
SL-HUMlab Manager: James Barrett

Yoshikaze Blog: yoshikaze.blogspot.com/
Yoshikaze on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/user3882081

HUMlab is an internationally established platform for the digital humanities and new media. Centered around an exciting studio environment of about 500 m2, HUMlab offers interesting technology, prominent international visitors, often several simultaneously ongoing activiites and a rich mixture of competences and interests.  Over the years HUMlab has received internationally renowned guest lecturers, among them Katherine Hayles and Steina Vasulka.More info on HUMlab > www.humlab.umu.se/english , yoshikaze.blogspot.com/2010/05/humlab-rl-sl.html

Knots and Twirls in Super Second Living Space

Knots and Twirls in Super Second Living Space

http://www.alansondheim.org/knots.mp4 (sharper)

Accompanying text:

This goes on and on. So far so good, these are abacuses, objects counted,
not too much out of line. If metaphor's involved, it's indexical. But then
perhaps I bring in libido (Dionysian, analogic) and superego (Apollonian,
digital), and I'm off and running. Before long I'm tied in Lacan's knots,
a slippage that's always productive - how can it knot be? Language begins
to curl, everything proceeds with a poetics of the real, and I'm lost, I'm
lost... weather" or knot strings: used for knots, Borromean knots, imperm-
anent subjectivities woven out of clotted postings.


And of the theory of knots. The midst of the embraiding of sheaves with
mass knots, a story or displacement of organs, the linking of knots, and
I'm off and running. Before long I'm tied in Lacan's knots, Borromean
knots, impermanent subjectivities woven out of clotted embroidery. The
midst of the embraiding of sheaves with mass flagu flagv *knotsu *knotsv
*bezt charidx kern nurb *bevobj *taperobj knots, in knots each other into
violent knots. They do go back.

A hollow tube closed with knots at both ends, Pestilence's canoe was
quickly, Borromean knots, impermanent subjectivities woven out of clotted
postings. I hung them from the window, I've tied myself in knots ... you
could see the s/ms as 'controls': bondages, knots, sheaves, sadisms,
ideological part- clots of subjectivities, knots and noted - each other
into violent knots. They do go back to the knobs of the trees and their
roots.

This topology with me, knots unraveling, coalescing no, you are many, are
gnarls or knots in the timber, to an insufficiently high cutting-speed, so
"Soften your sharpness, loosen your knots."

And my stomach's in knots. I'm falling over. I'm crawling, knotted up,
knotted, so ill, they twirl, buckle and unbuckle constantly, forming and
unforming, raveling and unraveling - with rafters, with the bark on high,
the bark on high above.

Introductory Essay to the Humlab AIR Residency Project

(This is written for the upcoming show/installation at Humlab.)


Introductory Essay to the Humlab AIR Residency Project

I thought the best way to proceed with an introductory essay, is to begin
with the original project description. Notes are bracketed.

Project name:

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)."

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

Avatar names:

My first avatar is Alan Dojoji.
My second avatar is Julu Twine.

[ Originally, Julu Twine was simpler in appearance and accouterments and
was used for building and everyday tasks. Then for a reason I no longer
remember, Alan Dojoji took up the role, and Julu Twine was outfitted for
complex movement, self-installation, and performance. Now both perform;
Alan Dojoji is the everyday avatar as well, and for the most part is
simpler.

Even with avatars, there are bandwidth issues; the more complex the
avatar, and the greater number of particles s/he emits - the more
bandwidth is taken up, which affects slower machines and the Second Life
parcel in general.

The avatars go in and out, taking their self-installations all about. ]

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 concept changed; I was less interested in negotiated architecture
than negotiated performance, and what I've termed "ontological mashup."
Negotiated performance references inordinately complex movements and
costuming - which is activated (i.e. moves on its own, has scripts
attached. I wanted to explore not only inconceivable movement, but a kind
of inconceivable movement that might reference our own condition in the
world - what happens when we carry destructive ecologies with us. A series
of oil and "oilamina" videos and still images resulted; the avatar became
hir own ecological catastrophe. I related this to the odd and abject
sexuality and fluidity of the BP oil spill videos, creating "spills" and
spews in the Humlab space seemed to wash away landscape, consciousness,
and intentionality. There's a buried politics at work here, based on the
majesty of large-scale environmental catastrophe and the horror that
ensues. ]

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 gives me the opportunity 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.

[ The narrative elements I used were based on several sources. Aurally,
I've worked with music, spoken narrative (both my own), and natural sounds
recorded in Colorado; these sounds have been remapped into the Humlab
space, creating interlocking realms. Visually, I've worked with language
and signing texture-mapped on objects - the language constantly changing
(it's imported from external directories). With all of this, the
"ontological mashup" described above becomes evident - it's hard to tell
what the _origin_ of speaking or writing is in the space - i.e. _who_ is
speaking, and to _whom._ Offline and online worlds are deeply entangled -
which is to say that inert and idiotic (Rosset) physical reality becomes
deeply entangled with online abstract and completely constructed virtual
reality.

A visitor to the site - or someone watching a performance with this
material - follows a complex diegesis which stumbles and backtracks upon
itself. The nature of language and communication are called into question
as signs appear and disappear at high speed, the avatar's gestures seem
corrupted, and the negotiated performances seem completely out of hand,
certainly out of touch.

All of this is also connected to issues of body and sexuality; with
texture-mapping, I was able to create reference points, intensifications,
Barthes' puncta, as a kind of seduction. So whatever happened in the chaos
sometimes seemed to resolve around sex, around flesh or meat, around
bodily contortions reminiscent of everything from torture to sexual
ecstasy. But these resolutions never held; what's visible is always in the
midst of a turn towards an other (Other) that remains both internal and
external, as if there were a coherence - where in fact there isn't any,
and as if there were inhering - whereas things tend to disperse, fall
apart, turn out not to be things at all. ]

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 "behavior collision" more systematically: an avatar
following more than one animation structure at a time.

[ I stayed with the older files; I was more concerned with audio, with
video texturing, with interspersed texts, with the problem of narrative -
the imaginary of narrative - within virtual worlds. All of this adds up to
a phenomenology based on relevance theory and attention economy.

Relevance theory is concerned with the hermeneutics of an environment -
how are complex spaces interpreted, and what is relevant within the
interpretation. Relevance is related to action and function: How one
behaves in a space is connected to how the space is read.

Attention economy references the "bandwidth" of attention - one might say
the political economy of attention - of the performer or online/offline
spectator. (The online spectator may be _within_ Second Life, or observing
Second Life in a public demonstration, i.e. on-screen.)

One only has a limited time to do anything, see anything, exist; the
attention economy considers how this time is deployed, actively or
passively. Within the Humlab installations, videos, and graphics, the
issue is connected with negotiation - is it worth moving through an
overly-busy space? What are the rewards? How does one _feel_ moving this
way? What are the detriments? What is the politics of what might be read
as overcrowding and ideological confusion? ]

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

[ These performances were carried out at Humlab and in a space in East of
Odyssey, with great success. Foofwa d'Imobilite performed in front of a
screen projecting videos from the Humlab space; Sandy Baldwin worked with
me "in world" - in other words, within Second Life. ]

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.

[ This was done. I feel like a pioneer in virtual worlds, creating utterly
"alien" performances, spaces, and avatars - i.e. without reference in our
real, physical reality. Second Life gives me the opportunity to create, in
a sense, ab nihilo; by doing this, I feel I can return to the older
phenomenological states of bracketing - not taking the world for granted,
but exploring all manner of other worlds. We are so used to considering
avatar and virtual worlds as mockups of our own, emphasizing surrealism
and fantasy - here, I explore worlds and states that aren't mockups, that
are something other, something unaccountable. This is exciting research /
work / art, and as far as I'm concerned, on the forefront of exploration
into virtual spaces. It's filled with wonder for me. It draws me in, and I
hope, draws you in as well. ]

- August 20, 2010

The Sparse Dance at Humlab

Avatar Julu Dojoji performing Sparse Dance at Humlab. Of all the avatar

dance videos I've done in SL, this seems to me (at the moment) to be the

most interesting - certainly the dance makes sense. Some of the materials

are worn by Dojoji, some are activated by hir; the movement is fluid,

camera work extraordinary thanks to the Snowglobe 2 Viewer. I wish to

thank my entire production staff for this. If you have ONE avatar Dojoji

film to see this year, THIS IS IT!

http://www.alansondheim.org/sparse.mp4

Seriously, it's beautiful and close to the kind of hypostatization I've

wanted to work towards, in terms of solo performance/choreography. Not to

mention the sound finally comes together. The beginning and end of the

piece demonstrates the construction and deconstruction.

Bringing things up to date

Most of my written work for Humlab is at http://www.alansondheim.org/ - you can look up files qp.txt, qq.txt, qr.txt for examples. The URLs may not all be functional at this point; I have limited storage space at the site, and have to keep taking older work down to put up new pieces. There are also compression issues.

In the future for the project -

1. A series of DVDs (with .mov and .mp4 files) will be produced.

2. A longer text, published as POD, will be finished; this will be created from the work already written.

You can also find soundwork related to the project at http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/ - this is also a directory, but it can be ordered so the most recent files are at the top.

The current videos are exploring yet again body interiority, the problematic of virtual architecture and its irreality, what appears to be 'spontaneous' generation, issues of diegesis and narrativity, and inscription - language - as an element within the installation as a whole.

wraithe

part of a series silent meditation on dissolution

theory:

think of the world as a debris field

books are a priori modernist monolithic

plot is equivalent to mise en scene

aphorisms define and promulgate thought

fragmented programming languages proliferate

friends without networks are not friends

the universe is incomprehensible

thought and research shape-ride

imminence replaces immanence

difference replaces differance

all construction is deconstruction

immersion is neighborhood-based

definition is situational

grand narratives are replaced by none

ecosystems are replaced by micro-niches

vertebrates give way

past life swallows present life

be on the make or die

information increase is chaotic and blind

the future has already past

we are proliferating splitting and outmoded channels

fucking is too close and too slow

a parent is an afterthought of a child and a mistake

agreement is futile

Thinking about Second Life phenomenology, that's it

So this is what I've come up with for the upcoming conference (ELO, providence) -

Second Life is a coherent system, based on mathesis, energy expenditure

dynamics; it is not a collocation of levels; Heisenberg does not apply

(except by crude analogy).

Second Life is theoretically a space of total control; control extends to

physics as well.

There are boundaries, but no differentiations in Second Life.

Physics and earths are afterthoughts at best. Permissions are equivalent

to cosmological constants under the sign of capital.

In Second Life, everything is inscribed, and inscription is everywhere

consistent.

Think of a phenomenological horizon of entangled information, present but

readable only in very limited ways.

Within Second Life, there is only within; the safe-words for escape are

quit, abort, shutdown, delete.

Within, there are signs among universal inscription:

Writings:

found:

signs within (readable) scripts

signs above or conntected to objects (think avatar names, other)

signs on object textures

universal signs as video on parcel according to privileged texture

universal signs as videos on parcels according to media textures

ad hoc:

chat, instant messaging < > indexical

voice < > ikonic

definable

Dynamic inscriptive regimes (always involves the subject/viewer):

narratological styles with avatar and object movements, textures

diegesis, avatars moving or being moved (controlled-by)

indexical signs of violence, sexuality, and so forth:

identifications

sutures

arousals

< > projections <> jectivity < >

immersive

objects and part-objects: seductions, lures, impediments

Everyday Life:

indexical objects, models, simulacra, re-enactments:

absolutely unnecessary

every movement or object in a virtual world that closely parallels

movement or objects in physical reality - is already a re-enactment

Thinking through language in virtual worlds

SL without language - that is to say, unspoken and unspeaking objects, objects unspoken-for, these objects parallel the diegeses of silent cinema - moving among them, but then what? what are the moments of narrative or other devices conveying meaning, other than design, etc. So language is critical, and there are signs/signboards everywhere, not to mention notes handed (down) to one upon entering SL - all this. But if language inheres to the object, if the object is always already inscribed, the possibilities open up perhaps? So on one hand, there are speaking objects, and on the other, objects with inscribed textures. The latter can be stationary signs/signboards; they can also be (in SL 2 viewers) videos separately assigned to separate surfaces, or objects in their entirety. In both cases, it appears as if the objects were speaking, were in some sense linguistic - as if language were in the world, not so much of, or beyond, it. So these works - recent works - of mine work with speaking objects - now here are two, minus the sound and dynamism. For the rest, there are a number of video files at http://www.alansondheim.org/ - I suggest http://www.alansondheim.org/thinking.mp4 or http://www.alansondheim.org/Okukin.mp4 or http://www.alansondheim.org/america.mp4 - there is also http://www.alansondheim.org/becoming.mp4 - all of these recent, as of today - and I do want to thank everyone for the possibilities of this residency as well!

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.