Photo study of the boy cellist

Before starting to build and experiment in the virtual space, I have begun collecting impressions from my subject my son (the cello boy) as he learns and practices his score. I have taken a series of photos with my iphone of him playing at different angles and contortions of his hands. The instrument being fretless means that the player's hands and fingers must adapt and learn to play the notes. The hands must "remember" and touch is as important as sound. The body and the mind, the ears and eyes are used by the subject as it will be for audience.

Why black and white? As a stark contrast between Second Life's vivid RGB color worldview, I have decided to construct a scene in monotone. It isn't pure SL. Obviously, the concept of photography comes to mind and but also the gap between real life and virtual are needing to be dealt with. In many virtual artists' viewpoints, bringing in the real is taboo as it doesn't rely on the materials and physics of the 3D simulated space. I'd like to challenge this notion while transcending both the photo and virtual spaces to make something new that doesn't exist in either. Still not experimenting in the virtual space, I have yet to know how this imagery will be combined, how users will interact with them or what spatial form will come about. This is fitting to my process and a large part of the experimentation.

At the same time, I'm also doing audio recordings which are still quite rough and even hard to listen to as he endeavors to perform what lies before him on the sheet of music. I will post the raw audio soon.

Yoshikaze's second artist-in-residence: Juria Yoshikawa

Juria Yoshikawa aka Lance Shields is our next artist-in-residence.  (S)he will be with us until 15th January, 2011.  Here is the project description by her/him:

Project “In the Mind of the Cellist Boy”
 
For this residency at Yoshikaze which is an SL space by Humlab at  Umeå University in Sweden, I will engage in an abstracted audio-visual exploration of the experience of learning to make sound, music and art. Springing from my 12 year old son’s challenge to learn the cello, I have watched him as struggles with the fretless, unwieldy organic mass of an instrument. Attempting to recreate the sounds of past composers, he enters in his own “zone” meditating on rhythms and harmonies, making it his own. Other times in tears fighting to make the composer’s intended sound.

What is he thinking and feeling? What can a father who has never learned to play an instrument but who makes virtual art with interactive sound grasp and build from this experience? My son is coincidentally starting a new song (Johannes Brahms Sonata) and the struggle to make it his own will be the heart of this project. Improvising from recordings of his practices, combining photo imagery, considering the form of the instrument, gleaning insights from conversations with my son, I will attempt to create from his experience in order to come to some understanding of what could be going on in the mind of the cellist boy.

This collaborative experiment will not be a documentary but be more like an interactive abstract painting combined with a song that is imperfect as we all are. My own experiments will last for 1-2 months, close to the length of time it will take the boy cellist to learn his score. It will try to look at the identities of a boy (my son) and a man (myself) as they attempt to create order in chaos. At the completion of this project, I would like to arrange a participatory performance inviting other avatars in the installation while live streaming my son playing the song. It is my hope that the happening will somehow capture my own interpretation of what is going on in the cellist boy’s mind.

Juria Yoshikawa

After two decades of creative pursuits ranging from conceptual art, installation, poetry, performance, computer art, animation, photography and digital design. Juria Yoshikawa arrived in Second Life (SL) in the winter of 2007 looking for a new artistic spark. Rather than bringing in real life (RL) artwork, Juria is compelled to use mainly the elements that make up SL itself. A typical Juria Yoshikawa virtual artwork mixes kinetic objects, animated texture, ambient noise and avatar animations. She inevitably chooses scales larger than conventional gallery work because she is interested in people experiencing the work in a physical way - flying through them, riding on them and socializing within the art. To Juria virtual art is about freeing oneself up to create in ways she finds impossible in real life.


Juria's videos >> http://vimeo.com/juriayoshikawa
Juria's photos >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/lancesh/collections/72157613007188738

Lance Shields

Lance is the real life person behind Juria Yoshikawa. As Juria is a female avatar, he wants people to know that she exists in SL as one of his alter egos but that there is not a real life female face behind her. In his real life, Lance is a Tokyo based multimedia artist and designer. He has spent many years creating digital art, installation art and performance. Sculpture and installation are where he started his creative career but he became progressively more involved in the digital and interactive. Lance sees SL as a return back to his artistic roots yet at the same time combines his interests in the phenomenology in the virtual world. This can be defined as “the reflective study of the essence of consciousness as experienced from the first person point of view”.

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.