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[digested @ nettime --mod(tb)] Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> old READING.TXT and internet course descriptions (1994-6) Avatar Absence Erasure Performance [limits of explanation] Day 3 (last), Columbia College mocap research examples - meditative (documentation of mocap proces, plus example) virtuality notes, from avatar.txt and from wryting-l Dusk Dance Culmination * do they know each other. Political Dance of the International Two REQUESTS: Open Re: US politics and wealth (fwd) new images of human beings for the nuclear workers @ Fukushima @ Fukushima (fwd) PLEASE NOTE: PROBABLY CONTAMINATED SITE death versus life Enclaves of Theory and Theology LISTEN HERE! FORGET EVERYTHING YOU EVER KNEW! cry out structures and ghosts Insoluble Cases - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 11:38:06 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: old READING.TXT and internet course descriptions (1994-6) READING.TXT I've been going through old text archives tonight and found the following: http://www.alansondheim.org/READING.TXT [July 1995] It's somewhat embarrassing, groping, tawdry, more literal than I'd like, blind-folded, cauterized, decrepit, awkward, centered somewhat around the event of Michael Current's death, stylistically poor, owing too much to various NY schools, gone down the hatch, occasional bursts of something, occasional John Giornoesque-manque, lurid, murderous story-telling, Ballardic, oceanic for obscure reasons, despairing, suicidal, neurotic, eurocentric - in other words check it out. And I forget what READING it was used for - where the words died in the air, what futility led me to think these things could be pronounced in an interesting way... Then there are these two old course descriptions, might be of interest - for UNIX commands: http://www.alansondheim.org/UNIX [from 1996] ====================================================================== [April 1994] Alan Sondheim sondheim@newschool.edu 432 Dean Street Brooklyn, NY, 11217 718-857-3671 NEW COURSE AT THE NEW SCHOOL, NYC: *BEFORE AND AFTER THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY* With public attention drawn to the 'information highway,' camcorders, multimedia, and a host of other information technologies, it is apparent that a revolution in communications is underawy. We will examine this transformation, using postmodernism and contemporary media theory. In so doing, we will focus on both past and future, from the history of television and radio to the 'transparent' virtual reality world of the next millennium. This course is a must for anyone interested in contemporary modes of entertainment or communication. Everything from a brief non-technical overview of the technologies involved, to the actual content of these modes, will be presented, including the new forms of subjectivity and personal communications (such as computer bulletin boards) that are emerging. Issues of space and time in virtual reality will also be considered. Topics include digital vs. analog communications, the internet, the 'new information order,' gender and communications, postmodern geography and telecommunications, computer bulletin boards, camcorder aesthetics (including issues of privacy, sexuality, oral history, and personal expression), multi-media at home and business, the emergence of new `languages' of expression, ELECTRONIC SUBJECTIVITY,and an overview of recent (1895-the present) communications history. Reading Materials: Because of the fast-changing media landscape, texts will be chosen several weeks before the course. The following list of references is tentative: 1. Mark Poster, Mode of Information 2. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity 3. Thomas Docherty, ed. Postmodernism: A Reader 4. Geoffrey Reeves, Communications and the 'Third World' 5. Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech 6. Alan Sondheim, ed. Future Culture issue, Art Papers, (available as texts before 1995 publication) 7. Alan Sondheim, Internet Text in Perforations 7 8. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women 9. Downloaded texts from the Internet, including Jack Frost on cyberpoetics, and (with permission), material from Postmodern Culture magazine. 10. Magazines include: Mondo 2000, Wired, Perforations, and Boardwatch and other computer magazines. ====================================================================== [February 1996] Internet and the Information Superhighway, FVA Six Sessions: Alan Sondheim, 718-857-3671, sondheim@panix.com Please note: No previous experience required! First week: Introduction to the Information Superhighway. The Internet: Email and email lists, Usenet. The nature of discussions. On-line issues. Censorship, business, and art issues. Getting set up, access. Practice. Difference between analog and digital. Introduction to the digital world. Demographics of the Net. Present and future. Commcercialization and the World Wide Web. Second week: The Internet: FTP, Gopher, Telnet, Finger, and beginning with the World Wide Web. Different sites available. The materials available on-line. Please bring a 3.5" disk if you have one. Going over the file information. Getting materials on-line. Third week: Continuing with World Wide Web, various search engines (World Wide Web Worm, Archie, Veronica, Wais). Images and image-coding/ decoding. Mosaic, Netscape, etc. Future of sound/moving images on the Net. Mbone and other advanced technologies, ATM. New search engines: Inktomi, IAF, Altavista. Fourth week: Electronic Conferencing. Various systems such as Caucus. Artnet and the thing. Different forms of bulletin-boards, Fido- net, other alternatives. Talk, ytalk, IRC, chats, MUDs, MOOs, and so forth. Demonstrations. ThePalace. Possible trip to my setup in Brooklyn. Fifth week: Social and political implications of cyberspace. Issues of virtual reality, sexuality, virtual subjectivity. Future multi-media. Possible trip to cybercafe around the corner. Iphone, CuSeeMe, Vdol, Xingstream, etc. Sixth week: Review of material. Internet practice, current demographics and statistics. Arts, literature, and sciences on the Net. Be prepared to take extensive notes. It would helpful for you to be as familiar with your own computer system as possible. Some books of interest: Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen; William Mitchell, City of Bits; Steven Levy, Hackers; Wired magazine; Michael Benedikt, Cyberspace: First Steps; Internet Secrets; Howard Rheingold, The Wired Community; Peter Salus, Casting the Net. ====================================================================== - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 02:16:04 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Avatar Absence Erasure Performance [limits of explanation] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Avatar Absence Erasure Performance ------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.alansondheim.org/netineti.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/netineti1.png http://www.alansondheim.org/netineti2.png http://www.alansondheim.org/netineti3.png http://www.alansondheim.org/netineti4.png http://www.alansondheim.org/netineti2.mp4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ thus at the limits of explanation, the _draw distance_ is beyond the avatar, stutters, operates within range, stumbles, moves, redefines position, filters objects in the whole wide world, strobes backgrounds, flashes objects, drains seas, cauterizes skins, retrieves supplements, performs in the absence of performances, dancing the virtual. the inherent plasticity of virtual worlds, sheaves cutting through psychologically apparent phenomena, is evident in deep phenomenological illegibility. the sense of logos, encoded, recuperable, aristotelian or quantum, is fundamentally shattered. what might have been considered primordial turns on confusion. ultimately nothing gets through the ground which may be abandoned. what occurs is a form of shepherding or collusion of affect; it's just those ways. beyond all of this, one would need access to the database itself, as if decoding were possible, and as if that possibility turned further into a clarity of mind. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ the texture-object: INVISIBILITY PRIM PUBLIC v1.1a by Beatfox Xevious: "SL has a few special system textures that are only accessible by UUID key and that possess properties which no other textures do. Namely, a prim using one of these textures is capable of rendering whatever avatar textures and textures containing alpha channels are inside or behind it completely invisible. Normal textures that do not contain alpha channels will remain untouched." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ the overheard dialog: [09:34 PM] FalIen Fallen has entered chat range (2.8m) [09:34 PM] Bryce Markova has entered chat range (3.9m) [09:34 PM] Bryce Markova: AAAAAAAH [09:35 PM] FalIen Fallen: kanichiwa [09:35 PM] Bryce Markova: HE IS A DONUT [09:35 PM] FalIen Fallen: HAHAHAHA [09:35 PM] FalIen Fallen: A DONUT [09:35 PM] Bryce Markova: hes afk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2011 02:30:15 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Day 3 (last), Columbia College mocap research examples - Day 3 (last), Columbia College mocap research examples - http://www.alansondheim.org/edge6.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/harness.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/322harness.mp4 1st, 1 dancer working the edge drawn into poser triplets 2nd and 3rd, 2 flight harness dancers, 1 ground (head, root) dancer 2nd drawn with poser singlet, third drawn with poser triplet notes from the accompanying talk My avatar behavior is governed by animation files originating with mocap equipment. Almost all professional current mocap uses nodes - information coming in from specific body areas, assigned body areas, and so forth. I remap the mocap body, by distributing nodes among several human bodies; by collapsing nodes, by node reassignment on a geometric or random basis, by 'heaping' nodes and so forth. I see 'the body' as: a. An already inscribed, already virtual body. b. A distributed or social body: Who speaks 'within' 'us' and who answers for us, etc. My avatars are social, their movements produced by groups instead of individuals: up to four performers for one animation file, one animation file expanded into multiple conforming avatars. c. A dying body: Our bodies are always on the way out and our work, if it doesn't revolve around love, sexual arousal, and hatred, is bounded by, revolves within, the horizon of death and despair. d. An absent body (Drew Leder); we rarely track everything. It is the privilege of the camera in Second Life to reveal the avatar as simultan- eous object and subject, confined and open, teetering. e. A present body and an abject body - in and out of virtual worlds. (political bodies, in the face of mass extinctions, social degradation) I'm interested in errors, leaks, and resistance, and in the recuperation/ re-presentation of flesh. My work always begins and ends with the flesh, with the flesh-mind, with embodied mind. (Among other tools, exploring the limits of mocap.) NEW WORK 3RD DAY: 1 RANDOM NODE ASSIGNMENT AMONG 2-3 DANCERS (FAILED, MAPPING IMPOSSIBLE) 2 TELEOLOGICAL BEHAVIOR: DANCERS 'TAKING' AVATAR THRU SPECIFIC TASKS 3 FLIGHT AVATAR W/ VIDEO CAMERA 4 FLIGHT AVATAR: TORSION IN RELATION TO GROUND AVATAR 5 FLIGHT AVATAR: LEG/ARM REASSIGNMENT WITH TWIST Thanks to: Patrick, Andrew, Steven, Morgan, Myah, Lianne, Katie, Deborah, Jeff, Brian, Terence. Final result: 90 bvh, 50 approx. .avi rendered, 300 stills, 2 hrs. video (including flight video). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:53:45 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: meditative (documentation of mocap proces, plus example) meditative http://www.alansondheim.org/4p_7.mp4 four controlling one, one day meditative, the slightest, then some http://www.alansondheim.org/chicagohd_06.mp4 - documentation of process mocap and flight harness control, brian wright dancers, morgan dixon, katie graves, deborah byczkowski video with unprocessed errors, alan sondheim the earth is so fragile, as our lives, so these momentary interventions, all that remains imminent, perhaps less, unresonant, so i keep on them, so of interest in a future that will fail, as ours, encrusting, askew, telling them true and slant, the slightest ocean, pool, unbeginning and henceforth, unbegun - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:28:50 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: virtuality notes, from avatar.txt and from wryting-l virtuality notes, from avatar.txt and from wryting-l beautiful code: http://www.alansondheim.org/frissonn.mp4 (mocap mod) (from avatar.txt) And so one's body is an immanent form of exchange; for both avatar and modeler - or procurer - it is a rite of passage. Were it not for the inertia of sexuality, the weight of the caress of light, hir body would become invisible, totalized: nothing and everything simultaneously. Its visibility for you would be its invisibility for hirself, of course, of course... [ ] When I model hir, I desire hir, desire the avatar and hir inconceivable performance, desire this which targets my body, re-possesses it; if s/he is clothed, hir body fulfills the function of clothing; if s/he is naked, everything is gone, devoured, _spent._ [ ] Thus engineering and avatar mediate between the real (evidence in the "scientific" sense) and the imaginary (the eccentric space of the erotic): an entity embedded into substance, or an entity promising substance and embedding - an entity existing only in the virtual, as hard as any other tissue. What I am is what I have; what I have is what s/he is; what s/he is, is what I am; what I am belongs to hir (plateau of skin, flesh of screen of flesh). What is ceased (embedded) remains in shadow; what is evident in the light is evidence and light is everywhere. Light embeds and re- produces; light presences, rewrytes hir again and again. [ ] I am restrained. In this fashion I hardly know hir, 1 on 1 side of the screen, 2 on the other. The light becomes a familiar caress (it is not daylight; it is litigation, the negotiation of the Law in this software, in this viewer, this hardware wetware); I confess everything. What you want is what you get. What I engineer is the inverted double, and I perform for hir. Like a service, I perform for hir, perform for myself, perform hir. I cannot (to be frank) look in a mirror; I avoid hir eyes. I perform for dead files which bring hir flesh to life; s/he brings me to life, the restoration which is the presence of flesh. The memory of flesh. The memory of non-existent flesh. Flesh is its disembodiment. S/he is the story which surrounds me. S/he are the beginning of narrative. What s/he pulls out of me is an object. An avatar. That avatar is an image, is substance. That avatar cures; s/he is shamanic, mediating the real against itself. There is nothing spiritual here, in this shamanism; there is only the presence of desire, arousal, speech, narrative, pathos, vehemence, intention, the circulating of the real, the collapse of fantasm, theory, language, against the reality of the flesh and its excitation. Which becomes a totality, transforms avatar, hir body into liquidity, the return of the caress. [ ] Carnival, plateau, perforations of the body. Everywhere illuminations. I desire hir, desire the endless peregrinations of hir engineering, hir engine, I desire hir presence within me. (from a question by Lawrence Upton on wryting-l) I think of inscription itself as virtual; the body is interpenetrated by (and penetrates) systems of signs and symbols not always coherent. A sign is virtual to the extent that it represents, even if it's ikonic, repre- senting itself. It (the sign) participates in abstraction, taking the body with it, just as the body physicalizes the sign. I think of tattoos for example as such representations - they're deliberately added. But there are things like scars, pockmarks, shaving patterns (or not), bruises, makeup, etc., all of which entertain the body within readings, within virtual worlds - for example scars referencing a history which is partly readable, partly deducible, partly absent. On the other hand, the body is fundamentally flesh and tissue, _there,_ and the body in pain or severe sickness or near death is 'beyond' representation; I think Elaine Scarry touched on these points - just as hysterical laughter or crying becomes a 'beyond' of the events that may have produced it. Virtuality isn't on a rocker switch; it's present like a Noh ghost or haunting, and it's part of the uncanny of the body. Watching the motion capture figures is a watching of inhabitations which are also lost or gone, or evanescent - there is the implication of multitudes in each of the bodies / avatars, yet only one connected form is actually visible. The body isn't a product, but it's not just a background either. I think one designs the body to a great degree - costuming, makeup, general appearance, but this is outward; a scar on the other hand most often is a mute testimony of something, perhaps serious and painful, that has gone (on) before. I think on the other hand, the general tendency is to make a separate between 'real' and 'virtual' bodies or avatars, and to talk about the designing of the latter. But the latter - even the Second Life virtual world avatars - also participate in the abject, in 'leakages,' that reference the arousals, histories, love, and hatreds of the 'real' fleshly body; avatars appear self-contained, but but they're hardly that (I think this kind of tethering between a body and 'hir' avatar in fact is uncanny, irreducible, a form of impulse or intentionality - something a while ago I called 'jectivity' to cover both introjection and projection.) So I think these mocap avatars or figures are 'about' all of this, all this intermixing of ontologies, bodies, representations, etc. - they're also carrying a kind of 'social' into the body. It was interesting working with the dancers and watching them operate together or independently, but within the aegis of the group, almost like a musical quartet; to produce a _particular_ movement in the avatar image, the dancers had to move, for example, in particular ways. On the other hand, when the dancers improvised independently or without regard of the (singular image), new and innovative movements appeared in the avatar as it responded, in dialog with the hardware and software, to often contradictory requests in the placement of limbs and movements. It reminds me of the old "Three Faces of Eve" concept of schizophrenia - or the multiple intelligences theory of the mind - and what ultimately appears in spite of Minsky, Lacan, and a number of more recent thinkers, is still a form of unity - one avatar twisting, one being, ultimately the fiction of one sign, the collectivity of what we still think of as the individual or "I". ========================================================================== - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:39:17 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Dusk Dance Culmination * Dusk Dance Culmination * these are all generated from the same mocap session - i forget the particular scheme. the bvh file is available, as is the soundtrack. there are two videos - one from poser and one from second life, in a full environment. i feel my life is entering dusk, the dance faltering, the world uncomfortably warm, dark, dangerous. stress pushes me to do these things, but beauty holds me as an afterthought. among the virtual worlds in multiverses, my creatures live without me. http://www.alansondheim.org/duskdance.mp4 (beautiful poser rendition of second life with solo oud score) http://www.alansondheim.org/duskdance.mp3 (solo oud piece, duskdance) http://www.alansondheim.org/duskdanceb.mp4 (beautiful rendition in second life of duskdance with julu twine avatar at columbia i am sim) http://www.alansondheim.org/duskdance.bvh (you can use this in virtual worlds as an animation, created at columbia iam mocap studio with several dancers inhabiting a single avatar through distributed and affine remapping) * these four files together constitute a single moment; please watch these, whether you've seen the others. these are a culmination of the mocap work, maybe opening new territories in animation and distributed performance. anyway they're fun to watch. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:45:32 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: do they know each other. do they know each other. http://www.alansondheim.org/dupdup2.mp4 (2(2) bodies, sound) http://www.alansondheim.org/dupdup1.mp4 (2(1) bodies, silent) "between the two of us, we do not know each other's taste and smell, yet we're all read and know each other's bodies well. to know each other, we had to know each other's bodies; to love and tell, we got to know each other's fluids well, we got that old besotted smell." doubled walks / spins / avatar interactions. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 01:45:08 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Political Dance of the International Political Dance of the International http://www.alansondheim.org/international.mp4 the world politics of the world, manifestos and political economy, liberations and revolutions, symbolic collapses and the french revolution, lying reagan's claim for soviet collapse, obama's unheeding calls, unlistening, government's violence smashing unions, tax-breaks for the rich, illness and hunger and starvation here and now, wisconsin governor sucking kkkadafi dick, twenty billion for wall-street, they will kill us all, fuel our anger, civility is for those who can afford it, all these words, virtual collapse in virtual worlds, where are anyone, we're at the eighth or ninth international, the rich should die, they're killing us and not with kindness, let them burn in the misery of thirst and starvation, let them drown in sickness, let them eat their own shit before they make us beg for it, violated them, destroyed their lives, let them cut their own throats an act of kindness, send them to the front lines of any war of their choosing, embed them in enemy reportage, stuff them with their empty words, our empty words, fill their dried fat bellies with dead avatars > this is a meal for the world, let us all eat flesh http://www.alansondheim.org/international.mp4 thanks to Second Life, Fau, i am responsible for this - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2011 02:43:56 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Two REQUESTS: Two REQUESTS: 1. Please download EVERYTHING from http://www.alansondheim.org/ and http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/ Who knows how long these sites will be up? A dying star, war-time em-burst, nuclear terrorism, very little: and THE WORK disappears. Such work as remains virtual debris or residue: it has NO OTHER existence than what you can give it, yourself, among your storage machines, your data-bases, your memories CONCRETE. 2. Please enact EVERYTHING visible or audible, everything legible, within the hardness of MARBLE or GRANITE, guarantee them at the least, a modicum of existence beyond my lifespan (as my health again turns HARSH). It is my DREAM to have this work, these avatars, TRANSFORMED into CONCRETE EXISTENCE, forms of STATUARY, proclaiming, that these were POTENTIALS at a certain stage of our existence, these were THINGS in the worlds of imaginations. DOWNLOAD and SAVE, DOWNLOAD and HARDEN, RE-PRODUCE: so much to ask, so great and small the results. SAVE ME! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2011 11:40:32 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Open Open There are 500 million worlds in our galaxy, a great number of which might support life. Or 500 billion - this changes daily - as such, at least seventy planets for each of us on earth: inconceivable. Life-forms seem to have been found within a meteorite, some local and identifiable, and others alien to the core. Multiverses range from 10^500 to an infinite number of universes, depending on the theory; in some of these, we're reproduced more or less exactly - in others, there's no relationship - in almost all, no ingress or egress; we're alone but fantastically duplica- ted. Ontology disappears, as does epistemology; knowledge and its constit- uents devolve in entirely unforeseen ways. Singularities are more of our myths; what is happening is slow erosion, as if eternity is just around the corner - but corners themselves are duplicated, and there is no more of the same, just as sameness itself appears as 10^500, an impossible degree. The point of all of this - the x-dimensional space-time of all of this - is only that knowledge has collapsed in its own deconstruction; given the problematic of proof, at least in this era, there's no reassem- blage on the other side of the brane or horizon. It's hard to configure art or ideology - any set or fieldings of human cultural values, given this landscape; new discoveries from one day to another bypass momentary blockages which are temporarily assembled as theory beyond heuristics - Badiou's mathematics comes to mind, Lacan, continental thought, philosophy itself, just about any scoring or underscoring one might make of a day or night when knowledge seems certain, always on the verge of trembling or text. I try to situate my work in relation to all of these, discarding myth, religion, even geometries and the truth of the image - any image - any imaginary - along the way. Buddhism stumbles on reincarnation for me, and the paradoxes of the void dissipate in the sizzle of virtual produc- tion. One writes always already suspended, from what and from where, or what form of connectivities - these are not only the wrong questions to ask, they're questions that are deeply meaningless, as is the preposi- tional aegis constructed in and out of localized geometries: above, below, within, without, before, after, and so forth. The suspension is from nothing. There is a degree of production one attempts to do, with all this knowledge, anti-knowledge. Even here, I am ignoring mass extinctions, the damage humans have done to the planet, local political corruptions, the nadir of what appears, from our positions on the bent plane, as universal slaughter. Everything can disappear in an instant: 9/11, Katrina, Christchurch, Tibet, are names hinting at a damaged symbolic. It's this: as time goes on, (phenomenologically) speeds up, nothing is recoverable; we're already gone before we've arrived: we're ghosts occasioned by our own exponentially-increasing knowledge which is already out of date. We can't catch up with ourselves, as ghosts; phantasms fly faster than flesh, which drags us down to death, to a stop of all of this. But until then, what? That these universes carry us elsewhere, that we become invaders of our very selves, marauders of what we've taken for granted? I try to work through this storm, this permanent monsoon encompassing all realities, all virtualities, no matter how invisible. And we're all, all of us and our selves, in the same positionless. ========================================================================= note 1 - not acceleration, but derivatives > 2nd degree; note 2 - not virtual or real, inscriptive or abject: neti neti, neither this or that, thrown outward, neither sein or dasein, all sets are open ========================================================================= - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:39:11 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Re: US politics and wealth (fwd) Thanks, Jon ---------- Forwarded message ---------- date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:03:04 from: Jonathan Marshall <Jonathan.Marshall@UTS.EDU.AU> to: CYBERMIND@listserv.wvu.edu from: http://www.alternet.org/economy/149918/9_pictures_that_expose_this_country%27s_obscene_division_of_wealth?page=entire [edited] courtesy Fred Maus via Facebook Some Wall Street types (and others) make over a billion dollars a year ? each year. How much is a billion dollars? How can you visualize an amount of money so high? Here is one way to think about it: The median household income in the US is around $29,000, meaning half of us make less and half make more. If you make $29,000 a year, and don?t spend a single penny of it, it will take you 34,482 years to save a billion dollars.... Some things you could buy if really wealthy: 1) the Maybach car the Landaulet model, costs $1 million. (Rush Limbaugh, who has 5 homes in Palm Beach, drives a cheaper Maybach 57 S -- but makes up for it by owning 6 of them.). Your $1 billion will buy you a thousand Maybach Landaulets 2) Some hotels charge $20-30,000 per night. A billion dollars will buy you a $20,000 room every night for 137 years 3) Some people spend as much as $200 million or more on a single yacht. You can buy ten $100 million yachts with a billion dollars 4) There are approximately 15,000 private jets registered in the US according to NBAA. You can pick one up for around $40 million, maybe $60 million for top-of-the-line. Your billion will buy you 25 of these. [etc] So you say to yourself, "I want me some of that. I?d like to place the following order, please.": One Maybach Landaulet for $1 million to drive around in. One $100 million yacht for when I want to get seasick. One Gulfstream G550 private jet for $40 million. One private island for $24.5 million (castle included) for when I want to escape the masses. One $8 million estate for when I have to go ashore and mingle with the masses (but not too close.) One $5 million watch so I can have one. Total: $178.5 million. My change after paying with a billion-dollar bill is a meager $821.5 million. I can still stay in a $20,000 hotel room every night for 112 and 1/2 years. As you see, $1 billion is more than enough to really live it up. Some people today are amassing multiples of billions And the concentration of income and wealth is increasing. The top 1% took in 23.5% of all of the country?s income in 2007. In 1979 they only took in 8.9%. Between 1979 and 2008, the top 5% of American families saw their real incomes increase 73%, according to Census data. Over the same period, the lowest-income fifth (20% of us) saw a decrease in real income of 4.1%. The rest were just stagnant or saw very little increase. http://extremeinequality.org/?page_id=8 Wealth can be inherited and accumulates over the years.... The top 1% owns more than 90% of us combined. In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available from the Federal Reserve Board, the richest 1% of U.S. households owned 33.8% of the nation?s private wealth. That?s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans in 2007 was $1.5 trillion. The combined net worth of the poorest 50% of American households (about 150 million people) was $1.6 trillion The top 1% also own 50.9% of all stocks, bonds, and mutual fund assets. The top 10% own 90.3%. Income inequality is actually greater in the United States than it is in Egypt - and this does affect politics. It makes legislation which favours the wealthy and increases inequality, but it also protects the wealthy form the consequences of their profit. The Koch brothers are said to have a net worth of $21.5 billion each. They financed the Tea Party movement and, along with big corporations and other billionaires, they financed the massive assault of TV ads in the midterm elections that helped change the makeup of the Congress. And now Congress is paying them back: Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group ? Americans for Prosperity ? to oppose the Obama administration's proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group's separate advertising and grassroots activity during the 2010 campaign. Republicans on the committee have launched an agenda of the sort long backed by the Koch brothers. A top early goal: restricting the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the Kochs' core energy businesses. see also: http://toomuchonline.org/ http://www.cbpp.org/research/index.cfm?fa=topic&id=36 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/component/option,com_issues/Itemid,22/issue,18/lang,en/task,view_issue/ UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. Think. Green. Do. Please consider the environment before printing this email. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:21:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: new images of human beings new images of human beings these came from transformed/dispersed motion capture sessions at columbia college, chicago. the video / images are in honor of japanese and haitian earthquake survivors. the body images are related to mayan glypha and ball-court records. please have a look. http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph.mov looped http://www.alansondheim.org/newglyph.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/newnewglyph.mov looped http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph01.jpg jpg images http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph02.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph03.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph04.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph05.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph06.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph07.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph08.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph09.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph10.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph11.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph12.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph13.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph14.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph323b1.bvh animation files for SL http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph323b2.bvh and other applications http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph323b3.bvh - from the above http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph323b4.bvh http://www.alansondheim.org/glyph323b5.bvh - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 03:12:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: for the nuclear workers @ Fukushima for the nuclear workers @ Fukushima http://www.alansondheim.org/reaktor.mp4 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 03:35:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: @ Fukushima (fwd) @ Fukushima The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon their mistress had expired before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; darkness had no need Of aid from them--she was the universe. (Byron) http://www.alansondheim.org/reaktor2.mp4 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 21:33:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: PLEASE NOTE: PROBABLY CONTAMINATED SITE PLEASE NOTE: PROBABLY CONTAMINATED SITE DO NOT OPEN THE FOLLOWING URL: http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ which is my mail archive site, set up several years ago; at this point, it contains malware of some sort that can lead to real problems with Windows; it even attempted downloads in Linux. I'm trying to get the site fixed (I don't run it myself, and didn't set it up), but haven't been successful. Please do not go to the URL until the problem is (hopefully) taken care of. I've been trying to get in touch with Decklin Foster, but so far I'm not successful; if you know him, please inform him about the problem. (Update: I just downloaded - whatever it is - and it seemed to contain all my email at the site? Something is amiss - I'm just not sure what it is.) Thanks, and apologies. - Alan - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2011 09:29:25 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: death versus life death versus life 3429 34916 203264 zz death 2891 31207 185626 yy life 1 ls 2 grep -h death texts/??.txt > zz 3 wc zz 4 grep -h life texts/??.txt > yy 5 wc yy 6 wc zz > ww 7 wc yy >> ww 2626 28103 164466 zz death collapsed a bit 2620 28763 170582 yy life collapsed a bit 1 ls 2 grep -h death texts/??.txt > zz 3 wc zz 4 grep -h life texts/??.txt > yy 5 wc yy 6 wc zz > ww 7 wc yy >> ww 8 h >> ww 9 sort zz > aa 10 uniq aa > zz 11 wc zz 12 sort yy > bb 13 uniq bb > yy 14 wc yy 15 wc zz >> ww 16 wc yy >> ww almost as much sex and life as sex and death sex and death - catatonia, defuge, death/immobility, sexuality, speech/murmured/ thematics bearing on such issues as death, sex, virtual embodiment, thematics bearing on such issues as death, sex, virtual embodiment, 'death)731: artist sex artist murders stab torture sex lesbian discipline The long-waves are fuzzy thematics bearing on such issues as death, sex, WILL NOT BE DEPRESSED! (promise broken :-( Fear of death mingled w/sex. We collude between death and sex, to the limits of distortion - space-time against, for same-sex marriage; Federal death penalty sought Gay Men in all letters sing only of sex and death. death, violence, sexuality, language, and body re-emerge as dissipated death, violence, sexuality, language, and body re-emerge as dissipated dying sex and death dying sex and death for-granted breaks down in obscenity, death, torture, sexuality, tantra, for-granted breaks down in obscenity, death, torture, sexuality, tantra, http//www.infinitecat.com/] ( Sierra Club Hostile Takeo sex death tt March innumerable sex and death innumerable sex and death innumerable sex and death innumerable sex and death it is love and sex, it is death and hard bushido it is love and sex, it is death and hard bushido it is love and sex, it is death and hard bushido it is love and sex, it is death and hard marl it is love and sex, it is death and hard marl it is love and sex, it is death and hard marl legs (sex) and bodies (deaths). I'd say we'd have to walk around carefully meanwhile. 'The male likes death - it excites him sexually, obscenity, death, torture, sexuality, tantra, etc. primarily into the seepage of our own liquidities, bodies, sexes, deaths, saturation. the dead-sex link with death and pain. the dead linkage. want sex and death sex and death sex and longing, death above all else. sexuality, but death upon hir. It must be seen that the entire avatar is solely by our impending deaths or does sexuality play a part? if males solely by our impending deaths or does sexuality play a part? if males the saturation. the dead-sex link with death and pain. Net sex is empowering, leading to realignments of real-life Is it because of your sex life that you say jennifer cries stop it? against her ... ... This is real life, Nikuko. My sex life is yours, < conversation sexing friendships libraries in real life there are > conversation sexing friendships libraries in real life there are Comments posted on "avatar nude sex second life performance" Embrace me. Give me your clothing, your sex, your life. In the dust of the How many of you have done things in Net sex you wouldn't do in real life? How many of you have done things in Net sex you wouldn't do in real life? Is it because of your sex life that you are going through all this? Is it because of your sex life that you are going through all this? Is it because of your sex life that you say in the industrial workers Is it because of your sex life that you say stop guessing? Perhaps this has something to do with your sex life? Possibly and now I adjust my frock your sex life are related to this. Speaker says, "carry sexuality beyond what happens in Alan's real life Speaker says, "carry sexuality beyond what happens in Alan's real life Speaker says, "carry sexuality beyond what happens in Alan's real life .." Speaker says, "carry sexuality beyond what happens in Alan's real life .." Speech is always raw, moist from the vocal cords. My sex life is con- Why don't you tell me more about your sex life... Why dont you tell me more about your sex life... abjections, untoward and extreme sexualities, pushing art and life to afterlife; absence characterizes existence, stains it; i try through sexu- as an ambiguous atmosphere, sexuality is co-extensive with life. In other comment on avatar nude sex second life performance: "this the the most describe your sex life and body... dimension to your sex life. subject: FREE ALL NATURAL SEXUAL STIMULANT expose yourself about your sex life and body... Discuss your feelings fucks life.Are afraid sex? girl this. to fucks this life.your Are sex? afraid you sex? of falls this ko. I have no fantasies, Nikuko. This is real life, Nikuko. My sex life is moment ^^^ :> is amplified and clarified in sex voyeur life.that way of one being close-at-hand. It's too much like real life, real sex; it can opportunity to see how AZURENIKUKO can change your sex life, and she's or I'll give you the best sex of your life, don't you see quite often this so-called 'new sex life' of young people -- and fre- sexual history, and even shamanic trauma, the lifeworld of the computer song. enemy titillates us with brilliance and amazing sleazy sex-life. this is so? Possibly and guess - I show you my flesh - your sex life are time. My sex life? I masturbated all the time thinking about you. I mas- trolled by Alan. Alan is controlled by my sex life. I am afraid of noth- was the best sex trip of my life. It told me to stop, but then I explained window, and i, on sex voyeur-life, sex ^^^ :> are inseparable.i think this work which was his life. He spoke on a panel on sex, theory and practice, your sex life and body... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 13:55:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Enclaves of Theory and Theology Enclaves of Theory and Theology =================================================================== You may lie on my first, by the side of a stream, And my second compose to the Nymph you adore But if when you've none of my whole, her esteem And affection diminish, think of her no more Jane. [Austen] (Charade - answer, a banknote.) [ But a different answer, away from capital, may be given altogether, "whole" replaced by the homonym "hole," "lie" curled in meaning, and "first" taken elsewhere; this is the application of local theory, an _ontology_ of capital replaced by the body, the body ultimately inaccessible. And then, what happens to capital? ] =================================================================== Abstract: My bad theory: If anything is basic it's lack. We scramble to suture the rest. We can't. We think we do. =================================================================== I pay no attention to theology; inerrancy or core belief is already dead in relation to its imperviousness. Think of god or spirit as token; as ulterior, in-evident, there is little to say about them, except of course for what might be enacted in their name. Theory is no longer at an impasse; theory - in the sense, in any sense, of speaking the world, is already lost. It's lost in technology, in the concrete, which it misplaces and misinterprets - how can one speak of codework without understanding code, speak of epistemology without access to, and understanding of, the very machines that extend, at least for the privileged, the real - whose very definition is characterized by withdrawal? The entanglement of theoretical subject and object is best served by quantum mechanics from below, now approaching the level of ordinary visibility. This is occasioned by recent readings into theory, where it is clear that the authors were circumlocuting a field they had little knowledge of - in this case, codework - but it's also occasioned by an increasing dissatis- faction with theory's applications beyond the social in general. It's too easy to slip from augmented reality or virtual worlds or virtual reality itself, to ontologies or epistemologies, with the receding dream of the fundamental guiding one astray. There are several levels involved, all crumbling, all entangled - the physical-real, the mathematics of the world (however world and mathesis are defined), the current technologies of the world (ditto), access to these technologies, theory and its techne - and melding or interoperability among all of these. It's theory that disappears in the mix - or the rest of us; increasingly, to understand the world has come to mean to understand technical vocabularies on all levels - from conceptual/theoretical astuteness to access to tools, which depends on the grace of institutions and individuals. In my own case, Patrick Lichty and Sandy Baldwin directed me towards mocap at their institutions; Frances van Scoy extended the invitation to 3-d scanners; Mark Skwarek guided me through the beginnings of mocap, and so forth. I walk in and out of labs with residencies that range (once) from half a year to (most often) 2-3 days. I walk into institutions, into institutional cultures; in this regard I'm luckier than most. But the access remains highly limited, and what's more important here, the resulting phenomenology is always bracketed. I suspect this is the case for most people; it's a matter of degree. All I can do - all _anyone_ can do - is write from the outside, from the external (within or without a phenomenology of externality), but, by grace of these invitations, I have learned, at the least, my limits. Theory on the other hand proceeds without limits; its contemporary over-reliance on the body, abjection, sexuality, and other issues is to some extent a withdrawal to a fictional core that remains inviolate: begin and end with the body of the theorist, and the details of codework for example will either be bypassed, introjected, or seen as irrelevant. None of this would matter, if theory didn't carry the weight it does; we've all read descriptions of our own work as if they're written in a foreign language, indecipherable with occasional partial legibilities that seem inherently wrong. Media (in the sense of writing-about, placing that writing, receiving and remediating that writing) does that to one, and there's little recourse at the other end. (On the other hand, our own descriptions, as cultural workers, often chart out vast philosophical terrain, as if materiality - and the bridging between abstract theory and materiality - made a difference. I'm guilty of that! In this enclaved essay I'm guilty of that!) When I give a talk now, I try to begin with issues of "the fragility of good things" (from catastrophe theory), extinctions, global slaughter coupled with populations exponentially increasing - and enclaving, a concept borrowed from Mike Davis, emphasizing the secure and violent walls placed around the wealthy, around global institutions and bodies, around governance in general. Theory itself is enclaved in this regard - as is the epistemology/ontology of the real (at variance with theory), dependent on Fermilab, the LHC, AR, holographic VR, etc. etc. - pick your level, your machine, your theorist. The levels aren't interoperable, nor are they well-defined. The result is brilliant production, with either micro-man- aged phenomenology, or phenomenology left in the dust. (Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality figures here for example.) It's characteristic of this short essay, that _I don't know what I'm talking about, nor can I_ - which is why the weaker the theory, the more functional. I keep thinking of the usual question, for example - Why is there something rather than nothing - and coming up with the exhaustive positioning of physical bootstrapping, the universe bringing itself, continuously, into existence, so that the Why - which implies both origins and causality - if it doesn't fade away, at least is in need of a coronary bypass. The solidity or projection of real or virtual objects stands ultimately in relation to physical theory; if holography plays a role in our appearing, how many codings occur to construct a virtual world? The bottom line, not the fundamental one, is the failure of regimes - of technology, theory, coding, phenomenology, physical and somatic realities - to interconnect, in combination with apparent flows of power among them. This power is split and sutured by human claims among humans that don't quite interconnect. I'm not talking about the old notion of two cultures, but about fragmentation everywhere, suturing within micro-domains (code, technology, augmented and diminished realities, theory, daily life). This is hard to grasp, when even this description falls apart, is rifted; how could it be otherwise? I'm not talking about the old notion of master narratives, but about a collocation of narratives, topologically-distinct but fuzzy and broken sememes. I'm not talking about a dearth of ontologies but about ontologies as local conventions, epistemologies always already under contestation. (Which is amazing and liberation; there are just the old Sartrean issues of scarcity economics in the midst of Bataille's surplus increasingly harbored from above.) And I'm talking about enclaving brought about by an exponential increase in knowledge, coupled by an exponential increase in wealth among a small and isolated class - both have utterly transformed the landscape, origin- ally one of privilege, network broadcast, and limited access - through a period of net neutrality, open sourcing knowledge (but not medical care, basic survival safety nets, life on the ground), and a distant horizon of universal open channels of information and communication - to one again of technological privilege, limited broadcast and access, local control. I can see the model changing from the imperial through the appearance of democracy, back through neoliberalism to an imperium in everything but name. Better managed this time, everything appears better and better advertised; it's just a kind blurriness in the details: WELCOME TO THE TELECOMS OF THE REAL. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 15:44:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: LISTEN HERE! FORGET EVERYTHING YOU EVER KNEW! LISTEN HERE! FORGET EVERYTHING YOU EVER KNEW! Forget Everything You Know About Kenny G | Best. Saxophone ... Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online (And Start ... Forget everything you have ever learned about stock trading, this ... Mar 14, 2011 ... Forget everything you have ever learned about stock Forget Everything You Ever Learned in High School Horrible Movie Night: Forget everything you know about zombies ... John Gray: Forget everything you know - Profiles, People - The ... 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Now forget everything you ever knew about mopping, like buckets of cloudy water, mixing cleaning solutions, and wringing out ugly cloth ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:15:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> I can't change the future, but I just did. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2011 11:28:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: cry out structures and ghosts cry out structures and ghosts http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout.mov http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout5.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout6.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout7.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout8.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout9.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/cryout9.png and soon text and soon structures cry out, structures cry out through the text, they cry out, they do not want to die, they want to remain open and supine, you may read them and write them, you may harbor thoughts among them, and others, others may harbor thoughts, and others beyond others, and many places, or none at all, or all, or all at once, these cryings out among our universe, i would like to say, these are our signature, and theirs, and others, our universe remembered for its crying out, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2011 04:13:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> Subject: Insoluble Cases ========================================================================= Insoluble Cases ========================================================================= I've just solved the case: Here's how it happened. (Monk) I began by thinking of the collapse of books, literature, theory: not of carry-over and interoperability among file formats, electronic productions or reproductions, but of the splitting and fragmentation of text and theory, the reduction to what I've considered elsewhere as radiations and dusts. Thus fundamental physical theory might just reduce to competing structures producing equivalent, if not identical results; in which case, the concept of the fundamental becomes moot through its splitting into entangled at the top, but deeply incompatible at the bottom, predictive and coherent constructs. So it goes, just as video, for example, has abandoned long-form for splits and bites/sound-bites that will continue to shrink. The world's buzzing confusing itself coheres and continues to grow and every genre, form, classicism, or medium disappears; even the voice channels into text, text into abbreviations, abbreviations into augments, augments into part-objects, all against and within the massive violence and poverty of the coming-to-age-and-end of a species literally dying for a singularity, other than dying. Consider new media, practices shadowed by their own future anteriors, constant redefinitions and tropes from simulacra through vectors and speed, back into the forests of signs and spectacles. Everything is plural and always already has been, which cripples the monotheisms of explana- tions, explanatory power, and the power that pervades them. Power is always a becoming, a leverage; now and forever, power splatters among gangs, hackers, corporations, languages, exploits, patches - and patches themselves are the new sutures, designed, not to hold subject or subject- ivity together, but to bridge monetary gaps in structures ultimately doomed to obsolescence or collapse. I've thought long about this, about the idea about this and about ideas and idea; these thoughts as well transform, are transformed, through radiations. Think of such as literal: how much gadgetry now speaks to itself through collocations and designated bandwidths, just on the desk or threshold? And think of such as content, not in the sense of McLuhanesque media, but in the dissolution of such media, everything parceling within electromagnetic spectra that begins and ends, usually, with something physical, some manifestation of receiving/ receiver and transmitting/transmitter. Think further, transmissions of receivers, receivers of transmitters, transmissions of transmitters; you get the idea, get hold of the idea, and the idea bifurcates chaotically; in the end you get nothing, you're swallowed by the waves, by the particles constantly in circulation. There's no room for the strictures of genre here, for the long-form that's already rusting, corroding at the ends, at both ends, throughout the long-form which requires patience, silent, and grounding that's inconceivable at this point/plane/dimension. For the long-form needs stability just like accountancy; it's the world of classical economy, classical accountancy; it requires memory and the stability of memory, things that can't, ever, be hacked, things that one can return to, two or three hundred pages or notes earlier; this isn't the case (for that matter/s, the world is no longer the case/s, if it/they ever were) - these arguments and edifices that built up, that led nowhere, that promised monotheisms, monotheories, that carefully laid themselves out (when not laying bodies) - these buried their internal violence, excreted it out the other end. All, everything here, requiring a respite from slaughter, extinctions, exponentially-increasing populations on the fast-track, these intrusions into the social, which now constitute the socials: the strings of the world are pulled by children, and the children's children, and ultimately nothing else matters. The children too dissolve into radiations and dusts, Fukushima and Chernobyl, but also the scatterings of local wars, gang insignia, temporary autonomous zones with a vengeance. There are pollutions, mostly invisible, everywhere, permeat- ing the world with the stench of death always already disappearing before it's presence is felt; we're all embedded like journalists in guerilla operations among the enclaves of a collapsing planet. It's too late for anything else, but it was always too late; we lived in momentary stases - of goods, apparently stable economies and weather patterns, that are once again on the fast-forward track. Our books, films, symphonies, portend the culture of death which inheres within them. We're watching ourselves disappear, and this isn't towards the prosthetic or viral, but rather the prion or unstable nanobots: as the atmosphere turns against us, nothing happens but fundamental ontology that mirrors and collapses within itself. And that's everything - in a sense, what used to be called 'anomie,' as long as anomie hearkened back to an inconceivable, inauthentic Eden of coherency that never existed in the first or any other place. Think of the anomie of anomie, anomie as nothing but the word itself, the inscription that's half read, half-disappeared, transformed by the fall of internal empires that still seem to hold us as one, together, or in multiplicities, or whatever groupings you might think still hold within occasional dream- ing. Whatever else, culture appeared thick, with inconceivable depth - this is the Castanedan theater, or the primordial or the aboriginal habitus, epics and virtual worlds emerging out of it, oral traditions miraculously holding forth for generations and so on. We believed that, just as we believed the moment from oral to written or written to oral, or the primacy of inscription or of things, or of orderings, or of axiomatics - even those that were admittedly insecure at the edges, Godel numberings for example tending towards the disappearance of moorings. See what can be accomplished at a distance, through a telescope or prime number investi- gations, but then there are always the problematics of other number systems, multiverses, families dangerous and out of control just the next block over. The thick was always a sheave, was always abject, always required control. Culture not only buried abjection; it consolidated the thing floating on top of the muck, cleaned off the shitty bottom. It answered, it had answers, if only anti-oedipal. But abjection comes with the corpses of extinctions, with local wars, hacking, pollutions. But no, it doesn't come with these at all; it's always been there, what's been fundamental are the dusts, the pollutions, the radiations, the muck that Plato wanted to bury, that D&G dug up again and rubbed in our faces: now those faces are gone as well. So the ontology, the epistemology, the ontic, the episteme, dissolve, and there is no yielding to a new order, though there might be chaos. I think of this as 'neither A nor B,' 'not both A and B,' dual and Sheffer-stroke lending themselves towards Pales of no concern, maybe A and B just go out like lights, maybe they disappear, maybe they were never there in the first place, maybe they're our dream of stability. How simple it all seems until we look for constant, the thick again, so we can speak, make sense, as if it were more than possible to make sense for more than a little while, more than the occasion on the corner, the chance meeting, the unknown disease or bullet fired in the dark. All of this is up for grabs, sites/cites/sights of contestation, but it should be clear by now that contestation itself, on local and global levels, among tendrils and temporary holarchies, is what roils, what roils within the abject, what provides no clear footings, anymore than currency or human exchanges. Things are beginning to run out; more likely than not, the singularity will be one of scarcity, not the fecundity of technological answers that promise immortality to those enclaved lucky few able to afford them. It's just a matter of time before immortality as well is swallowed up; even cryogenics depends upon the thick, upon basic stabilities, in order to propagate itself and the species with the wealthy few. So we're left scattered among augmentations, inscriptions, the arrogance of chic - and among inconceivable pain and beauty as, not only empires, but the very elements of culture dissolve. And we can discuss these things; if social networking is the current paradigm, the radiations and problematic of paradigms will leave us for some brief moments when we might pick up a book, for example, just to feel the weight of it. But more likely we'll be listening to tunes of our own mirrored creations, as long as the power stays on. (Wait, this isn't right here, this trope.) There won't be tunes or books; there might be implants. They might last for a while. There might be fetishisms of all sorts, driven not by power, but by Lingis' lust, abject and oozing. There might be splits. There will be scarcity. There won't be long-form. There will be momentary stases, strange attractors. There won't be life-spans; there will be fallout. Dusts never die, carry no information, infiltrate driven by no will of their own or anyone's. They increase. The appearance of the future of the world is Maya. The future of the world is graffiti. That's where it will happen, the warnings to vacate the area, that something poisonous and deadly is just around the corner. That's where the thick ends up - with such unspeakable pain, with such death, that words not only fail - they never existed in the first place. And not even that's guaranteed. ========================================================================= - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org