Alan Sondheim publishes two new books

[anna balint]

From: "Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc." <mail at franklinfurnace.org>

Alan Sondheim publishes two new books.

VEL
by Alan Sondheim
Product Information: POETRY
Paperback: 120 pages
Perfect-Bound Binding
Size: 7.5" x 9.25"
ISBN: 0-9759227-4-2
Retail Price: $16.00
blazevox.org/books/as.htm

Book Description:  A collection of codework poems written by Sondheim while
at the Virtual Environment Lab, a research center at West Virginia
University, where he visited during the summer of 2004. Baldwin says in his
intro, "Sondheim's work is important for its problematic status, as the
result of and still part of the work of digital media. As digital writing
in a strong sense, Sondheim's writing appears problematically coded -
problematic because it is decodable neither as "human-readable" or
"machine-readable" but suspended between."

http://www.blazevox.org/books/as.htm
[from] vellum, velocity: an introduction to VEL
by Sandy Baldwin, charles.baldwin at mail.wvu.edu

The dictionary tells us that VEL is an abbreviation for vellum, a
fine-grained opaque or almost-translucent parchment made from lambskin or
calfskin. Vellum is a sensuous, reflective surface. The written word is lit
up through the stretched and cured skin. VEL also abbreviates velocity,
probably derived from a Latin root for liveliness, today defined as the
rate of speed, a derivative of movement through time. The VEL in the title
of Alan Sondheim's new book VEL is the acronym for something quite
different: Virtual Environment Lab, a research center at West Virginia
University, where Sondheim visited and explored during the summer of 2004.
Sondheim's collaboration with computer scientists exploited creative
mis-use and adaptation of the technologies at the VEL, disrupting and
re-distributing built-in assumptions about the imaging and integrity of the
human body and the capture of the "real." The experiments at the VEL,
preliminary as they were, established the fascination of the problem of
"liveness" in virtual environments. Sondheim worked with clusters of data
drawn from motion capture systems to map and drive animations, videos,
texts, and other artifacts. These data clusters, in their aggregate state
as "clusters," capture motion and "life." The results are beautiful and
moving, very alien and very human, enigmatic and intimate. Some of the
writings collected here are direct results of his work at the VEL; all were
written during Sondheim's visit. And so, the meeting of linguistic roots
and corporate-strength acronym is appropriate. Sondheim writes on the
organic matter of vellum and the velocity of bodies in motion. The
technicality of being live and the already virtual velocity of written life
is very much the concern here. Sondheim's writing is best described through
his own term "codework, the computer stirring into the text, and the text
stirring the computer." So, a first take on VEL is its relation to the
computer. ... His work is opaquely illuminated by the net.

One might think of Alan Sondheim as the Joyce of our time. Too big while
he's here among us, or while we're here among him, to get our heads around
what he's done and is doing.On the other hand, it's clear he doesn't want
to be our Joyce at all, in deliberate, un-scrolling process as he is of
immolating himself, incinerating any last trace of canonical identity in a
stupendous bonfire of poetry, code, and secret philosophy. What "Joyce"
shall be left? What "Sondheim"? A monk burns in full view and the blaze
refuses to go out. We're here watching, startled and baffled, contemptuous
and titillated. That we don't quite know what fuels the seemingly mystical
act renders the transfiguration all the more unsettling and marvelous.
Kent Johnson

Sondheim's writing refreshes. Narrative or persistent personality the
reader constructs will resist. It's funny output, coded, destabilising. It
projects, expands and redirects personal need, hunger amidst insubstantial
plenty, where the real material is imaginary. Writing without purpose;
purposeful writing; not delivery of contentment or white space infill.
Writing as individuation of multipliers where what is familiar is parodic
as it is manifested, cyborgian tenacity creating its selves in process
awareness, sans merci. I is mindful of being confederated awareness.
Peripheral desiring bodies remain animal, alone and palely loitering during
downtime, mammals with machines, sensuous making intellects.
Lawrence Upton

Alan Sondheim co-founded the Cybermind and Wryting email lists online. He
is editor of Being on Line and author of .echo and Disorders of the Real.
His latest book, The Wayward, of the Salt Modern Poets books series, is now
available. He publishes widely on Net issues, and his video/sound work is
internationally exhibited. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his
partner, Azure Carter, and their cat, Boojum.

Relevant URLS:
http://www.asondheim.org/
Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
Sondheim may be reached at sondheim at panix.com.

[ Excerpt from VEL ]
Cutting the Timber

A man lay down across the threshold of the kitchen outside, head within. He
was to represent the saw. Two players now took hold of his feet outside,
while two others caught his head and shoulders in the kitchen. They pulled
against one another, forward and backwards, as if they were sawing wood,
until one pair proved too strong for the other.

- Irish Wake Amusements, Sean O Suilleabhain, Mercier, cork, 1967, p. 82.

the ocean divides one world from another.
there is no gravity in division.
worlds bracket the ocean.
new worlds bracket old oceans and new oceans.
the horizon bends crazily with the disorientation of the wounded.
troop ships sank quickly in the frigid waters.
the _bow_ of the ship _ploughs_ a _furrow_ through the waters.
no one is present in this landscape.
no one is looking.

it is so clean i am sure you will be very happy.

Another new title from Salt
The Wayward by Allan Sondheim
1844710475
216 x 140 mm 252 pp.
GBP12.99 USD $19.99
Customers can order directly from the publisher at
http://www.saltpublishing.com/shop/proddetail.php?prod=1844710475