[syndicate] Intimacy Chat Transcription

[James Partaik]

forget that quesion. I guess i missed it. when is then next one?
james

On 07-12-09, at 01:28, Alan Sondheim wrote:

>
>
>
> Intimacy Chat Transcription
>
>
> Transcript of Intimacy Session
> December 8, 2007, England
> Participants: Sandy Baldwin ("You"), Alan Sondheim (Alan Dojoji)
>
> Premise:
> Discussion of avatar theory and practice.
>
> (Please check this out - the event was excellent and the chat covers
> a great deal of the theoretical/practical work we've been doing.)
>
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy_chat.txt
>
> Check out the blog for the event:
>
> http://avatarpaste.blogspot.com - there are images from the session  
> here.
>
> Images also at:
>
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy05.jpg
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy06.jpg
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy07.jpg
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy08.jpg
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy09.jpg
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy10.jpg
> http://www.alansondheim.org/intimacy11.jpg
>
> Partial description:
>
> "WORKSHOP: AVATAR PASTE AND CODE SOUP IN FIRST AND SECOND LIFE
> "14:00-18:00 www.secondlife.com - FREE book via email to drp01mc (at)
> "gold.ac.uk
> "Leaders: ASS. PROF. SANDY BALDWIN, West Virginia University & ALAN
> "SONDHEIM
>
> This workshop will take place in the virtual world Second Life, and  
> will
> be conducted by Alan Sondheim and Sandy Baldwin, with participation by
> other artists and performers in Second Life.
>
> Participants from the Intimacy conference will be supplied with  
> location
> and others details within Second Life. The workshop emerges from  
> Sondheim
> and Baldwin's ongoing exploration of analog and digital bodies,  
> using a
> range of technologies to remap the solid and obdurate real of  
> bodies into
> the dispersions and virtualities of the digital, and then back  
> again into
> real physical spaces. The "avatar paste" of the title means at  
> least three
> things.
>
> Firstly, the pasting of viewpoints together, the suturing of the  
> subject
> into the avatar. Secondly, paste as glue, as half-liquid and half  
> solid,
> as a materiality of renewable and infinite pliability. This is the  
> chora
> of the avatar, the body matrix that is less a framework than a  
> smearing of
> paste. And thirdly, paste as pasty and dis/comfortable substance,  
> paste as
> slimy and dripping. While this abjection is already implicit in  
> paste as
> glue, the pastiness of paste involves the projection and dreaming  
> through
> of the avatar, the inhabitation of avatar bodies and the emptying  
> of real
> bodies into the avatar.
>
> "Avatar paste" comes out in avatar motions and behaviors. Firstly,  
> these
> are formed by symbolic orders, presenting surfaces to read in terms of
> sexuality, power, emotion, and other projections. At the same time,  
> the
> pasty avatar body tends towards collapse and abjection. Work on the  
> avatar
> becomes a choreography of exposure and rupture, modeling and  
> presenting
> inconceivable and untenable data, within which tensions and  
> relationships
> are immediate and intimate. One might imagine, then, this  
> inconceivable
> data as a form of organism itself: as part of a natural world or a  
> world
> already given; out of this we might think through new ideas of  
> landscape,
> wilderness, hard ecology, the earth itself.
>
> The workshop will theorize and demonstrate these topics. The first  
> part
> discusses theoretical frameworks. Alan Sondheim will introduce the  
> topic
> of dismemberment and telepresence in terms of the presence or  
> appearance
> of abjection in Second Life avatars. He will connect this to the
> epistemology of emptiness vis-a-vis sheave theory and Buddhist  
> philosophy,
> and then to the problems of motion and behavior of avatars. Sandy  
> Baldwin
> will discuss the topography of limits in Second Life, both body  
> limits and
> spatial limits, an connect this to issues of the hunt and animal  
> display.
>
> He will also discuss the dynamics of performance and audience in  
> Second
> Life. The second part of the workshop will show off Sondheim and  
> Baldwin's
> approach to re-mapping live bodies into Second Life performances,  
> includ-
> ing: video and other examples of motion capture and scanning;  
> intermediate
> processing of files (e.g. editing .bvh data or working with  
> Blender); and
> then the resulting works, including documents of Second Life  
> performances
> and re-mappings back into "first life" spaces with dancers and  
> other live
> performers. The final part of the workshop will include avatar  
> performance
> by Sondheim, Baldwin, and other participants in Second Life.
>
>
>
>
>
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