To: webartery@yahoogroups.com
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 00:59:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: periodic note




===


Internet Philosophy and Psychology -                             11/26/02
                                                       (last was 08/02/02)


My recent work has been dealing with sexuality, terror, death, windows
onto worlds, the confluence of subtropical nature with subsumption neural
architectures. I have also been working on a series of 3D animations
(mixed with real-life video), pieces exploring the same themes in extreme
or extended spaces. An extended video, Trilby, was produced; more recent
videos include a Scan series, and Alberta.mov. (All available reduced on
cdrom.)


===


This is a somewhat periodic notice describing my Internet Text, available
on the Net, and sent in the form of texts to various lists. The URLs are
http://www.asondheim.org and http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/
which is partially mirrored at
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html.

See http://www.asondheim.org/portal/ for new video/imagework; please note
this is for over-18/

The changing nature of the email lists, Cybermind and Wryting, to which
almost all of the texts are sent individually, hides the full body of the
work; readers may not be aware of the continuity among them. The writing
may appear fragmented, created piecemeal, splintered from a non-existent
whole. On my end, the whole is evident, the texts extended into the lists,
partial or transitional objects.

So this (periodic) notice is an attempt to recuperate the work as total-
ity, restrain its diaphanous existence. Below is an updated introduction.

-----

The "Internet Text" currently constitutes around 100 files, or 10,000
printed pages. It began in 1994, and has continued as an extended
meditation on cyberspace, expanding into 'wild theory' and literatures,
symptomologies of the edge.

Almost all of the text is in the form of short- or long-waves. The former
are the individual sections, written in a variety of styles, at times
referencing other writers/theorists. The sections are interrelated; on
occasion emanations are used, avatars of philosophical or psychological
import. These also create and problematize narrative substructures within
the work as a whole. Such are Susan Graham, Julu, Alan, Jennifer, Azure,
and Nikuko in particular.

The long-waves are fuzzy thematics bearing on such issues as death,
sexuality, virtual embodiment, the "granularity of the real," physical
reality, computer languages, and protocols. The waves weave throughout the
text; the resulting splits and convergences owe something to
phenomenology, programming, deconstruction, linguistics, philosophy and
prehistory, as well as the domains of online worlds in relation to
everyday realities.

Overall, I'm concerned with virtual-real subjectivity and its manifesta-
tions. I continue working on a cdrom of the last eight years of my work
(Archive), as well as a series of 3d animation and other videos, some of
which are on cdrom.

I have used MUDS, MOOS, talkers, perl, d/html, qbasic, linux, emacs, vi,
CuSeeMe, etc., my work tending towards embodied writing, texts which act
and engage beyond traditional reading practices. Some of these emerge out
of performative language - soft-tech such as computer programs which _do_
things; some emerge out of interferences with these programs, or conversa-
tions using internet applications that are activated one way or another.
And some of the work stems from collaboration, particularly video, sound,
and flash pieces.

There is no binarism in the texts, no series of definitive statements.
Virtuality is considered beyond the text- and web-scapes prevalent now.
The various issues of embodiment that will arrive with full-real VR are
already in embryonic existence, permitting the theorizing of present and
future sites, "spaces," nodes, and modalities of body/speech/community.

The texts are roughly in the order written; the last-entered at the moment
is mq. They may be read in any order, and distributed in any medium;
please credit me. I would appreciate in return any comments you may
have.

For information on the availability of cdroms containing the text and
other materials (graphics, video, sound, articles, books), see the appen-
ded notice below.

You can find my collaborative projects at
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm and my conference
activities at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk - both as a result of my virtual
writer-in-residence with the Trace online writing community.

See also:
.echo, Alt-X, e-book and publish-on-demand, 2002
Being on Line, Net Subjectivity (anthology), Lusitania, 1997
New Observations Magazine #120 (anthology), Cultures of Cyberspace, 1998
The Case of the Real, Pote and Poets Press, 1998
Jennifer, Nominative Press Collective, 1997

Alan Sondheim 718-857-3671 or 718-813-3285 (US)
432 Dean Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11217

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

CDROM Offering: Alan Sondheim : Collected and Newly-Released Work:

Archive 4.5: This includes all the texts from 1994- present, a number of
older articles, several books, a great number of images, some short video,
etc. Archive is continuously updated. There is also sound-work and some
programming. I think of this as the "basic" cd-rom; if you have an earlier
copy, you might want to update. $ 12.00 including shipping.

Other cdroms include new video/sound/image/text - please contact me for
details.



 

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