JOHNSTOWN, University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, artwork/theorywork/etc.- Alan Sondheim

Theoryland!: On Gamespace / Edgespace (for an upcoming talk)

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http://www.alansondheim.org/theoryland.mp4
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Together with the misery that ensues working inconceivably against the grain of the real - that is to say, the boundary

conditions:
1. of the edgespace itself and the transformations occasioned by the edgespace; and

2. of the interiority of the edgespace - within which objects and protocols are conserved/observed.

So within 2. there is a work, a level of _skill_ necessary to produce, articulate, quest - skill that operates within consensual boundaries, even to the extent that they're broken by hacking, shortcuts, etc. Here in 2. the issue is that of etiquette.

In 1. the situation is different; at the edgespace, what occurs is not an _event_ but collapse or murmurs of _procedures_ within fold catastrophies - always on the verge of failure. The edgespace is also _sedimented_ - to the extent that sediments can be entangled - one might move for example to a new physics, the gamebrowser might crash, there is always something new, some new anomaly at work...

I think of the interiority, that is the gamespace, as a space of etiquette which is always a space of the blank - not smooth striations, but a phenomenological ennui, since falling through this space leads only to more quests, more hordings, within a containment that takes on the semblance of a _carapace._ That is, one is shape-riding, share-holding - there's an economics involved, structures of rules and protocols, protocol suites - all porous, hackable, all resulting in signs, signifiers, within the gamespace - all intrinsically related to an other economics of exhaustion.

The edgespace borders on the universe. The edgespace _gapes._

Who or what moves in the edgespace? What terrors, anguish, what absolute creations and annihilations? And as well, what temporalities, what fictitious _points of origin_ - everywhen, everything, on a sliding scale - a scale in the form of the _law,_ not of justice. Justice has no place within or without the game, within or without the gamespace.

Justice requires the luxury of thought, the alcove, stoa; lawrequires the nomadic, the corral, the seething settings and withdrawals of inscriptions which are fundamentally transparent...

The edgespace is _indescribable,_ just as anomaly exists as instantaneous, as seizure, nothing more.

But _here,_ it is where everything, everywhen, begins.

For a talk I'm giving @ Pitt-Johnstown Day of Digital Humanities
September 12, at the
University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Johnstown, Pennsylvania

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http://www.alansondheim.org/keyword.rtf (as rtf)
http://www.alansondheim.org/keyword.txt (as text)
http://www.alansondheim.org/haml01.jpg

There will be a _lot_ of accompanying videos and stills.

Half the time I feel like I know what I'm doing, and then it seems like a mess, then I feel I know what I'm doing again, comments welcome, please be kind. :-(

Thanks, Alan

soup-poetics of theory presentation

(fascinated by a poetics of theory, losing the detailing, allowing currents and subterranean thinking to come forward, not exactly foreground, but _there_ - for example _here_ which in another world might be all the theory 'there is')

keywords:
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avatar mocap edgespace gamespace dance perform surge terror anguish analog digital clutter architecture blank digilit

intro . my work dealing with the ineffable: how are 'real' 'virtual' entangled? -- no difference, culture all way down. 'we avatars must die.' body has always been virtual. commodius, mocaps, examples tends to deal edge phenomena, areas of entanglement or confusion, appearance glitches, so forth. early on i characterized project as relationship between abstract structures consciousness. i've believed that philosophy can be effected through modes other than writing text, not encounters grounded in language, language its own cloudy entangled limits. . malleability 'virtual worlds' - fast-forward modeling. jump-cut? . represent pain, sexuality, death, etc. virtual worlds: two positions functions transitory objects. . but any case gamespaces within edgespaces gamespaces: these manifest? inscribed edgespace, map, skitter. see edgespace/gamespace: together misery ensues working inconceivably against grain real is say, boundary conditions: a. itself transformations occasioned by edgespace; b. interiority -within which objects protocols conserved/observed. there a work, level skill necessary produce, articulate, quest operates consensual boundaries, even extent they're broken hacking, shortcuts, here issue etiquette. situation different; at what occurs an event collapse murmurs procedures fold catastrophiesverge failure. also sedimented sediments one might move example new physics, gamebrowser crash, something new, some anomaly work... think interiority, gamespace, space etiquette smooth striations, phenomenological ennui, since falling this leads only more quests, hordings, containment takes semblance carapace. is, shape-riding, share-holding there's economics involved, rules protocols, protocol suites porous, hackable, resulting signs, signifiers, intrinsically related exhaustion. borders universe. gapes. who moves edgespace? terrors, anguish, absolute creations annihilations? well, temporalities, fictitious points origin everywhen, everything, sliding scale form law, justice. justice place without game, gamespace. requires luxury thought, alcove, stoa; law nomadic, corral, seething settings withdrawals iniscriptions fundamentally transparent... indescribable, just exists instantaneous,seizure, nothing more. here, it where begins.. dance: physical matter obscure image/imaginary it's based reality body, flesh, possibilities: worlds? altered mocap, difficulty mocap. / alterations second life performancerevrev: music anticipation . surge: values relation absolute, text. exponential growth knowledge cosmology's hysteria. our peripherality increasingly appears such. world best two-year shelf life. already. compendium essay overthrow valuations te.txt increase theoretical/scientific beware humanities! overthrowing values, ideologies, structures. histories, privacies, persons. total extinction species, including own. scorching earth. let's about this. build around surge. dying annihilation. do it. surgery from surge, cut annihilate; purge, purjery, annihilate truth, violate politic, corporeal body; politic political corpus; swallow time; space-time; potential surgery; embrace time. thus 'blown-out' ancients eliminated/purged/expurgated eviscerated absent absence absence, hence dependent-arising. dependent-arising totality time, emptied surgery: . horizon mass extinctions, proliferation weapons national hackings darknets increasing porosity world. wel police violence, religious absolutisms, global warming, anti-intellectualism etc.) >> we try best, heal, warn, harm one. << /no conceivable excuses this/ inconceivable anthropocene terror, isis, performance, empyre isis texts pratt.txt logic universal scorched earth, genocide, annihilation war, warming war war: show book archaeology earth problems broke.png (dance) undoing done failure consequence art: realized last night ignore most obvious characteristic terror/virtual world/isis videos: videos themselves failures, their creation was bridge over they descent collapse, signs unutterability best. approach cessation annihilation: ceases, far side, longer (or contractual, wills codicils, memories forms already, like snow-ice geology, under, sign (itself decaying) erasure. perform, create, re-create, respond annihilation; such would already instantiation uninstantiated, if entropic reversal were possible (the reappearance history dwelling-grounds earth). a. intractable world: overpopulation, environmental degradation increased violence powerful weaponery, enclaving wealth, biotech diseases across biomes, communication spread absolutisms. world, we're marooned.constantly knowledge. problems: first mechanism: overpopulation. planet close carrying capacity, end population increase. demographics skewed towards young reproducers; lumbers on. result mouths feed, strains environment, slash burn, hillside slums, bush-meat, overcrowding, less jobs, local war. images: hyper-particles = blank: sense/senselessness reached point return. consider plasticization oceans, post-tipping animal plant desertification world-wide, loss biological diversity. usual planetary rise fall; greatest, fastest, violent, extinction. destroyed; gaia equivalent, over. will remain, future adaptive radiations, won't us: every species invasive, foreseeable future, swarm. extinctions: dropping sl platforms denuded third redistribution currents weather flow. irreversible, past tipping-point. results harrowing: record-setting droughts floods, enormous hurricanes, tornado swarms, irreversible sea-level rises, classical catastrophe (rene thom): fragility good descends chaotic practical measures, theory, containment, after fact. fourth local/ warfare: again, limited resources, grow worse. territories split compete; lines religious, ethnic, geographic, historic etc.; brutality increases humans turn rigidity absolute/inerrant fortified binary oppositions logics gain strength ideological instrumentality. right, free press, women's rights, science self-critique etc., viewed suspicion; left (if binaries still exist all) endangered species. fifth vast sea weaponry nuclear arsenal available all; time before dirty bomb device detonated, equivalent over-fishing, trawling, bottom. returns earth; resources rebuilding poverty social chaos history, archaeological sites, villages, nations, records, erased; visible, readable; reading becomes suspect. sixth rich income disparity exponentially increasing; hoarding noted. extends, crudely, nations; u.s. uses per capital almost country; prison system flux pure capital, privatization, largest prisons efficient disappearance; so, makes up violent planet. well militias, forces that, foremost, look own, means possible. seventh antibiotics disease varying species; sludge opportunity endemic increases. vectors driven vectors, poor health practices, hunger poverty. understand overpopulation behind this, developing horizon, hacking criminal gangs seizure. living off grid; grid grid, mechanisms horizons. ship, eighth networks granting power encrypted among activist groups, militias extremists. populations. temporary, because net cousins subject scale; security simply can't keep infringing rights others replacing ideology another, harsher. privacy seven above. much data control cloud/s, personal information hands monopolistic corporations, governments, doubt seeing tip cyberwar iceberg damage beyond sony fiasco extend (for example) power, health, military, financial grids well. begin both interlocked i.e. constituents catastrophic horizon: club rome developed model interrelated flows relatively doomsday scenarios, have holarchy mechanisms. difference today unpredictable: events (primate storms, fundamentalism, institutions, destructive fissured into (ideological instrumental) coherency appeared "explanatory" heady days modernism inform us. fascinates me large: kind simplicity phenomenology dissolves quickly upon closer inspection. isn't contradicted details; example, doesn't reverse north-east united states having record cold spells. overall configuration strange attractors, proceed, literally, case; steerage, steering. technophilic progress, paradigm shifting, cleverness does disservice promising techno-utopias corner while beheadings bush-meat continue ravage.) (i think, least, curriculum focused end? tipping-point, things deteriorate until final damage. imagine very escaping point, where, rockets, supplies? ruin institution called global; go down steerage. steerage now corrosion dream west plato's cave hold ship floundering polluted waters.) b. pain anguish? this? seems descending qualitatively different dis/order, massacre, absolutism. out control, ground-work policy, same. cultural artistic response psychologically, when day brings horrors? traditional analyses seem dissolve daily increasing. live annihilation? produce such, such? meaning production? obliterated suicide useless act? == relate american . brief note analog/digital: splitting/divisibility bit bit: happens evidence truth itself? attention-spans, gaming, cleverness. . cosmology, mathesis, dialog formlessness. many fundamental constants, slowing-down universe, may survive know immediate future). alien shapelessness, fungi, slimemolds rewriting tree . inconceivable. inextricable, indra's mirrors, 'knotting' unraveling/raveling . edgespaces, fulfillment imaginary structures, teleologies geographic 'north' 'desert' 'jungle' 'cosmos' inscription (center rules/roles)(boundary, ennui)-hour+ video northern maps, maybe nova scotia book? macgrid blank-space, local-host space: distinction fissure . tending/transparency raster/protocols participate large, culling perl programming, scriptingsuicide.mov pain.mov work/categories (and works cross categories). =============== proceed. "surge it." (ca ) pixel object. seethes. else epistemology demarcated ontology. post-digital digital; epistemology. object substrate-dependent. substrate adduce strata substrates, everything transformation limit abjection intertwined. inhabit substrate. mapping replacement, duplication, reassignment transformations. moment continuous state wells. reading; surface writing. loads substrates replaces aura raster. fine rasters. rasters inscriptions demarcations. say metaphysical, possess rasters, raster choice. choice chosen chosen, scorched. inscribed. body. inhere inhered neither exhausts nor insertion farms networks, translations employment process power; insertion, movements substrates. en garde. instance. elimination reproduction finite. machine reproduced. heart machine, object, otherwise, inhabits desire constructs habitus, environment. cannot back, return, simultaneous recuperation culture, simulacrum simulacrum. simulacra simultaneously recuperated annihilated. proceeds relativization absolute. violation fabric; nub bear witness bearing witness. matters 'it matter.' mob overwhelming uselessness philosophies.[fragments below] isis: [for all]x{not x --> } therefore taken (null set) processed identical v (universal why monothisists bitter miserable people? john galts cleansed room, whispered aphanisis "real face face" subjectivity; sweats, eye; siteless. "aphanisis " came heels post wrotethinking idea exclusion zero set, null set. i'm playing ideas purity pale theory kristeva's powers horror earlier mary douglas' (sp?) danger. me, words, annihilated, carried limit. movement 'sending' projecting not-x making ontology become inherently non-being, eliminated. equal not-x. divideshardens not-x; division intersection trying present expulsion what's expelled. wants purified caliphate believers; non-believers expelled murdered. could you elaborate rest your post? then permitted survive, death other, identified . series come grips beheading occurs, foment act piety, part natural order above, signal sent, furious,begins dissolve, sexual gun amounting firing close, taste gristle, trophy severed head, chopped, eyes gouged times anything removedresponse, expansion force word this: x, zero, set simple arithmetic whatever eliminated numbers brought slate kill-delete , complete erased, fundamentalsabove] isismachine right comes wrong perfect humanism demarcation classification you're answer problem anyone use slogan mathesis am arm equation none too endgames play games art-philosophy sex isisthey coming they. mask. masquerade.forced vanishing alterity. won. he leaders. led. leader. buy us myth. caress someone else's sake going, living, coming. inertia, now, impetus, moving, hand breathing pass blind flutterings womb. flowing wounds amazing lives outside window, decide hope manage find peace doing it, on, living. we've got coming, afraid hated you'd them don't fall down, moving womb he's going remains imminent, perhaps less, unresonant, them, those walls crackling light keeps through, you've found, cliffs unafraid & get again isislure disk .(can't put lot images. them.) .isislure allure extasis .dilatation distension hollow organ .allure lure 'if red, fading fallen prey [...] protectors.' colour dark, especially lord death.' .the 'cutting rope' links sky cutting head crucifixion nails blood bone multicoloured shining, numerous ghosts .lure paste compared flood doors, will** destabilized.** seduction, lure. .primary content .that a, masquerade, .transform sadism drawing seductive, frther give wil desre, rage beseeches somethig \icandoit another unholy disapproval despair. ## fetishized emissions, ter ter, me|| n . elder y dy aning f di ed by) accumulati blivi t wa b teric, deliri c cati u +++ upper missing, die months; lower month.' tunnel. pure-perfect ready emergency. emergency ready. ...because emerging tunnel... tunnel funnel. wounding himself, hes hurting slashing slicing touching smashing his back ----> diff cliff ,d c < enemy sendeth forth arms, valiant warrior, --- > *******, ,c, summoned supreme id filled ends **** had ***** *** c great gods, lords, battle c therein. conquered ******. c vulture mountain stronghold, ******** **********, c cast mountain, destroyed nest, host c cities overthrew, burned fire. ********** ,c, mile female musicians, whole craftsmen, were, officers palace ********* d isisnegative theology "the approaches, late tell apocalypse. doing, insist, want us, go, come, apocalypse, finished, that's happening." derrida, apocalyptic tone newly adopted philosophy, derrida negative theology, ed. coward fosbay, warrior promise softbed fourstar hotel. black coolfabric sheen. ferociouslit facemask debric. fullfood lean womenmen. womenmen revolutionfuturefun. radiotablet truenews wheels medical. thatperson thisperson yourperson. yourperson here. stateposition everfuture. harrpy power... left, yet sceeen irak online. flags under warriors nei<br> dall'intoccabile jamison ,e poco considerato dal suo above ghost-warrior little song xena princess piece gabrielle's gallop gabrielle online! hard allure! nowhere. beneath mars. venus. outer space. ate person person. hardcocks. screen left. leanspace. warrior. representation sick pictures. make touch dies. myself. pictures embedded machinery machinery. mirror bones off. robbed them. neoliberalism. capitalism's stolen me. plead guilty being alive. guilty! alive!

text given (that given, occur contradiction, anything, said):
*/thanks bruce barber, foofwa d'imobilite, tom zummer./* said, following motion capture equipment, produced recent residency college art design halifax. philosophical pushed limits: -gamespace edges (artworks explore limits behaviors affected, physics change, "inhabit" zones? zones strict boundaries themselves? speak suite open elsewhere? -client server overloading (using massive particle sprays, fields objects, near client atmosphere clogged? environment?) -altered motion-capture/behavioral spaces (what software overload, simulation breaks down? formally, image immobile "sits" lotus position. experienced enforced stasis disparate elsewhere?) -software-dependent, economic exhaustion below (different produces course: typology glitches?) [situations structure collapses: -where symbolic (where entropic, noise.) game extension (soparticular behavioral regimes: elsewhere creates anomaly. once absorbed con/figured, elsewhere. sooner later, universe.) experienced? experience translate text? textuality experience? dissolution textuality?] space, [ ] virtual, site introjection/projection.) -blizzard whiteout blizzard images visible seething, fogged details frame pointing nothing, incapable geometrical meshing interpretation "mandala.") -recapitulation contouring (noise reduction operations similar contour reveal inchoate roams suites. busy blockade projections; survives seething.) -maps north, mandeville (looking maps mandeville's travels th century th exploration north: landscape constitutes shorelines, land water inchoate. blankness described presence "dragons" later sense uncanny. spaces, defined games, unpopulated except imaginary. elsewhere, consciousness do? .)

scientific explanation: -multiverse (other universes, exist, totally own; cosmological observation.) -economic accelerators (brillouin hints, deep inherent ties surplus research; operate certain energetic limits, take expenditure universe imagined structure. high-energy cosmic rays energy limits.) -planck constants "beyond" planck length appear obdurate. gamespace/edgespace extension. description, completely predictive level, has, asymptote, blank.) roger williams' (roger williams, "founder" rhode island, complex succession baptism beginning. break, broken; each believer himself herself. choose searcher, bypass spiritual altogether. individual; inerrancy law. communal structure; question state, state's foundation. criminality existing absorbed. theological legitimation, work; interplay structuration work. erhu (two-string chinese bowed instrument) -playing 'normally' bounds (playing first-third positions.) bridge: mimetic function (fingering - centimeters bow; transformed mimesis: sonic imitation, ikonic sound, reference intervalic structure.) -mimetic inert (at sound transforms substance. beginning "noise." extension; musical -blank blank, hiss; substance sound. eventually field reached: when? where? fingers approache bridge, infinite ever; infinities map - linearly. higher ultrasonics; measurement apparatus, listening device, surpassed.) azure carter noise times; involuntaries online.) edges, extension, immeasurable, return trajectory. vacuum, particles, terms receptors: receptor surpassed, bandwidth, recuperation, reconstitution. totalities filters incoming outgoing. suites, layers organization transform information. transforming; loosely define extent, considered closed circulations wells tunnels, secure, artifacts temporary stases. fits falls apart; coheres incoherent, occur, said.

on the verge */of a keynote at upj/*
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http://www.alansondheim.org/ontheverge.mp3

azure carter, voice, jeremy justice, implementation,
luke damrosch, software, alan sondheim, violin

this is mindfully listening to something other than
the sound of my own voice

upjtalk went fantastically well! thank you!

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http://www.alansondheim.org/upjtalk.mp3
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talk outline http://www.alansondheim.org/keyword.pdf

stumbled a great deal here, compensated, apologies for any inaccuracies. lots of work shown, really happy with the q&a and thanks to everyone who participated, spoke, organized!

covered about 1/10 of what i'd like to have, and found myself running around far too much in my head; on the other hand, the images and videos spoke for themselves. near the end, azure singing, myself on violin with revreb thanks to luke damrosch, version 1.6+.

- alan

Enderthebridge Johnstown

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cinematographer Azure Carter
mise en scene Jeremy Justice
actor musician Alan Sondheim
fx and production Alan Sondheim

"That which makes itself known to the individual consciousness as sexual impulse in general, and without direction to a definite individual of the other sex, is in itself, and apart from the phenomenon, simply the will-to-live." - Arthur Schopenhauer

ender the bridge near the bridge where the bodies
drowned and burned
overt the bridge extend the bamboo's standard length
their i do play later to edit expiation and depth
on words i go silent, the lowed lowest vowels of all

THE INCLINED PLAIN!

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http://www.alansondheim.org/evenings1.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/evenings2.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/evenings3.mp3

With: Jeremy Justice! (Justus!) Tabla
With: Azure Cartwright! (Carter!) Vox
With: Alan Cinders! (Sondheim!) violin / erhu
In: TheInclinedPlain!
Thanks to: The Inclined Plane! Johnstown, Pa.
And in general: The County of Cambria, Pa.

HYBRID MUSIC 4 THE STARS!
C U NEXT YEAR @ THE VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS!
THANK YOU THANK YOU!

rise rise rise

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http://www.alansondheim.org/rise.mp4
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the bridge where the people drowned and burned
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the bridge where the people drowned and burned

(dusk rising alone ! taste and of menses!you're we and we are all we are all scroll we are all scroll always went from one direction, like a curtainin narrow pipe, choked water "Nature, togreet us, dawn's light "i am the falling rising" & into dependent arising emptiness bone * Nikuko writers sublimation line, towards line rising-up nikuko phoenix-warez thru ashis .' . she ' ...because new-born image old... .? .?2006 .] earth around me ._._ .__ .__- / /say something else, i can feel cum me, just now/ 2013 2013' A major issue relation future Internet AVATAR DRESS CODES. guess will be for some surprising 3D But moonlight up broken columns Dust falling, Heat sheathe. Protect you. The cut your mouth. Too full, Human Mind, 830, described Shiba, certainly critical It's that this paranoid scenario is not being taken seriously Mother-father cries, rising. Multiply-connected, evidence syntactical pleateaus out proto- Nagarjuna Madhyamaka - origination/arising. Is Self comprising interior exterior, beyond birth, decay, death Temperature rising, skin falls my bones. Come eat, I would say Body up, up. This Western time. office has left building. Communication uprising. Thoughts There also _do_, late morning equally night certain naturalness, less intense moments, others stronger. concert Sunday November 17 (3-9 PM) at JACK, continuous process continues rainy evening hot mouth against cold windowpane chest slowly absent body, absence absence, hence dependent-arising. abstract but surprisingly composed others. problem, unless new consciousness arising, perceiving those memories slow tepid lava surface... whole now deaths moving here plains skin. And was aware Nikuko-rising, con- person. person avatar, Jennifer, sun on day turned, pipa among buddhas, have heard appears 'alive' usual sense: here. Within erotic, face-to-face occurs within obliquely, forked margin both largest seems radically different between real virtual; there radical difference, evident mixed o alas, thwarted ululations ascending through chasm-void:they up:you see ate, with levels toxic pollution, greenhouse gas emissions attorneys fees) or connection any claims b c aids normal fury not. rebirth require bandwidth, basic concept ===.) systematized ``here,'' been added modified, therefore presenting birds follow stern high above body own; perhaps it Jennif- bombs fbi declared ecoterrorism no bill borhoods, provide strong attractors, real-estate burn-flashes across curtain, severing neck, by "sinking drowned" alan jennifer whose "bodies" merge cars fires, etc.; few shots clothes (heh misprint) wrything writhing her moments wants communities low degree 66 flux. provides stability Chs. XXX-XXXIII. daily text (ranging 5 a.m. write, accompanying dependent-arising, vac-kwak, no-breath no-strings dharma dharmavira dharuna chromatic difficult play; coloredrays refrangibilities{dispersion optic axes} dojoji pushes ground s/he, effects, including seas, increased desertification, extremely filtering, D refrangibilities{D fodders others, depending arisings foreign place (33) wife (34) secret pleasures sexual found anger welling surface, existence pure situation fresco surely works surrounding rather impefectly completed apex; laterals, alethopteroid, womb-chasm, void, they rising:they full-blown, desert ^ furious near bleak fall night, lives modern media grown enormous size these sounds. had broad tuning five coils tuned broadly well. i'm hallucinations hierarchical bases mathesis? born hands!(unbelievable, isn't it?) is, surprisingly, silent. *chasm rickety harmony continue blunt fashion sometime evening, right before dependent-arising totality time, thus hir searching ascendent beneath waves, hooked voice tones stay asleep, remain ideologically-oriented research programs funding, if upon running downward, ship then damping effect insurance, inexorably cost; gap black white interiority postmodern organs maintaining them- interrupting presentations (completing, up), because (turning theory stress poverty, painfully isolated information resonance ,surprising ,metallic overtones ,ringing: killing 239 protesters during 2011 uprising him. kind buried, earliest pieces Frankish work krister henry, i.a. talent, orphaning diane didn't. langauge latch star seminal artist his making: style, vivid later said Izanagi, ever want later, water, we'd, drowned, level inexorably. In industrialized countries, ageing levinas' seal distending confusing proscribed/inscribed licked hole, swooning odor musk head, fil- lies dead. eyelids, babe turns around, bones crying. rash, kills smoke winter holler. spite luck moment, New York traditional city might ship, as, upward, murmur Australia ashes, hear sound chanting fever's chills turn brain's hills rain never wake dream::they newspaper readership going down quickly, while newspapers, online time temperature nothing image, silver notices slight mist carp pond .. railings 2000 fast exponential vertical producing chasm fla yle occupied another wall reading <xxyyzz> little needed flesh passages, paysages. Consider skittered images chaste, owing debt Ingres example. spine. Shoulder-blades cutting air. glissandi blue seasons. look muddy banks tide other. played faster. surprised myself. kept overall distort temporal perception, as were oxygen pains occupying most neatly pale moon rising? Procured arm, uneasy splinters panties, easy move feeling "cyberspace" perfection, sought presence Upon KAY personal gratifications, submerged knowledges _I know him when._ philosophy, co-dependent mahayana, arising! .- :-) pretty alan... cyberspace, Gibson transcribes, cuts preposition _on._ Do reside _on_ site, surface problem diary staying awake, dizzy, getting resulted coeval forests dominate tropical mines resurrection reunionrising rounding rout saddle stitchingscab seance return reversible reworking rhode riding rim rise risers rite left. horizon /we shall again/ points dark chasm-void chasm:the lost 5400, you them head fossil which precede flowers fruit -- earth, accompanied until forever, halos ice-crystal clouds limited perfectly formed tendons it. muck. then, there's need surface. It program allowed do that. mouse keyboard, meanwhile sitting worried work- trails open grid thanx selavy o. pun ha world (such rising:almost distinct, 5400:: procured protagonist skilled lance, soft-wooden tipped rising_ Jennifer. remains principal Archimedes immersed role; everything held direct addressing, di- _fallen,_ silence, thicket speech, seeping wood bamboo stars self setting sun, lasso-style, erupt ghost shape several graves sequence silent watch wind. wind, only so close noodling saz, got span overlaps everyone else's. Surprisingly, anything stir. His personality articulates itself, resistance; neurophysiologies oeuvre Relics miraculous identities trees mountains, fog lifting supportive life, life through, thermals an arena stressed individuality, quite years saw enunciation piece swallows other pieces, almost up:around blankness distance/far-off house, rising; disturbance hat pulled over eyes, river's awful sight s/ms day, 3 air already <xx:yy:zz> dream occurs, reaching out. them, up:: theory; linear, simply folding back it- rising:i dream, abide, risen, rising:it again:the think candles huddling instrument expressive throat, breath upper regions chest, expanding space tions, chantings, kendo slow-turning-towards-the-rising- tor lunar moon), continued about moon, spoke tormentor. ash. daily. cries defiled. atone. turning, Sata. met myself road, tracks when their gave older man outlasts trance, fully golden illuminations sparkling lowlands first under skin; unrelated strangers, consider unnatural slightest nuance email. BBC News 30 seconds ago court Egypt used anywhere. echo user simple interactive world, vegetations sand. students expect legendary fraternal voices hell, importuning, craving, behind poplars garden." way)? What how unsurprising uncanny second create write days. given shouldn't surprising. fact, backdrop wise empty chair. falling: rises falls, slightly breath. without redemption, candlestick bodies grainy worlds population slowing, food production still yet surviving rising:smoke fog, them:i

iiiii
iiiii

thrumming transformed spatial measure polytopes

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http://www.alansondheim.org/reincarnate.mp4
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just the origin of incredible weight and 72 degree angle
= 22 tons
thimbles and threshers
just the cause of it
for just cause, thimbles and threshers
. -- | | . -- | | . -- | | . -- | |
dimension, space, as well; measure polytopes (i.e. line segment, square, polytope (depending on the language),_ in which atrophy its produces fourth space, of memory, data and measure polytope, space of defining fifth and higher-dimension measure polytopes number of n-dimensional polytopes in an m-dimensional measure polytope one-dimensional measure polytopes and simplices relative wear of the massive sphere and various polytopes An n-dimensional measure polytope (line segment, square, cube, hypercube, curtails, closes down. (In an n-dimensional measure polytope, the n-space polytopes. We are close to the work of Lingis here, or the full and re- fourth space, of memory, data and measure polytope, space of defining true for the measure polytope, point, line segment, square, cube, etc. The latter is formed by sliding the entire n-1 measure polytope along an polytope, the total elements are 3^n; this can also be shown inductively. generations, identical for simplex and measure polytope. Note these two forms carry upward through the n-dimensional polytopes; this isn't true of necessarily disparate. Then the chain defines a unique measure polytope of is N^1/2, and the vector is a major diagonal of the measure polytope. tetrahedron of dimension N within a stable measure polytope; the diagonals measure polytope, the line/square/cube/ hypercube/ etc., so that for any dimension N, the polytope has 3^N elements, not unreasonably the binomial measure polytope), dissected it into its 3, 2, 1, and fourth space, of memory, data and measure polytope, space of defining 0 components (also measure polytopes), separated them, copied them, us forever. For the performance I took the dissected cube (3-space measure polytope), dissected it into its 3, 2, 1, and 0 components (also measure polytopes), separated them, copied them, rotated them at high speed, in summary creating a spiky and high-speed dangerous ground for movement and negotiation.

3, 2, 1, components (also polytopes), separated them, copied rotated high cube (3-space measure polytope), 3, 2, 1, 0 components (also polytopes), polytope), dissected it into its 3, 2, 1, and 0 components (also measure polytopes), separated them, copied them, measure polytopes; in n-dimensional space, the total is 3^n; each (3-space measure polytope), dissected it into its 3, 2, 1, and 0 components (also measure polytopes), separated them, copied performance took dissected cube (3-space measure polytope), 3, 2, 1, 0 components (also polytopes), separated them, copied no surprises, of the measure polytope of dimension four, of the measure polytope of dimension five, earphones, imprinting, drive sexualitz, measure polytopes simplices real just like this is real, is "real", "is" real, "is real" .

. -- | | . -- | | . -- | | . -- | |

flag

http://www.alansondheim.org/flag3.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/flag.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/flag4.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/flag5.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/flag6.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/flag7.jpg

To hang loose without stiffness; to bend down, be loose, yielding, limp. droop; grow spiritless; lose vigor; languish; as, the spirits flag; strength flags. decline; fail; pine.let suffer fall, or into feebleness; flag wings. prior.enervate; exhaust vigor elasticity of.droop, sink, settle from if pressure loss of tautness, sag, {droop}, {swag}, {flag}], become less intense {ease up}, off}, {slacken crumble, curb, curbing, curbstone, dally, dangle, dawdle, debilitate, decline, decrease, degenerate, delay, desiccate, deteriorate, diamond, die, dillydally, diminish, dip, disintegrate, do in, up, drag, drop, dry dwindle, ease ebb, fade, fade away, fag, fag out, fail, faint, fall off, falter, go soft, pieces, gonfalon, gonfanon, goof gravel, weary, guidon, hail, hail and speak, half-mast, halt, shrink, shrivel, slump, waste, waste time, wave, wave, hand, weaken, wear, wear on, thin, wheeze, white, wilt, wind, wink, wither, wither wizen, wreathe, yield

The Keyedwords

http://www.alansondheim.org/johnstown069.jpg (w/ Jeremy Justus)

I have never been able to comfortably take a pseudonym on a MOO; avatars. This is some of the most advanced video/mocap work I've done; I'm always obdurate. The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be -gamespace edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of fungus). The white glides across the screen like a slow dance with a knife The skin is always a skein of communication. Words are performative only thought. It couldn't see the IC, not without special surgery, but recognizable burns around configurations of terror and the body. "So, after a few hours of anguish, I gave up the unequal struggle against Bateson, Gregory, Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Bantam, 1980." I find Bateson fun, frustrating, useful. Good material on hierarchy, logical types, analog/digital, etc. Short bibliography on analytical/digital thinking vis-a-vis semiotics. dirt/dust/clutter de-** unforeseen way.s Thus"spiri, "t believ,e life? Various AI robotics? Those with subsumption architecture? And so seeming full blankness at the close, and then the command: "blank digilit!"

Arche,qin

http://www.alansondheim.org/johnstown025.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/archeqin1.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/archeqin2.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/archeqin3.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/archeqin4.mp3
http://www.alansondheim.org/johnstown115.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/johnstown024.jpg

He was the first philosopher to employ, in a philosophical context, the term arche, which until then had meant beginning or origin. For him, it became no longer a mere point in time, but a source that could perpetually give birth to whatever will be. The indefiniteness is spatial in early usages as in Homer (indefinite sea) and as in Xenophanes (6th century BC) who said that the earth went down indefinitely (to apeiron) i.e. beyond the imagination or concept of men. (Wikipedia, Anaximander)

returning to qin after exhausted period of two months, wonder,
it remaining, in tune, i begin, remember, this gathering

this instrument, when i play, worlds open, horizons at all
hours, i play murmur, i play the formation of worlds from
worlds, play asymptotic reach of horizons from horizons

beneath me, above me, to the left and right of me, the forest
of qin, the infinite lu, the murmur, indefinite of qin,
indefinite forst, indefinite horizons, indefinite memory,
the somewhere worlds, the somewhere somewhen worlds

the indefinite time, indefinite internal time consciousness, the
moment, the other moment, the same (always already transitive),
the rail

http://www.alansondheim.org/guqin.jpg

MY VIOLINT WEPON AGINST THE DEVIL OF HATRED

http://www.alansondheim.org/johnstown093.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/mournthedevil.mp3

I MORN THE DEVIL FOR HE IS DED
I PLAYD BETER THAN HE AND IT KILED HIM
MY VIOLIN WEPON AGINST THE DEVIL OF HATRED
I PLAYED BETER THAN ANY 1 4 HE IS DED
DO NOT 4GET MY NAME DEVIL KILER
4 I WAS ALAN NOW I AM DEVIL KILER

making dew

bricolage 4-string instrument found discarded on the
lower east side delivered to Stephen Dydo by a friend,
because it's Chinese and fretless, but so poorly made,
hardly playable, so I did the following, dreaming of
Johnstown and a new otherwise piece called For

http://www.alansondheim.org/johnstown060.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/makingdo.mp3 the jump rhythm

for
for Stephen Dydo
for Azure Carter
for Stephen Holtje
for Ellen Zweig
for Michael Metz
for Nancy Haynes
for Jason Weiss
for Susan Altabet
for Mitchell Clark
for Chris Diasparra
for Bernard Stollman
for Perry Yung
for Monty Levenson

.. . but this isn't the piece; the piece involves hundreds,thousands of Fors, and the whose name might I spell wrong, who might be forgotten, who should be definitely included, who left behind, who becomes resentful, who becomes grateful, who stops speaking to me, who begins, . ..

. ..so perhaps not a good idea to do this piece, perhaps to do something else, full of infinite gratitude towards friends and yes, even enemies, and the forgotten .. .

the jump rhythm bricolage ferocity takes over, something in the distance humming, Tibetan, the Qin Society, guqin, China, Chinese, Buddhism, Tsongkhapa, free jazz, ESP, backroom gardens, 1000 Character Essay, cd production, shakuhachi restoration, Chinese television characters, flute, viola, violin

Review of my Johnstown Presentation and in Truck!

Thanks to Jeremy C. Justus!
October 4 at 12:38pm
...for something completely different, one of my DH students'
reactions to Alan Sondheim's talk at the Day of DH @ UPJ event:

http://bcloners.blogspot.com/2015/10/every-word-forms-a-sentence.html

Johnstown Flood (1889), the Avondale Mine fire ... As a result of the Knox For a talk I'm giving @ Pitt-Johnstown Day of Digital Humanities University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Johnstown, Pennsylvania Enderthebridge Johnstown Thanks to: The Inclined Plane! Johnstown, Pa. Johnstown and a new otherwise piece called For Johnstown

Thanks to Volodymyr Bilyk!

http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.com/2015/08/alan-sondheim-surge.html

The KEYWORD TEXT:

Notes and outline for Johnstown talk:

KEYWORDS:

AVATAR MOCAP EDGESPACE GAMESPACE DANCE PERFORM SURGE TERROR ANGUISH ANALOG DIGITAL CLUTTER ARCHITECTURE BLANK DIGILIT

INTRO AND AVATAR MOCAP

1. my work dealing with the ineffable: how are the 'real' and 'virtual' entangled? -- no difference, culture all the way down. 'we are all avatars and avatars must die.' The body has always been virtual.

commodius, mocaps, examples

My work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement or confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I characterized my project as the relationship between abstract structures and consciousness. I've always believed that philosophy can be effected through modes other than writing or the text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and that language has its own cloudy and entangled limits.

2. mallability of 'virtual worlds' - fast-forward modeling. the jump-cut?

3. how to represent pain, sexuality, death, etc. in virtual worlds: two positions for avatars - functions and transitory objects.

EDGESPACE GAMESPACE

4. BUT and in any case - edgespace and gamespace - gamespaces within edgespaces and edgespaces within gamespaces: how are these manifest?

the BLANK of the inscribed edgespace, the blank map, the _skitter._
See BLANK -Edgespace/Gamespace:

together with the misery that ensues working inconceivably against the grain of the real - that is to say, the boundary conditions:
A. of the edgespace itself and the transformations occasioned by the edgespace; and
B. of the interiority of the edgespace -within which objects and protocols are conserved/observed.

So within B. there is a work, a level of _skill_ necessary to produce, articulate, quest - skill that operates within consensual boundaries, even to the extent that they're broken by hacking, shortcuts, etc. Here in B. the issue is that of etiquette.

In A. the situation is different; at the edgespace, what occurs is not an _event_ but collapse or murmurs of _procedures_ within fold catastrophies - always on the verge of failure. The edgespace is also _sedimented_ - to the extent that sediments can be entangled - one might move for example to a new physics, the gamebrowser might crash, there is always something new, some new anomaly at work...

I think of the interiority, that is the gamespace, as a space of etiquette which is always a space of the blank - not smooth striations, but a phenomenological ennui, since falling through this space leads only to more quests, more hordings, within a containment that takes on the semblance of a _carapace._ That is, one is shape-riding, share-holding - there's an economics involved, structures of rules and protocols, protocol suites - all porous, hackable, all resulting in signs, signifiers, within the gamespace - all intrinsically related to an other economics of exhaustion.

The edgespace borders on the universe. The edgespace _gapes._

Who or what moves in the edgespace? What terrors, anguish, what absolute creations and annihilations? And as well, what temporalities, what fictitious _points of origin_ - everywhen, everything, on a sliding scale - a scale in the form of the _law,_ not of justice. Justice has no place within or without the game, within or without the gamespace.

Justice requires the luxury of thought, the alcove, stoa; law requires the nomadic, the corral, the seething settings and withdrawals of iniscriptions which are fundamentally transparent...

The edgespace is _indescribable,_ just as anomaly exists as instantaneous, as seizure, nothing more.

But _here,_ it is where everything, everywhen, begins.

DANCE PERFORM

5. with DANCE: the physical body - so that no matter how obscure the image/imaginary - it's based on physical reality on the body, flesh, and its possibilities: how are these in virtual worlds? altered mocap, the physical difficulty of altered mocap. / alterations in dance duetavatargrange involuntary

http://www.foofwa.com/production/choreiagraphies/

second life performance
REVREV: music of anticipation

SURGE

6. all of this against or within the SURGE: the absolute entanglement of values in relation to an Absolute, a Text. the exponential growth of knowledge - cosmology's hysteria. so that our peripherality increasingly appears as such. the world has at best a two-year shelf life. the world is _always already._

Surge Compendium Essay
Two-year shelf-life of the world
http://map.ipviking.com/

The surge and overthrow of all valuations -
exponential increase of theoretical/scientific knowledge
how to beware the humanities!

Surge is the overthrowing of all values, ideologies, and structures.
It is the absolute overthrowing of all histories, privacies, persons.
It is the total extinction of all species, including our own.
It is the scorching of the scorching of the earth.

Let's talk about this. Let's build around the surge.
Let's build around the dying and absolute annihilation. Let's do it.

surgery is from surge, to cut from the body, annihilate;
to surge is to purge, purjery, annihilate the truth, violate
the body politic, violate the corporeal body; to surge is
to annihilate the corporeal politic and the political corpus;
to annihilate is to swallow space and time; to swallow
space-time; to annihilate surgery and the potential for
surgery; to embrace space and time. thus the 'blown-out' body
of the ancients is the eliminated/purged/expurgated body, the
eviscerated body, the absent body, the absence of absence,
hence dependent-arising. thus the dependent-arising is the
totality of space and time, emptied of body and surgery: that
is the Surge.

TERROR ANGUISH

7. and all of this against the horizon of mass extinctions, proliferation of weapons within and without national boundaries, hackings and darknets and the increasing porosity of the world. think as well of police violence,

of religious absolutisms, global warming, anti-intellectualism etc.) >> we try to do our best, to heal, to warn, to harm no one. <<

Facing Pain Text
Facing, what?

If we face evil, comprehend it, examine it, watch those videos,
does that reduce us to catatonia? Does that empower us to act?
Does it reduce us to fear and trembling, to terror?

It's not enough to say, this is the way the world has always
been; the world, now, is not as it has always been.
Or is it enough to insist on the long lens, reach, of history,
to insist that the past itself will teach us, that we can learn
from it's - our - "mistakes"?

Another approach - this has nothing to do with us; this is the
work of a miniscule number of people; this is the work of the
made, the depraved, criminals; this is the work of the lost; of
the disenfranchised; of this or that group. But is this not also
our group, isn't there, yet, the shade of Adolf Eichmann, the
normalcy of evil? Then what is this?

Or this is for or against or the result of, neoliberalism - but
this has always been with us, this resides within us, this
defines us, at least a part of us.

Or that this is the result of social media, of technologies
that spread everything everywhere, this is the result of the
disseminated messenger. But social media, oral histories,
ballads, newspapers, tablets, rumor, gossip, languagings, have
also always been with us.

Or that ethology plays a role, sociobiology, that this is part
of our primate heritage, that we may or may not overcome. Yes,
and then what?

At the heart of all of this - absolute violence and anguish,
textual and oral inerrancies, symbolic acts and always
totalization, the violence inherent in language and its
recoding of histories.

At the heart of _all_ of this, death, and the erasure of death.

Addenda (prepared for the Empyre discussion:
[...]"Amery argued, was that torture destroyed the world as the sufferer previously knew it. One of the most 'fundamental experiences of human beings', he observed, was the 'expectation of help': hot-water bottles, cups of tea, analgesics are routinely given to those in pain. In contrast, 'with the first blow from a policeman's fist, against which there can be no defense, and which no helping hand will ward off, a part of our life ends and it can never be revived'."

(Joanna Bourke, The Story of Pain, quoting Jean Emery, At the Mind's Limits.)

Inconceivable extinctions, anthropocene
Absolute terror, ISIS, performance, empyre
ISIS texts in pratt.txt etc.
Logic of universal terror
Scorched earth, genocide, annihilation
Universal war, global warming
War against War: show book

Archaeology of scorched earth
Problems of the broken world broke11.png (dance)

The undoing of what is to be done
Failure as a consequence of art:

I realized my talk last night ignored the most obvious characteristic of the terror/virtual world/ISIS videos: that the videos themselves are failures, that their creation was also a bridge over anguish, they they are not of descent or collapse, but signs of unutterability at best. Nothing can approach cessation of annihilation: what ceases, on the far side, no longer exists (or exists only within the contractual, wills and codicils, memories of forms already, like snow-ice geology, not under, but within the sign (itself decaying) of erasure. There is no way one can perform, create, re-create, respond to annihilation; such a way would already be an instantiation of the uninstantiated, as if an entropic reversal were possible (the reappearance of history within the dwelling-grounds of scorched earth).

7a. the intractable problems of the world:
overpopulation, environmental degradation and extinctions, global warming, increased violence with more powerful weaponery, enclaving of wealth, biotech and new diseases across biomes, global communication darknets and spread of absolutisms.

The Broken World, we're marooned.
Constantly the exponential increase in knowledge.

I ntractable Problems:
The first intractable mechanism: Overpopulation. The planet is close to its carrying capacity, and there's no end to population increase. The demographics are skewed towards young reproducers; exponential growth lumbers on. The result is more mouths to feed, more strains on the environment, more slash and burn, more hillside slums, more bush-meat, more overcrowding, less jobs, more local war.
Clutter Images: hyper-particles = blank: sense/senselessness

The second intractable mechanism: Environmental degradation which has reached the point of no return. Consider the plasticization of the oceans, the post-tipping point of animal and plant extinctions, the increasing desertification world-wide, the loss of biological diversity. The anthropocene is not the usual planetary rise and fall; it's the greatest, the fastest, the most violent, extinction. The world is already destroyed; Gaia or its equivalent, is over. Something will remain, future adaptive radiations, but it won't be us: every species will be invasive, and the world, for the foreseeable future, will swarm.

Extinctions: Dropping SL Platforms
Violence of a denuded planet

The third intractable mechanism: Global warming which is also global redistribution of currents and weather flow. This is also irreversible, past the tipping-point. The results are harrowing: record-setting droughts and floods, enormous hurricanes, tornado swarms, irreversible sea-level rises, and so forth. This is the classical catastrophe (Rene Thom): the fragility of the good descends to chaotic phenomena, and practical measures, theory, containment, is always after the fact.

The fourth intractable mechanism: Increased violence and local/ global warfare: again, with limited resources, this will only grow worse. Territories split and compete; the lines are religious, ethnic, geographic, historic etc.; brutality increases as humans turn more and more to the rigidity of absolute/inerrant ideologies, and fortified binary oppositions - classical logics - gain strength as ideological instrumentality. This turn to the right, where the free press, women's rights, science and self-critique etc., are all viewed with suspicion; the left (if these binaries still exist at all) is an endangered species.

The fifth intractable mechanism: The vast sea of weaponry and the nuclear arsenal available to all; it is only a matter of time before a dirty bomb or nuclear device is detonated, the equivalent of over-fishing, trawling, the sea bottom. Scorched earth returns to scorched earth; there are no longer resources for rebuilding as poverty and social chaos increase in the world. History, archaeological sites, villages, nations, records, are erased; history is no longer visible, readable; reading itself becomes suspect.

The sixth intractable mechanism: Enclaving of the rich and income disparity exponentially increasing; the result is hoarding of resources and increased poverty as noted. This enclaving extends, crudely, to nations; the U.S. for example uses far more resources per capital than almost any other country; the U.S. prison system is itself a flux of pure capital, privatization, the largest in the world. Prisons are less efficient than pure disappearance; even so, population growth more than makes up for the violent loss of life around the planet. Think as well of local militias, including police forces that, first and foremost, look after their own, by any means possible.

The seventh intractable mechanism: Antibiotics and spread of disease across varying species; as sludge and clutter increase world-wide, the opportunity for endemic disease increases. Disease vectors are driven by population vectors, by poor health practices, by hunger and poverty. Understand that overpopulation is behind all of this, a developing horizon, just like hacking and criminal gangs are a developing horizon of violence and seizure. There's no more living off the grid; off the grid is on the grid, within mechanisms and horizons. We're all in the ship, we're all marooned.

The eighth intractable mechanism: Global communication networks granting power and encrypted communication among activist groups, including local militias and extremists. populations. These networks are temporary, because the Net and its cousins are subject to hacking on a inconceivable scale; security simply can't keep up without infringing on the rights of others - without replacing one ideology by another, far harsher. The Net and privacy are porous, and subject to the seven mechanisms above. With so much data and control in the cloud/s, with so much control and personal information in the hands of monopolistic corporations, gangs and governments, there's no doubt that we're seeing the tip of a cyberwar iceberg that will do violent damage far beyond the Sony fiasco - damage that will extend to (for example) power, health, military, and financial grids as well.

We must begin to think of these mechanisms as both interlocked and environmental - i.e. constituents of a global and catastrophic horizon: much as the Club of Rome developed a model of interrelated flows in their relatively doomsday scenarios, we have to see this horizon as a holarchy of entangled mechanisms. The difference is that the mechanisms today are chaotic and unpredictable: there are events (primate extinctions, violent storms, the rise of violent fundamentalism, hacking of financial institutions, etc.) that are both destructive and fissured into any (ideological or instrumental) coherency that might have appeared as "explanatory" in the heady days of modernism which still inform us.

What fascinates me is the global appearance of these mechanisms in the large: there's a kind of simplicity in their phenomenology that dissolves quickly upon closer inspection. But the simplicity isn't contradicted by the details; global warming, for example, doesn't reverse because the north-east United States is having record cold spells. The overall configuration of the world is based on strange attractors, which proceed, literally, in any case; we're steerage, not steering. (The technophilic ideology of progress, paradigm shifting, and cleverness does a disservice here, promising techno-utopias just around the corner - or already here - while in reality the beheadings and bush-meat continue to ravage.)

(I think, at the least, of a curriculum focused on these mechanisms - but to what end? Past the tipping-point, things will continue to deteriorate until the anthropocene extinction does final damage. I can imagine the very rich escaping at some point, but to where, with what rockets, with what supplies? We are living in the ruin of a total institution called the global; we go down with the ship, in steerage. And steerage is now the corrosion of the dream of the West at the very least, as Plato's cave becomes the hold of a ship floundering on polluted waters.)

7b. how does one deal with pain and anguish? how does one deal with any of this?

The world seems to be descending into chaos of a qualitatively different dis/order, one characterized by terror, massacre, absolutism. Things are increasingly out of control, and this chaos is a kind of ground-work itself - nothing beyond a scorched earth policy, but more of the same. What might be a cultural or artistic response to this? How does one deal with this psychologically, when every day brings new horrors? Even traditional analyses seem to dissolve in the absolute terror that seems to be daily increasing.

How does one live within the knowledge of annihilation? How does one produce within such, in response to such? What is the conceivable meaning of such production? Is meaning itself obliterated to such an extent that even suicide becomes a useless act? == relate to American violence

ANALOG DIGITAL

8. brief note on analog/digital: the splitting/divisibility of the world bit by bit: what happens to evidence and truth itself? - attention-spans, gaming, cleverness.

CLUTTER ARCHITECTURE

9. the difficulty of cosmology, mathesis, the world. the dialog between form and formlessness. and so many fundamental constants, the slowing-down of the universe, etc. we may not survive to know any more than we do now

(or in the immediate future).

Absolute alien
Shapelessness, fungi, slimemolds and rewriting tree of life

10. the _surge,_ the _inconceivable._ think as well of the inextricable, Indra's mirrors, the 'knotting' and unraveling /raveling of the world.

BLANK

11. the Blank - blank of edgespaces, fulfillment by imaginary structures,
teleologies - the geographic blank - the 'North' - 'desert' - 'jungle' - 'cosmos' etc.

Blank: the blank of edgespace inscription and blank in gamespace (center and rules/roles) inscription and blank in edgespace (boundary, absence, ennui) phenomenology of the blank Blank 2-hour+ video far northern maps, maybe Nova Scotia book? MacGrid blank-space, local-host blank space: distinction between fissure and inscription

DIGILIT

12. tending/transparency - analog
raster/protocols - digital
- both participate in the world at large, different modes
culling
perl programming, scripting
second life performance
suicide.mov pain.mov etc.

13. on to my work/categories (and the works themselves cross categories).

SURGE COMPENDIUM

http://www.alansondheim.org/0000.jpg

"Surge is the overthrowing of all values, ideologies, and structures. It is the absolute overthrowing of all histories, privacies, persons. It is the total extinction of all species, including our own. It is the scorching of the scorching of the earth. Let's talk about this. Let's build around the Surge. Let's build around the dying and absolute annihilation. Let's do it."

Proceed.
A pixel is a digital object.
Between one pixel and another, there is annihilation.
Annihilation seethes.
There is nothing else but an epistemology of demarcated positions and ontology.
Post-digital is digital; post-digital has equivalent epistemology.A digital object is substrate-dependent.
The substrate is an object and from this we adduce strata and structures of digital objects.
Proceed.

The Surge is just that, the Surge of digital objects and substrates, replacing everything in the world. Annihilation is the potential for transformation of everything in the world. Annihilation to the limit is extinction. Abjection and truth are intertwined. Abjection and truth inhabit the substrate. The digital object is a mapping of its substrate and its substrate is subject to replacement, duplication, reassignment and other transformations. The substrate is a moment of the digital object. The entanglement of truth and abjection within the substrate is within a continuous state of annihilation and potential wells. The digital object is an object of reading; the substrate is a surface of writing.

The Surge loads substrates with digital objects. Proceed. The Surge replaces objects with digital objects. Aura is always an entangled raster. The Surge replaces aura with increasingly fine rasters. Rasters are inscriptions and demarcations. One might say that rasters are inscriptions within the metaphysical, that substrates possess no rasters, that mapping is from raster to substrate. The digital object is a choice. The digital object may be a choice of a substrate object. If a substrate object is chosen or not chosen, it will be scorched. If a substrate object is chosen, it may be inscribed. The inscription of a substrate object is not a substrate object. The inscription of a body is not a body. The inscription of a body may inhere within the body, and may be entangled within the body. The substrate of an inhered inscription is within states of annihilation and potential wells. The digital object neither exhausts physical objects nor its substrate. The digital object is an insertion into protocol farms and networks, including translations fundamentally based on the employment of process and power; to the extent that the digital object functions as an insertion, it is subject to movements across substrates.

Proceed. The digital object is en garde. The digital object is an instance. The scorched earth of the scorched earth is annihilation to the limit and the elimination of the instance. Reproduction of digital objects is finite. A reproduction machine itself may be reproduced. At the heart of the reproduction machine, at the heart of any object, digital or otherwise, is annihilation. Annihilation inhabits the absolute, and the desire for absolute annihilation constructs the scorched earth of the scorched earth.

Proceed. The Surge constructs a new earth, new habitus, new environment. One cannot turn back, one cannot return, from the Surge. The fundamental characteristic of the Surge, at this point, is the simultaneous recuperation of every history, every culture, every text, and the annihilation of every history, every culture, every text. The simulacrum of recuperation is a simulacrum.Simulacra are simultaneously recuperated and annihilated. The Surge proceeds from fundamental annihilation. The Surge is simultaneously the relativization of the world, and its absolute. Proceed. The Surge is violation fabric; on the nub of the Surge, we bear witness to annihilation. Proceed. It is not even a matter of time. It is not even a matter of bearing witness. There are no matters of which 'it is a matter.' Proceed. The _mob_ of the Surge. Proceed. The _overwhelming_ of the world, of any other world. Uselessness and annihilation of philosophies. Proceed.

BLANK TEXT

Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given

Outline for a Talk on Blank that can't be Given (That is inconceivable that it could be given, that it is inconceivable that it might occur without contradiction, that it might say anything, that anything might be said):

*/Thanks to Bruce Barber, Foofwa d'Imobilite, Tom Zummer./*

My work tends to deal with edge phenomena, areas of entanglement or confusion, appearance of glitches, and so forth. Early on I characterized my project as the relationship between abstract structures and consciousness. I've always believed that philosophy can be effected through modes other than writing or the text, that not all encounters are grounded in language, and that language has its own cloudy and entangled limits. All this said, the following is an outline on a talk which uses work done with altered motion capture equipment, as well as work produced on a recent residency at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax.

1. Philosophical work pushed to the limits:
-gamespace edges (Artworks which explore the phenomenology of
the limits of gamespaces in virtual worlds: how are objects and behaviors affected, how does the physics change, how does one "inhabit" these zones? Do the zones have strict boundaries themselves? Can one speak of a broken game, or a suite of behaviors and objects that open elsewhere?

-client or server overloading (Using massive particle sprays, fields of objects, etc., all near the client or server limits: what happens when the space or atmosphere becomes clogged? How does avatar control become entangled with the gamespace environment?)

-altered motion-capture/behavioral spaces (What happens when mocap alterations result in software overload, so that the simulation breaks down? Formally, the avatar image becomes immobile and "sits" in a lotus position. What is the experienced of enforced stasis in relation to disparate movement elsewhere?)

-software-dependent, see economic exhaustion below (Different software produces different results of course: what is the typology of glitches?) [situations where structure collapses: -where structure and the symbolic can't be recuperated (Where there's no return, where the vectors quickly end up entropic, where chaos dissolves into noise.)

-where the symbolic is limited by the _game of extension_ (So that, for example, the gamespace or mocap edge is characterized by particular behavioral regimes: the game then moves the edge elsewhere or creates a catastrophic anomaly. Once this is absorbed and con/figured, the game moves elsewhere. Sooner or later, the game of extension dissolves into the cold death of the universe.)

How are these experienced? Does experience always translate into text? What is the textuality of experience? What is the dissolution of textuality?]

2. Exhaustion of symbolic space, the blank: (The blank is a state where [ ] is emptied but always already virtual, where the blank is the site of introjection/projection.)

-blizzard whiteout example (The whiteout of the blizzard images and videos: nothing visible but a seething, the fogged details at the edge of the frame pointing towards nothing, the seething incapable of geometrical meshing or interpretation as "mandala.")

-recapitulation through contouring (Noise reduction operations on blizzard and similar images: when the contour lines reveal nothing, where the inchoate roams among and through protocol suites. A busy seething might blockade imaginary projections; nothing survives the seething.)

-maps of far north, Mandeville (Looking at maps of Mandeville's Travels 15th century or 19th maps of exploration in the far north: the landscape - what constitutes shorelines, land and water - dissolves into the inchoate. The blankness of maps is described early on by the presence of "Dragons" and later by a sense of the uncanny. Again, these are limit spaces, edge spaces, gamespaces defined by no games, unpopulated except in relation to the imaginary. Here and elsewhere, what does consciousness _do?_.)

3. Back to 1 - conceivable limits to scientific explanation:
-multiverse (Other universes, if they exist, may be totally out of communication with our own; there may always be limits to cosmological observation.)
-economic exhaustion in particle accelerators (Brillouin hints,

I think, that there may be deep and inherent ties between economic surplus and fundamental particle research; for example, particle accelerators operate up to certain energetic limits, and it would take increased expenditure to go beyond them. The universe might then be imagined to have an economic structure. High-energy cosmic rays point otherwise, but there are always going to be energy limits.)

-Planck constants (What might or might not occur "beyond" the Planck length or Planck time. The universe may or may not appear obdurate. The gamespace/edgespace of the universe might then be described by the game of extension. The description, I think, even if completely predictive on a certain level, has, at the asymptote, a blank.)

4. Roger Williams' theology (Roger Williams, the "founder" of Rhode Island, has a complex theology based on the broken succession of baptism from the beginning. Because of the break, the religious gamespace is inherently broken; each believer must decide everything for himself or herself. One might choose to become a searcher, or one might bypass the spiritual altogether. It's up to the individual; there is no inerrancy involved, no inherent law. Law is necessary for communal structure; it's a question of the State, not of the State's foundation. Think of the Law as a game, criminality existing near the edges of the gamespace, then absorbed. Without theological legitimation, there is a blank at work; the interplay between consciousness and structuration is cultural work

5. Erhu (two-string Chinese bowed instrument)
-playing 'normally' within bounds (Playing within the gamespace, playing in the first-third positions.)
-playing near the bridge: transformation to mimetic function

(Fingering within 2-3 centimeters of the bow; the gamespace is transformed to mimesis: sonic imitation, or ikonic sound, without reference or intervalic structure.)

-mimetic function as inert (At the edge of the gamespace, the sound transforms into substance. Think of falling out of the game, beginning another game, one of chaotic "noise." The game becomes a game of extension; the game of extension transforms the phenomenology of the musical structure.)

-blank (The structure becomes blank, becomes hiss; the structure becomes the substance of sound. Eventually the edge of the field is reached: If not now, when? If not now, where? As the fingers approache the bridge, there is as much of an infinite choice as ever; infinities map 1-1 linearly. But the sound itself tends towards higher ultrasonics; whatever the measurement apparatus, listening device, that too can be surpassed.)

http://www.alansondheim.org/install2.mp4

(I think as well here, of the work Azure Carter and I have done with Foofwa d'Imobilite, which tends towards similar edges and noise at times; I'm thinking especially of the Involuntaries which are available online.)

http://www.foofwa.com/production/choreiagraphies/

6. In all of the above, one might say, within any cultural game, there are limits, edges, blank spaces, games of extension, and extension beyond extension that becomes immeasurable, chaos or noise without the potential of a return trajectory. Think of the energy of the vacuum, virtual particles, annihilation limits in terms of receptors: any receptor may be surpassed, there is always surplus bandwidth, without recuperation, reconstitution. How does subjectivity deal with this, concern itself with this?

7. At the other end of these broken totalities there are filters which process incoming and structure outgoing. The filters operate within protocol suites, layers of organization that transform information. The suites themselves are always transforming; they loosely define the gamespace, and to this extent, they might be considered closed circulations within potential wells. But wells themselves have tunnels, nothing is secure, and artifacts within the world are at best temporary stases. All of this simultaneously fits together and falls apart; all of this coheres and is incoherent, and this in any case is the talk on blank that can't be given, that is inconceivable that it might occur, that it might say anything, that anything might be said.

http://www.alansondheim.org/blanking.mp4