[Nettime-bold] current work

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

-


Internet Philosophy and Psychology -                             Sept 001


Since the WTC tragedy, my work has been dealing with the creation and
destruction of language, of the broken teeth of words. It has also dealt
with the possibility of distance against its very impossibility, and with
exile, the corruption of culture, the corrosion of news and media.

In Miami, I am an inaccessible digit, furiously telephoning; what is writ-
ten travels through the mutilation and veering of thought. I am ashamed
over my own depression, aware that terror decathects meaning - that mean-
ing is a luxury. I try to write through this.

Below is the usual intro:

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 URL is:
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ which is partially mirrored at
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html. (The first
site includes some graphics, dhtml, The Case of the Real, etc.)

The changing nature of the email lists, Cybermind and Wryting, to which
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 4500 print-
ed pages. It began in 1994, and has continued as an extended meditation on
cyberspace, expanding into 'wild theory' and literatures.

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, and
Nikuko, in particular.

The long-waves are fuzzy thematics bearing on such issues as death, sex,
virtual embodiment, the "granularity of the real," physical reality, com-
puter languages, and protocols. The waves weave throughout the text; the
resulting splits and convergences owe something to phenomenology, program-
ming, 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); I also additional video materials, created with Azure Carter
and Foofwa d'Imobilite, on two cdroms, Baal and Parables. I've worked on a
series of codeworks and political pieces, as well as Asteroids, a group of
videos based on 3d modeling of spatial objects and fly-byes. Finally, I've
recently completed two cdrom collections of materials, Miami and Voyage.

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.

It may be difficult to enter the texts for the first time. The Case of the
Real is a sustained work and possible introduction. It is also helpful to
read the first file, Net1.txt, and/or to look at the latest files (lq, lr)
as well. Skip around. The Index works only for the earlier files; you can
look up topics and then do a search on the file listed.

The texts may be distributed in any medium; please credit me. I would ap-
preciate in return any comments you may have.

Current cdroms are available for $14; if you've have an earlier version,
they go for $10. (Video format is .mov with Sorenson compression or .avi
or .avi-jpg). (Costs include shipping.)

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:
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
Parables of Izanami, Potes and Poets Press, 2000/1

Alan Sondheim - Miami cellphone (voicemail) 305-610-5620
Miami phone (no voicemail) 305-668-5303 email sondheim@panix.com
Home address: 4600 SW 67th Avenue, Apartment 252, Miami, FL, 33155


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






_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold