<nettime> Phenomenology of mannequin-avatar construction (text/art)

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

Phenomenology of mannequin-avatar construction


>From mannequin avatar discovered in the back of the immersive 3d desk room
through scanning programs, as in second life, so in first, as in the bar-
rier or injunction against the milk of the mother in this dry and airless
realm, once entering the computer for resonant transform back through fil-
tering into perception and thereby repressed spread across yet more and
other injunctions of the other - from skin through plaster-plasticine,
from ligament through metal pinning, skein thrusts forth across impotent
transformations yet a boy can dream can't he.

These are stillborn, static formations of .obj files, in other words ob-
jects, for insertion into true world video/performance. In other words, an
epistemo-ontological rebus, perhaps condensation/displacement of previous
work, displaced into/outto mannequin towards maquette, maquette towards
model towards inscription lifted from the magic writing slate.

Enter the sleazy, tawdry - enter defuge as annihilated punctum; doesn't
the same thing happen to every boy and girl in second life? All those
exaggerated breasts, penises, lips, toppling airless bodies with physics
configured in a distant memory of a newborn and innocent physical world,
taking us taking it for granted. What's revealed beneath the surface is
the phal-lick; what's revealed beneath the phal-lick is the surface
emptied of content, inscribed, exhausted. There's nothing there there.
Either the surface is closed/clothed or it's emptied, sheave-skin, already
torn, fallen apart, sleazy (as if the night revealed real members of
itself, real w/wholes).

The mannequin cracks. Topologically, an organism is a coherent (linked)
multiply-pierced torus defined everywhere; topologically, a mannequin is
an un-linkable fissured structure which may or may not be hollow - i.e. a
set of manifold sections and spheres. Neither has well-defined nodes; the
body has no well-defined parent-child relationships; the manifold has
well-defined parts and linking mechanisms. Tissues, organs, organelles,
etc. of the body are often porous, self-defining, resilient, multiply-
connected through nerves, ligaments, musculature, blood and other vessels,
transport mechanisms of all sorts, repair and defense mechanisms, etc.
These mechanisms are not mechanical; they depend on a local electro-chemi-
cal environment; they are processes requiring constant maintenance. The
mannequin is passive, a well-defined collection of well-defined states.

Oh what's the difference, I'm here, they're there, or vice versa, all
these false identification existing only as long as the brain functions,
mind 'works,' however defined, and this isn't well-.

Video materials, once one has a shield, everything falls into place. But
how can one use a shield against the immense vitality of the Universe!
Space and time beyond all comprehension! Unfathomable measurement! We're
just here for a second of eternity! No wait, a nanosecond of eternity!
Wait, we're just a page between life and death! A spot on the sunglasses
of God! A furrow of the imaginary! No wait!

The thing about Valeska Gert, obdurate substance, there's flicking of the
symbolic, nothing concrete, she's too smart, too fluid, for that. She's
either an impersonator (mind you, of the highest order) or a philosopher!
That's my role of thinking. Deities flicker on the lip-nub of death.

The worldling praxis of aim having been formed in the heart, he the Tatha-
gata, creating a conventional body, practices desires exactly as he cares.
(from 40 verses in Yoga of the Guhyasamajatantra, translated Waxman)

If philosophy is to remain true to the law of its own form, as the repre-
sentation of truth and not as a guide to the acquisition of knowledge,
then the exercise of this form - rather than its anticipation in the
system - must be accorded due importance. (Walter Benjamin, The origin of
German Tragic Drama)

http://www.alansondheim.org/sadness.mp4
http://www.alansondheim.org/ valeskagert materials

For Valeska Gert:

http://www.anstendig.com/Valeska%20Gert/gert_page.html
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1478054




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