<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><p class="MsoNormal">The origin of the computer involved the decoding of
"enigma," a mystery—a desire to penetrate the impenetrable, the
veiled, violating the inner sanctum of an enemy in a time of war. Demobbed, in
a time of "peace," the computer became as aggressive tool of
seduction, offering algorithmic possibilities for happiness and ease/ or obeisance
and abjection. (I hope by the end of the day we don't discover that Donald
Trump is the apotheosis of this virtual existence where a lie is equal to truth
and being "bored with success" is the coin of the realm.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Both ADEENA KARASICK and ALAN SONDHEIM are intensely attuned
to the deep effect of the computer in contemporary life and culture. While
embracing and even ingesting its pervasive presence and adopting its tools to
their poetic/artistic purposes, each in her or his way carries out a rear guard
action against it, in essential ways redefining or critiquing its nature.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Worddance of a woman
of valor—Salome</i>: Canadian poet, performance artist and librettist ADEENA
KARASICK is acutely attuned to the seductive impulse that lies at the heart of
the computer. But she transforms its hostile functionality to an ecstatic dance
of feminist (religious) empowerment and sensual self affirmation. Against an idea
of infinity embedded in algorithmic proliferations, she posits a counter
narrative—the infinity the 13th century Kabbalist Abulafia (the contemporary of
the Sufi poets Rumi and Yunus Emre in Anatolia) saw within a play/dance of language.
That's the way Karasick describes it: "<span style="font-size:13.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;background:white"> For the past couple of
decades, I’ve been consumed with how a sense of infinite linguistic play leads
not to paralysis'... [But] </span><span style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:
"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:
minor-bidi">its seductive swathes of color texture, image typographies are
synechdochic of how meaning unveils itself as an ever-spiraling space where
“Origin” is <i>unlocateable</i> [italics my
own]</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">." Karasick returns to the unlocatable mystery at
the origin of the computer. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">"Artist, writer, and musician, working in entangled media," ALAN
SONDHEIM is inherently suspicious of the ability of the computer finally to
reveal the secret embedded in the enigma. Rather, he sees it as a series problematic
codes full of holes, created and combined, proliferating into ever larger
systems. Yet the gaps remain, and humanity, culture remain entangled with them.
In their skepticism of a final "localized" meaning, Sondheim and Karasick are similar to each other; but, tonally,
extremely different. For her, the
continuous change with "unlocatable origin" is ecstatic. His is
melancholy, infused with a sense of catastrophe and dissolution. His work is a
continuous meditation on endless human entanglements with codes and the wounds
they inflict. Here is how he describes it: " I have been working with
computers for decades, and specifically with virtual worlds and motion capture
for the past fifteen or so. I developed the notion of 'codework' to indicate
works in which code is presenced on the surface, but problematic - works in
which meaning uneasily inhabits distinctions among 'worlds of the work' and
program-spaces. Of course the distinctions themselves are problematic and
entangled among many other things, such as the body, abjection, and 'dirt' in
the mix. In motion capture, I've worked with altered software and mapping,
producing distorted avatars and avatar behaviors. In virtual worlds, I've been
working with concepts of gamespace, edgespace, and blankspace...."</p><div><br></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">To know more about Sondheim's vast work, one can read the
interview "Surging Towards Abjection: an Interview with Alan
Sondheim" in <i>The Rain Taxi</i> (<a href="http://www.raintaxi.com/?s=Alan+Sondheim+Interview">http://www.raintaxi.com/?s=Alan+Sondheim+Interview</a>).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB">I hope the members of the list will participate in the
discussions around the works of these two artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:13.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;
mso-ansi-language:EN-GB"> </span></p>
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