Re: your post to [-empyre-] the symbolic and the real (fwd)

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

(Sorry for confusion - Alan)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 00:43:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Adam Nash <adam@yamanakanash.net>
Cc: post-avatar <post-avatar@yamanakanash.net>
Subject: Re: your post to [-empyre-] the symbolic and the real


Hi - a few things. By hidden structures, both code and architecture -
which are one and the same. And the protocols are part and parcel of this;
for example, older vrml might not run on newer systems - the codes are
different. But there's nothing ephemeral or ghostly about this; in fact,
it's more 'exact' than 'real' architecture. I think one might argue that
there are ontologies of the symbolic without ascending or descending into
the imaginary or (Lafcadio Hearnlike phantasmic); in fact, it's part of
'occidental' culture to separate the symbolic from the referent - in this
instance (as well as, say, ontologies of fundamental particles) it may
well be a mistake. In other words, vr is not vr but at least in the
scaffolding is real, rr, in an other, but not in a less or imaginary sense
than our notion of physical reality, Sartre's pratico-inert, etc.

Second, a viewpoint is always decided to the extent that there are
viewpoints which aren't activated, which aren't present. If I look at an
avatar from position x, I am not looking at it from position y. Is this
trivial? No - because what one is looking at of course is a
two-dimensional representation - but one of an ontologically stable three-
dimensional virtual object. I'm always amazed in my own work for example
(I use Blender etc.) that one can create a video presenting an appearance
of three-dimensional objects - which are really nothing but collapsed
mappings, into two dimensions, of a scaffolding which only manifests
itself for the viewer.

In other words again: I walk around the stone. The stone is there. Here's
a matter for Buddhism, there, not there, etc. But I virtually walk around
a virtual stone: my walk readjusts the scaffolding and projection onto the
screen; I am doing nothing; the image of the stone constantly reappears,
is reformed, in relation to different viewpoints and of course screen
rate. It is ephemeral, but it is also exact, and concrete. It is _there._

- Alan


On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Adam Nash wrote:

> Alan, I'm particularly interested in your response to Saul's comment on
> empyre, but tangentially as it relates to post-avatar - would you mind
> expanding on it in relation to MU worlds? What do you mean by hidden
> structures - do you mean the code itself, or the 'architecture' of the world?
> And how is the viewpoint always decided? If audience self-navigate during a
> virtual performance, particularly in out-of-avatar mode, isn't it undecided?
>
> Adam
>
> On Tue, 7 Oct 2003 15:44:47 -0400 (EDT), Alan Sondheim wrote
> > Perhaps but only to a limited extent - first, because VR always has a
> > concrete structure/protocols - WYSIWYG - and second, because there
> > are always hidden structures; the viewpoint is always decided,
> > always a preferential one.
> >
> > Alan
> >
> > On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, saul ostrow wrote:
> >
> > > can we truly imagine something that has no corresponding physical
> > > attributes in the material world  -- isn't VR a bit like building a
> > > unicorn -- consequently it would fall under the Lacanian notion of the
> > > imagined or Benjamin's notion  of the phantasmagoria -- in other words
> > > it is a world of nothing but representation and as such it is always
> > > already symbolic -- the  real  of it is  the experience of it, not  the
> > > constructed illusions that are  experienced -- in this the participant
> > > makes the imagined real
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > empyre forum
> > > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > >
> >
> > http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
> > http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
> > Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
> > finger sondheim@panix.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> --
>

http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
finger sondheim@panix.com