[NetBehaviour] Confusion

[Alan Sondheim]

Confusion


The exhibition arena hall and skysphere are clumped, colluded, coagulated,
confused, contorted, convoluted, complicated, occluded, obscured, obfu-
scated, and obstructed - to such an extent that editing at this point
becomes almost impossible; an editor, myself through Julu or Nikuko (Alan
Dojoji), literally can't see ahead, with or without mouselook, sufficient-
ly to isolate and link individual prims. Everything is spewing against or
towards everything else and the high-speed movement (rotatory, linear, in
combination) of objects results in jumps from position to position; they
remain ungraspable. It's also increasingly unclear as to what constitutes
an object in the first place; particle spews are everywhere, as are alien
permissions that refuse to be modified.

There are also slow-ups as a result of increasing bandwidth; Second Life -
in other words my access to the representation of the virtual world -
almost grinds to a halt at times. Think of over 2000 particles each carry-
ing a video texture and moving at high-speed from sources that are also
moving at high speed, among say, 300 three-dimensional and partially
transparent prims (also moving, etc.), and you get the idea. So there is a
shift in attention, from proper construction or deconstruction to the
maintenance, management, and configuration of a miasma which can barely be
grasped in whole or in part.

I think of this as a form of information implosion where everything gets
out of hand, or a war or sex zone where it's impossible to walk or think,
or Pliny's uncle's death (and other devastation) when Vesuvius blew: What
does one do in such a situation? How does one do it? One false step or
click and you're underwater or in the skysphere (which is a bit quieter
than the thirteen channels of sound competing for your attention on the
ground floor - not to mention video, if you have that turned on as well),
finding or fighting your way back and to what? - More of the same, an
incandescent Las Vegas teetering on the brink of the apocalyptic with no
way out, and possibly no way in for that matter. Because the entrance
itself shimmers, dances, and roars, and it's easier to fly through the
melange than to attempt walking or running in - neither may be possible
from time to time. Then consider this, and what do you do or see when you
get there? Some things, some prims, moving out of the way, vanishing or
almost vanishing - it depends on size and location. And for that matter,
you might not be able to recognize the vanishing at all - there are always
things coming in to take their place, coming at you, furiously fleeing
you, or so it seems. The wonder for me, other than the beauty in coagula-
tion, decay and concentration, is that all of this occurs within a small
and somewhat stabilized space, a column in a sense, ascending from ocean
through deconstructed architecture to skysphere - neither above the
skysphere nor below the ocean nor beneath the ground - anyway - all of
this occurs in a relatively contained space, and yet seems everywhere,
everywhen, a concussion of simultaneities which appear self-defining, and
simultaneously topologically/topographically open ad closed, a machine
extending from micro- to macro-cosm, and yet doing nothing but high-speed
processing and representation of scripts that appear to be running amuck,
but are in fact quite logical from the interior, if in fact there is an
interior, which is also, in the midst of all this craziness, up and down
for grabs.

1005 total 6, yesterday 6, 1008 total 6, yesterday 3, 1012 total 3,
yesterday 3, 1020 total 3, yesterday 7, 1023 total 7, yesterday 3, 1030
total 3, yesterday 7, 1034 total 7, yesterday 4, 1051 total 4, yesterday
17, 1056 total 17, yesterday 4, 1060 total 4, yesterday 4, 1066 total 4,
yesterday 5, 1073 total 5, yesterday 6, 1082 total 6, yesterday 9, 1087
total 9, yesterday 5, 1088 total 5, yesterday 0, 1097 total 0, yesterday
8, 1107 total 8, yesterday 10, 1114 total 10, yesterday 7, 1120 total 7,
yesterday 5, 1122 total 5, yesterday 2, 1129 total 2, yesterday 7, 1133
total 7, yesterday 4, 1134 total 4, yesterday 0, 1145 total 0, yesterday
11, 1148 total 11, yesterday 3, 1152 total 3, yesterday 0, 1152 total 3,
yesterday 3, 1154 total 0, yesterday 2, 118 total 28, yesterday 49, 123
total 49, yesterday 5, 133 total 5, yesterday 9, 167 total 6, yesterday
28, 178 total 28, yesterday 10, 211 total 10, yesterday 33, 317 total 33,
yesterday 105, 317 total 33, yesterday 105, 330 total 105, yesterday 12,
347 total 12, yesterday 17, 366 total 17, yesterday 18, 391 total 18,
yesterday 25, 404 total 25, yesterday 13, 412 total 13, yesterday 7, 439
total 7, yesterday 26, 448 total 26, yesterday 9, 451 total 9, yesterday
2, 482 total 2, yesterday 31, 489 total 31, yesterday 6, 588 total 6,
yesterday 98, 610 total 98, yesterday 21, 670 total 14, yesterday 11, 762
total 3, yesterday 88, 843 total 88, yesterday 81, 858 total 81, yesterday
14, 878 total 14, yesterday 19, 949 total 62, yesterday 8, 965 total 8,
yesterday 15.

To access the Odyssey exhibition The Accidental Artist:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/48/12/22