[NetBehaviour] outline of emanent research (current work at wvu)

Alan Sondheim sondheim at panix.com
Sat Jan 19 01:37:43 CET 2008





outline of emanent research


(note while the notions of 'code,' 'coding,' 'decoding,' codework,
underlie almost everything below, they're not explicit - nor are the
actions of reading and writing. the actions can be considered emergent
phenomena, and the notions as primitives in the sense of members of a set,
etc. again, the analog and digital phenomenologies are implicit as well,
as are the (related) concepts of abjection and purification. the analyses
of these comes out through praxis, attention to detail, thinking through
mandalic structuring until the scaffolding leads, not to silence, but to
tending. this should be clearer as the work progresses.

i should note that the following is both a constitution of my usual/cur-
rent directions and most likely too ambitious. the trajectories circulate
around formal systems and their psychoanalytic/psychological receptivi-
ties, around emanents and 'true worlds,' around edge phenomena which turn
towards the uncanny and abject, around languages, bodies, sexualities,
communalities, and inhabitations. i have increasingly worked through
buddhist philosophies, the analogic and digital at the limits, notions of
'dis/eased' philosophies, deathing and uneasy worlds. now that i have a
clear time to think through these things, the outline below is useful as a
guide; for that matter, it's a guide to the past few years of the 'inter-
net text' as well.)

I. motion capture: this conjures up external behavioral characteristics
translated into internal processes (penetration, scale, displacement,
torsion, according to various geometries). think of mocap behaviors
operating within a constrained field with strange attractors / catas-
trophic jumps. continue to develop mocap with new multi-valent sensors
and software rewrites:

1. turning nodes on and off
2. combining nodes
3. mathesis such that node1 = f(node{n not = 1}), or such that
    node1 = recursively f(node1)
4. multivalent sensors such that sensor(x) = sensor[{n}]

what are the emergent images here?

what is the possibility of constructing bvh files with additional nodes
determined mathematically from the hardware set? or mathematically from
extraneous data?

what is the possibility of other organic models (i.e. than human or
animal forms)?

IA. data remappings

entry of bvh files into blender:
1. modeled onto abstracted forms
2. modeled onto parent/child forms
3. modeled onto metaball forms

blender file outputs:

1. entry into cave environment: static or dynamic
2. video output
3. what is the possibility of gaming output here? (moving around emanent
    environment)
3. second life output: static or dynamic/interactive

IB. interiors

1. standardized interiors: sheave-skin, sheave-organism
2. constructed 'model' interiors: solid, transparent, penetrable,
    impenetrable
3. abject fluxed interiors: how should these be constructed?

IC. interior narratologies

1. abject/purified narratologies and emanent interactions
2. abjected/purified contents of dis/ease, dis/order, ecstasy, ekstasis,
    catatonia, defuge, death/immobility, sexuality, speech/murmured/
    whispered/cried/screamed, body formed/deformed
3. tantric/middleway theoretics

ID. choreographic mocap (see above)

1. additional issues of jump/leap, exhaustion, tether
2. video/photographic output as well as bvh

II. scan

phenomenology of scanning, causality across scanned lines

IIA. small scanner

1. head/speech phenomena dissected
2. schizophrenias and beam-splitters
3. reflections from coils, air condensers
4. static tantric buddha image: sutured, stitched-displaced, node
    combinations and splits
5. wounds, scars, lips, genitals, ears

output into .obj files into blender/cave
output into video/still image files

within blender: solve the issue of disappearance/transparency

IIIB. large scanner

1. interior scans: rooms with bodies, reflections, dance-studio,
    scan-choreographies
2. exterior scans at bretz coke ovens, persona rapid transit (in motion),
    soccer fields
3. mobilized body scans in inert environments: reading 2d -> 3d, nature of
    the inference.
3. environmental scans with mobilized and peripheral bodies
5. narratologies of such bodies: violence, chase, jump/fall, etc.
6. choreographic narratologies

III. access grid (open source internet 2 group messaging/environment)

1. distant interaction with emanents
2. readings of the corporate / corporate bodies: photographs/video
3. theory and discussion, levinas, leder, lingis, etc. at the distance
    of telecommunications

IV. cave and second life

1. performance and documentation
2. working/running within emanent interiors
3. and so forth

V. goals of the above:

1. what does it mean to be in-carnated within the real/virtual/
    true world?
2. what are the edge-phenomena/plastic and static limits of the body?
3. of the geopolitical body? of the political-economic body?
    performance: abu-gharayb modeling in sl
    performance: abu-gharayb modeling in choreography
4. what are the signifiers of bodily arousal/violence/meditation?
    how are these constituted within the real/virtual?
5. readings: what does it mean to read the real body? the virtual body?
6. what are the ontologies and epistemologies involved here?
    ontological status of the so-called virtual -
    schrodinger's cat paradox and collapse of the wave function as model
    for simultaneous analogic/digital readings -
    seeing through microscopy (tunnel, scanning, optical, etc.):
    are ontology and epistemology equivalent at the limit?
    (are analogic and digital equivalent at a parallel limit?)

VI. medical model

1. internals and externals, static/dynamic. remnants of the visible
    human project, gendering of the visual/internal
2. comfort, dis/comfort, ease, dis/ease, hysteria and abjection/fluid-
    ity (laycock's 1840 essay on hysteria, kristeva, chasseguet-smirgel)
3. dis/ease, hysteria, and so forth of emanents
    distorted emanent behavior and body image (gaz)
    distorted surface textures and behavior-collisions (sondheim)
    distorted worlding, 'bringing one out of the true world' (etc.)
4. medical model and technology
5. psychoanalytics and technology, psychoanalytics of emanents

VII. radio

1. vlf - very low frequency - body interferences with antenna
    reception, phenomenology of body coupling with antenna
2. scanner - social, continuous socio-political landscape description.
3. sw - anomalous signals
4. long-wave - anomalous signals
5. crystal - the receptivity of inert materials, primordial radio and
    primordial radio culture
6. phenomenology of the antenna/field: materiality of the world as
    electromagnetic channeling

VIII. emanents within fieldings, choreographies, edge/boundary phenomena

VIIIA. praxis of edge/boundary phenomena

1. analogic and worn emanent boundaries
2. edge / boundary phenomena - physics and psychophysics of the game-
    world edge in second life
3. phenomena of the sheave-skin and sheave-skin internals
4. phenomena of medical models in relation to edge/boundaries

VIIIB. praxis of edge/boundary phenomena with hardware/software

1. edge phenomena in literature, codework, mathesis of the text
    (cramer's and reith's programs)
2. edge phenomena within the motion capture software, poser, blender,
    calculations for example of sin(tan x) as tan x nears the
    asymptote
3. generalization of edge phenomena into the dialectic between tacit
    knowledge (polyani) and error (winograd/flores)

VIIIC. live choreographies:

1. foofwa and soccer (edge phenomena, dancesport, etc.)
2. foofwa with crystal radio, vlf radio, etc. in large field
3. sexuality of ballet (nude ballet, classical or genre figures),
    gendering of roles, ballet as emanation
4. anita berber narratologies ('annihilation: to the limit!')
5. foofwa dancework at coke ovens
6. 'body-contouring' of dance/geography
    the geography of dance, dance of geography, dance geography
7. 'body-contouring' of dance/technology: dance at the limits
    of the machine

IX. world-constructions

1. what constitutes worlds? constructing?
    world of the text, inhabitation/dwelling/building (heidegger,
    dufrenne)
2. what constitutes the true world? worlding?
    'true world' in which lines/angles are 'trued' (affine geometry),
    'true world' in the sense of 'trued' phenomenologies within which
    virtual, real, and ikonic are blurred and interpenetrating, somewhat
    equivalent, and within which traditional epistemologies of symbol/
    sign/signifier/signified/index/ikon etc. break down (kalachakra
    tantra, jeffrey hopkins)
3. 'reading' underlying (substructural, configuration files, guides)
    organization of mocap/scan through surface phenomena
    (and the relationship of this reading to waddington's epigenetic
    landscapes)
4. who is world? communality, consensuality?
    the problem of other minds and the problem of consensual other minds
    (group hallucinations, vijnanavada, dwarf sitings, ufos, etc.)

X. outputs:

1. video and film (in practice, usual issues of apparatus/spectator)
2. digital and silver photography (digital/analogic and analogic/digi-
    tal divides - potential well on one hand, grain on the other)
3. series of short papers/descriptions
4. series of performances (individual and collaborative)
    morgantown and elsewhere across real geographies
    anywhere across virtual geographies
5. formal presentations at wvu (spring and perhaps fall)
6. formal presentations elsewhere


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