Michael Current and I started Cybermind back in 1994; we wanted a forum for discussion of cybersp... more Michael Current and I started Cybermind back in 1994; we wanted a forum for discussion of cyberspace theory and practice, issues of embodiment and sexuality and so on. That's my background. For me, the most overwhelming arena of writing, in which the body appeared fullest so to speak, was ytalk. With Cybermind and the other lists I send to, the writing is cooler (although it might not appear such). Nowadays my experiences are generally in the form of feedback from writing; the intimacy isn't there, and couldn't be there at this point-it would interfere too much with my private life. In this I'm echoing what Dibbell found in My Tiny Life-I had to move on. Or to some extent, the Net has evolved elsewhere; with the close to perfect emergence of real-time detailed video, for example. Initially I found myself exploring any number of Internet venues, most of them ascii at that time (what I've called 'darknet' although that word now seems used otherwise); I also started teaching Net matters, practice or theory, etc. One exercise-I asked people to log on to various IRC channels as 'Susie' or some such, no matter what the gender.
The talk is improvised, recorded in Snagit, assembled in AdobePremiere. It includes materials fro... more The talk is improvised, recorded in Snagit, assembled in AdobePremiere. It includes materials from a number of videos andstills. It\u27s a summary of the work I\u27ve been doing for thepast decade and a half, the unproduction of the body or bodiesin a variety of technological and haptic circumstances. There\u27ssome theory and some history and referencing in the video andof course as is my wont; I apologize ahead of time for anyerrors. The piece was recorded in 13 sections, one after theother, which were then assembled in the order of recording.This is a theme which pervades all of my work, the problematicof the body in relation to the digital and technologies ingeneral, including analog. It\u27s an attempt to collapse theproduction of the digital body back into the analog, and toemphasize the body in relation to biomes and microbiomes;disease and death; refugee, racist and contested environments;ecstasy, sexuality, and abjections; bacterial, viral, andother forms of disease; and de...
I write online, teach online, conference online, and even doa bit of governance - I run a number ... more I write online, teach online, conference online, and even doa bit of governance - I run a number of email lists, which presents all sorts of issues. But here I want to deal with my writing, my texts, which I send out to several email lists, several times daily. In order to do this, I work constantly - a lot of the time I use online environments and tools for my work.
The trAce online writing community, directed by Sue Thomas, originates from Nottingham Trent Univ... more The trAce online writing community, directed by Sue Thomas, originates from Nottingham Trent University, England; the URL is http://trace.ntu.ac.uk. I was the second virtual writer-in-residence at trAce (following Christy Sanford Sheffield); I used the six months to write a diary; work on my own texts; participate heavily in the Webboard (BBS) discussion (this also included initiating a number of conferences); and developing four projects, all of which are concerned with writing, semantics, organization, and deconstruction. Three of these projects - LoveandWar, The Yours, and The Traceroute (or trAceroute) Project - are at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm; the Lost Project is at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/lost/index.htm. The following is a brief description of the individual projects, and some of the issues involved in them.
Broken Theory is a jettisoned collection of fragmentary writing, collected and collaged by new me... more Broken Theory is a jettisoned collection of fragmentary writing, collected and collaged by new media artist, writer, musician, and theorist Alan Sondheim. Folding theoretical musings, text experiments, and personal confessions into a single textual flow, it examines the somatic foundations of philosophical theory and theorizing, discussing their relationships to the writer and body, and to the phenomenology of failure and fragility of philosophy’s production. Writing remains writing, undercuts and corrects itself, is always superseded, always produced within an untoward and bespoke silo – not as an inconceivable last word, but instead a broken contribution to philosophical thinking. The book is based on fragmentation and collapse, displacing annihilation and wandering towards a form of “roiling” within which the text teeters on the verge of disintegration. In other words, the writing develops momentary scaffoldings – writing shored up by the very mechanisms that threaten its disappe...
The Internet Text is an extended analysis of the environment of Internet communication, an extend... more The Internet Text is an extended analysis of the environment of Internet communication, an extended meditation on the psychology and philosophy of Net exchange. As such, it is concerned primarily with virtual or electronic subjectivity – the simultaneous presence and absence of the user, the sorts of libidinal projections that result, the nature of flamewars, and the ontological or epistemological issues that underlie these processes. Internet Text begins with a brief, almost corrosive, account of the subject – an account based on the concepts of Address, Protocol, and Recognition. This section “reduces” virtual subjectivity to packets of information, Internet sputterings, and an ontology of the self based on Otherness – your recognition of me is responsible for my Net-presence. The reduction then begins to break down through a series of further texts detailing the nature of this presence; a nature which is both sexualized/gendered, and absenting, the result of an imaginary site. Ev...
straight ahead to the body creased and folded where the legs join. looking down towards a convolu... more straight ahead to the body creased and folded where the legs join. looking down towards a convoluted topography of triangular slits. straight ahead above the slits. descending in the presence of the slits. angling upward in the presence of the slits. backing up, stopped by a wall. forward, stopped by a wall. turning to the right, looking through double slits at a young woman sleeping. straight head by the side of the woman. unable to proceed forward. turning to the right near the young woman, ascending near the young woman. unable to ascend. turning further to the right and straight ahead. unable to move. ascending further until the outer grey peripheral belt is visible; just above, the reddened underbelly of a cantilever beam. a second image of the young woman in a second alcove. moving forwards towards the alcove. hovering above the alcove. descending into the alcove and looking upward. turning to the right, facing the young woman duplicated in the alcove. continuing to turn. there is a nude man in the shadow. moving to the left. the body is there, hovering, next to the young woman. he has his arms between his legs. he is headless. slightly descending and to the left again. turning to the right. backing o Ú . remaining within the alcove. ascending slightly. there is a hand grasping something. it may be an arm on another arm. ascending slightly. two edges meet at acute angles, panels carrying the image of the creased and folded body. above, the red underbelly of more cantilevers. to the left and right, grey support beams surround, the peripheral belt. gaps are visible in the belt. above to the left, intimations of another series. below, shadows of limbs FROM THE POSITION OF THE YOUNG WOMAN, invisible now and most likely alert.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2006
In order to fulfil my duties pursuant to full-time employment without fear of censorship (somethi... more In order to fulfil my duties pursuant to full-time employment without fear of censorship (something all too often in our country, alas!), I will answer the following excellent questions which you have posed, to the best of my ability, directly, I appreciate the time you have taken to develop them, in relation to the more general theme of the direction of future literature, if there is a future, if there is literature. Please excuse this format, since of course there is no tenure committee, no tenure, no holdfast in the fast-forward sea of media/information flow. And of course committees are nowadays temporary at best, designed on the fly to handle particular problems that appear, perhaps disappear or transform before adjournment. Comparing writing practices from the years 1995 and 2005, what do you see as being the most significant historic development(s) in writing(s) in, for and with digital environments in the past decade? This of course depends on what is meant by 'writing.' Writing per se has not changed; what has changed is mechanics, performativity, technology. Probably most of the writing worldwide is currently within the worlds of blogs, Wikis, online gaming, and so forth. In 1995, almost everyone online, AOL users excepted, was familiar with the commandline interface to some extent. Being online often meant dealing with unix shells (today, linux shells). This created a sense of being close to the bone, literally, in relation to the net itself; when I'm online (as now) in the unix shell at panix.com, I can enter a command such as 'who'-and I will get a list of everyone on now, as well as what software they're using; for example, are they sending email, working in the emacs or vi editors, and so forth. This community, one might say, communality, is always in the background, even though I rarely hear from these people. The computer is always already shared. I'm aware I'm writing electronically within a network. Today-and this started with the dumping, by AOL, of around two million users onto the Net a decade or so ago, most people are shielded from the undercurrent, what I've called the 'darknet' (before this term was taken over by the media for other uses). Today, being online usually means working with GUI, graphic user interfaces, which are well-and sometimes over-designed. The number of commands available are less with a GUI editor (the full number of unix commands runs to over 1800). The code-the protocols at work-is increasingly invisible, and the Net is
"This collection of original writings and artwork challenges commonly held definitions of th... more "This collection of original writings and artwork challenges commonly held definitions of the body. Filmmakers, poets, visual and performance artists, sex workers, activists, and cultural critics employ outrage and analysis to investigate the body as a source of identity and an object of social control. The contributors offer anguished and exultant visions of gay yearning and despair, male heterosexual hysteria, ethnic defiance, feminist reflection, and emotional recognition. These rigorous and inventive works will entrance and provoke." -- p. [4] of cover.
Michael Current and I started Cybermind back in 1994; we wanted a forum for discussion of cybersp... more Michael Current and I started Cybermind back in 1994; we wanted a forum for discussion of cyberspace theory and practice, issues of embodiment and sexuality and so on. That's my background. For me, the most overwhelming arena of writing, in which the body appeared fullest so to speak, was ytalk. With Cybermind and the other lists I send to, the writing is cooler (although it might not appear such). Nowadays my experiences are generally in the form of feedback from writing; the intimacy isn't there, and couldn't be there at this point-it would interfere too much with my private life. In this I'm echoing what Dibbell found in My Tiny Life-I had to move on. Or to some extent, the Net has evolved elsewhere; with the close to perfect emergence of real-time detailed video, for example. Initially I found myself exploring any number of Internet venues, most of them ascii at that time (what I've called 'darknet' although that word now seems used otherwise); I also started teaching Net matters, practice or theory, etc. One exercise-I asked people to log on to various IRC channels as 'Susie' or some such, no matter what the gender.
The talk is improvised, recorded in Snagit, assembled in AdobePremiere. It includes materials fro... more The talk is improvised, recorded in Snagit, assembled in AdobePremiere. It includes materials from a number of videos andstills. It\u27s a summary of the work I\u27ve been doing for thepast decade and a half, the unproduction of the body or bodiesin a variety of technological and haptic circumstances. There\u27ssome theory and some history and referencing in the video andof course as is my wont; I apologize ahead of time for anyerrors. The piece was recorded in 13 sections, one after theother, which were then assembled in the order of recording.This is a theme which pervades all of my work, the problematicof the body in relation to the digital and technologies ingeneral, including analog. It\u27s an attempt to collapse theproduction of the digital body back into the analog, and toemphasize the body in relation to biomes and microbiomes;disease and death; refugee, racist and contested environments;ecstasy, sexuality, and abjections; bacterial, viral, andother forms of disease; and de...
I write online, teach online, conference online, and even doa bit of governance - I run a number ... more I write online, teach online, conference online, and even doa bit of governance - I run a number of email lists, which presents all sorts of issues. But here I want to deal with my writing, my texts, which I send out to several email lists, several times daily. In order to do this, I work constantly - a lot of the time I use online environments and tools for my work.
The trAce online writing community, directed by Sue Thomas, originates from Nottingham Trent Univ... more The trAce online writing community, directed by Sue Thomas, originates from Nottingham Trent University, England; the URL is http://trace.ntu.ac.uk. I was the second virtual writer-in-residence at trAce (following Christy Sanford Sheffield); I used the six months to write a diary; work on my own texts; participate heavily in the Webboard (BBS) discussion (this also included initiating a number of conferences); and developing four projects, all of which are concerned with writing, semantics, organization, and deconstruction. Three of these projects - LoveandWar, The Yours, and The Traceroute (or trAceroute) Project - are at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm; the Lost Project is at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/lost/index.htm. The following is a brief description of the individual projects, and some of the issues involved in them.
Broken Theory is a jettisoned collection of fragmentary writing, collected and collaged by new me... more Broken Theory is a jettisoned collection of fragmentary writing, collected and collaged by new media artist, writer, musician, and theorist Alan Sondheim. Folding theoretical musings, text experiments, and personal confessions into a single textual flow, it examines the somatic foundations of philosophical theory and theorizing, discussing their relationships to the writer and body, and to the phenomenology of failure and fragility of philosophy’s production. Writing remains writing, undercuts and corrects itself, is always superseded, always produced within an untoward and bespoke silo – not as an inconceivable last word, but instead a broken contribution to philosophical thinking. The book is based on fragmentation and collapse, displacing annihilation and wandering towards a form of “roiling” within which the text teeters on the verge of disintegration. In other words, the writing develops momentary scaffoldings – writing shored up by the very mechanisms that threaten its disappe...
The Internet Text is an extended analysis of the environment of Internet communication, an extend... more The Internet Text is an extended analysis of the environment of Internet communication, an extended meditation on the psychology and philosophy of Net exchange. As such, it is concerned primarily with virtual or electronic subjectivity – the simultaneous presence and absence of the user, the sorts of libidinal projections that result, the nature of flamewars, and the ontological or epistemological issues that underlie these processes. Internet Text begins with a brief, almost corrosive, account of the subject – an account based on the concepts of Address, Protocol, and Recognition. This section “reduces” virtual subjectivity to packets of information, Internet sputterings, and an ontology of the self based on Otherness – your recognition of me is responsible for my Net-presence. The reduction then begins to break down through a series of further texts detailing the nature of this presence; a nature which is both sexualized/gendered, and absenting, the result of an imaginary site. Ev...
straight ahead to the body creased and folded where the legs join. looking down towards a convolu... more straight ahead to the body creased and folded where the legs join. looking down towards a convoluted topography of triangular slits. straight ahead above the slits. descending in the presence of the slits. angling upward in the presence of the slits. backing up, stopped by a wall. forward, stopped by a wall. turning to the right, looking through double slits at a young woman sleeping. straight head by the side of the woman. unable to proceed forward. turning to the right near the young woman, ascending near the young woman. unable to ascend. turning further to the right and straight ahead. unable to move. ascending further until the outer grey peripheral belt is visible; just above, the reddened underbelly of a cantilever beam. a second image of the young woman in a second alcove. moving forwards towards the alcove. hovering above the alcove. descending into the alcove and looking upward. turning to the right, facing the young woman duplicated in the alcove. continuing to turn. there is a nude man in the shadow. moving to the left. the body is there, hovering, next to the young woman. he has his arms between his legs. he is headless. slightly descending and to the left again. turning to the right. backing o Ú . remaining within the alcove. ascending slightly. there is a hand grasping something. it may be an arm on another arm. ascending slightly. two edges meet at acute angles, panels carrying the image of the creased and folded body. above, the red underbelly of more cantilevers. to the left and right, grey support beams surround, the peripheral belt. gaps are visible in the belt. above to the left, intimations of another series. below, shadows of limbs FROM THE POSITION OF THE YOUNG WOMAN, invisible now and most likely alert.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2006
In order to fulfil my duties pursuant to full-time employment without fear of censorship (somethi... more In order to fulfil my duties pursuant to full-time employment without fear of censorship (something all too often in our country, alas!), I will answer the following excellent questions which you have posed, to the best of my ability, directly, I appreciate the time you have taken to develop them, in relation to the more general theme of the direction of future literature, if there is a future, if there is literature. Please excuse this format, since of course there is no tenure committee, no tenure, no holdfast in the fast-forward sea of media/information flow. And of course committees are nowadays temporary at best, designed on the fly to handle particular problems that appear, perhaps disappear or transform before adjournment. Comparing writing practices from the years 1995 and 2005, what do you see as being the most significant historic development(s) in writing(s) in, for and with digital environments in the past decade? This of course depends on what is meant by 'writing.' Writing per se has not changed; what has changed is mechanics, performativity, technology. Probably most of the writing worldwide is currently within the worlds of blogs, Wikis, online gaming, and so forth. In 1995, almost everyone online, AOL users excepted, was familiar with the commandline interface to some extent. Being online often meant dealing with unix shells (today, linux shells). This created a sense of being close to the bone, literally, in relation to the net itself; when I'm online (as now) in the unix shell at panix.com, I can enter a command such as 'who'-and I will get a list of everyone on now, as well as what software they're using; for example, are they sending email, working in the emacs or vi editors, and so forth. This community, one might say, communality, is always in the background, even though I rarely hear from these people. The computer is always already shared. I'm aware I'm writing electronically within a network. Today-and this started with the dumping, by AOL, of around two million users onto the Net a decade or so ago, most people are shielded from the undercurrent, what I've called the 'darknet' (before this term was taken over by the media for other uses). Today, being online usually means working with GUI, graphic user interfaces, which are well-and sometimes over-designed. The number of commands available are less with a GUI editor (the full number of unix commands runs to over 1800). The code-the protocols at work-is increasingly invisible, and the Net is
"This collection of original writings and artwork challenges commonly held definitions of th... more "This collection of original writings and artwork challenges commonly held definitions of the body. Filmmakers, poets, visual and performance artists, sex workers, activists, and cultural critics employ outrage and analysis to investigate the body as a source of identity and an object of social control. The contributors offer anguished and exultant visions of gay yearning and despair, male heterosexual hysteria, ethnic defiance, feminist reflection, and emotional recognition. These rigorous and inventive works will entrance and provoke." -- p. [4] of cover.
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