Workshop on “Avatar Paste” on December 8 in Second Life

As part of a program on "Intimacy: Across Digital and Visceral Performance" taking place from December 7-8 at the University of London, there will be a workshop on "Avatar Paste and Code Soup in First and Second Life."  I feel pretty dense trying to figure out the meaning of the subject matter:

The workshop emerges from Sondheim and Baldwin’s ongoing exploration of
analog and digital bodies, using a range of technologies to remap the
solid and obdurate real of bodies into the dispersions and virtualities
of the digital, and then back again into real physical spaces.

The
"avatar paste" of the title means at least three things. Firstly, the pasting of viewpoints together, the suturing of the
subject into the avatar. Secondly, paste as glue, as half-liquid and
half solid, as a materiality of renewable and infinite pliability. This
is the chora of the avatar, the body matrix that is less a framework
than a smearing of paste. And thirdly, paste as pasty and
dis/comfortable substance, paste as slimy and dripping. While this
abjection is already implicit in paste as glue, the pastiness of paste
involves the projection and dreaming through of the avatar, the
inhabitation of avatar bodies and the emptying of real bodies into the
avatar.

The full workshop description follows after the jump.  Certainly sounds provocative and intense.

The workshop below is being held on Saturday, December 8, 2pm London time as part of Intimacy: Across Visceral and Digital Performance, at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. If you are interested in more information or in participating, email Sandy Baldwin at charles.baldwin@mail.wvu.edu.

SECOND LIFE WORKSHOP: AVATAR PASTE AND CODE SOUP IN FIRST AND SECOND LIFE
Leaders: SANDY BALDWIN, West Virginia University & ALAN SONDHEIM

This workshop will take place in the virtual world Second Life, and will be conducted by Alan Sondheim and Sandy Baldwin, with participation by other artists and performers in Second Life.

Participants from the Intimacy conference will be supplied with location and others details within Second Life. The workshop emerges from Sondheim and Baldwin’s ongoing exploration of analog and digital bodies, using a range of technologies to remap the solid and obdurate real of bodies into the dispersions and virtualities of the digital, and then back again into real physical spaces. The "avatar paste" of the title means at least three things.

Firstly, the pasting of viewpoints together, the suturing of the subject into the avatar. Secondly, paste as glue, as half-liquid and half solid, as a materiality of renewable and infinite pliability. This is the chora of the avatar, the body matrix that is less a framework than a smearing of paste. And thirdly, paste as pasty and dis/comfortable substance, paste as slimy and dripping. While this abjection is already implicit in paste as glue, the pastiness of paste involves the projection and dreaming through of the avatar, the inhabitation of avatar bodies and the emptying of real bodies into the avatar.

"Avatar paste" comes out in avatar motions and behaviors. Firstly, these are formed by symbolic orders, presenting surfaces to read in terms of sexuality, power, emotion, and other projections. At the same time, the pasty avatar body tends towards collapse and abjection. Work on the avatar becomes a choreography of exposure and rupture, modeling and presenting inconceivable and untenable data, within which tensions and relationships are immediate and intimate. One might imagine, then, this inconceivable data as a form of organism itself: as part of a natural world or a world already given; out of this we might think through new ideas of landscape, wilderness, hard ecology, the earth itself.

The workshop will theorize and demonstrate these topics. The first part discusses theoretical frameworks.Alan Sondheim will discuss topics of dismemberment, telepresence, and abjection in relation to the motion and behavior of Second Life avatars. Sandy Baldwin will discuss the topography of limits in Second Life, both body limits and spatial limits, an connect this to issues of the hunt and animal display.

He will also discuss the dynamics of performance and audience in Second Life. The second part of the workshop will show off Sondheim and  Baldwin ‘s approach to re-mapping live bodies into Second Life performances, including: video and other examples of motion capture and scanning; intermediate processing of files (e.g. editing .bvh data or working with Blender); and then the resulting works, including documents of Second Life performances and re-mappings back into "first life" spaces with dancers and other live performers. The final part of the workshop will include avatar performance by Sondheim, Baldwin, and other participants in Second Life.