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Space Title

A Time Capsule Or A Grave

Within the World Titled well,
Credited to Sammie Veeler
Opening date March 12th, 0020
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Main image for A Time Capsule Or A Grave

Statement:

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

“I didn’t know what I was doing until it was already done.”

A Time Capsule Or A Grave is my first serious attempt to involve performance in my practice. The work exists in a hybrid format. I activate a persistent virtual space on New Art City with IRL performances, the audio of which are recorded and installed spatially in the virtual after each iteration. This essay is itself a momentary capsule of subjectivity.

A week before I went to perform the piece for the first time at Octobre Numerique Faire Monde, Lauren Lee McCarthy introduced me to her idea of a “performance in progress.” I had already planned to record the audio from the first performance and install clips in this space at each place I spoke, but Lauren sparked the idea that I could perform the piece multiple times.

My late husband, Tvordis Veeler, was obsessed with Finnegans Wake. One idea that forms the book’s internal logic comes from The New Science of Giambattista Vico. According to Vico, the cyclical structure of history loops through three ages: divine, heroic, and human. Joyce modifies the schema to include a ricorso between cycles which I view something like eddying out on the river of time. As I write this, A Time Capsule or A Grave has been performed four times. The ricorso came second through a collaboration with Emji St. Spero.

Production of each age in this first cycle of performances formed a tightening temporal loop.

- A Time Capsule Or A Grave - October 2022 - Arles, FR - Octobre Numerique Faire Monde - Essay
- What Will You Be Like Before, What Were You Like After December 2022 - Venice, CA - Beyond Baroque
- About My Avatar - January 2022 - Los Angeles, CA - Human Resources - Essay
- His And Hers - January 2022 - Los Angeles, CA - NFTuesday LA

So did I design them this way? With the Viconian cycle in mind?

No. It is a comfortable frame from my former literary obsession with which to name the phenomena I’ve observed in this process.

Wait. You said your husband was the Joycean.

Yes.

Tvordis is my previous avatar– an identity to which I am wedded but which is no longer alive. This fiction was not revealed as fiction until the third iteration of the performance.

Increments of time and space have the same statistical character as the whole. In the same way, I hope this essay will mirror the constellation of objects and processes that make up this work.

This first cycle of exploration has revealed that the process of observing and naming particularities in this world must be central to the work going forward. Indeed it has defined all of the efforts leading here as well.

Words spiral out of the rupture of an encounter with a past self as other and the future self as self. The best way to show my future self what I can’t see today is to get out of my own way and try to name the sensations. Even though I made these worlds and everything in them, the internal logic here remains unclear. I still get lost. The process of this piece is becoming a pataphysical study of the phenomena taking place here.

toward,

Sammie Veeler
February 26, 2023

Artworks in this space:

Artwork title

What Will You Be Like Before, What Were You Like After

Artist name Sammie Veeler & Emji St. Spero
Artwork title

Provincial Skinflint 7

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Provincial Skinflint 11

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Provincial Skinflint 14a (Deathtape 2)

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

All Now In Time

Artwork Description:

Exhibited in Posthuman Vernacular, curated by Jesse Damiani at Rand Gallery in Dubai 

Artwork title

Field Collage - September 2020

Artist name Sammie Veeler
Artwork Description:

An essay written to accompany Field Collage: a collection of sound art by Tvordis Veeler, curated by a Sammie Veeler. Delivered at the second performance iteration of A Time Capsule Or A Grave at Human Resources in Los Angeles on 1/13/2023

Album
Artwork title

Back To The Avatar

Artist name Sammie Veeler
Artwork Description:

Delivered at the second performance iteration of A Time Capsule Or A Grave at Human Resources in Los Angeles on 1/13/2023

Artwork title

Nobody Died But

Artwork Description:

Delivered at the second performance iteration of A Time Capsule Or A Grave at Human Resources in Los Angeles on 1/13/2023

Artwork title

Improvised opening Remarks

Artwork Description:

Delivered for the third performance of A Time Capsule Or A Grave at NFT Tuesday on 1/17/2023

Artwork title

A Shark Gnaws On The Cable

Artwork Description:

Delivered for the third performance of A Time Capsule Or A Grave at NFT Tuesday on 1/17/2023

Artwork title

Persistence In Speech

Artwork title

More Like Clothes

Artwork Description:

Delivered for the third performance of A Time Capsule Or A Grave at NFT Tuesday on 1/17/2023

Artwork title

His And Hers Computers

Artist name Sammie Veeler
Artwork Description:

His And Hers Computers by Sammie Veeler

His And Hers Computers is a recurring asset in my work. This union of two local machines by a mass of cables between them symbolizes the digital bond between myself and my late husband, Tvordis. On the left, my avatar floats out of the glowing translucent screen of a Macintosh covered in the stickers that adorn my current computer. On the right, a replica of Tvordis’s personal computer, Theseus, depicts a portrait of him on the screen.

This artifact is spun off from A Time Capsule Or A Grave: a hybrid performance project initially commissioned by the Tezos Foundation for Octobre Numérique Faire Monde in Arles, France in October 2022. It connects a series of IRL performances with a persistent virtual environment on New Art City, each of which evolve between every iteration. Audio recordings of each performance are broken into clips and installed in the virtual environment at each place where they were spoken, forming an ever expanding dialogue between versions of myself across time.

A central conceit of the work is my grief ritual and preservation practice with Tvordis’s digital archive. There is more to preservation than storage. Digital artifacts only perform their objecthood when accessed. They always point back to an invisible original. We must not confuse information for memory. Information exists in the machine. Memory is constituted in the body. I would rather the piece live in your mind than die in a hard drive where it lies in suspended animation.

A Time Capsule Or A Grave is an ongoing process and this edition is a snapshot of a single state of its existence. Once minted, His And Hers Computers will be immutably written and perpetually preserved on the blockchain. If, as Jon Ippolito tells us, new media art can only survive by mutating, what role does immutability play in this process?

Included with this edition are an archival 4K TIFF render, a gLTF 3D file, and a .Blend file of the scene depicted in the image. The TIF format was released in 1996. It is a preferred archival format for digital preservation of images and is not likely to change in the near future. The gLTF format was released in 2015. While much newer, it is quickly becoming the new standard for 3D files in the WebGL era. It is a happy medium between mutability and fixity. Blender is about as old as the TIF, but in terms of longevity, it is the most precarious of the three. The most recent .Blend file version that can be opened by the current long term service version of Blender (3.3) is version 2.8, released in 2015. How long will files made with 3.3 be supported?

While open source projects can in some cases provide more resiliency than corporate platforms, the evolving nature of the software means the original tools for authoring this work will not be here forever. How will you preserve these artifacts? What does preservation mean to you? What role do humans have in this preservation process that entrusts the task of storage to a so called trustless system?

Format: PNG + Unlockable TIF, gLTF, .blend
Resolution: 3840 x 2160

OBJKT Link
Two computers: an original Macintosh Classic and a 2015 Macbook Pro are united by a mass of black, green, and orange cables which run into a pink metallic porthole straight through the Macbook Pro's keyboard.  

The Macintosh has a translucent glowing screen with a tiny gold shape  coming through the screen. 

The Macbook Pro has a black and white photo of a stern looking young man, my husband, in a notched lapel overcoat holding a cigarette in his raised hand. 

The Macintosh is covered in stickers: "ACAB," "HRT," a trans flag with an AK47 on it, an iridescent mouse pointer, "Lower Grand Radio."

Above the scene float five wood framed photographs of the same man on the screen of the Macbook Pro. The left four photos are taken in the reflection of a cup of coffee. The right photo was taken with the camera underwater. His face is doubled.
Artwork title

Ascii Avatar

Artist name Sammie Veeler
Artwork title

Field Collage 10

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Avatar

Artist name Sammie Veeler
Artwork title

Field Collage 12

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Field Collage 9

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

field collage 2

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Light Journal 3a

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

The Nose

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
The Nose
Artwork title

My Husband Is Dead

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
My Husband Is Dead
Artwork title

Ouroboros

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Ouroboros
Artwork title

Leave The Body

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Leave The Body
Artwork title

The Witness

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
The Witness
Artwork title

Light Collage 1b

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Light Collage 2

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Palazzo

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Palazzo
Artwork title

Mitchum 1

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Mitchum 1
Artwork title

Mitchum 2

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Mitchum 2
Artwork title

Mitchum 3

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Mitchum 3
Artwork title

Void Portrait 1

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Void Portrait 1
Artwork title

Void Portrait 2

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Void Portrait 2
Artwork title

Provincial Skinflint

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Provincial Skinflint
Artwork title

Segment 5 - A Time Capsule Or A Grave (Performance Audio)

Many of the artifacts Tvordis left behind were stereophonic field recordings and sound collages created from those recordings. These, too, are virtual spaces and he viewed them that way. He captured field recordings to construct incongruous sound spaces with them. His sound-worlds are embodied time, experienced durationally. They only perform their objecthood when they are accessed. These worlds, like all media files, are always accessed in translation. They point back to an invisible original. In his recordings he took care to make himself invisible, but he is present with us as a fellow listener. In five years of his field recordings I have not found a single trace of his voice. His absence, however, is a form of presence drawn out through his mistakes. I feel him when he jostles the recorder, jingles his keys, and clicks his tongue to test the shape of the room. I argue that a virtual space can be defined as a third space between two or more physical spaces. These can be localized in both space and time. Tvordis is only alone in his field recordings when I am not there to listen with him. When I join him in these spaces he left for me, our virtual selves are equally unburdened by time and the body. The boundary between our consciousnesses blurs. On the other side of time there is a hand reaching back to you; however, you must choose to grasp it. Can you be sure which hand is yours?

Artwork title

Segment 6 - A Time Capsule Or A Grave (Performance Audio)

The architecture of the internet obscures the fact that you always travel with an avatar. The only difference between this and Second Life is the avatar can convincingly resemble your actual self. We must not make the mistake of identifying ourselves through the masks that we wear. Is the avatar your virtual embodiment? Why should we assume a singular identity online? Plato describes sight as an active process– our eyes project beams onto the world, reflecting it back to us. We now understand that sight functions in exactly the opposite way. This is, however, exactly the way cameras work in interactive 3D worlds through a process called ray-casting. The camera sees actively. Does this mean you do the same? The avatar is your clothes, but it is not your body. In virtual space, you are embodied as a camera and you see by casting beams out of your eyes. This sight does not necessarily confer presence. Presence, like listening, is active.

Artwork title

Field Collage 5/6

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Field Collage 7

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Five Distorted Portraits

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Segment 7 - A Time Capsule Or A Grave (Performance Audio)

Tvordis imagined things for me that he refused to imagine for himself and our time together was painfully brief. As soon as I felt he could really see me, he was almost gone. He could envision me here in front of you more clearly than I could. It is ironic that as his life ended, mine seemed to begin. And so here I am walking through the world he spoke into existence, handling this mass of material he called his archive, which he never attempted to organize, and shared with no one. He left it for me to untangle in his wake. He viewed his life as a work of art, but he left before a suitable venue emerged to exhibit it. He poured art out of himself autonomically– it seemed so easy for him to accept what came and yet he failed to publish any of his work. I feel it is my duty to construct a mutable biography of this strange man from the documentation he left behind. Today I perform for you in the flesh. Tomorrow my voice will be automated at each obelisk and exhibition visitors will share virtual space with a dead version of me.

Artwork title

Field Collage 4

Artist name Tvordis Veeler
Artwork title

Portal Gate 333

Artist name Sammie Veeler