Puzzling the Ficto-Quizzical II

On track of the unknown neologism.  Looking for leads on the “ficto-quizzical,” origins of this species, possibility spaces and the like.

Bullshit detectors typically topple from an acute inability to read between the lines and, or,  when in the vicinity of the (((WFT))) hypercentre.

Nonetheless there are established fields worth wandering and wondering into, naked facts to jostle loose implied allegations of whimsy or hoaxcraft.

Ficto-quizzicism is a neologistic attractor, calling forth a small brigade of other such portmanteau.  We can ascribe it as a flotsomnambulant variation on ficto-criticism.  Flotsomambulance itself a more technical term for space-time transience.

Most noticeably ficto-quizzicism is mere shades apart from the term “ficto-critical”. Rosslyn Prosser citing Amanda Nettlebeck’s notes on ficto-critical conduct in Processing Fictocriticism describes this expanse as one of: “self reflexivity, the fragment, intertextuality, the bending of narrative boundaries, crossing of genres, the capacity to adapt literary forms, hybridized writing, moving between fiction (invention/speculation) and criticism (deduction/explication) of subjectivity (interiority) and objectivity (exteriority)”–

In the Weird Fiction milieu, these puzzle pieces are generated from likely enough sources.  The Weird Tales of Lovecraft, Blackwood, Shaver, Serling, Eshun and other such twisty pretzels.  New media, residual media, emergent media, dead media and their kin. Information environments overrun by conceptual kudzu.  Hi Fidelity Concepts: Sci-Fi, Weird-Fi, Sonic-Fi, even occasionally Anartic-Fi exploded in ad hoc amalgamations with lo-fi videographic techniques, glitchcraft, expanded cinema, networked performance and other audio-visual agendas.

Like so many accelerations to facilitate collidoscopic views of that elusive Higgs Boson, this is a collaborative operation spanning many nodes and perhaps infiltrated even now by future influences.  Simultaneous Blogs beget vlogs beget vamples and short docs. Live performance begets networked writing begets research and development of concepts, costumes, camera-assists, bookworks, occasional artspeak and then repeat gestures unravel again.

Detonation sidesteps denotations, exciting confused connotations and an aesthetic of complexity.  Associational structures coalesce from the debris that survives impact:  mingling, mutating and meandering into new forms.

As letter forms go, ficto is not far removed from salvo.   Accept this lexiconspiracy, at least momentarily, and curious correspondences in such a firing of arms (to strike a target or simply to salute ) offer up another puzzle piece–one that does…not…quite…fit…

Apologies dear readers: This  ficto-quizzical is a strange bird- a paraform that even the fleshy mind of this lone mammal can only calculate so quickly!

Creeping Futurism

My neuroaesthetically inclined cohorts in the ficto-quizzical milieu of Weird Fiction have recently regurgitated their theories of cine-molecular sabotage; aligning these to quantum claims of scientists pursuing the cryptid-like Higgs Boson particle.  As (((WFT))) explodes the space-time of material memories, physicists continue to agree that saving your ancestors from fated collisions  is no cause for alarm, paradoxically speaking.  In other words, as Denis Overbye relays in his recent NYTimes article The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate, “In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus.”

Arguably, the possibilities bandied about concerning “future influence” on the Large Hadron collider could also be construed as an anomolous extreme of planned obsolescence.  Planned, or structured obsolescence operates by building in a limited time frame of usefulness for a product, ensuring the need for consumers to continually dispose the old and buy again a familiar but newer model. The reverse engineering manifest in creeping featurism reaches its logical limits with the time-travel theories concerning the LHC. Not unlike an adventure safari into the Jurassic that obsolesces various futures with every haphazard step away from the presented path.

Relatedly, we read all instances of obsolescence as actions of future operatives, butterfly effects orchestrated in advance to endanger would be stationary species. From beta decks to tasmanian tigers each extinction at once opening up an alternative universe focused on the future and marooning the residuals in lost worlds, memory holes and the shadowy spaces of network culture.

Derelict Theory Objects

In the networked cultures of everyday media life, derelict theory objects, or free-floating thought forms synthesized by wetware, may be closer to encounters in areas with spotty wi-fi.  Outside of the blogosphere, calcified instantiations of Metaphortean vectors idle in the confines of a gallery as evidenced (and compromised) in Shawn Higgins‘ photo presently. Derelict theory objects momentarily free from the mobility of pingbacks, trackbacks and the like.

Still, memetic modules will activate itineraries the old fashioned ways, constructing mechanisms and creative exchanges in the Duchampian sense.  And soon enough become cybernetically enhanced in a Stelarcian sense (arguably),  a feat this very post itself is self-consciously guilty of perpetuating!

Yes, the pervasiveness of network culture seeps in, offering oracular assurance for urgent queries “I became very worried about the artist so I asked a question on facebook“ and, or, augmenting any other mental note, tingle, hunch, intuition–what-so-ever, near instantaneously.

“[I]nstead of immediate, lived experience, the contemporary subject relies on the immediated real, a condition in which mediation is a given and life becomes a form of performance, constantly lived in a culture of exposure in exchange for self-affirming feedback” (Varnelis, The Immediated Now)

Recursively, in a meta-self-referencing fashion, it has become evident that even derelict theory objects do not escape the trawlers.  A network may be defined as much by its gaps as by its links, as Margaret Morse has suggested, and yet: of “a strange dark voyage into a cave,” (PORT) , Flickrings and onwards, “one measures a circle starting anywhere” (Fort).

In other words, there is always already an echo in here these days.  Inside those ivory haunts our minds are wired up, and memory palaces are abandoned, seen as poor substitutes for the acres of data domiciles.

Invasive Computing

Invasive Computing environments are growing quietly and quickly.  The architecture for these systems is as ambient as it is robust.  Quiet, ambient, networked…these are fantastic descriptions for the data-products shuttling between nodes and networks.  Not so fitting, however, for those caught in the tangled webs between real and virtual spaces.  The so-called meanderthals act as indicator species for the ubicomplications of emergent network cultures.

Meanderthals are a product of human error amplified and extended through networked technologies.  Oblivious to all but the demands of their personal data assistants, these wayward cyborgs call attention to the limits of a city’s infrastructure by way of unconscious collisions.

Tracking their movements across simultaneous environments may require access to schizogeographic information systems, schizogeographic positioning satellites and other such theory objects that have and are presently being hot-wired to contend with the non-euclidean event scenes of these bumbling hordes.

Still, their carbon footprints are readily identifiable, as evidenced in the niche opportunities billowing forth in all shades of grey.

Forever Paleontology

Retrograde remediation could be applied to the processes and possibilities of Network Realism, in the pursuing of a sousrealist agenda.  Sousrealism seems an apt term, traces of that vigilance from below that so many phantom limbed panopticonfidants engage in.  Forever publishing images, forever tracking, being found, and being present all the time with no end, information piles up, burying yesterday’s findings incessantly.  Living fossils are really just stationary species, to paraphrase zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans.   Onward, following researcher Nold Egenter’s use of  “sous-realism” to differentiate Magritte from his typical surrealist milieu, stressing the artist’s attention to sub-terranean phenomena.   “With deep reflections and intensity [Magritte] reconstructs very precisely lost structures of the past, conditions which are no more conscious to us,” (Magritte the Archtecturologist), like a paleontologist puzzling out a prehistoric form.

Surrealism retro-fit through a digging up of clues,  out from under the real rather than from some lofty heights beyond it.  Entangled between fact and fiction, betwixt tangible reality and the mediated variants that are now so mundanely informing operations in everyday life.  Not quite liminal, maybe liminoid, a twilight expanding.  The apparitions now wandering about in the landscape of our distributed minds are searching for material memories, geo-spatial fossils and dredged up dinosaur technology.

Close encounters with alien visitors offer the promise of immediacy so absent in network culture.  Eye-witness interaction with advanced technology, a heterotopian space idling in the gaps of network coverage.   While even still,  the lifeworld of extra-terrestrial phenomena is beholden to the generative mechanisms of theory objects, if there is any hope of a lasting impression. Tech support for failed utopias in the timbre of twilight.

Damned Data-Mine

New Probes

Data-mining the Shaver canon, with particular attention to the Deros, evokes a maligned form of the meanderthal. Mutant and mean-spirited, the deros or “detrimental robots” were allegedly borne of irradiation from e-waste left behind by negligent Titans and, or, Atlans millenia ago. From within the inner-Earth they accumulate attention capital by way of malevolent social networks—sabotaging and disappearing people, places and things on Earth’s surface.

“A man who is equipped like a territory is no longer an inhabitant; he becomes a habitat.” – Paul Virilio, Crepuscular Dawn.

Within Virilio’s critique of techno-accessorizing and auto-colonization is also a possibility space for more mysteries a la Shaver. E-waste as alien implant, a time capsule, an out-of-place artifact from a future imperfect. “History is spatial,” notes Tom Sherman, “there are going to be anachronisms in your neighborhood.” (Before and After the I-Bomb) The shadow economies of electronic refuse remain on the back of our minds, figuratively or literally, depending on how far we push this amazing story.

Birds of a Feather

Summer is arrived with a wave of brain addling heat –and so I will keep this post necessarily brief.  Brief and necessary, compelled by unknown mechanisms.  Truly,  I find myself pestered both passively and aggressively into continuing my reports on the ficto-quizzical agents of the Weird Fiction milieu.  So I’ll dredge up some tidbits now on the creature known as This Owl.

This Owl is purported to be omniscient, panopticonscious, densely networked and, at times, creepy as all hell. Rarely materialized into “humanoid” form at Weird Fiction event-scenes, yet always quick with reviews and anecdotes of any particular evening’s occurrences. Some audiences have reported hearing a faint fluttering of wings, incessant ringing of phones and other anomalous sounds.

While shy of a confirmed link, or two, there is reason enough to consider the “Mothman,” or “Bird man”  as an adjunct operative.  Zoological authorities will always laugh off any cryptid by pointing to a commonplace look-a-like.  In presence of Mothmania circa 1966 and various points onwards, many experts have cited the barn owl to quell anxious denizens of the West Virginian countryside.   Truly, the colossal corpus and red glaring eyes don’t compute with typical taxonomies of owls but the point here is not merely Fortean formulations on intermediacy.   Owls, especially the species inhabiting info-ecosystems, are most curious and perhaps paranormal creatures, to be wary of…period!

Visual associations aside, This Owl, like the Mothman (and so many other monstrous creatures) is also a sort of portent or omen of impending crises.  Alas, as noted, the heat is close at hand and my Metaphortean diagostics are greatly incapacitated  presently.  I will have to end here, taking cover in shadier climes for a spell.

Confusion as Nest

In China, “a tiny Swiss watch in a 400-year-old tomb,” is found.  A tomb that “had been undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty four centuries ago” (Fortean Times, June 2009). Out of place artifacts persist in the excavation of ancient cities, while general displacement is rampant in modern metropolises by way of newfangled techno-accessories.

We are familiar with the Meanderthal, that wandering cyborg variant studied closely by Matthew Tiessen. Further analysis suggests the Meanderthal is in fact a megapod. Etymologically it is “large -footed” like its Bigfoot brethren, but emphasis here is on its carbon footprint, the sort sighted increasingly across e-wastelands. Alternately, we view the “pod” as vehicle or craft, the Meanderthal enclosed in the simultaneous environments of the Megapod.  Limited not just to the omnipresent iPod but all manner of other mobile tech…the mega pod/device as multitude become mesh…life in the cocoon.

Network culture by way of the megapod frees one from the immobility of desktop computing while promoting a local anesthesia, a numbness to the immediate world, as well. Worlds within worlds, cities within cities, echoes and splinter forms of Archigram’s insectoid armada and/or Martijn de Waal’s myspace urbanisms.

This is the tele-cocoon, lifeforce of the Meanderthal. Is there a next-level butterfly that will hatch one day? Insert post-human hybrids and signs of the Singularity here. Animals everywhere are drawn to urban environments to make their nests, a form of adaptation in hostile environments. Why should anyone wonder differently about bi-pedal humanoids seeking refuge in continuous partial attention?  Confusion is nest.

Exploding Views

Retrograde Remediation is a mode of moving backwards, or perhaps sideways, often (but not always) in the face of new media provocation. A medium re-framed in another form does not inherently necessitate a linear, forwards motion or mobilize, only, concerns of the market. Conceptual hacking of the remediation process can produce other hybrids, too. For instance database cinema, wherein computerization highlights valuable insight for the cinematic (in the hands of visionary cranks) Cinema subject to an identity crisis, realizing it is, and has always been, a database form– albeit one that has adhered to a stringent algorithm (or script). This hypermediacy in opposition to the dominant drive towards immediacy and efficiency in/of image production. Valid, convenient, these imperatives are— but denying so many parallel worlds and hybrid moments.

Exploded view diagrams isolate and arrest. A techno-taxidermy that sizes up perceived pathways for understanding of the complexities of so many mechanisms. A camera enters bullet time but does not reach escape velocity. Floating here, camera as carcass, a frozen fillet suspended for further analysis.

Weird Fiction operates on the innards of cinema, exploding narratives. A process not a product per se. Exploding narratives, then rummaging in real-time through the flotsam and flightpaths of hurtling audio-visual world/views. This is not guaranteed to produce novel forms of coherency or complexity but, as Irving Bleak claims “arational systems hold value,” too.

Imagine the mix as a live process of instantiating the cutting room floor, a perverse re-enactment of the discarding and refusal of data. Imagine any unnamed archivo-futurists, foraging this floor, thinking through their hands, piecing together dissociated knowledge. In any live milieu, ficto-quizzical or otherwise, music allows for more abstract associations while spoken words will fight for stubbornly literal visual returns. Words are not tied to their literal imaged counterparts, parallel worlds do exist! One can open up worlds by embracing the exploding view not as a finite map of known forms, of knowledge inventoried and complete. Instead as just that but also always a crisis ripe for re-viewing, an exploding ad infinitum, a gateway or nodal nook for z-access into on-going parallel processes. The logic of the loop, or stream of consciousness. At any rate, another procession of the damned