‘Pataphraseologies of the Ficto-Quizzical

After a slow moving reconnaissance mired by Weird-Fiction auto-obliterating tendencies of late, Metaphortean Research has for you, dear reader, a significant peek into the formulae of the ficto-quizzical.

As inefficient as it is intoxicating, the ‘Pataphrase is a fascinating ficto-quizzical procedure. Doubly derived from Pablo Lopez’s ‘pataphor and Alfred Jarry’s science of imaginary solutions, the ‘pataphrase is a process of restatement that is as far from paraphrasing as paraphrasing extends from an original text.

In this process, two or more editors communally perpetrate an extraordinary rendition of an original writing, implementing a series of linguistic glitches and strategic misspellings to re-configure the text. Denotation is sidestepped by detonation as meanings are twisted, metaphors stretched, puns unearthed and suggestive correspondences feverishly followed to their illogical ends. Sometimes a Wikipedia article or a news blurb will serve as a starting point.

The excerpt is distributed in a real-time collaborative editing application such as “Etherpad.” Two or more Weird-Fiction editors then simultaneously or asynchronously begin ‘pataphrasing the text. After an initial round of linguistic agitation, the Weird-Fiction editors swap copies and repeat the process until one or several stylized gems pan out.

From Here to Ethernity

Travelling at the speed of thought, from here to Ethernity, which is simultaneously somewhere and nowhere, which are the same, so claims A.Jarry, (and/or a Faustroll). Out of shape, nothing but jelly and an aspiring membership to one of several ‘pataphysical fitness centers.

Endless storage space perpetually promises a lot of baggage, while cloud computing shades into cumulonimbus  more so than stratocumulus puffs that presently privelige pleasantries for pareidoliacs all agog. Elsewhere, somewhere,  a slime mold is dropped on a city, a stroll of green globs, a bevy of inchoate globules, wild in the streets.

Autopoietic systems swerve into a realm where “i” am not as autopoesis takes the helm, here and elsewhere, cribbing notes from the expressive abjection of cryptobiosis.  Exemplary is the intrepid tardigrade, an adaptive strategist, an entity eagerly adopted by Metaphortean Researchers as personification of labyrinthine linguistic ploys. A near piglet of the microcosm, the tardigrade is keen on self-inducing pellethood when there’s too much heat in the proverbial kitchen, impermanent vacation in scattered plasticities.

Drone Kitsch

One and the same bloated (polter)zeitgeist coughs up simultaneously two such things as a domestic drone program and downloadable secret shopper app,  or a loitering UAV and a lingering UFO fetish.

All four vie for our attention, and are, ostensibly, Rothsteinian ‘drone ethnographies.‘ With contextual contours of para-fact, para-fiction, para-military and the para-normal, one wonders if the connection engines that could, won’t instead just sputter to a halt—para-lyzed by prefixations.

A drone domesticated for surveillance along borderlines and an app tailored for reconaissance along bottom lines– what perspective on the networked cosmos is (a)wry enough to enable us to situate them in relation to each other?  Alas, anamorphoses, too, are hard pressed to (find) work in a network economy!

Constellations of coherency, amidst continuous partial attention, might well mirror the actions of radicalized zombie sats, truly this scenario also hints at a worldview beset by non-lineation.  Vertical disintegrations. In any case, where there can be an avante-garde meandering now for half a century, a slow-motion momentum,  an antagonism towards ambushes, the delayed arrival of a possible future still looms.

Panopticonfident teenage swarms, arguably, but certainly the DARPA dynasties will suffice. In contrast, we find an aspiring razzle-dazzle approach, a ‘rear guard,’ out there, hidden in plain sight.

Enter the Dragon(drop), enter the tele-prescient modes of engagement, a simultaneous cultural phenomenon appears to which we will continue to tactically (if also tacitly) extract  Greenbergian insights, reconnoiter and in all ways already apply them under the aegis of Drone Kitsch: curiously unmanned memetic vehicles, weird and design fiction, arrogant apps, killer apps, near future sci-fi, spy-fi and why-fi, if not the 99% in swarm-formation. Heir apparent of the cryptozoological set,  this “gigantic apparition” patrolling the landscapes of the global mind.

Henceforth, Drone Kitsch, in its own abominable ways , may amount to an unnamable aerial vehicle. A strategic ambiguity, or a mis-ambiguation of things seen in the sky, or on Facebook, or, at any rate,  an “unmanning” of sorts, a derelict theory object of sorts. An intermediate technology in the Fortean sense, or a tele-prescient gesture of good will for a coming future void of empathetic urges.

Drone Kitsch, gleaning raw data from the proverbial leaky wiki, the derelict vaporware of this and the other information scientist, the cybernetic unconscious, or that which a winged memex might perpetrate by night.  Of un-homogenized projectiles skimming the surface of gray markets or in the wake of another difference that makes a difference, and so on.

Lo and behold: Drone Kitsch is vicarious, it is experience, it is fake and it is sensational. Drone Kitsch pretends to command no attention, the poor person’s infrared, a continually partial veneer.

Drone Kitsch makes itself up in the military industrial complexions of “devices, tricks, stratagems, rules of thumb, themes,” coverts them into cosmetically enhanced surgical strikes.  Drone Kitsch is nebulized into a fine-spray, deodorant, a perfumed metal.  It operates by way of cultural viruses, unmanned para-sights, downloaded in the fumbled keystrokes of a distracted operator, or by unrepentant gamers who have slyly quit their day job while still being a nuisance at work.

Drone Kitsch may be the epitome of all that is not necessarily mediated by a screen but which remains negotiated by distances emotional, rhetorical, psychological, other rogue (mind)states what have you.

Of Things Seen in the Sky

Twilight Zoning

Towards a reassignment of flight, an objective moves through the radiosphere. Shit hits the proverbial fan with the precision of a ballistically engineered projectile.  If drones patrol the borders between architecture and painting they are para-mediators masqueraded as prouns… but geometries of consequence lie elsewhere.  Of remote possibilities, monolithic members of the virtual maul are readily deploying swarms, an x-mass of unidentified apputees tasked to recon.  Just shy of 5-D, exploitation of the altruistic drone continues, database and superstructures soliciting agile algorithms or co-opting crepuscular agents.  Amidst international laws thrown into the fog of tele-violation, another archipelago of ambiguous information clusters around the acronym CCD. At once an electronic light sensor on the obligatory imaging device of a subservient drone and also the abrupt collapse — a distributed denial of service– from, perhaps, a panopticonscientous swarm.

Panopticonscientious Objections

“Cyberspace is real,” claims President Obama, for whom,like a textbook synesthete—metaphors are concrete. The Metaphortean may offer swampland in virtual space, gothic high-tech ruins for weekend getaways, a scenic route between (and betwixt) (atempo)realities.  If cyberspace is real it is overcast, beset with atmospheric perspectives, bouts of bad weather. Cloudy with a chance that mini-van-like moons will plummet from outer spaces.  Pleading the fifth(dimension) —these zombie sats do not. Networked objects warrant their own shadow-forms, accidents unseen, things out of the internet (crawling chaoses), malevolent spimes.  The shadow of the ghost is a dead drop.  Mini-van-like moons, are, of late, construed as meteoric sympathizers and perhaps advocates of the altruistic drone, or,  to use a rising star amongst adjectives — a zombie drone, drifting on its own accord, a meandering ‘cross wounded galaxies.

Reciprocally antagonistic, military industrial complexions color the possibilities anomalous– that there mightn’t be an unmanned vehicle directed in a manner that temporarily reduces  indifference while increasing another vehicle’s différance.  Offset iterations, reticent swarms, amplifications of a fumbled keystroke from a distracted operator, glocal anaesthesia, a muted cry of empathy issued from a futured (discontinued) self.

W.Powell’s fateful flight provides an obtuse example, albeit, one that is contextually rogue–behaving as though it were acute.  Truly this is the terrain of the paramilitaristic rather than the parliamentary, it yields the paranormal only by proxy.  Occultic, really, a redacted memory of things seen in the sky.  Of other nuances, the cluttered stellar maw ponders satellites positioned politically or poetically, which will, on occasion, find themselves — in free fall—

Yonder, e-waste falls from the sky, a ghost story for the txt generation, hard-hitting hint fiction: blunt and to the point.  Panopticonscientious Objectors negotiating immediate and mediated environments, temporal ecologies, the externalities of progress.

The squeaky nodes abandon indifferent fields, naked facts jostling loose of the regular flows, calling attention to hertzian space (always already there)  Attention towards networked societies pleading the fifth [in all senses], or otherwise administering points of pontification, soapboxes for Flying Dutchmen deniers.

Architectures of Dearth

Towards a dearth of something else, the brain is a data structure, a vessel waiting to be re/filled.  Optimized for search and retrieval, suitable for dada-mining, too. Economalies of attention, erroneous trades, disruptive innovations —but for whom do these hidden logistics linger on?

Memory palaces boarded up, one suspects they’ve been condemned.  Rather we have memory palisades, on the sly, but in lock down? Data-bodies have their own algorithmic itineraries, hidden designs on the database complex, implicitly explicit and in accordance with pop zombie-lore, aiming for the brain.

Over-sized crania in extra-terrestrials would be a good target, safe for the outward obsolescence of such a thing as an in-board brain. Presuming, as a Metaphortean Researcher would, that sci-fidelity concepts are tellingly attuned, upgrading these antiquated personifications of electronic brains, themselves personifications of giant computers was argued cinematically some time ago. From the antagonistic aliens of This Island Earth (1955) to the nodally nuanced and nomadically nimble (if also vicious) technologizations of our future selves in Fiend Without a Face (1958), cyborg variants grope towards a dearth of stasis and the spoils of this mobile sort of brain.

Fiends without faces, the brain before its time — the wi-fi readied floating brain–, returns today under the aegis of friends without faces, or the googlization of many things, the maniacs of storage, the feverish claims on archiving for its own sake, of friends accumulated like bottlecaps.  So many computerized conquests festooned on one’s outward “skin” it’s all about brand identity.  Be a meme and not an aura, hyperlink your soul, catch a whiff of your future technologized self.  Retrograde remediation of the “Star-Child,” many facebookies are eclipsing their own online persona with that of their progeny.  perhaps.

Architectures of dearth.  The Emperor’s new digs.  Algorithms trim down, go stealth, hidden in plain sight if sufficiently meshed in a thicket of networked databases.  Stealth algorithms are not quite the algorithmic unconscious but may end up marooned there under the folly of unnamed engines and the pre-mature arrival of digital dark age(ncie)s

Spinnerets Blazing

Cobwebs ornament the detritus of the digital dark age, dinosaur technologies gone missing in plain sight on account of an absence of compatibility.  The network enhances all manner of manoverings in the chaos of movements.  Obsolescing the performative trajectories of the Kino-Eye contingent, upcycling these operatives as video virologists just ’round the database turn. Chaoses within varied networkings are micro-managed in a multitude of devices, of browser tabs, dashboards and other acoutrements of latter day acoustic space.  Echoing a damned database, a file cabinet from the farthest stretches of reasonable information science, anomalies persist and paradigms shift.

Imagine yourself entangled in a web, while ostensibly equipped like a spider, spinnerets blazing in wild abandon.   Air-breathing arachnids recommend one keep at least four of many appendages on the ground, here and now, then and there.

Fast forward, uptempo, rapid-construction of web-slung solutions has not fared well under the influence of stimulants.  Proverbial flies on walls are welcomed into arachno parlors on premise of ascertaining a point of view, and so the story goes.

Double Trouble

Arachnids and bed-bugs are not alone in tasking their curriculum vitae towards conclusion in approximately 18 months. Computer chips, too, follows this pattern, one wonders not that the newest tech is so buggy…

With much fanfare, Moore’s law (semi)conducts a continual procession of damned data-dispensories on account of diminished use value.  Alternate uses are typically obscured by the parallel dementia of exchange value, Murphy stepping in for Moore administering law in this land.

Chip capacity motors on twice over inside of 2 years while derelict doubles, yesterday’s latest marvels, make their way towards the River Lethe, a tributary into the global waste stream.  Once immersed in this larger body, port may be found in any number of low-tech recycling centers in the global South.

Pirates of all stripes maraud the new media milieu in accordance with their own para-logistics, establishing their own forms of doubling with rather subtely disruptive innovation in recent times.

For instance, innovative entrepreneurs  deploying doppleganger Apple stores, complete with iProducts in all shades of gray, signage, employees and an ideological adherence to ‘customer happiness’.

Rather like a fan fiction informed by digital rhetoric, contemporary counterfeiting is typified by a distributed production system wherein shadow economies imitate the crypsis of a dominant technocultural entity with the panache of a newly mediated Narcissus.  Operating razzle-dazzle style, hidden in plain sight, (con)fusing rather than concealing its movements.

Not unlike the Cardiffians and the batty Barnum bedazzled and buoyantly Baudrillardian iterations unfurling in the hearts and minds of Americans circa 1869.

Of Metaphortean Pursuits

Advancing diagonally, in an anomalous fashion, Metaphortean Research will be purveyed and surveyed in various climes in coming weeks:

For denizens of Düsseldorf, Blobsquatch in the Expanded Field will be screening at the artists’ space WP8 on May 21st as part of a retrospective of Kunstfilmtag programming.

May 25th, Syracuse, NY will bear witness to an offering of Metaphortean Pursuits, with FunknWaffles as host, initiating a series of event-scenes across Northeastern climes:

Brooklyn, coordinates fuzzy and occurring just before:

An official, if speculative, genealogy of Metaphortean Research to be presented at Little Berlin gallery in Philadelphia on Saturday May 28th. Arriving at the end of the current exhibit of Very Amateur Society of Science and Technology, this Metaphortean presentation will include several nused and emergent Metaphortean pursuits, including the audio-visually augmented para-lecture version of Polterzeitgest

Redolent of all manner of Fortean foibles, and presented by The Hollow Earth Society, The Observatory hosts a final bout of this most officious outing of genealogies and provisional maps on Monday 30 of May.

On June 3rd, Derelict Dirigibles, a recursive romp through recombinant residuals Roswellian and otherwise alienated—will be met with a live score composed, arranged and performed by Randy McKean and cohorts at Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco as part of the Mission Eye+Ear Live Cinema series.