Tape Species

In anticipation of my long belated interview with sound artist Instinct Control, I am replaying immaterial memories of “Tape Species” in my head. Cassette classification systems are curious, but audio anomalist G.Lucas Crane did not hesitate to speculate on species of tape when we spoke last year. “Computer tapes,” halloween soundtracks,” “answering machine,” and other such recordings from the world of audiotape point towards the more or less vernacular variety available via these consumer electronics. Metaphors from zoological quests rather than archeological digs seem more appropriate for this sort of discovery channeling.

As with cryptozoological pioneer Bernard Heuvelmans’ dossiers on hidden animals, the aggregation of diverse claims– including anecdotal, folklore and legend amidst the methods of official science makes for a healthy exploration of the unknown audio(visual) specimen.

Perhaps archeological digs are metaphors reserved for found film footage and vinyl records, archives of official pop culture. Vinyl selection is more or less musical, turntables have been interfaced and have enveloped malfunction, remediating scratches as advanced modes of play. The authenticity embodied in the scratch, vinyl or filmic, is no accident in the emulation biz. The limitations of audio-visual technology tend to be re-activated by subconscious addiction for far-gone flaws, a desire so strong that an imitation, a bonafide hoax, is accepted as the genuine article. Will the real Cardiff Giant please stand up?

Obsolescence knocks on the cassette deck’s door but the door is already propped wide open. The hiss, the pops, the spinning parts! The garbled sounds and sped up voices! Drooling devotees of this new sound welcome the abundance and access made manifest in the waves of unwanted tech produced by obsolescence.

A “hands-free” philosophy guides the long-running research of the EVP enthusiast who listens closely for paranormal signals in tape playback. The circuit-bender, another ilk of electronic anomalist uses bare hands (and feet) directly engaged with circuitry to solicit sonic heralds from other worlds. By “other worlds,” I mean imaginaries opened up at the Interface of Malfunction. This interface emerges in the ruins of the intended mode of exchange. Breakdown, or malfunction of interface invokes a liminal space from which the Interface of Malfunction can potentially rise. This shift in cognition might be otherwise described as the “curiosity” or “wonder” that compels one to venture forward in understanding novel sound-forms or an unknown species (of tape).

Interface and Malfunction

An interface is typically designed to make the new domain easier for a “user” to comprehend. When this remediation works, the user is fairly oblivious to the crossing-over that is going on. On the contrary, malfunction typically calls attention to the collision of worlds, maintaining itself as burden on presumed purposes.

This sort of dissonance might seem to complicate the credibility of such a thing as “the interface of malfunction.” If there is hesitation…so be it. An experiential and interpretative encounter with this mechanism will give one a better impression of its Fortean flavor! The interface of malfunction exists in that duration of uncertainty that follows an anomalous rift in the linear progression of the everyday. An unexpected occurrence that can be accommodated with provisional explanations or embraced as passageway to new lands. The interface of malfunction is a paranormal mechanism to encourage a dip into the unknown. The unknown may remain aloof, leading the curious onward, or it may be extinguished into a legitimate thing, technique, or new animal… but the process is initially un-known.

The interface of malfunction relies on a rupture in physiological vision and what Norman Bryson refers to as “socialized vision” (in Vision and Visuality) i.e. the mesh of signs that filter/focus one’s point-of-view socioculturally.

Pre-existing knowledge or suspicion of other dimensional worlds, creatures, phenomena factor in to the interfaces of malfunction. These thought-forms operate within vernacular networks of information, the blogosphere notwithstanding. The Sasquatch encounter these days, for example, opens up an interface of malfunction that must contend with the questions of blobsquatchery and answers of blogsquatching. “Blogsquatching,” a term coined by preeminent cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, refers to “the use of web logs to spread information on unknown hairy hominoids such as Sasquatch, Yeti, and Yowie across the internet” (cryptomundo.com).

This age-old collision of experiential and interpretative Sasquatch encounter is amplified through the internet, it remains as always perceptual and conceptual, pulling on individual sensory information and collective forms of speculative interpretation. Malfunction is an Abstract User Interface (AUI).

Speaking of anomalous rifts, age-old collisions, of interface and malfunction and AUIs: The strategic misspelling known as neologism short-circuits known words, leading the meanings into previously neglected peripheries. The collision of prefixes and suffixes offers a short-lived duration of uncertainty wherein malfunction is interfaced and operated on rather succinctly. This perhaps due to the ubiquitous presence of the written word.

New York Giants

In homage to my old stomping grounds of upstate New York, I’d like to muse for a moment on some Fortean phenomena found there. Charles Hoy Fort himself was a native Albanian (NY that is), and the pallid data to be captained in these climes is deep as the region’s winter snow! I typically shy away from outright hoaxes…save for those toe-cracking Fox sisters of Rochester, NY…finding the ambiguities of erroneous capture much more compelling than the intentional deception perpetrated by pranksters. But the Cardiff Giant shenanigans are peculiar, offering up a batty Baudrilliardian event-scene!

A primitive race of giants is purported to be evidenced in a petrified giant man excavated near a farmhouse in Cardiff, NY circa 1869. It was in fact a stone carving that was inconspicuously buried by secret co-conspirators, then “discovered” by the allegedly un-knowing farmer, William C. “Stub” Newell. Much attention was generated, and Newell made a small fortune charging admission for the curious droves eager to ogle this oddity. Experts only sensationalized the demand by declaring the giant a genuine phony.

The famous showman Phineas.T. Barnum made attempts to lease the Cardiff Giant, eager to add this anomalous hulk to his growing menagerie of freaks and curiosities. Failing to acquire the actual giant he had his team model a spin-off, a fake of a fake. And so goes the precession of the (damned) simulacra. Here, in this hyperrealized hoax-craft is where the Fortean aspect creeps in, corrupt as it may be by commercial intentions.