Gushes of Periwinkles

“A naked fact startles a meeting of a scientific society—and whatever it has for loins is soon diapered with conventional explanations.“  — Charles Fort, Lo! , 1931

Gushes of periwinkles fall on labyrinthine back roads, we paid no mind to this at the time.  After Google map guffaws on the cold and windy night, we saw the neon prompts emerge.  Parked, we wandered next to behemoths of off-season carnivals, of amusements in hibernation.  Incomplete roller coasters, leering carousels, and other mechanical monstrosities.  Meanwhile, another anomalous Portland encounter–the Oaks Rink– beckoned us with subtle hypnosis.  Neighborly and welcoming with its warm glows and the faint aroma of nacho cheese.

Aesthetics of the bowling alley, shades of a disco, this inviting Americana was tonight peppered with the cool minimalism of contemporary art and artifacts as well.  A comfortable match all told.  Free skate filled it in for an hour.  Free skate functioned despite the fact that this activity unfolded  under the shadows of a most curious floating tech relic.  A Wurlitzer dramatically lit with wooden vessels galore. Sloping walls with switches and an impressive armada of bells. A decidedly steam punk environment claimed some.

Weird nostalgic twitches took a turn for the  surreal as untold numbers of skaters continued to careen around the rink.  Tumbling, soaring, peripheral glimpses and grasps, par for the course? Far from it!  This old haunt was adrift in a sonic enviros that veered towards the outer limits of its intended function.  Attuned and transfixed as one could be in the midst of pedlock on wheels, the cosmic uncanny of Ethan Rose’s live performance was a near Fortean delight.

Retrograde Remediations

Data tapes are retrograde remediations of consumers’ faith in intelligently designed music.  Thus some unwitting consumers, upon purchasing and listening to a data tape, might well conclude that the avant-garde is alive and well.

This suspension of disbelief would undoubtedly waver should said data take shape as code-like patterns, leading said consumers to puzzle out the presumed borderline between science and art, between calculated compositions and derelict troves salvaged from the Super Sargasso Sea.

As much could be considered the impetus for the extraterrestrial dx fishing in 1924, that had many hopeful ears attuned to noise but hearing faint whispers of the red planet’s salutations still. “One measures a circle beginning anywhere,” quipped Mr. Fort,  and we can follow the speculative pathways encircling tape species, too.  That the aural abstractions on a data tape encountered when sent careening through speakers, towards ears pricked up, should carry also the counter-narratives of intentional information is a splintered echo of the Martian symphathizers.

This, however, does not discount the immense and perverse joy in experiencing a dynamic noise peformance, captivating for its own abstract, damaged and often non-linear aesthetics.  Tele-memetically, actively listening to “unwanted sound,” can open up borderline phenomena at the alleged barriers between signal and noise.   Temporary constellations of coherency, adventures in sonic fiction, access is linked to perception.  Oppositional or otherwise, the mobilization of discarded media detritus through retrograde remediations facilitates both faint whispers and salutations.

Do Not Adjust Your Set, Yet

Perhaps another node in the concern over extra-terrestrial terrorism that Fife Symington and associates discussed in the Fall of 2007, the incoming Obama administration is planning on postponing the transition to digital television.  On the surface this of course is framed as a chance to catch consumers up to speed against the lagging distribution and production of converter box vouchers.  For electronic anomalists of all stripes, this is also an unfortunate delay in freeing up the analog airwaves to interference-free research.

As outlined in Patrolling the Ether (shown above), there are advantages to the obsolescence of analog broadcasts and great expectations for the new lands, forms and forums to be engaged across the etheric sea.

Sounding Fishy

Sounding fishy, like a data tape played back through speakers, like a VHS tape on the fritz, the coelacanths are my current call sign for curious cassette activity.  A living fossil from the genus magnetic.  If logic follows from Monster on the Campus,  a coelacanth exposed to gamma rays will reverse-engineer the evolution of those who imbibe its blood.  Highly speculative, but perhaps in the parallel dementia of Metaphortean space this damned data could be cast as the reversal of an over-heated medium.  That McLuhan endorsed moment when a medium pushed to its extremes collapses.  Revealing in this implosion a previously imperceptible purpose, direction, and/or possibility space.  The rise of cassette jockeying, for example.

Strange Survivals

“I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen,” exclaimed Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer on December 23rd 1938.

There was a time when the slimy shimmering coelacanth populated portions of the world unbeknownst to mainstream zoologists, and (amongst other reasons) was thus considered to be some 80 million years extinct. Lauded as a living fossil upon its discovery  in 1938, it has retained a certain subterranean cred.

“Coelacanths are certainly not as rare as we first thought…rather they’re living in a part of the world, a habitat that is so very difficult to sample…if you were lucky enough to hook one, you probably wouldn’t be able to bring it to the surface.” (Dr. John McCosker, Senior Scientist and Chair, Aquatic Biology)

Likewise audio cassettes are difficult to dredge up in the main streams.  Second-hand habitats are essential places to look, such as the legendary “Bins” on the outskirts of Portland proper.  Here you can cast a wide net, with yields of marvelous electronic has-beens, schools of eclectic cassettes and an active junk culture.  Like fish, your finds are sold to you by the pound!  Still others, like McCosker, make the case that  “The best way to sample for coelacanths now is not to fish for them but to talk to native fishermen…they say ‘oh I know that fish,’ they’ve caught them.” For many Indonesian fishing communities, the coelacanth was never really a fossil.

Never really an obsolete form.  Many in DIY music communities have never perceived a break in the cassette continuum, including younger generations who have “grown up digital,” yet turned out as advocates of an allegedly outmoded format.  Issues of access, opposition, Fortean logic?

Onto the more curious audio-life forms, the species of tape that reveal the potential of all tapes, of all tech, that lurks at the interface of malfunction.  Mix tapes act as sort of indicator species for an ecosystem of curious cassette activity.  As much was suggested in recent conversation with G.Lucas Crane about mixtapes as a sort of first glimpse at the hands-on potentialities encrypted in these consumer forms.