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.

Close Call

Again conversation has been halted with Instinct Control.  Could it be some sort of cosmic coincidence  (or paranormal protectionism) that my bevvy of electronic and digital recorders failed, that Instinct Control’s phone also died, and all on the day that marked the beginning of the end of analog television?

Could be.  Nonetheless, we’ll chalk it up to unknown paranormal mechanisms and re-group.  What secrets of the genus magnetic are being protected, if inadvertently?  The suspense is killing me.

Techno Ghost Worlds

Read Suzi Steffen’s rave review of otherworldy art–including my own metaphortean monstrosity which is pictured above..

photo by Rick Gehrke

Procession of the Damned

“A PROCESSION of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march….” -Charles Fort, Book of The Damned , 1919

This database of the damned set forth around 9:15am, out from the depths of the Potter garage. The rains of frogs and hail held out for our flight today and after a lumbering launch, we held to a steady clip. With help from Ryan Halley and the PXL visionary Jesse England — we navigated the concrete (and ever green) jungles of Eugene.

Most human contact was limited to blank stares and gaping mouths. Of note was one older woman in the vicinity of 20th/Harris who slowed down our damnable craft to question our motives. Ascertaining that we weren’t selling anything, she excitedly discussed Chaos theory with us and then went merrily on her way! As predicted, it took just 90 minutes to complete our procession. We unloaded at the docks of JSMA victorious and rejoicing.

Metaphortean Field Report #1

En route to Bent Fest in search of metaphortean phenomena, my videocamera became suspected of blobsquatchery. “You have to take the cameras out of the bag” the security guard at the PDX airport told me, “they have lots of components.” She then asked to check my bag. Noticing that I had a book on fortean phenomena, she asked “do you like aliens?” I told her that i did like aliens. “I have verifiable proof of UFOs flying over the Pyramids….1983,” she excitedly proclaimed. She proceeded to de-blobmatize my videocamera with some strange instrument, then sent me on my way.

First stop Ann Arbor, to probe the suggestive correspondences of Plugfinder’s “free energy” claims. Ufologists have proposed that free energy exists, amongst a plethora of fortean affairs, in the hollow of the Earth. Ufologist Theodore Fitch suggests that UFOs emerge not from outer space, but inner Earth. Their hovercraft are powered by innovative use of free-energy sources. This is just one instance of invention by the subterranean super-civilization. Fitch notes “”They say they are thousands of years ahead of us in all of the arts, such as painting, sculpture and architectural designing. Also they are ahead of us in their domestic and business management, in their agricultural techniques, and that their beautiful landscapes, parks, flower gardens, orchards and farms vastly surpass our own.” (cited in The Subterranean Origin of the Flying Saucers by Dr. R. W. Bernard, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.)

Whether Plugfinder truly teeters on the edge of ancient mysteries remains to be seen, but this much we know: Ann Arbor promises unities of ambiance, attractive terrain and electroplasmic arrays.

RhYthm fRoM WrEckAGe!!!

Rhythm from Wreckage will resurface with its latest showcase of unusual experiments in time-based art from artists around the world on Thursday May 17th. The electronic anomalists featured in this program glean new aesthetic information from malfunctioning apparatuses, cultural detritus, and other residual media.

Plumb the unseen worlds of everyday appliances with Jesse England (Springfield), Learn strange facts and machine mythologies from Nate Harrison (Los Angeles) and Carl Diehl(Eugene). Marvel at the synesthetic cinema found lurking in a humble SK-1 toy keyboard with help from Gijs Gieskes (Netherlands) and enjoy several other excursions into the outer regions of audio-visual experience!

Thursday May 17th @ DIVA gallery, 8pm, $5, or $3 students/members
110 w.broadway @ olive, Eugene, OR

Travelling Through Time With My VCR

Intercepting the datasphere circa feb ‘07: G.Lucas Crane in conversation part one: Beckjordian notions of interdimensionality surface and collide between the lines of sight

L: It’s the difference between The person running the séance tying an invisible fishing line to their finger that triggers a book falling…versus something weird happens and the medium improvises and says “she’s here” it’s the same kind of thing with a record player. The first time someone used it as an art form to access music that came before it…but musically that was a mistake…that was like breaking the record, scratching the record. Doing things you’re not supposed to do with the record Great. Space of mesmerizing strangeness… achieved. You’re totally fucking up that record player, it’s not meant for that. How can we advance our hi-fi technology when you’re destroying that needle and the drive belt of that record player? ….all those analog machines are still around. Turntablism…It’s not a mistake anymore, there’s a tradition of mixing records like that…it’s not anti-doing something else. It’s not about playing record appropriately or not… it’s another way of playing a record

C: It’s like a perceptual shift…

L: It’s a cultural, yeah, perceptual shift, and it’s super deep too. Now, it’s not just the machine, now there’s a whole culture of how you break a record correctly. It’s totally locked up. It’s not experimental anymore…there’s names for hand motions, how you mix, technique names…it’s a whole world

C: Similar to cryptozoological interests. Breaks from official taxonomies become re-absorbed…glitches and electronic or audio anomalies are going in reverse…becoming classified into techniques… wrangled in. Become a known quantity.

L: Right, zoologically is that the same as how the chart would have to evolve if we found a sasquatch is actually proved? That’s like somebody experimenting, sitting in the woods and then finding the sasquatch. Then from that experiment is a drive to completely describe and analyze it. That’s the funny thing about mysteries. The longer it’s a mystery with more people working on it and it stays a mystery. You’d assume there would be a progression and conclusion. So much on science describing the world. But we keep this a mystery…so it can function as it needs to.

C: Supsension of disbelief, or sustaining of belief…

L: Right, sustaining the necessity of sustaining belief, or disbelief…or wait where are we? Yeah sustaining belief. Is it a big deal if we discover if the sasquatch is real or not? Maybe it’s doing more good for the human race as is. That’s why they had to come up with the blobsquatch. To differentiate with types of videotaped strange things.

C: a side effect of digital perfection…the quality of images. “That’s not a strange mysterious animal…because sasquatches are ape-like not blob-like.” Or something like that…

L:What if you had high fidelity photograph of an animal that’s just a blob.?

C: There are cryptids known as globsters…giant blobs washed up on a shore…definitly aquatic but no other characteristics except that they’re unknown blobs of organic mass…possibly a correspondence between blobsquatches and globsters.

L: they’re made to confuse, they’re made to specifically be…

C: perpetual anomaly

L: A situation crafted by whatever set of factors that interlocks exactly with our desire… with our ability to be totally confused by information and our desire to get to the bottom of something. So it’s just enough to keep us going, but not enough to point us in any right direction…

C: It’s like a video switcher that has four input choices, but you push in two at once, so you get a new garbled signal that’s neither one nor the other…perhaps detrimental to the device…but also a new entity

L: But why would you do that? You would need to do that only to access the fucking spirit world.

end transmission