Cracked Memex

Curiously continuing onward into the outer regions of circuit-bending, or riffing off Voice Crack’s term — cracked everyday electronics.  More so a conceptual hack is what I’m after. Something “cracked” as much for its affiliations with crackpottery and crank-dom, yet still an apparatus, a memex to be precise.  Dr. Vannevar Bush’s marvelous “memory extender,” born obsolete, it never made it past vaporware.  Truly, it inspired hypertext and is oft cited as a direct feed for innovators Englebert, Licklider and Nelson.  It remained too unwieldy in the 1940s tech-scene, a mechanical monstrosity, a premature arrival of the future.

Unlike a typical index, the memex aspired to create an associational webwork of information in a manner akin to the human mind.  My interest is in a bent memex, or rather a cracked memex.  A warped device, eschewed of reason, intended to extend the mental capacities of the conspiratorial mind.  A cybernetic device, the cracked memex augments the internal mechanics of conspiracy logic, an interface of malfunction opened up within the human mind.  Associational structures and temporary salves to information overload, the cracked memex amplifies speculative theories and possibility spaces.

Housed in a retro-fit old desk, cables and cords protruding, embedded screens and electronic synthesis to boot.  An audio patchbay of potential correspondences, and video sequences subjected to Soviet montage theory.  Majic eyes wide shut, this miracle of mad science is finished off with an homage to the Majestic-12.  As you may suspect, this once secret Roswell research committee on E.T. wreckage retrieval included, that’s right, Vannevar Bush!  My working prototype of a cracked memex is currently on display at Portland’s ON gallery.  Part of my collaborative installation with Mack McFarland entitled Being Liminal. Within a fortnight, documentation may well manifest.

Unlocking the N.E.S.

Just the other day in Scotland, new footage of the Loch Ness Monster surfaced from depths of the vlogosphere. In metaphortean circles, new sightings associated with nessies are a regular occurrence. Adventurous explorers everywhere are unlocking the N.E.S.! The Nintendo Entertainment System, that strange survival of the 8-bit era, is a dinosaur in relation to today’s highly evolved gaming. The archetypal adventurer in these waters is Cory Archangel. Upon closer inspection, he is in fact in the company of quite a motley crew.

Ogo Eion, of the Portland duo Disjunct is no programmer. Instead he dives right in and intuitively intervenes with these live electronics.

Likewise, Baltimore’s Jeff Donaldson touts his noteNdo techniques for playing with power. In an interview last April, Donaldson explains, “In the beginning I was just using tin-foil…and you know this thing is plugged into the wall…I just intuitively knew the spots to go for and didn’t kill myself.” Like all such pursuits into the unknown it’s the moment of rupture that reels one in. “It’s like all of a sudden [the N.E.S.]is unbound from algorithm, it breaks out”

Acronymically, the unlocked N.E.S. might read-out as New Electroplasmic Source. As with the legacy of glimpses in Scotland’s Loch, nessies live on!