Gray Areas Persist

“Network realism” prefaces our encounter with reality these days.  As much and more is to be included in an upcoming research programme by the Virtual Knowledge Studio.  Seeking “to understand how mediation and knowledge production are entwined in the use of databases of images“ The notion of network realism, of an architecture of information swirling around actual entities, inspires me to re-trace my thoughts on networks, images and associational structures in relation to the Fortean.  Proposed Network Realism research is focused on the factual. Following Fort I’ll take the factual as a nuanced hue in a shifting continuum between known and unknown phenomena.

While the goblin universe has persisted in peripheral visions for millenia, nothing’s quiet on the Western front.  A (percieved) rise  of Fortean pursuits, including exhibits in New York, Maine, Maryland, also pop culture, hoaxes, sightings in both mass and amateur media seem to be gaining critical mass.  These occurrences may be understood as provocations linked to an accelerating, mass societal shift towards the acceptance/preference/convenience of free-floating images, text and associations as being indistinguishable from the represented physical counter parts.

For some the response to this is a matter of Baudrillardian hyper-reality, the pursuit of the cryptid is “a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real.” The goblin universe is more tangible than the ghost world of networked space, or at least the possibilities of close encounters hold that promise.  There is likely a link to surveillance as well and thus the allure of the “unknown animal.”  Cryptids exist only as hypothetical realities, once captured, classified–they cease being cryptids. Once classified as legitimate animals they move from the speculative non-fiction of legend and folklore to the speculative non-fiction of network realism.  They are digitally photographed with cameras on tripods, saved as high resolution data products, then tagged.  Over time, the search engineering shifts associations away from Fortean claims.  Eventually even  forest giraffes, for example, are capable of generating links far removed from bigfeet, nessies and other, perhaps stealthier, cryptids.

Gray areas persist.

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.