Finding Fortitude

Notification of another node with neologistic trajectories emergent:  FORTITUDE

Letting loose lexiconspiratorial plots, the sort hatched most often, in recent times, in the vicinity of Weird Fiction.  Ostensibly this is an annex of “Charles Fort,”  and “attitude,”  but also already a synonym for resilience, strength of mind, mettle, determination and on.   The Fortean ‘tude flies in the face of  authorized facts, revealing the  intermediate slip underlying  so much phenomena.

Always game for a paraview, or parallels, Fort was one for ludic fallacy, perhaps. Quite literally in his interventions into the popular past-time of checkers with modifications and hacks of his own. “Super-Checkers is going to be a great success…” exclaimed Fort, “I have met four more people who consider it preposterous.”  At any rate: Possibility spaces and Pre-game for further fortitude?

Spimal Tap

In an illuminating lecture on RFIDs, theory objects, the internet of things, and related matters at the Emerging Technology Conference 2006 , writer Bruce Sterling discussed the role of language in shaping (for better and worse) emerging technologies. Sterling describes a need for neologisms to break away from the archeologisms that have anchored ideas about technology in stagnant waters (like the quest for Artificial Intelligence that has obscured the real potential of computers to file, sort, link info). The lecture is also about Sterling’s recent speculative theory manifesto (Shaping Things) about everyday objects that are supported by an active network of information (so that you could ‘google’ your keys on-line to find out where they are physically hidden, for example). Sterling’s word for this is “spime”– an object trackable in space and time. “Spimes are manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system,” writes Sterling. “Spimes begin and end as data. They’re virtual objects first and actual objects second.” (Sterling)

This is interesting to think about in relation to the cryptozoological. Cryptids are (possibly) confabulated entities sustained by extensive and dense informational support facilitated by active participants and believers. They begin and end as data. Sightings and reports lead to investigations for the physical creature–it eludes physical capture–but is caught by a camera. The Patterson-Gimlin 16mm film, as Sasquatch researcher Alton Higgins contends is “a gold standard against which other pictures must be compared.” (Higgins) It exists (as all moving images do) virtually. We do not see 24 frames per second of celluloid (or video scan lines for that matter) but comprehend the imperceptiblly singular instances as an animated whole mentally in the virtual space of memory.

Of course, cryptids feature spimal cord injury missing links between virtual identities. Their instantiative stance obscured by a lack of physical traces

What about the Glitchsquatch?

The Blobsquatch, for my pursuits, is a welcome personification of technological aberration as unknown ‘animal’. The suffix “squatch” serves as a short-cut into acres of associated cryptozoological ideas. “Squatch” operates in a manner similar to the prefix “franken”, a direct line to notions of mad science in modern culture, or the suffix “gate” which transforms anything into a political scandal. Blobsquatch works but Blobfoot doesn’t. Why? “Blobfoot” sounds like some sort of disease or awkward dance. Chupacablob, Blob Ness might be acceptable variants using other known cryptids, but of course Bigfoot/Sasquatch is more memetically charged as an emblem of cryptozoological culture.

Recently, one of my colleagues asked me “What about the Glitchsquatch? Do you know about the Glitchsquatch?” So far as I can tell the term “glitch” is self-sufficient. It doesn’t need the suffix “squatch” to express the idea of technological anomaly. Etymologically, “glitch” is likely derived from Yiddish glitsh “a slip,” from glitshn “to slip,” from Ger. glitschen, and related gleiten “to glide,” as Etymonline.com suggests. Emerged in the early 1960s as technical term associated with electronic engineering it was “popularized and given a broader meaning by U.S. space program.” (Etymonline) I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that the glitch may be close cousins with the gremlin. The conglomeration “Frankenglitch” as a term meaning approximately the “mad science of manufacturing malfunction,” might work out. Mad scientists of malfunction, in my mind are audio-visual artists who seek signals in noise and/or are motivated by a belief/conviction to do so. But then, the term “mad scientist” isn’t synonomous with “cryptozoologist,” (despite what some people might think) and so the use of the prefix “franken” gets entangled in a whole other system of signs.

In its original usage, Blobsquatch refers to the results of an optical error, or lens based blurring of an image. This unintentional illusion (rather than photoshopped hoax) appears, in its blob-like form, to be a Sasquatch (which it may or may not be in actuality.) As stated elsewhere, I’m interested in pursuing the Blobsquatch in the expanded field. In other words I’m interested not just in the blurs, blobs and unknowns specific to botched attempts at documenting Sasquatches, but the holding power of aberrations and curious encounters across the technocultural imagination. Optical, electronic and digital unknowns that are both aesthetically fascinating and foundational to various vernacular belief systems. The Blobsquatch functions for me as a means of interdisciplinary exploration at the intersection of the cryptozoological and technological.

Blobsquatchery

Following the neologistic trajectories of monstrosities such as Frankenstein and Watergate, the Sasquatch, too, has reached the cultural capitol of portmanteau! The suffix “squatch,” has been broken free from “sas” and re-connected to “blob”.

Blobsquatch. The term itself, according to Cryptomundo.com was coined initially by Vito Quaranta, then propagated online by Ray Randell throughout 2002-03. The ‘squatch,’ of course, refering to sasquatch, bigfoot, manimals–those hairy, hefty, homonids in our midst. ‘blob’ refers to a common characteristic of most all cryptozoological documentation–blurry, grainy, blobby-ness. The shadowy shapes and nebulous forms that just might be something out of the ordinary. This is separate from a hoax, which involves intentional construction of deceptive imagery. In an article entitled Evaluating Purported Sasquatch Photographic Evidence author Alton Higgins notes the rise of Photoshop assisted phoniness in falsified Bigfoot documentation. With Sasquatches or Blobsquatches proper, Higgins contends that “most unbiased observers, including those within the bigfoot research community, would [agree] that any photo requiring equal parts interpretation and imagination…should be discounted.”(Higgins)

This seems a valid way to determine the objectivity of indexical traceroutes back to a physical sasquatch and environment. That is to say if one’s noise-to-signal ratio reads blob-to-squatch, (see figure above fromBigfoot Forums) and is concerned only with that physical thing out in the wildnerness. For my research, into the information environment and anomalies that upset order there, the Blobsquatch is a welcome personification, so to speak, for the technocultural imaginary.

“Wherever streams of consciousness and electrons converge in the cultural imagination,there lies a potential conduit to an electronic elsewhere” (Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media). There has been a historically sustained interest in the intersection of technology and imagination. Particularly prominent is the interpretation of glitches, errors and other technological aberrations as signs of the supernatural. The activities of the Modern Spiritualists come to mind, particularly Spirit Photography. Modern Spiritualists believed that the otherwise imperceptible forces from the spirit world could be captured in the sufficiently sensitive photographic process. Murky multiple-exposures and the gooey gobs of ‘ectoplasm’ can be found in the photodocuments from late 19th century seances. As radio technology was implemented in the early 20th century, the audio-disturbances (now known as sferics) were intially believed to be Alien communiques. Electronic Voice Phenomena and the mysterious bloop are more recent variants on audio-anomalies. In 1970, the “Bayside Apparitions” phenomena began in (originally) Bayside, New York. As Folklorist Daniel Wojcik describes in his book The End of the World As We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America, Veronica Lueken has developed a following of thousands surrounding her direct conveyance of the Virgin Mary’s prophesies. Lueken’s followers, known as ‘Baysiders,’have witnessed and documented miraculous phenomena–most notably with Polaroid cameras. “Said to contain allegorical symbols and…interpreted as divine communication offering insights of prophetic relevance,” (Wojcik,p.81) the Baysiders refer to these photos as “Polaroids from Heaven.” The manifestations on these photos “include streaks and swirls of light…dotted lines and beads of light,” (Wojcik, p.82) all developed near-instantaneously in traditional Polaroid form. Like Spirit Photography, “miracle photography is a form of divination, a technique of interpreting symbolic messages communicated by superantural forces,” (Wojcik, p.83) on par with a technologically involved world.

Gremlins, as discussed in a previous post, are perhaps a missing link between technological and cryptozoological anomalies.