New Probes

Data-mining the Shaver canon, with particular attention to the Deros, evokes a maligned form of the meanderthal. Mutant and mean-spirited, the deros or “detrimental robots” were allegedly borne of irradiation from e-waste left behind by negligent Titans and, or, Atlans millenia ago. From within the inner-Earth they accumulate attention capital by way of malevolent social networks—sabotaging and disappearing people, places and things on Earth’s surface.

“A man who is equipped like a territory is no longer an inhabitant; he becomes a habitat.” – Paul Virilio, Crepuscular Dawn.

Within Virilio’s critique of techno-accessorizing and auto-colonization is also a possibility space for more mysteries a la Shaver. E-waste as alien implant, a time capsule, an out-of-place artifact from a future imperfect. “History is spatial,” notes Tom Sherman, “there are going to be anachronisms in your neighborhood.” (Before and After the I-Bomb) The shadow economies of electronic refuse remain on the back of our minds, figuratively or literally, depending on how far we push this amazing story.

Generating the Invisible

Crypto-bloggers were abuzz about abominable claims this last week, follow-ups on inflammatory hype over interdimensional bi-pedals.  While elsewhere research no doubt continues on by a Dr. Robert Hanlon who,  in recent years, has found that “by manipulating millions of tiny pigment-filled organs in their skin, cephalopods are able to disguise themselves in nearly any situation. ” (Ransford, Matt Case of the Disapearing Octopus)

There are others attributing the camouflage common amongst cuttlefish, octopi and squids to the perceived absence of physical sasquatches.  Conclusive evidence remains hidden from view, but perhaps the bigfeet have in fact upped the ante into post-blobsquatch modes of crypto-logistics.

Meanwhile I am happy to have search engineered the “invisible generation” chapter of Burrough’s Ticket That Exploded.  This as an accoutrement, a supplement to probes awaiting departure. In cahoots, of course, with my research into living and transitional fossils. Teetering on the edges of an audio-cultural vortex, I’m already lost in a swirl of associated thought-forms.

Relatedly, I’m looking forward to the accompanying audio-visuals for Don Stacy’s  All Mixed Up: A Cultural Exploration of Mixed Tapes and CDs

New Probes

The cryptozoo is an amorphous force, itself a multi-nodal hub in a greater, more tangled web of Fortean goings-on. A hulking mass of curiosities that unflinchingly belches up entities like the Swedish “blobbogey,” as was reported by Cryptomundo today.

A submarine presence in Sweden’s Storsjön lake… equal parts indistinct mass and unidentified object! My fleshy mammalian brain can only imagine that this gesture is at once commemorating the golden anniversary of Bigfoot reports and condemning the close-minded hoax craft perpetrated in Palo Alto by way of Georgia. This speculative explanation is prone to fly wide open at any moment. I’ll retreat presently towards another tangential realm.

In previous Metaphortean spaces I have discussed the notion of glitchcraft. The blobbogey offers curious correspondences with this phenomena.

Some initial probes: Absence of being airborne in the Storsjön lake monster scenario acknowledged, bogeys are UFOs in waiting. Unidentified but not yet confirmedly associable with the flying saucer set. Glitches as latter day gremlins, favoring transmission rather than transportation tech as sites of intervention. A bogey is craft in the sense of a vehicle or vessel, or at least a thing of flight. A blob is craft in terms of applied art. The art of the creative short-circuit, figuratively or literally, according to context. The familiar folkloric Bogeyman, a shape-shifting fearsome formation, has been associated with green fog in the Pacific Northwest.

Above, a blob. A curious green blob, surfaced on the outskirts of Wizard Isle in Crater Lake circa August 2006. No claim to fame, just amateur anomaly.

Nostalgic Valley (prototype)

Musing on Mashuro Mori’s notion of the Uncanny Valley, that twilight zoned for awkward encounters with dolls, 3-D animated characters and androids. Those entities that seem human, safe for a creeping sensation that they are not ! Mori charted the plight of these sorts of things in the diagram below:

Hollywood has trended lately towards (failed) attempts at creating photorealistic humans via 3-d animation and/or elaborate motion capture systems. For all the money spent on these endeavors, the characters that haunt these cinematic productions are a perpetually dead-eyed bunch…bogged down in the depths of that valley so low! The Uncanny, following Freud’s 1919 essay of the same name, is in German “unheimlich,” and is set against the term “heimlich” which means homely. Uncanniness is feeling not at home. I’ll return to this notion of home in just a moment.

On the advantages of obsolescence, Rosalind Kraus re-iterates the thoughts of Walter Benjamin: “at the moment of obsolescence…he wondered whether photography, like other technologies before it, released a fleeting image of the utopian promise it might contain at the moment when it was still an amateur past-time…the moment that is before it became commercialized and hardened into commodity.” Memory traces of utopia are subsequently bottled up and resold in the name of nostalgia, (re)commodifying the radical prospects of such ideas. Returning to the notion of the Uncanny, of “feeling not at home,” I wonder if there isn’t a connection to nostalgic mechanisms. Nostalgia, that longing for a place that no longer exists, was defined prior to 1920 as “severe homesickness,” according to Etymonline.com. Eager to eke out a more explicit correspondence between “feeling not at home,” and “severe homesickness,” I give you wild speculation! Nostalgia for home that is so sick it hurts. “homesick and sick of home,” writes Svetlana Boym in her Off-Modern Manifesto. It hurts to fess up to the fact that the yearned for home very likely never existed as remembered (Boym.) This disconnect between home remembered and the home that actually existed. An uncanny valley, gap or rupture? Home incorporates, in part, an etymological relation to ecology via the Greek oikos “house, dwelling place, habitation.” I’ve revisited Mori’s diagram of the Uncanny Valley–replacing “Uncanny” with “Nostalgia.” Plugging in terminology related to the life cycles of technologies. A speculative exploration of media ecologies. See below:

As media are imagined, re-used, re-purposed, re-invented, the creative possibilities proliferate. Obsolete, residual media sparkle with renewed sense of utopian potential. Desire also increases, only to be short-circuited by nostalgic enterprises. When the accursed “Nostalgic Valley” looms, a plunge into its depths is an imminent threat. In her essay “New Lamps for Old,” writer Michelle Henning cites Evan Watkins who argues, “There’s every reason dominant ideological productions work very hard to endlessly construct itineraries of the obsolete as survival narratives…because obsolescence when reproduced as nostalgic object is no longer dangerous.” Quality reproductions and/or Emulation are retro-active new mediations. They seem authentic, but lack the truly unique characteristics, such as glitches and quirky behaviors that exist outside of intended function. New Media, by way of remediation, involve a slightly refined sort of regurgitation. Using the example of photography, Henning emphasizes the fact that obsolescent status is not a naturally occurring phenomena. “Remediation is…necessary to the production of obsolescence. The digital camera is marketed as an ordinary camera with added value: you can now do without film, view your images immediately, [etc].” New media involve new spin on old facts. Obsolescence is necessitated so that the cycles can repeat, Nostalgia intercepts utopian desire, sabotaging emergent forms of imaginative re-use. The top right of the diagram should perhaps read “vaporware” although this is arguably co-mingled with impossibilities of utopian tech as well.

Out of Place Artifacts

We live in active acres of signs, bridging connections, forging pathways, voyaging far. Is this not the metaphortean pursuit? Following linguist R. Jakobson, there’s metonymy and metaphor, the two opposing poles of discourse. On one extreme–the literal and contiguous. The other end decidedly figurative…an abstract mode of thought. “Metaphor does not conform to neat rules and does not follow rational paths,” writes Raymond Gozzi, Jr in The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media, it breaks away from literal linkage.

Phantoms of the (Metaphoric) Pole. Hard facts dematerialized into phantoms, into particles, free-floating pieces, slippery slopes. Bridged in semionautical explorations. Do the poles exist? Or are there instead previously imperceptible portals and passageways? Oceanic metaphors enveloped the early wireless world, but what lies beneath… in the depths? Strange creatures evolved to operate in otherworldly conditions. Some Hollow Earth Insiders speculate that a geological crack on the floor of Scotland’s Loch Ness is a node within an elaborate network of tunnels. An exit strategy for an over-exposed pleisosaur.

There is much to be learned from subterranean activities, media archeology and neogeographic queries. The glitch, if not stylistic agendas, ushers in obsolescent status for an object oriented towards specific function. The glitch reveals the outer limits of media and technology “the world is hollow, for I have touched the sky”. Beyond the glitch, access to points unknown? Is this not the metaphortean pursuit? Bring it up to Earth: Glitch as animation: out-of-place artifacts off-sprung from an implied crypto-zoetrope (another philosophical toy). Glitch as post-gremlin. An animal interstitially ambling outside of a machine’s presumed range.

Speculative trajectory: timecraft-spacecraft-glitchcraft-lovecraft.

New Probes

In his 1969 book Counterblast, McLuhan in cahoots with designer Harley Parker adventure into non-euclidean typographies and playful prose. Speculating (and demonstrating) the presence of previously imperceptible lifeforms in new media environs.

“Media…can be entrusted only to new artists, because they are art forms, that is, new ways of perception, new probes into the world like new species. Evolution as a process has shifted from biology to technology.” (McLuhan) Artists themselves as new species. New mutants arrived from the future to accelerate the evolutionary processes. Kodwo Eshun tuned in to this nearly a decade ago, in his mezmerizing More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction

Technologies are typically situated as remedies for older models of media. Digital cameras incorporate the “click” sound and look of an SLR while simulataneously promoting the convenience of post-chemical processing. This slow-moving remediation buffers the outpouring of ever-new media, gadgets and killer apps that automate and infiltrate one’s sense of (extended) self.

Residual media are missing links, unknown species with traces of familiarity. Cryptozoologists deviate from scientific methods into the realm of the imaginary and fantastic. Inversely, the 19th century Modern Spiritualists appropriated electronic jargon to re-frame their mystical beliefs, seances and sightings

Applied Blobsquatchery

Crypto-Zoetropicalism, that strange survival from the B.B. (Before Blobsquatch) era, returns in the vidsonic saga Hidden Animals. Following theories that from animals to animation, if there are hidden animals like bigfeet, there are also hidden animations. These anomalous entities would surely consist of animation outside of traditional sequencing, inside of experimental practices…. including but not limited to: vjing, staged accidents, kinetic modification, scratch film and other ideas.

Hidden Animals: A Search For The Crypto-Zoetropical Yonder is a testament to the anomoulous audio-visual pursuits unfurled in this arena by yours truly in cahoots with sound artist Padna last year.

Test-run this Saturday at DIVA in company of grayscale slo-mo glitch hoppers INCITE of Hamburg, Germany! For the Official premiere, in Padna country, look forward to Thursday August 2nd at Monkeytown in Brooklyn, NY

In this instant replay of initial inquiries, and/or considering what we now know about the Blobsquatch, Crypto-Zoetropicalism might be better understood as Applied Blobsquatchery. We could break this down further into nooks and crannies of intent…

Metaphortean Research

In a variation on the philosophy of Charles Fort, let’s look at media and technology. If we demarcated all new media as red, and all “obsolete” media as yellow, we would realize that there remain acres of orange media which falls on both sides of the alleged borderlines. The term e-waste has emerged in recent years to frame the discussion of toxins and nonbiodegradable materials found in many electronics. This concept has also become associated with obsolete or outdated technology. Theorist Lisa Parks has suggested the term residual be used instead of e-waste to “complicate the bifurcations of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media …[which] risk inadvertently reinforcing the imperatives of electronics manufacturers and marketers who have everything to gain from such distinctions.” (Parks, Falling Apart: Electronics Salvaging and the Global Media Economy) Although the connotations of “e-waste” are certainly not positive, and serve to address the dark side of digital electronics, they don’t exactly alleviate the conception of old media as anything other than worthless dreck.

From teleportation to sea serpents, spontaneous combustion and the hollow earth (to name a few!), fortean phenomena—itself a sort of ecology—multiplies alternative and vernacular modes of understanding the world. Drawing upon fortean studies as an inspirational framework for my research, I am interested in exploring the outer regions of media ecology. Neologisms, as suggested earlier, are an effective means of steering semionautical expeditions and so I’ve declared my research metaphortean. Deriving metaphorical models from the fortean pursuit, metaphortean research is aimed at better understanding the hidden worlds, marvelous creatures and borderline activities that permeate the realms of the residual media environment. The abundance of residual technologies circulating through second-hand markets suggests missing links rather than fossil traces. In these pages, the associated Blobsquatchery in the Expanded Field vlog, as well as the satellite exhibition now on display at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art I hope to help sustain the belief that new adventures abound!

Apportland

The term “teleportation” was coined by Charles Fort in an attempt to understand the supernatural shenanigans seen at seances. Such high-tech trickery is also linked to the UFO by way of its interdimensional affairs and propensity towards abduction. The blobsquatch, the glitch (as quantum-mutated gremlin)–these cryptids are related in experience design. Despite discrepancies, it is useful to consider ufologists’ notions of upper division close encounters with extra-terrestrial intelligence in sorting out Metaphorteana. Abduction scenarios, classified CE-4, typically involve teleportation with the alien set. We can shift to the lower-tech notion of telecommunication, i.e. abduction rendered by psychical means, in our discussion of Metaphortean modes of abduction. As nefarious as the nebulous Cthulhu’s transmitted images of nightmare corpse cities, and as everyday as a vividly recognized audio sample that snatches you away—this involuntary mental abduction is as moving as physical apports. The next level of encounter, the CE-5, “are joint, bilateral contact events produced through the conscious, voluntary and proactive human-initiated or cooperative communication.” (wikipedia) These are akin to applied blobsquatchery (in the expanded field).

This synesthetic process was recently dramatized in Blobsquatch: In The Expanded Field Part 3.

Not unrelated, Meta-Fortean phenomena often relies on the insertion of retro-activated continuities between familiar forteana. This process is akin to the creative short-circuit of an electronic device. For best results, this activity should be considered derivative only in a psychogeographical sense. Such that one encounters unexpected occurrences in increasingly electronic everyday affairs brings to mind whiffs of corresponding fantasies from the cultural –sci-fi, weird-fi, the cryptozoo, etc. There is a sense of amplification in a Mcluhanesque manner but routed through a flanger pedal. For example, blobsquatchery and sasquatchery are originally the same signal generated by paranormal mechanisms. Both prompt hesitation about “that thing over there.” But the blobsquatch, in its existence as a medium, inherently impedes immediate perception further. And so the signals are delayed a tiny bit. Gradual changes lead to exciting new formations. There is feedback and modulation, swirling and harmonic effects. Does one wonder that the “flange” effect itself was discovered by accident ? Without a proper exit strategy, I will end this post here… by means of an abrupt apport!

Metaphortean Phenomena

“An intensification of scrutiny must be met with an amplification of guile” ( RAQs Media Collective ). Under the search engineered panopticonscious data wrangling of our times, the cryptozoological are boldly unknown… searchable but indiscernable. Like virtual Globsters washed up from the depths of the infosphere, identifiable only as unidentified masses. A thought on the tip of your tongue crossfading away into everything else. The beguiling blobsquatch is distinctly indistinct. A known unknown oscillating between representational media forms and the potential of imagination. It cribs notes from H.P. Lovecraft’s notoriously nameless, unameable and unfathomable cosmic hordes. Those Things “that cannot be described–there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldtritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order,” as Lovecraft’s narrator explains in The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Charles Fort, the famous researcher from whence the adjective “Fortean” emerged, was an iconclastic thinker and author of several books on anomalous phenomena. He held that everything exists in an intermediate state, a suspension or flux between extremes. It is in this liminal zone that the blobsquatch reigns supreme. The betwixt ‘n’ between of borderline phenomena. Intermediate, or perhaps Intermedia to forward Dick Higgins’ description for ” the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres” (wikipedia). Higgins’ diagram above suggests, as Hannah Higgins notes in her appendix to D.Higgin’s Synesthesia and Intersenses: Intermedia, “According to a model like this, historic and contemporary experience is diverse, causally flexible and permissive of the as-yet-unknown…It is an open framework that invites play.” (H.Higgins)

Synesthesia. Higgins’ alludes to this coalescing of sensory stimuli, and one Dr. Hugo associates metaphors with synesthesia in his article “Art and Synesthesia: in search of the synesthetic experience.” Hugo describes metaphor as being “like a mental encounter; it can produce a flash of insight. The poetic form of the metaphor allows to counter-balance rational thinking with a creative potential” (Hugo)…bridging seemingly dissimilar concepts and materials. As I’ve previously mentioned, neologistics (metaphor most definitly included) are sometimes necessary to shift perception, disrupt traditional routes and rhythms of language systems. The poetry of machines, the potential of imagination… Metaphortean Phenomena. Intermedia is the message of Metaphortean phenomena. Generated by paranormal mechanisms, MetaPhortean phenomena are mental encounters emerging at the interface of malfunction. And perhaps sustained only in that duration…as Ghazala suggests in his discussion of the hybrid “Bio-Electronic AudioSapien” ( Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments)emerged at the interface of [sustained] malfunction.

Ghazala explains the news BEAsape species, “As I made sounds by touching the body contacts on the shorted-out mini amp, the electricity of both bodies, myself and the amp, became intertwined……we were one….Yes, the BEAsape’s existence is temporary, its existence momentary.” (Ghazala,p.17) These encounters are often with residual media, or at least within the margin of error of new media. Carrying forth implicit comparisons within the technocultural imagination, anomalous characteristics are transferred across domains, in a synesthetic process that is at once strange and familiar. Strange because it involves distinct sensations of the supernatural and wildly speculative; familiar because it evokes sense-memories of bygone eras/errors, of structured obsolescence and prescribed patterns of consumer electronics. Blobsquatches (in the expanded field) emerge at the limits of intended functionality of various technologies. They panopticonfidently flirt with signal and noise, intuitively drifting between extremes