Recent Trawl

The exquisite specimens above are the result of a recent expedition by recreational trawler Jesse England. A long-time advocate of Metaphortean Space, England donated these living fossils for further research. The coelacanth of cassettes is most certainly a dinosaur, making such Mesozoic (or ‘middle animals’) as a data cassette and a sound “filmstrip” particularly relevant to current pursuits of Metaphorteana. There are many suspected inlets to the Super Sargasso Sea across the Pacific Northwest, and this recent trawl points again to that nucleus of damned data and lost miscellany.

The data cassette, defiantly boasting itself as “leader less,” “certified,” and issued by Radio Shack as a “computer product” was marked also with a fictographical ruse in the form of the hand-scrawled statement “blank.” Devoid of aural activities it cleary was not, whether the emanating damned data can suffice as “computer product” is unknown, but its sonic soliloquy was at once strange and arguably electronic. The other tape, marked with striking green and black colorations, issued by Coronet in 1974, and identified as “instructional media” seems to be a variant in the symbiotic scheme witnessed with other species of the genus magnetic. Intended to accompany a filmstrip of images, the Coronet tape is entitled “Our Changing Earth: HOW WE STUDY IT.” Indeed the content comprises a nearly thirteen minute audio-tome on Earth Science, complete with iconic bells, wind sounds, a curious and intermittent bassline.

Endless Coelacanth

Our coelacanth, the Metaphortean variant and/or a sea creature akin to an endless cassette  is already evidenced, at least speculatively, swimming around in the global brain. I’ll sum it up with a poem by Ogden Nash ( as sighted in Samantha Weinberg’s A Fish Caught in Time):

Consider now the Coelacanth,
Our only living fossil,
Persistent as the amaranth,
And status quo apostle.
It jeers at fish unfossilized
As intellectual snobs elite;
Old Coelacanth, so unrevised
It doesn’t know it’s obsolete.

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.

Technocultural Turn Signals

Indicator species provide a character sketch of an ecosystem’s overall bill of health. An acute demonstration of key characteristics at play in the environment at hand.

Within the media environment a species from the genus magnetic, namely mixtapes, are one such example. The ability to mix, to customize and personalize a sonic trajectory derived from mass media fragments with consumer electronics speaks volumes for the possibilities of this technosphere as a whole.

“I have found that you could make all kinds of great noises with just your tape recorder and the buttons on it” reports one informant in Don Stacy’s audio-cultural exploration All Mixed Up. The informant continues, “right when it gets to that…guitar crescendo, you could press the pause button, and you get this ‘EEEERWEB!” And it totally ends the song”

Canaries in coal mines, indicator species from the genus magnetic seem to be pointing towards impending extinction. With the rise of mp3s and other invasive species, there is a perceived obsolescence of cassette technologies. The diminishing call of the mixtape—the garbles, the clicks, the presence of blank space—gives weight to the theory that forced migration is in effect.

Research now suggests that this is, at least potentially, an adaptive camouflage. Rather than a plunge into sedentarization, the exodus of analog is more likely a nomadic impulse or oppositional gesture. Competing with new media buzz, staking a claim in overlooked locales, the tape deck and its songs still exist. Much like many insects that have had to shift frequencies so as to elude the electronic smog of ringtones and sonic emissions, evidence of vernacular technoculture may require a conscious shift in attention.

In many cases, a permanent vacation from imposed cycles and the lemming-like misinformation surrounding the fate of technologies is recommended.

Unnatural Selection

“‘Living fossils’ are best defined as stationary species” writes cryptozoological pioneer Bernard Heuvelmans in his 1955 book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

Similarly, all technologies are already fossils (in waiting). The production of obsolescence, as Michelle Henning has described, is essential to the perpetuity of new media and new technology. Obsolesced entities do not (typically) exile themselves into the depths of the Hollow Earth, instead they accumulate in lesser subterranean locales. Basements, in some cases.

With media technology, the classification, praise and official acceptance occurs at the beginning of the species’ presence. Unlike cryptids, techno-anomalies are inactive initially. They migrate in somnambulistic fashion into realms of the hidden, unknown, folkloric and fantastic after being invented, classified and known. They become scoffed at, subject of skeptical dismissal and willful ignorance after being first accepted and heralded as legitimate technological entities—if not salves to technocultural crises of the moment.

Marked with an aleatory zeal that echoes that of any number of run-ins with unknown animals, a later process of unnatural selection unfolds in second hand shops and other liminal zones. For better and worse this activity is accompanied by faint memories of yesterday’s marketing campaigns. As with cryptozoology, this thrifting can be concurrent with romanticized pursuits and nostalgic agendas.

Even so—revelation of more curious characteristics, activation of formally dormant possibilities emerges in both zoological and technological encounters. Technocultural claims could involve, for example, circuit-bending an old casio, re-programming a nintendo, or coming across an acreage of discarded data tapes in a mid-western liquidation center. The sound of found medical data, it turns out, is comprised of an astounding array of aural complexities. That is, if said data were played through an audio cassette deck rather than a data tape reader. Together Tapes’ Nohio release is testament to this anomalous action, but more on Together Tapes after field recordings are transcribed.

Until then, the above video by Youtube user CassetteMaster will appease eager Metaphortean researchers with a similar outing of techno-anomaly.

Creatures of Habit

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

Tape recorders are not people, except in particular cases, but I suspect that the deck is in fact a living organism in that (metaphortean) manner that tapes themselves are.  Tape species are most often in a mutual or at least commensal symbiotic relationship with tape decks. Thus contrary to previous theories that the tape deck was some sort of world, we can instead think of it as a partner.  An environment loosely speaking, a territory inhabited by cassettes as the rhinoceros’ hide is a territory ‘inhabited’ by tick birds.   The cassette provides signals and the deck amplifies and processes —garbles, scratches, and of course the recorded sound on the magnetic tape.

This feeling is mutable, of course, but Metaphortean Space has co-mingled with some existing examples already.

Instinct Control has offered glimpses of the ‘songs’ of the tape deck itself, NonHorse has shared knowledge on a plethora of tape species.  Mix tapes as indicator species needs further analysis, but the techno-lycanthrope, or shapeshifting semantics of data tape, will be met with close encounters later this evening!

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.

Sounding Fishy

Sounding fishy, like a data tape played back through speakers, like a VHS tape on the fritz, the coelacanths are my current call sign for curious cassette activity.  A living fossil from the genus magnetic.  If logic follows from Monster on the Campus,  a coelacanth exposed to gamma rays will reverse-engineer the evolution of those who imbibe its blood.  Highly speculative, but perhaps in the parallel dementia of Metaphortean space this damned data could be cast as the reversal of an over-heated medium.  That McLuhan endorsed moment when a medium pushed to its extremes collapses.  Revealing in this implosion a previously imperceptible purpose, direction, and/or possibility space.  The rise of cassette jockeying, for example.

Strange Survivals

“I picked away at the layers of slime to reveal the most beautiful fish I had ever seen,” exclaimed Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer on December 23rd 1938.

There was a time when the slimy shimmering coelacanth populated portions of the world unbeknownst to mainstream zoologists, and (amongst other reasons) was thus considered to be some 80 million years extinct. Lauded as a living fossil upon its discovery  in 1938, it has retained a certain subterranean cred.

“Coelacanths are certainly not as rare as we first thought…rather they’re living in a part of the world, a habitat that is so very difficult to sample…if you were lucky enough to hook one, you probably wouldn’t be able to bring it to the surface.” (Dr. John McCosker, Senior Scientist and Chair, Aquatic Biology)

Likewise audio cassettes are difficult to dredge up in the main streams.  Second-hand habitats are essential places to look, such as the legendary “Bins” on the outskirts of Portland proper.  Here you can cast a wide net, with yields of marvelous electronic has-beens, schools of eclectic cassettes and an active junk culture.  Like fish, your finds are sold to you by the pound!  Still others, like McCosker, make the case that  “The best way to sample for coelacanths now is not to fish for them but to talk to native fishermen…they say ‘oh I know that fish,’ they’ve caught them.” For many Indonesian fishing communities, the coelacanth was never really a fossil.

Never really an obsolete form.  Many in DIY music communities have never perceived a break in the cassette continuum, including younger generations who have “grown up digital,” yet turned out as advocates of an allegedly outmoded format.  Issues of access, opposition, Fortean logic?

Onto the more curious audio-life forms, the species of tape that reveal the potential of all tapes, of all tech, that lurks at the interface of malfunction.  Mix tapes act as sort of indicator species for an ecosystem of curious cassette activity.  As much was suggested in recent conversation with G.Lucas Crane about mixtapes as a sort of first glimpse at the hands-on potentialities encrypted in these consumer forms.

New Probe