Damned Data

All this talk of blobsquatchery, but "what about the glitchsquatch?" as a colleague queried earlier. Generally speaking, all these technological anomalies may be catalogued under the banner of Metaphorteana, but let us continue now with the conspicuous traits of creatures in this cryptozoo. Etymologically, the term glitch means "to slip," and is often associated with the U.S. space program's slippage. In this regard there seems a lineage between gremlins and glitches carried out in the shadows of transportation technologies. Planes give way to spacecraft including UFOs. Perhaps piloted by gremlins in a transanimal phase towards glitchhood, UFOs are famous for interference with both physical and virtual modes of transport--as the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena has detailed. Glitches move from physical transport to disembodied transmissions of data across space and time. Operating in the zone of transmission or retreival of data, glitches collaborate with various paranormal mechanisms to make themselves known. In digital affairs, glitched produce is called data corruption. This is often linked to the notion of data or information loss, suggesting an absence of information. While intended information is often lost, there is also new information to be gained!

Noise is also a signal. As circuit-bending pioneer Reed Ghazala recalls in his inaugural encounter with metaphortean phenomena, circa 1967, "I closed the drawer and was immediately in the midst of some of the most unusual sounds I'd ever heard. Why? By pure accident, some unknown metal object had fallen against the exposed circuitry of the amp, shorting-out the electronics...[I thought] if this can happen by means of an accidental short circuit, what might happen by shorting things on purpose?" ( Bending the Headspace of Electronic Design)

The potential of uncovering previously imperceptible modes of understanding.

"A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded." - Charles Fort, The Book of The Damned, 1919

Ghazala and Fort are not alone in the championing of damned data. There is a multitude of metaphortean research in our midst. Circuit-bending aside, some exciting explorations of data corruption include the efforts of Glitch Browser and Recyclism. Above you will find a glitchsquatch made manifest by Glitch Browser's paranormal processing.

Curiosity Cabinetwork

Through unknown paranormal mechanisms, I find myself returning to my initial inquiries into the role of folksonomies in regards to vernacular architectures of information surrounding fortean phenomena. In essence, the folksonomy seems to be a return to curiosity cabinets of the 16th century. Housing all manner of marvelous bric-a-brac including: plants, fossils, minerals, medicinal items, unicorn horns, shells, stones, etc., these cabinets offered a glimpse of the world. Representational short-hand, accumulated in accordance with any one collector's means. In this primordial phase of the modern museum, collections were often ordered up in constellations of corresponding visual characteristics .

At the Anatomical Museum in Leiden, for instance, there was "a corner...dedicated to twoness -- two-tailed lizards, conjoined twin foetuses, forked carrots and a two-headed cat were ranged side by side." (Shiralee Saul, 1998) This non-hierarchichal manner of management is not unlike the method of the modern folksonomy. Folksonomies emerge from clusters of user-generated tags attached to images, videos, webpages, et cetera...on-line. Following the imitative magic of curiosity cabinets, tag clouds echo the curiosity cabinets nicely. Flickr is a more exemplary homage to the museum in Leiden, as you can see from this tag search on "two". Quite a curious collection indeed!

In an essay on curiosity cabinets arranged via corresponding features, UCSB's Microcosms group writes "For the sixteenth century, such [correspondences] confirmed the sense of an underlying logic to the world at large. For us, it allows us to recognize that objects within the world yield different sorts of information, or have different values, according to the questions we ask about them. In all cases, comparison requires access to a large enough body of material to make such analysis meaningful." ( Pangolin and Pinecone, 1995)

Within globalized networks of information today, "access to large enough bodies of material" is not so much the issue. Access is eclipsed by sheer volume of data. I find it interesting to entertain current debates on post-folksonomic constellations, such as collabularies in light of curiosity cabinets transmogrifying into taxonomic models. Is there an echo in here?

Handful of Fantastic Zoology

"By treating the things of media--the artifacts, the technical apparatuses, the material texts as if they, like living things, have lives and therefore potential biographies, we can trace their paths as they pass across social classes and from newness to obsolescence." (Michelle Henning, New Lamps for Old, Residual Media, 2007, p.50)

Sifting through schlock at the Picadilly flea market today, I found two portable CD players. I'd been eager to find some working devices so that I might embark on a laser guided derive along the lines of Michael Oster's CD Trauma techniques. "The CD players work," the man at the flea market told me, "twenty for the pair." It's been hard to find CD-players, as the iMperial pods flood the mainstream market. The CD players I found are transanimals, hybrid electronics that play CDs, CD-Rs and MP3 data discs. Transanimals are a nano-niche disappeared in the blink of an eye. Hybrid moments are ultimately futile strategies as "survival of the fittest" is out-done by the latest. It's not about survival so much as being physically fitted for always-already planned obsolescence.

In the nooks and crannies of culture is where by-gone media resides. Transanimals frequent this terrain. I found my CD players at the flea market today, but no sign of audio cassette tapes. A stray AC/DC or Quiet Riot album, sure. A Tom Clancy book-on-tape, yes. But no more the menagerie of home-made obscurities, the box loads of miscellany on audiotape. Those marvelous creatures with hand-scrawled text. The mezmerizing strangeness of travelling through time via a tape player left on in a boring room, a vacation journal, answering machine, or an impromptu verse.

Tales become taller. I sense mythologies creeping in, as I recall my second-hand hunting through flea markets of yore. "Once I even found a...," as my anecdotal story starts. There is cross-over here with the crypozoological pursuit, a deep personal conviction that the age of discovery still exists. The golden age of discovery is as convenient as eBay today, although such armchair adventuring begs the question "what now?" The thrill of the hunt, spirited haggling and chance discoveries become extinct. Even the typo-farming folklore has become business as usual. In regards to eBay's impact, as John Richards notes "It is not a question these days of getting hold of something, but rather what to do with it" ( 32kg: Performance Systems for a Post-Digital Age ) Perhaps, off-world adventuring, a la circuit-bending, in an electronic elsewhere opened up within the abundance of residual media?

Cryptozoologists Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark recall the golden age of zoological pursuit "In the beginning, as explorers trekked to new lands and listened to local informants, they were led to remarkable new species...Cryptozoology keeps alive the tradition of discovery and recognition of new species of animals (cited in Dendle, Peter Cryptozoology in the medieval and modern worlds, 2006)

Semionautical Almanac (excerpt)

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has noted that "the reaction to any one specific blobsquatch remains in the eye of the beholder," (cryptomundo.com ), suggesting a slippery slope of perceptual possibilities as one tries to determine the (un)reality of any occurence. Look around you! The metaphortean wing of the cryptozoo is lurking in the margins of error in most all media, technologies and machines. Deploying a variety of vernacular probes and processes in retort to any number of errata will only increase the likelihood of an encounter with the technocultural unknown. I've discussed psychogeographical drifting in the context of the information environment before and have alluded previously to circuit-bending as a form of electronic derive. Likewise, we can imagine that cities might be "circuit-bent."

How does a city work, what is its' intended function? An intricate system of residential, industrial and commercial areas, "a city is like a colossal machine for organizing human sociality. Doing anything other than walking on a sidewalk. Doing anything other than buying a coffee...It’s immediately obvious that you access a strange place…things will stand out," proclaims urbanite G.Lucas Crane. Bending the city to access a strange place means shifting perception in one's everyday itinerary. Looking again, as the anamorphic adventuring of Plugfinder suggests. Plugfinder bends a city by first bending down and looking around at all the extraneous outlets that lurk in alleyways and on sides of buildings. Once catalogued by means of semi-conscious drifting, these sights can become activated as sites for electrified cultural production. One can only begin to imagine the meta-fortean potential of, for example, bending electricity from a city's marginal/liminal zones into the amplifcation of a device being electronically derived in the traditional circuit-bending sense of re-navigating a casio's circuitry to access strangeness!

Travelling Through Time With My VCR

Intercepting the datasphere circa feb '07: G.Lucas Crane in conversation part one: Beckjordian notions of interdimensionality surface and collide between the lines of sight

L: It’s the difference between The person running the séance tying an invisible fishing line to their finger that triggers a book falling...versus something weird happens and the medium improvises and says “she’s here” it’s the same kind of thing with a record player. The first time someone used it as an art form to access music that came before it…but musically that was a mistake…that was like breaking the record, scratching the record. Doing things you’re not supposed to do with the record Great. Space of mesmerizing strangeness… achieved. You’re totally fucking up that record player, it’s not meant for that. How can we advance our hi-fi technology when you’re destroying that needle and the drive belt of that record player? ….all those analog machines are still around. Turntablism…It’s not a mistake anymore, there’s a tradition of mixing records like that…it’s not anti-doing something else. It’s not about playing record appropriately or not… it’s another way of playing a record

C: It’s like a perceptual shift…

L: It’s a cultural, yeah, perceptual shift, and it’s super deep too. Now, it’s not just the machine, now there’s a whole culture of how you break a record correctly. It’s totally locked up. It’s not experimental anymore…there’s names for hand motions, how you mix, technique names…it’s a whole world

C: Similar to cryptozoological interests. Breaks from official taxonomies become re-absorbed…glitches and electronic or audio anomalies are going in reverse…becoming classified into techniques... wrangled in. Become a known quantity.

L: Right, zoologically is that the same as how the chart would have to evolve if we found a sasquatch is actually proved? That’s like somebody experimenting, sitting in the woods and then finding the sasquatch. Then from that experiment is a drive to completely describe and analyze it. That’s the funny thing about mysteries. The longer it’s a mystery with more people working on it and it stays a mystery. You’d assume there would be a progression and conclusion. So much on science describing the world. But we keep this a mystery…so it can function as it needs to.

C: Supsension of disbelief, or sustaining of belief…

L: Right, sustaining the necessity of sustaining belief, or disbelief…or wait where are we? Yeah sustaining belief. Is it a big deal if we discover if the sasquatch is real or not? Maybe it’s doing more good for the human race as is. That’s why they had to come up with the blobsquatch. To differentiate with types of videotaped strange things.

C: a side effect of digital perfection…the quality of images. “That’s not a strange mysterious animal…because sasquatches are ape-like not blob-like.” Or something like that…

L:What if you had high fidelity photograph of an animal that’s just a blob.?

C: There are cryptids known as globsters…giant blobs washed up on a shore…definitly aquatic but no other characteristics except that they’re unknown blobs of organic mass…possibly a correspondence between blobsquatches and globsters.

L: they’re made to confuse, they’re made to specifically be…

C: perpetual anomaly

L: A situation crafted by whatever set of factors that interlocks exactly with our desire… with our ability to be totally confused by information and our desire to get to the bottom of something. So it’s just enough to keep us going, but not enough to point us in any right direction…

C: It’s like a video switcher that has four input choices, but you push in two at once, so you get a new garbled signal that’s neither one nor the other…perhaps detrimental to the device...but also a new entity

L: But why would you do that? You would need to do that only to access the fucking spirit world.

end transmission