It's All Blobjective

The Blobsquatch as meta-fortean phenomenon can be read in relation to the contemporary enthrallment with the blobject. A combination of "blobby" and "object," this new fangled word addresses nebulous cavalcades of physical things originated in the immaterial screen-based realm of computer assisted design. As writer Bruce Sterling explains "A blobject is what a standard 20th century industrial product, a consumer item, looks like after [being] beaten into shape with a mouse." ( When Blobjects Rule the Earth) From VW Beetles to iMacs and toothbrushes this sensual selection of curvaceous fluidity and anthropomorphic liquidity exudes an emotional, organic oomph. It has been the subject of much hoopla including an exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art in 2005: Blobjects and Beyond: New Fluidity in Design

Curated by Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov, this exhibition was an effort to map out historical roots, include the familiar, cuddly and cute blobjects and also speculate on darker trajectories...such as the sleek curves of nuclear bombs and ice caps melting away due to global warming! In a review, writer Amos Klausner summarizes these blobjects as "an ideal visual representation of an increasingly fluid and changing world where borders and boundaries are disappearing and culture is being shared at a fever pitch." ( Behind the Curve)

Certainly the Blobsquatch is also a blobject. A blobjectional vector of inquiry, a borderline phenomenon on the outskirts of the dominant blobjectives of design. The Blobsquatch is here to agitate the information environment. It meanders and drifts. It oscillates between distinctions, between " mass-produced...emotionally engaging consumer products" ( Wikipedia) and more disturbing, darker blobjects at the extremes of commodity culture. The end stage of unchecked consumption being (perhaps), gray goo, aka global echophagy. The Gray Goo Problem involves the hypothetical destruction of life by a self-replicating blob of nanomachines that would rapidly break down all organic matter to use as raw materials for replication! Spreading “like blowing pollen, [replicating] swiftly, and [reducing] the biosphere to dust in a matter of days,” as nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler warns in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. The Blobsquatch is not necessarily malevolent or omnivorous but definitly contrarian. It resists anthropomorphic yearnings that familiarize the unknown and provides enough anomaly to elude mass production and emotional engagement. This is meta-fortean phenomena par excellance. A blobby object the Blobsquatch is, but more distinctly indistinct still. It is a blobby sasquatch. It is fortean phenomena surrounding fortean phenomena.

Metaphortean Field Report #1

En route to Bent Fest in search of metaphortean phenomena, my videocamera became suspected of blobsquatchery. "You have to take the cameras out of the bag" the security guard at the PDX airport told me, "they have lots of components." She then asked to check my bag. Noticing that I had a book on fortean phenomena, she asked "do you like aliens?" I told her that i did like aliens. "I have verifiable proof of UFOs flying over the Pyramids....1983," she excitedly proclaimed. She proceeded to de-blobmatize my videocamera with some strange instrument, then sent me on my way.

First stop Ann Arbor, to probe the suggestive correspondences of Plugfinder's "free energy" claims. Ufologists have proposed that free energy exists, amongst a plethora of fortean affairs, in the hollow of the Earth. Ufologist Theodore Fitch suggests that UFOs emerge not from outer space, but inner Earth. Their hovercraft are powered by innovative use of free-energy sources. This is just one instance of invention by the subterranean super-civilization. Fitch notes ""They say they are thousands of years ahead of us in all of the arts, such as painting, sculpture and architectural designing. Also they are ahead of us in their domestic and business management, in their agricultural techniques, and that their beautiful landscapes, parks, flower gardens, orchards and farms vastly surpass our own." (cited in The Subterranean Origin of the Flying Saucers by Dr. R. W. Bernard, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.)

Whether Plugfinder truly teeters on the edge of ancient mysteries remains to be seen, but this much we know: Ann Arbor promises unities of ambiance, attractive terrain and electroplasmic arrays.

RhYthm fRoM WrEckAGe!!!

Rhythm from Wreckage will resurface with its latest showcase of unusual experiments in time-based art from artists around the world on Thursday May 17th. The electronic anomalists featured in this program glean new aesthetic information from malfunctioning apparatuses, cultural detritus, and other residual media.

Plumb the unseen worlds of everyday appliances with Jesse England (Springfield), Learn strange facts and machine mythologies from Nate Harrison (Los Angeles) and Carl Diehl(Eugene). Marvel at the synesthetic cinema found lurking in a humble SK-1 toy keyboard with help from Gijs Gieskes (Netherlands) and enjoy several other excursions into the outer regions of audio-visual experience!

Thursday May 17th @ DIVA gallery, 8pm, $5, or $3 students/members
110 w.broadway @ olive, Eugene, OR

Glitchcraft

Bewitched by neologistics, I turn to my dictionary because it is chock full of spells. I wanted to explore the trajectories (real and imagined) latent in 'glitch'. Beyond slippage which is the essence of glitch...I want to slide further afield, to probe the alledged associations with the US space program.

Glitchcraft is crafty for all its possible lines of flight. A neologism hovering betwixt 'n' between meanings, a proto-theory object with trails of attention glimpsed in a simple google search. Despite some alluring leads from google, I will attempt to lead glitchcraft further astray. The gremlin, if we recall (how could we forget?) is a mischievious cryptid infamous for erring aeroplanes in WWII. Today the gremlin can be retrofit with the title of blobsquatch in the expanded field. The gremlin is adept at crafting glitches for all manner of vehicle or vessel used for transportation. In other words, the gremlin is good at glitching craft--aircraft, spacecraft, timecraft. Timecraft being a time machine in the sci-fi sense, or time-machine in the VCR sense. Time-based art inherently involves travelling through time. Circuit-bending, or blobsquatchery in the expanded field, is timecraft but also a means of transforming everyday electronics into glitchcraft. Vessels for exploring new worlds. Or, an art of the creative short-circuit. And a process associated with wizardry and witches. Glitches as familiars ready at the glitchcrafter's side. A muse, a spirit for further beglitching.

Relatedly, "This fall...An underground ring of superconducting magnets, reaching from Switzerland into France, will smash together subatomic particles at incredible force. Physicists say they're not sure what will emerge from those collisions. They're hunting a mysterious, hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson. It is also possible they will make miniature black holes, or discover new dimensions of space-time." (Morning Edition, 4/9/07 )

An Archival Impulse

With all due respect to Borges, it may be considered that animations are divided into: (a) belonging to Disney, (b) archived, (c) Saturday Morning, (d) claymation, (e) CGI, (f) stop-motion, (g) experimental, (h) included in the present classification, (i) kinetic, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine pen, (l) et cetera, (m) SFX, (n) that from a long way off look like blobs.

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!