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.