Differently Functional Spaces

Heterotopias are simultaneously physical and cerebral spaces. Relatedly, Mcluhan contended that new media environments are as invisible to their inhabitants as water is unthinkable to fish. This is because one is so enveloped in au currant media that it's impossible to find an outside space from which to reflect. Residual, or differently functional media environments are otherwise invisible. Invisibled by means of underexposure and/or marketing ploys that steer desire towards tech-utopia atop the growing mound of media that have been buried alive.

Living dead media. "When there's no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the earth," reads the poster for George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a zombie-laden critique of consumption. Another Mcluhanism: "Obsolescence is the moment of superabundance." Obsolescence is often enough an arbitrary label external to actual usefulness of a thing. There is then an excess of accessible technologies glimpsed in liminal spaces, if all too quickly damned by the powers that be. The strategies of planned obsolescence are like a dark art, but the psychological sort centered around fashionability is most abominable---more so than any snow man. Residual, or, differently functional media environments are not so much about inevitable invisibility, but anti-environments that exist in contradiction to the enforced laws of time, space and mind. Neurobiologically speaking, heterotopias are "collections of normal neurons in abnormal locations...caused by an arrest of migration of the neurons to the cerebral cortex." (Medcyclopedia ) They are bad news, often leading to seizures or developmental anomalies. Re-contextualized they do provide, as Foucault describes, a means of contesting the "no place" of Utopias with real, if dangerous, "other spaces."

Recycling the Sasquatch

Recycling the sasquatch, and perhaps its hetero-crony the blobsquatch, as the preferred porters into fortean space. These cryptids are representational shorthand, anthropomorphic emblems, like mascots on a state flag. Or, at least, a flag that alerts one to the state of mind that is prone to entertain such entities as the sasquatch and the blobsquatch. Accident-prone minds you might say. As fortean phenomena is not limited to bigfeet in one's midst, but includes acres of interruptions. But before canvassing that expanse with makeshift heterotopologies, let's be frank. Frame 352 is the passport for flying the doors wide open on fortean space.

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!

Procession of the Damned

"A PROCESSION of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed, will march...." -Charles Fort, Book of The Damned , 1919

This database of the damned set forth around 9:15am, out from the depths of the Potter garage. The rains of frogs and hail held out for our flight today and after a lumbering launch, we held to a steady clip. With help from Ryan Halley and the PXL visionary Jesse England -- we navigated the concrete (and ever green) jungles of Eugene.

Most human contact was limited to blank stares and gaping mouths. Of note was one older woman in the vicinity of 20th/Harris who slowed down our damnable craft to question our motives. Ascertaining that we weren't selling anything, she excitedly discussed Chaos theory with us and then went merrily on her way! As predicted, it took just 90 minutes to complete our procession. We unloaded at the docks of JSMA victorious and rejoicing.