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 This concept has also become associated with obsolete or outdated technology.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!