Techno Ghost Worlds

Read Suzi Steffen's rave review of otherworldy art--including my own metaphortean monstrosity which is pictured above..

photo by Rick Gehrke

Unlocking the N.E.S.

Just the other day in Scotland, new footage of the Loch Ness Monster surfaced from depths of the vlogosphere. In metaphortean circles, new sightings associated with nessies are a regular occurrence. Adventurous explorers everywhere are unlocking the N.E.S.! The Nintendo Entertainment System, that strange survival of the 8-bit era, is a dinosaur in relation to today's highly evolved gaming. The archetypal adventurer in these waters is Cory Archangel. Upon closer inspection, he is in fact in the company of quite a motley crew.

Ogo Eion, of the Portland duo Disjunct is no programmer. Instead he dives right in and intuitively intervenes with these live electronics.

Likewise, Baltimore's Jeff Donaldson touts his noteNdo techniques for playing with power. In an interview last April, Donaldson explains, "In the beginning I was just using tin-foil…and you know this thing is plugged into the wall...I just intuitively knew the spots to go for and didn’t kill myself." Like all such pursuits into the unknown it's the moment of rupture that reels one in. "It’s like all of a sudden [the N.E.S.]is unbound from algorithm, it breaks out"

Acronymically, the unlocked N.E.S. might read-out as New Electroplasmic Source. As with the legacy of glimpses in Scotland's Loch, nessies live on!

Anti-Environments are not anti-environmental

Media environments, particularly the most current, may be invisible via envelopment, or paralysing with info-overload (anesthesia as form of in-visibling). Mcluhan stressed the importance of anti-environments to balance out one's sense of place. Anti-environments are not anti-environmental but a means of understanding connections. Latent are conduits that lead to other spaces, if at once accessible and restricted. They are beyond allotted intervals of error (the errors needed to inform operation of various control mechanisms). Beyond known realities. Like the unforseen things glimpsed in H.P. Lovecraft's weird fiction. Generally, Lovecraft's tales included recluse adventurers tinkering at the limits, uncovering irrational or non-euclidean modes or reality. Everywhere around us are revealed interdimensional access points to forbidden knowledge. Between life and death, this world and that.

"Everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this phantasy of prismatic distortion it moved anomalously in a diagonal way, so that all the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset." (The Call of Cthulhu)

One could argue that Lovecraft's schtick was unfurling ever maddening cosmic horror to all those who were too curious. Still, there's a trace of symmetry in the sort of curiosity and courage needed to operate under the daunting global networks of control that gird our non-fictional world. Foucault described heterotopias as counter-sites to the impracticalities of Utopia/Dystopia. Heterotopias are anti-environments, counter-sites waiting in the margins of error. Previously imperceptible swathes of knowledge are revealed in accessing and/or being restricted. Heterotopias and Anti-Environments are simultaneously real and imaginary, mythic and mundane, dangerous and compelling.