Paranormal Mechanisms

New Lands!

2007-09-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

Paranormal Mechanisms has been re-located (archived posts and all) to a new site in hopes of embracing new lands within the (meta)fortean ecology....not to mention the spoils of wordpress widgetry!!...

So, set your sites on this: Metaphortean Space

Out of Place Artifacts

2007-09-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

We live in active acres of signs, bridging connections, forging pathways, voyaging far. Is this not the metaphortean pursuit? Following linguist R. Jakobson, there's metonymy and metaphor, the two opposing poles of discourse. On one extreme--the literal and contiguous. The other end decidedly figurative...an abstract mode of thought. "Metaphor does not conform to neat rules and does not follow rational paths," writes Raymond Gozzi, Jr in The Power of Metaphor in the Age of Electronic Media, it breaks away from literal linkage.

Phantoms of the (Metaphoric) Pole. Hard facts dematerialized into phantoms, into particles, free-floating pieces, slippery slopes. Bridged in semionautical explorations. Do the poles exist? Or are there instead previously imperceptible portals and passageways? Oceanic metaphors enveloped the early wireless world, but what lies beneath... in the depths? Strange creatures evolved to operate in otherworldly conditions. Some Hollow Earth Insiders speculate that a geological crack on the floor of Scotland's Loch Ness is a node within an elaborate network of tunnels. An exit strategy for an over-exposed pleisosaur.

There is much to be learned from subterranean activities, media archeology and neogeographic queries. The glitch, if not stylistic agendas, ushers in obsolescent status for an object oriented towards specific function. The glitch reveals the outer limits of media and technology "the world is hollow, for I have touched the sky". Beyond the glitch, access to points unknown? Is this not the metaphortean pursuit? Bring it up to Earth: Glitch as animation: out-of-place artifacts off-sprung from an implied crypto-zoetrope (another philosophical toy). Glitch as post-gremlin. An animal interstitially ambling outside of a machine's presumed range.

Speculative trajectory: timecraft-spacecraft-glitchcraft-lovecraft.

The Old Crypto-Zoetropical Pursuit

2007-09-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

Cryptozoology, the study of unknown, hidden, or mystery animals is a marginal scientific discipline operating outside of traditional zoological practice. Believing firmly in things that are not supposed to exist, cryptozoologists counter dominant ideologies with alternative theories and new taxonomic models. The Bigfoot, shuffling by in Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin’s home movie from October 20th 1967, is Cryptozoology’s most moving image.

Over the years, skeptics and believers alike have poured over the Patterson-Gimlin filmstrip in attempts to understand the hairy homonid. Experts from both camps have broken down the sequence into discrete parts in hopes of either exposing the hoax or proving the existence of Bigfoot as a living animal. From animals to animation (that other illusion)-- unknown, hidden and mysterious experiences are engaging because they activate and agitate the human capacity for wonder and curiosity

The Bigfoot experience begins and is sustained as data: rumor, report, filmic capture, reproduced images, video capture, digitized images, and so on. Communication and participation in this network is as fundamental to the cryptozoological encounter, as technology is crucial to suspend disbelief in moving image experiences. The actual living, breathing thing is an [optical] allusion. These entities are facilitated by cultural and technological apparatuses.

In deconstructing the animal’s movement, the proto-cinematic motion studies of Eadward Muybridge come to mind.

From animals to animation, movement is broken down, the wonderment surrounding both phenomena, both illusions, is halted. Returned to science, removed from fiction, a serious attempt to wrangle in the anomalous, smooth over glitches and return to business as usual.

Rather than breaking down and halting the cryptozoological pursuit, what might emerge from a breaking up? Break-up occurs in communication, a signal is interrupted by noise. Supposing there are Bigfeet in our midst, what sorts of animations exist outside of traditional practice? Animation rules screen-based technocultural experience--from computer desktops to web sites, billboards, special fx and entertainment. What remains to be seen?

What is the potential "thing that isn't supposed to exist" in terms of animation? One animator's perspective on the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage brings a stamp of authority regarding anomalous movement. Beyond moving images convincingly showing an anomalous animal, what about anomalous animation revealing previously imperceptible moving image art? All this and more will be approached in the upcoming events at Rererato gallery in portland and LumpWest gallery in eugene: The Crypto-Zoetropical Pursuit and other adventures into the technocultural unknown!. To be held on the 40th anniversary weekend of that most famous filmic Bigfoot's inauguration into the cultural imagination!

Neogeographical Reconnaissance

2007-08-30T14:20:00.001-07:00

Neogeography is an umbrella term to tidy up the offshoots of Situationist psychogeography, GPS enabled geo-caching, radical cartography, audio tours and other exploratory pursuits meandering on the outskirts of professional geography.

Perhaps the title Fortean Geography applies, as these vernacular mapquests "don't conform to the protocols of proffessional practice" ( placekraft). Dragons and sea serpents on the maps of yore, the mysterious Terra Australis or incognita generally, there is a rich history of curious confluences of fact and fiction. Not precluding the potential of hollow earth and flat earth theories as neo-geographical in that they speculate on alternate schemes for trotting the globe.

In 1939, composer John Cage presented his score for the first in a series of Imaginary Landscapes. Sonic excursions involving variable speed turntables, radios, and noise. a neogeographical reconnaissance mission, seeking signals in noise. Chance operations involving volume settings, "left many people in the audience displeased...due to the fact that the work was fairly quiet," notes lecturer Guy de Bièvre. Intentional inderminacy produces uncertain results. Silence is a sound, noise is the poetry of machines.

The recent documentary Manufactured Landscapes by Jennifer Baichwai - about the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky abounds with an industrial-strength dose of "intentional landscapes." Not that the acres of factory workers in China assembling electronics, mountains of e-waste waiting for recycling, and upheaval of towns in the wake of a massive dam were part of an elaborate blueprint exactly. But more like inderminate new vistas unearthed under the auspices of intention, i.e. rampant industrialization. Silent sublime, Burtynsky's images speak loud and clear

Navigating the manufactured landscapes of China's industrial revolution with the coordinates of imagined audio worlds a la Cage's experiments with noise offers a rather flimsy neogeographical pastiche. Data foraging will pause for further analysis

Blobsquatch Redux

2007-08-19T04:56:00.000-07:00

Metaphors are fine operatives for probing possibility spaces and understanding the unknown. But what about the Blobsquatch? Fortean phenomena including Fortean Zoology is a fertile ground for metaphor, but how does the Blobsquatch fit in?

Putting audacity before caution, risking redundancy, a re (intro) duction to the Blobsquatch in the Expanded Field. What is expanding? What is the field? Blobsquatches as personification of optical errors, or the visual noise overcoming visual signal of a Sasquatch. Like gremlins-to-airplanes, Blobsquatches are a minor nuisance. Blobsquatches are good at impeding commercial cultural exploitation of an otherwise iconic mystery animal. A break from official zoology, the Sasquatch breaks science. It is an error, an anomaly, a Fortean figurehead of Other Science and vernacular culture. But Fortean forecasts fumble in the weird "whether or not" precipitation of understanding signals in noise at the level of technological mediation. What is the Blobsquatch if not Meta-Fortean? an anomaly mediating anomaly. What else? Blobsquatch as personifcation of error engendered technologically. A different kind of mystery. Meta-Fortean, media extend human faculties, errors extend human fantasy and/or amplify the human capacity for wonder. Blobsquatch as hetero-crony, as counter-sight to the Sasquatch.

Expanded Field as Other Technology. Other technologies, allegedly obsolete, discarded, deemed out of style, use, relevance. Residual technologies that circulate through second-hand markets. Leftover media and machines, creatures of the outer edge. What of vernacular culture? vernacular technoculture? Blobsquatchery is an active pursuit of Blobsquatches. A search for signals in noise. Circuit-bending is one example, including video-bending --a crypto-zoetropical pursuit par excellance! We can also cite/sight/site: Iron Artist, an annual call-to-arms from Portland's School and Community Reuse Action Project. Opposing teams face off in the realm of residuals. Bound thematically, imagination is activated to stretch the limits of select scraps, to find signals in noise, squatches in blobs. A carrying over of ideas from one realm to another. Like metaphors in action.

So what am I on about? Creative Re-Use of Fortean phenomena. Remediation of Fortean Phenomena. Metaphors from the outer edge. Metaphortean phenomena as a signal in all this noise.

Putting caution before audacity, Blobsquatches might be mitigated by a comparison to the Hitchcockian plot device, the MacGuffin. Although generated here by paranormal mechanisms rather than clever directors--- to complicate and confabulate the spaces between fact/fiction, new media/old media, signal/noise, and so on.

New Probes

2007-08-11T16:10:00.000-07:00

In his 1969 book Counterblast, McLuhan in cahoots with designer Harley Parker adventure into non-euclidean typographies and playful prose. Speculating (and demonstrating) the presence of previously imperceptible lifeforms in new media environs.

"Media...can be entrusted only to new artists, because they are art forms, that is, new ways of perception, new probes into the world like new species. Evolution as a process has shifted from biology to technology." (McLuhan) Artists themselves as new species. New mutants arrived from the future to accelerate the evolutionary processes. Kodwo Eshun tuned in to this nearly a decade ago, in his mezmerizing More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction

Technologies are typically situated as remedies for older models of media. Digital cameras incorporate the "click" sound and look of an SLR while simulataneously promoting the convenience of post-chemical processing. This slow-moving remediation buffers the outpouring of ever-new media, gadgets and killer apps that automate and infiltrate one's sense of (extended) self.

Residual media are missing links, unknown species with traces of familiarity. Cryptozoologists deviate from scientific methods into the realm of the imaginary and fantastic. Inversely, the 19th century Modern Spiritualists appropriated electronic jargon to re-frame their mystical beliefs, seances and sightings

Applied Blobsquatchery

2007-07-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

Crypto-Zoetropicalism, that strange survival from the B.B. (Before Blobsquatch) era, returns in the vidsonic saga Hidden Animals. Following theories that from animals to animation, if there are hidden animals like bigfeet, there are also hidden animations. These anomalous entities would surely consist of animation outside of traditional sequencing, inside of experimental practices.... including but not limited to: vjing, staged accidents, kinetic modification, scratch film and other ideas.

Hidden Animals: A Search For The Crypto-Zoetropical Yonder is a testament to the anomoulous audio-visual pursuits unfurled in this arena by yours truly in cahoots with sound artist Padna last year.

Test-run this Saturday at DIVA in company of grayscale slo-mo glitch hoppers INCITE of Hamburg, Germany! For the Official premiere, in Padna country, look forward to Thursday August 2nd at Monkeytown in Brooklyn, NY

In this instant replay of initial inquiries, and/or considering what we now know about the Blobsquatch, Crypto-Zoetropicalism might be better understood as Applied Blobsquatchery. We could break this down further into nooks and crannies of intent...

Rhythm from Wreckage: Call for Entry

2007-07-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

Fall 2007: Call For Entry: The Crypto-Zoetropical Pursuit

Cryptozoology is the study of hidden, unknown or mystery animals like the Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster. These creatures exist in an interstitial world between fact/fiction, stasis/movement. A hoax? an illusion, or something more mysterious? Moving on from animals to animation---if there are Bigfeet in our midst, what sorts of hidden, unknown, or mystery animations might abound?

Rhythm from Wreckage seeks collisions of technological and zoological unknowns! anomalous a/v entities outside of traditional animation…

What creatures of the “crypto-zoetropical” persuasion? or queries into cryptozoologistics? Perhaps missing links, non-sequitur sequencing, cine-mashups, recombinant forays into conspiratorial nooks and crannies of culture, glitchcraft, kinetic modification, scratch film, circuit-bent videographics, expanded machinima and/or the truly unknown unknowns of the technocultural imagination!!

Rhythm from Wreckage is looking for videos less than 10 minutes in length on DVD, MiniDV, 8/Hi8/Digital 8, VHS (NTSC only) or data DVDs (as a Quicktime movie file).

Submission Deadline (received by): October 10th 2007

Include with your submission a brief written description of the work, which includes media, year produced, duration, and country of origin. SASE required for tape return (Only U.S. mail will be returned). Otherwise, all submissions will be added to the Rhythm from Wreckage library for possible inclusion in future programs. Artists will be contacted for permission prior to having their work included in other programs. Unfortunately, Artist Fees cannot be paid at this time.

To be screened on the weekend of October 19th and 20th in honor of the 40th anniversary of that most curious sequence of cryptozoological fame--- the Bigfoot caught on film by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in Bluff Creek, CA 1967!

Screenings will take place at Rererato Gallery in Portland and a LumpWest in Eugene Oregon.

Please contact Carl Diehl for more information at: carl DOT diehl AT gmail DOT com

Send Entries to:

Carl Diehl
632 NE Failing Street
Portland, OR 97212

Techno Ghost Worlds

2007-06-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-06-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Differently Functional Spaces

2007-05-31T08:24:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

"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.

It's All Blobjective

2007-04-30T16:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2007-04-16T23:15:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

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!

Damned Data

2007-03-22T02:11:00.000-07:00

All this talk of blobsquatchery, but "what about the glitchsquatch?" as a colleague queried earlier. Generally speaking, all these technological anomalies may be catalogued under the banner of Metaphorteana, but let us continue now with the conspicuous traits of creatures in this cryptozoo. Etymologically, the term glitch means "to slip," and is often associated with the U.S. space program's slippage. In this regard there seems a lineage between gremlins and glitches carried out in the shadows of transportation technologies. Planes give way to spacecraft including UFOs. Perhaps piloted by gremlins in a transanimal phase towards glitchhood, UFOs are famous for interference with both physical and virtual modes of transport--as the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena has detailed. Glitches move from physical transport to disembodied transmissions of data across space and time. Operating in the zone of transmission or retreival of data, glitches collaborate with various paranormal mechanisms to make themselves known. In digital affairs, glitched produce is called data corruption. This is often linked to the notion of data or information loss, suggesting an absence of information. While intended information is often lost, there is also new information to be gained!

Noise is also a signal. As circuit-bending pioneer Reed Ghazala recalls in his inaugural encounter with metaphortean phenomena, circa 1967, "I closed the drawer and was immediately in the midst of some of the most unusual sounds I'd ever heard. Why? By pure accident, some unknown metal object had fallen against the exposed circuitry of the amp, shorting-out the electronics...[I thought] if this can happen by means of an accidental short circuit, what might happen by shorting things on purpose?" ( Bending the Headspace of Electronic Design)

The potential of uncovering previously imperceptible modes of understanding.

"A procession of the damned. By the damned, I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded." - Charles Fort, The Book of The Damned, 1919

Ghazala and Fort are not alone in the championing of damned data. There is a multitude of metaphortean research in our midst. Circuit-bending aside, some exciting explorations of data corruption include the efforts of Glitch Browser and Recyclism. Above you will find a glitchsquatch made manifest by Glitch Browser's paranormal processing.

Curiosity Cabinetwork

2007-03-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

Through unknown paranormal mechanisms, I find myself returning to my initial inquiries into the role of folksonomies in regards to vernacular architectures of information surrounding fortean phenomena. In essence, the folksonomy seems to be a return to curiosity cabinets of the 16th century. Housing all manner of marvelous bric-a-brac including: plants, fossils, minerals, medicinal items, unicorn horns, shells, stones, etc., these cabinets offered a glimpse of the world. Representational short-hand, accumulated in accordance with any one collector's means. In this primordial phase of the modern museum, collections were often ordered up in constellations of corresponding visual characteristics .

At the Anatomical Museum in Leiden, for instance, there was "a corner...dedicated to twoness -- two-tailed lizards, conjoined twin foetuses, forked carrots and a two-headed cat were ranged side by side." (Shiralee Saul, 1998) This non-hierarchichal manner of management is not unlike the method of the modern folksonomy. Folksonomies emerge from clusters of user-generated tags attached to images, videos, webpages, et cetera...on-line. Following the imitative magic of curiosity cabinets, tag clouds echo the curiosity cabinets nicely. Flickr is a more exemplary homage to the museum in Leiden, as you can see from this tag search on "two". Quite a curious collection indeed!

In an essay on curiosity cabinets arranged via corresponding features, UCSB's Microcosms group writes "For the sixteenth century, such [correspondences] confirmed the sense of an underlying logic to the world at large. For us, it allows us to recognize that objects within the world yield different sorts of information, or have different values, according to the questions we ask about them. In all cases, comparison requires access to a large enough body of material to make such analysis meaningful." ( Pangolin and Pinecone, 1995)

Within globalized networks of information today, "access to large enough bodies of material" is not so much the issue. Access is eclipsed by sheer volume of data. I find it interesting to entertain current debates on post-folksonomic constellations, such as collabularies in light of curiosity cabinets transmogrifying into taxonomic models. Is there an echo in here?

Handful of Fantastic Zoology

2007-03-18T11:39:00.000-07:00

"By treating the things of media--the artifacts, the technical apparatuses, the material texts as if they, like living things, have lives and therefore potential biographies, we can trace their paths as they pass across social classes and from newness to obsolescence." (Michelle Henning, New Lamps for Old, Residual Media, 2007, p.50)

Sifting through schlock at the Picadilly flea market today, I found two portable CD players. I'd been eager to find some working devices so that I might embark on a laser guided derive along the lines of Michael Oster's CD Trauma techniques. "The CD players work," the man at the flea market told me, "twenty for the pair." It's been hard to find CD-players, as the iMperial pods flood the mainstream market. The CD players I found are transanimals, hybrid electronics that play CDs, CD-Rs and MP3 data discs. Transanimals are a nano-niche disappeared in the blink of an eye. Hybrid moments are ultimately futile strategies as "survival of the fittest" is out-done by the latest. It's not about survival so much as being physically fitted for always-already planned obsolescence.

In the nooks and crannies of culture is where by-gone media resides. Transanimals frequent this terrain. I found my CD players at the flea market today, but no sign of audio cassette tapes. A stray AC/DC or Quiet Riot album, sure. A Tom Clancy book-on-tape, yes. But no more the menagerie of home-made obscurities, the box loads of miscellany on audiotape. Those marvelous creatures with hand-scrawled text. The mezmerizing strangeness of travelling through time via a tape player left on in a boring room, a vacation journal, answering machine, or an impromptu verse.

Tales become taller. I sense mythologies creeping in, as I recall my second-hand hunting through flea markets of yore. "Once I even found a...," as my anecdotal story starts. There is cross-over here with the crypozoological pursuit, a deep personal conviction that the age of discovery still exists. The golden age of discovery is as convenient as eBay today, although such armchair adventuring begs the question "what now?" The thrill of the hunt, spirited haggling and chance discoveries become extinct. Even the typo-farming folklore has become business as usual. In regards to eBay's impact, as John Richards notes "It is not a question these days of getting hold of something, but rather what to do with it" ( 32kg: Performance Systems for a Post-Digital Age ) Perhaps, off-world adventuring, a la circuit-bending, in an electronic elsewhere opened up within the abundance of residual media?

Cryptozoologists Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark recall the golden age of zoological pursuit "In the beginning, as explorers trekked to new lands and listened to local informants, they were led to remarkable new species...Cryptozoology keeps alive the tradition of discovery and recognition of new species of animals (cited in Dendle, Peter Cryptozoology in the medieval and modern worlds, 2006)

Semionautical Almanac (excerpt)

2007-03-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has noted that "the reaction to any one specific blobsquatch remains in the eye of the beholder," (cryptomundo.com ), suggesting a slippery slope of perceptual possibilities as one tries to determine the (un)reality of any occurence. Look around you! The metaphortean wing of the cryptozoo is lurking in the margins of error in most all media, technologies and machines. Deploying a variety of vernacular probes and processes in retort to any number of errata will only increase the likelihood of an encounter with the technocultural unknown. I've discussed psychogeographical drifting in the context of the information environment before and have alluded previously to circuit-bending as a form of electronic derive. Likewise, we can imagine that cities might be "circuit-bent."

How does a city work, what is its' intended function? An intricate system of residential, industrial and commercial areas, "a city is like a colossal machine for organizing human sociality. Doing anything other than walking on a sidewalk. Doing anything other than buying a coffee...It’s immediately obvious that you access a strange place…things will stand out," proclaims urbanite G.Lucas Crane. Bending the city to access a strange place means shifting perception in one's everyday itinerary. Looking again, as the anamorphic adventuring of Plugfinder suggests. Plugfinder bends a city by first bending down and looking around at all the extraneous outlets that lurk in alleyways and on sides of buildings. Once catalogued by means of semi-conscious drifting, these sights can become activated as sites for electrified cultural production. One can only begin to imagine the meta-fortean potential of, for example, bending electricity from a city's marginal/liminal zones into the amplifcation of a device being electronically derived in the traditional circuit-bending sense of re-navigating a casio's circuitry to access strangeness!

Travelling Through Time With My VCR

2007-03-03T08:34:00.003-08:00

Intercepting the datasphere circa feb '07: G.Lucas Crane in conversation part one: Beckjordian notions of interdimensionality surface and collide between the lines of sight

L: It’s the difference between The person running the séance tying an invisible fishing line to their finger that triggers a book falling...versus something weird happens and the medium improvises and says “she’s here” it’s the same kind of thing with a record player. The first time someone used it as an art form to access music that came before it…but musically that was a mistake…that was like breaking the record, scratching the record. Doing things you’re not supposed to do with the record Great. Space of mesmerizing strangeness… achieved. You’re totally fucking up that record player, it’s not meant for that. How can we advance our hi-fi technology when you’re destroying that needle and the drive belt of that record player? ….all those analog machines are still around. Turntablism…It’s not a mistake anymore, there’s a tradition of mixing records like that…it’s not anti-doing something else. It’s not about playing record appropriately or not… it’s another way of playing a record

C: It’s like a perceptual shift…

L: It’s a cultural, yeah, perceptual shift, and it’s super deep too. Now, it’s not just the machine, now there’s a whole culture of how you break a record correctly. It’s totally locked up. It’s not experimental anymore…there’s names for hand motions, how you mix, technique names…it’s a whole world

C: Similar to cryptozoological interests. Breaks from official taxonomies become re-absorbed…glitches and electronic or audio anomalies are going in reverse…becoming classified into techniques... wrangled in. Become a known quantity.

L: Right, zoologically is that the same as how the chart would have to evolve if we found a sasquatch is actually proved? That’s like somebody experimenting, sitting in the woods and then finding the sasquatch. Then from that experiment is a drive to completely describe and analyze it. That’s the funny thing about mysteries. The longer it’s a mystery with more people working on it and it stays a mystery. You’d assume there would be a progression and conclusion. So much on science describing the world. But we keep this a mystery…so it can function as it needs to.

C: Supsension of disbelief, or sustaining of belief…

L: Right, sustaining the necessity of sustaining belief, or disbelief…or wait where are we? Yeah sustaining belief. Is it a big deal if we discover if the sasquatch is real or not? Maybe it’s doing more good for the human race as is. That’s why they had to come up with the blobsquatch. To differentiate with types of videotaped strange things.

C: a side effect of digital perfection…the quality of images. “That’s not a strange mysterious animal…because sasquatches are ape-like not blob-like.” Or something like that…

L:What if you had high fidelity photograph of an animal that’s just a blob.?

C: There are cryptids known as globsters…giant blobs washed up on a shore…definitly aquatic but no other characteristics except that they’re unknown blobs of organic mass…possibly a correspondence between blobsquatches and globsters.

L: they’re made to confuse, they’re made to specifically be…

C: perpetual anomaly

L: A situation crafted by whatever set of factors that interlocks exactly with our desire… with our ability to be totally confused by information and our desire to get to the bottom of something. So it’s just enough to keep us going, but not enough to point us in any right direction…

C: It’s like a video switcher that has four input choices, but you push in two at once, so you get a new garbled signal that’s neither one nor the other…perhaps detrimental to the device...but also a new entity

L: But why would you do that? You would need to do that only to access the fucking spirit world.

end transmission

Metaphortean Phenomena

2007-02-26T07:18:00.000-08:00

"An intensification of scrutiny must be met with an amplification of guile" ( RAQs Media Collective ). Under the search engineered panopticonscious data wrangling of our times, the cryptozoological are boldly unknown... searchable but indiscernable. Like virtual Globsters washed up from the depths of the infosphere, identifiable only as unidentified masses. A thought on the tip of your tongue crossfading away into everything else. The beguiling blobsquatch is distinctly indistinct. A known unknown oscillating between representational media forms and the potential of imagination. It cribs notes from H.P. Lovecraft's notoriously nameless, unameable and unfathomable cosmic hordes. Those Things "that cannot be described--there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldtritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order," as Lovecraft's narrator explains in The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Charles Fort, the famous researcher from whence the adjective "Fortean" emerged, was an iconclastic thinker and author of several books on anomalous phenomena. He held that everything exists in an intermediate state, a suspension or flux between extremes. It is in this liminal zone that the blobsquatch reigns supreme. The betwixt 'n' between of borderline phenomena. Intermediate, or perhaps Intermedia to forward Dick Higgins' description for " the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres" (wikipedia). Higgins' diagram above suggests, as Hannah Higgins notes in her appendix to D.Higgin's Synesthesia and Intersenses: Intermedia, "According to a model like this, historic and contemporary experience is diverse, causally flexible and permissive of the as-yet-unknown...It is an open framework that invites play." (H.Higgins)

Synesthesia. Higgins' alludes to this coalescing of sensory stimuli, and one Dr. Hugo associates metaphors with synesthesia in his article "Art and Synesthesia: in search of the synesthetic experience." Hugo describes metaphor as being "like a mental encounter; it can produce a flash of insight. The poetic form of the metaphor allows to counter-balance rational thinking with a creative potential" (Hugo)...bridging seemingly dissimilar concepts and materials. As I've previously mentioned, neologistics (metaphor most definitly included) are sometimes necessary to shift perception, disrupt traditional routes and rhythms of language systems. The poetry of machines, the potential of imagination... Metaphortean Phenomena. Intermedia is the message of Metaphortean phenomena. Generated by paranormal mechanisms, MetaPhortean phenomena are mental encounters emerging at the interface of malfunction. And perhaps sustained only in that duration...as Ghazala suggests in his discussion of the hybrid "Bio-Electronic AudioSapien" ( Circuit-Bending: Build Your Own Alien Instruments)emerged at the interface of [sustained] malfunction.

Ghazala explains the news BEAsape species, "As I made sounds by touching the body contacts on the shorted-out mini amp, the electricity of both bodies, myself and the amp, became intertwined......we were one....Yes, the BEAsape's existence is temporary, its existence momentary." (Ghazala,p.17) These encounters are often with residual media, or at least within the margin of error of new media. Carrying forth implicit comparisons within the technocultural imagination, anomalous characteristics are transferred across domains, in a synesthetic process that is at once strange and familiar. Strange because it involves distinct sensations of the supernatural and wildly speculative; familiar because it evokes sense-memories of bygone eras/errors, of structured obsolescence and prescribed patterns of consumer electronics. Blobsquatches (in the expanded field) emerge at the limits of intended functionality of various technologies. They panopticonfidently flirt with signal and noise, intuitively drifting between extremes

Hole Earth Reviews

2007-01-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

"We send probes into deep space to listen to alien worlds. But alien worlds aren't always that far away." —Reed Ghazala, father of circuit-bending

Circuit-bending, a practice born in that hallmark cryptozoological year of 1967, embarks on expeditions into the electronic unknown. The coordinates of technological breakdown (y) and communications breakup (x) give way to breakthrough, a z-axis into previously imperceptible realms. Like William Burroughing, seismically shifting, cut-up (and down) along the circuit... " The machine pushes the music into inhuman directions," writes Kodwo Eshun on the related realm of sonic fiction, "the producer follows the trail blazed by the error, breeds it into a new sonic lifeform." These entities may be uncovered by pure chance or through intuitive exploration as one is "drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there" (Debord)

There is some speculation that the Bigfeet retreat to the caverns of the Hollow Earth when pressure is on from the topside parapaparazzi. Subterranean hideaways for hominids include the majestic Mount Shasta, situated as it is in the Bigfoot stomping grounds of Northern Cali.

The Hollow Earth has echoed through cultural imagination for centuries, as David Standish details in his recent book The Hollow Earth .Declared John Cleves Symmes in 1818:

"TO ALL THE WORLD! I declare the earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in the undertaking."

Such cavernous thoughts re-surface in Pierre Huyghe's 2006The Journey That Wasn't, an Antarctic expedition and associated art(ifacts) with allusions to the Hollow Earth by way of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Strange Story of Arthur Gordon Pym from Nantucket" (1838). Poe, excavated the literature of Symmes for his polar prose. Huyghe folds the shocking facts of melting ice caps and global warming into his hunt for icy unknowns.

With Sir Edmund Halley's concentric fantasies of the Hollow Earth in mind (see above), could there be another layer above us, buffered by the infosphere? The Earth revealed to be "a small planet held in suspension in the electronic ether of telecommunications," as Virilio has observed (The Information Bomb), are we merely the innermost core? If a network is defined as much by its gaps as by its links, as Margaret Morse has suggested, what is waiting to be discovered in the hollow of these error 404 zones?

Semionautical Almanac (excerpt)

2007-01-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

One doesn't want to freeze up language to soon. If you freeze language too soon you get stuck with a hypnotic living corpse. A dubious ice-man frozen spectacle, a sideshow or hoax. I wonder if the blobsquatch has done this--frozen my semionautical expedition in its tracks. Conceptual engineering of neologistic frameworks encourages semionautical expeditions into the unknown...i must stay the course! Rather than freezing up, the blobsquatchery lumbers on, glacially drifting. A slow-motion derive. “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there,” writes Debord in a debrief on the derive (Debord , 1958)

This deviant engagement, which Guy Debord and his Situationist crew termed Psychogeography, sets its sights on the latent potential of urban landscapes, encouraging detours or detournement, of one’s everyday environment. The Situationists understood the derive as a means of excavating “unities of ambiance,” and effects which “"the geographical environment, consciously organized or not," had on "the emotions and behavior of individuals." Along with literal geographical impediments, one’s environment may be constricted along socio-economic contours which direct and homogenize one’s experience in a particular space. Terrain is textual in cyberspace, but as with the usual itineraries that move one through a city there exist subtexts, so to speak.

Similarly, the blobsquatch may be understood as an example of what Julian Bleecker calls a theory object, a term relayed by Bruce Sterling as "not just a mental idea or a word, but a cloud of associated commentary and data, that can be passed around from mouse to mouse, and linked-to... A Theory Object is a concept that's accreting attention, and generating visible, searchable, rankable, trackable trails of attention." (Sterling )

In cyberspace terrain is textual. A derive consists of neologisms. The neologistics of a psychogeographic information system. Neologisms as strategic or accidental misspellings. This is an opportunity to uncover missing links.

Spimal Tap

2007-01-15T17:54:00.000-08:00

In an illuminating lecture on RFIDs, theory objects, the internet of things, and related matters at the Emerging Technology Conference 2006 , writer Bruce Sterling discussed the role of language in shaping (for better and worse) emerging technologies. Sterling describes a need for neologisms to break away from the archeologisms that have anchored ideas about technology in stagnant waters (like the quest for Artificial Intelligence that has obscured the real potential of computers to file, sort, link info). The lecture is also about Sterling's recent speculative theory manifesto (Shaping Things) about everyday objects that are supported by an active network of information (so that you could 'google' your keys on-line to find out where they are physically hidden, for example). Sterling's word for this is "spime"-- an object trackable in space and time. "Spimes are manufactured objects whose informational support is so overwhelmingly extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system," writes Sterling. "Spimes begin and end as data. They're virtual objects first and actual objects second." (Sterling)

This is interesting to think about in relation to the cryptozoological. Cryptids are (possibly) confabulated entities sustained by extensive and dense informational support facilitated by active participants and believers. They begin and end as data. Sightings and reports lead to investigations for the physical creature--it eludes physical capture--but is caught by a camera. The Patterson-Gimlin 16mm film, as Sasquatch researcher Alton Higgins contends is "a gold standard against which other pictures must be compared.” (Higgins) It exists (as all moving images do) virtually. We do not see 24 frames per second of celluloid (or video scan lines for that matter) but comprehend the imperceptiblly singular instances as an animated whole mentally in the virtual space of memory.

Of course, cryptids feature spimal cord injury missing links between virtual identities. Their instantiative stance obscured by a lack of physical traces

Panopticonfidence Medley

2007-01-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Big Brother. The Panopticon. The All Watching Eye. In a society increasingly saturated with surveillance, information environmentalist Zack Denfeld has come up with the term panopticonfidence. Speculating that a side effect of an Orwellian world could be more thoughtful, conscious and expressive actions and gestures on the part of the overexposed citizen.

On the other hand, there is the counter-presence of sousveillance--a term from Steve Mann to describe "watchful vigilance from underneath." Many a man, woman and child operating cameras and all manner of mobile imaging devices propagated over the networks--a dispersed and inversed surveillance. Once activated by a network, chance sousveillance acts like The Zapruder film, Rodney King video and more recently the Michael Richards incident--these unplanned documents become weaponized information. Mann describes an applied set of sousveillance activism in Issue Three of the journal Surveillance and Society , describing his strategies of shooting back as a model for "[problematizing] social interactions and factors of contemporary life...with the goal of social engagement and dialogue." There is still, as Mann admits, the risk of sousveillance acts effectively strengthening and expanding the coverage of dominant control mechanisms. Mann suggests in a more recent article in Ctheory that the tactic of inverting/subverting a dominant ideology or structure to critique it is no longer effective. Double detournement is upon us-- "is there really an inverse?" --asks Mann.

Outside of an arms race type cross-fire of cameras escalating with over exposure of personal information for everyone...the end scenario of this inversion (whether engaged citizens emerge or not)--there are other ideas that work zig-zag and sideways, drifting outside, or rather in between sur/sous, us/them, binary oppositions. Zack Denfeld, in regard to his Blue Puddle project, writes "Instead of users giving up information about themselves and their daily activities to be data-mined by multi-nationals or worse, Blue Puddle actively encourages citizens to track resources that are undocumented and to modify their local built environments." Users post and tag images of their own derives...collaboratively creating a map that relates back to their everyday environment. A hybrid space of real/virtual social networks--- dialogue encouraged in less confrontational manner than some of Mann's agit-prop.

So, panopticonfidence could also mean more thoughtful, conscious and expressive image construction on the part of the over-equipped citizen. Such as an exposé of free power sources in one's physical neighborhood...which may or may not lead to a more engaged sense of place/place for engagements. But works towards empowering (so to speak) without putting one's personal info on(the)line. "Literacy is not just the ability to sort out and digest media information, it is also learning how and when to author messages, so one can...actually alter the nature of the immediate media environment" suggests Tom Sherman in AFTER THE I-BOMB. Moving towards an "object hyperlinking" hybrid world of networked RFID'd objects and places, Sherman's words ring more literally than figuratively in regards to projects like Blue Puddle.

Panopticonfident compositions that exhibit strong design and potent imagery will also make memorable impressions on the tagging hordes. Check out Carnegie Mellon's ESP Game for an exercise in parsing image potency and refining the ultimate search engineering. What word resonates most informatively? Amongst thousands, what word sheds such descriptive light that it transduces into that one image?

In the blindingly bright, free of shadows, everything exposed light of all this, a figure like the Bigfoot may be pursued for possible apprenticeships as it is a creature well versed in stealth manouevers and strategic (in)visibility in spite of on-going scrutiny. It knows how and when to author messages. It seems telling that the belief in cryptozoological animals constitutes a break from official hierarchies of knowledge with figuratively blurry evidence and theories. This mystery is what attracts speculation. The architecture of participation in this mystery is what the Bigfoot thrives on. Panoptic pleas for less blurry evidence (real/virtual) seem counterintuitive to the Bigfoot's symbolic power as an alternative figure of power and knowledge that is neither totally exposed or totally covert. Instances of blobsquatchery, while discounted by many Sasquatch researchers as optically aided errors of judgement, may in fact be an implosion (not inversion) of the panopticonfident belief that total exposure is the key. What do the cryptids represent in a surveillance society? What of an aesthetics of confusion? Hovering between states of signal/noise, sur/sous, us/them, squatch/blob.

What about the Glitchsquatch?

2006-12-15T05:09:00.001-08:00

The Blobsquatch, for my pursuits, is a welcome personification of technological aberration as unknown 'animal'. The suffix "squatch" serves as a short-cut into acres of associated cryptozoological ideas. "Squatch" operates in a manner similar to the prefix "franken", a direct line to notions of mad science in modern culture, or the suffix "gate" which transforms anything into a political scandal. Blobsquatch works but Blobfoot doesn't. Why? "Blobfoot" sounds like some sort of disease or awkward dance. Chupacablob, Blob Ness might be acceptable variants using other known cryptids, but of course Bigfoot/Sasquatch is more memetically charged as an emblem of cryptozoological culture.

Recently, one of my colleagues asked me "What about the Glitchsquatch? Do you know about the Glitchsquatch?" So far as I can tell the term "glitch" is self-sufficient. It doesn't need the suffix "squatch" to express the idea of technological anomaly. Etymologically, "glitch" is likely derived from Yiddish glitsh "a slip," from glitshn "to slip," from Ger. glitschen, and related gleiten "to glide," as Etymonline.com suggests. Emerged in the early 1960s as technical term associated with electronic engineering it was "popularized and given a broader meaning by U.S. space program." (Etymonline) I wouldn't be the first to suggest that the glitch may be close cousins with the gremlin. The conglomeration "Frankenglitch" as a term meaning approximately the "mad science of manufacturing malfunction," might work out. Mad scientists of malfunction, in my mind are audio-visual artists who seek signals in noise and/or are motivated by a belief/conviction to do so. But then, the term "mad scientist" isn't synonomous with "cryptozoologist," (despite what some people might think) and so the use of the prefix "franken" gets entangled in a whole other system of signs.

In its original usage, Blobsquatch refers to the results of an optical error, or lens based blurring of an image. This unintentional illusion (rather than photoshopped hoax) appears, in its blob-like form, to be a Sasquatch (which it may or may not be in actuality.) As stated elsewhere, I'm interested in pursuing the Blobsquatch in the expanded field. In other words I'm interested not just in the blurs, blobs and unknowns specific to botched attempts at documenting Sasquatches, but the holding power of aberrations and curious encounters across the technocultural imagination. Optical, electronic and digital unknowns that are both aesthetically fascinating and foundational to various vernacular belief systems. The Blobsquatch functions for me as a means of interdisciplinary exploration at the intersection of the cryptozoological and technological.

Blobsquatchery in the Expanded Field

2006-12-10T17:07:00.000-08:00

To go about catching a Blobsquatch, one must bait the creature's native habitat--the technocultural realms of the infosphere. Staged accidents concerning analog and digital imaging implemented with intent to attract the truly unknown. For the truly fantastic, it is likely necessary to turn to known Blobsquatch specialists, those who seek 'squatches' in 'blobs', or signals in noise. The electronic art of circuit-bending and other such adventures should be investigated. Theorist Svetlana Boym alludes to the promise of this sort of creative sabotage in Nostalgic Technology: Notes for an Off-Modern Manifesto, describing "broken-tech" as art's new technology. "It cheats both on technological progress and on technological obsolescence." (Boym) Broken-tech is not nihilistic but hopeful and curious, "not Luddite but ludic. It challenges the destruction with play." (Boym) I have recently started another on-line think tank, this one dedicated to field recordings and related documents: Blobsquatchery in the Expanded Field.

Blobsquatchery

2006-12-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

Following the neologistic trajectories of monstrosities such as Frankenstein and Watergate, the Sasquatch, too, has reached the cultural capitol of portmanteau! The suffix "squatch," has been broken free from "sas" and re-connected to "blob".

Blobsquatch. The term itself, according to Cryptomundo.com was coined initially by Vito Quaranta, then propagated online by Ray Randell throughout 2002-03. The 'squatch,' of course, refering to sasquatch, bigfoot, manimals--those hairy, hefty, homonids in our midst. 'blob' refers to a common characteristic of most all cryptozoological documentation--blurry, grainy, blobby-ness. The shadowy shapes and nebulous forms that just might be something out of the ordinary. This is separate from a hoax, which involves intentional construction of deceptive imagery. In an article entitled Evaluating Purported Sasquatch Photographic Evidence author Alton Higgins notes the rise of Photoshop assisted phoniness in falsified Bigfoot documentation. With Sasquatches or Blobsquatches proper, Higgins contends that "most unbiased observers, including those within the bigfoot research community, would [agree] that any photo requiring equal parts interpretation and imagination...should be discounted."(Higgins)

This seems a valid way to determine the objectivity of indexical traceroutes back to a physical sasquatch and environment. That is to say if one's noise-to-signal ratio reads blob-to-squatch, (see figure above fromBigfoot Forums) and is concerned only with that physical thing out in the wildnerness. For my research, into the information environment and anomalies that upset order there, the Blobsquatch is a welcome personification, so to speak, for the technocultural imaginary.

"Wherever streams of consciousness and electrons converge in the cultural imagination,there lies a potential conduit to an electronic elsewhere" (Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media). There has been a historically sustained interest in the intersection of technology and imagination. Particularly prominent is the interpretation of glitches, errors and other technological aberrations as signs of the supernatural. The activities of the Modern Spiritualists come to mind, particularly Spirit Photography. Modern Spiritualists believed that the otherwise imperceptible forces from the spirit world could be captured in the sufficiently sensitive photographic process. Murky multiple-exposures and the gooey gobs of 'ectoplasm' can be found in the photodocuments from late 19th century seances. As radio technology was implemented in the early 20th century, the audio-disturbances (now known as sferics) were intially believed to be Alien communiques. Electronic Voice Phenomena and the mysterious bloop are more recent variants on audio-anomalies. In 1970, the "Bayside Apparitions" phenomena began in (originally) Bayside, New York. As Folklorist Daniel Wojcik describes in his book The End of the World As We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America, Veronica Lueken has developed a following of thousands surrounding her direct conveyance of the Virgin Mary's prophesies. Lueken's followers, known as 'Baysiders,'have witnessed and documented miraculous phenomena--most notably with Polaroid cameras. "Said to contain allegorical symbols and...interpreted as divine communication offering insights of prophetic relevance," (Wojcik,p.81) the Baysiders refer to these photos as "Polaroids from Heaven." The manifestations on these photos "include streaks and swirls of light...dotted lines and beads of light," (Wojcik, p.82) all developed near-instantaneously in traditional Polaroid form. Like Spirit Photography, "miracle photography is a form of divination, a technique of interpreting symbolic messages communicated by superantural forces," (Wojcik, p.83) on par with a technologically involved world.

Gremlins, as discussed in a previous post, are perhaps a missing link between technological and cryptozoological anomalies.

Here be Dragons

2006-11-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

In thinking more about cryptozoological entities in terms of cultural phenomena and not just as their zoological referent, I've been researching maps and cartography. Generally, maps recieve little consideration as to the objectivity of their representated terrain. Presumably, this is because when one is trying to find their way back to the freeway, they don't want to add questons of neutrality into their already frustrated inqury.

Maps are typically referential, like a road map, identifying the location of something, or thematic, mapping specifc data (such as voting trends) across a geographic area. This demarcation of maps presents a binary similar to that of zoological thing and the cultural phenomenon. Maps of the referential variety are used by cryptozoologists to track down the literal animal where it literally lives. Whereas one might employ the dynamics of a thematic map to assess the effects of a cultural phenomenon like belief in cryptids over a certain period of time. This could be further broken down into particular variable including types of cryptids, ages of believers, political leanings, etc, etc.

In Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States, author Monica L. Smith explains the ways in which "the realities of nonoverlapping ritual, social, and economic activities...have an impact on political cohesion." (Smith, p.832) While modern map-making has been more wary of the instability of power relations over time, ancient maps are still depicted as fixed entities. Historical territorial maps frequently represent ideological projections of crafty rulers. Smith writes, "Ancient historical sources, written from the point of view of an aspiring central authority, may overstate an enemy’s strength to gain support for extensive military campaigns or underplay military losses to keep morale high." (Smith, p.837) These biased and fragmented details are translated into objective facts regarding the extent of various states' territories. Oversimplifying the complex flux of power relations over time, a "convenient fiction" of uninterrupted authority is instilled. Smith goes on to describe the role of networks in examining "more accurately the mechanisms developed to manage the inherent economic, social, and political challenges to the imposition of state authority...In a network, nodes and connectors are dependent upon each other, with a large potential number of combinations that enable [the] links to be sustained in a robust but flexible manner.” (Smith, p.838)

Smith outlines (so to speak) the strategic use of networks by the Inka empire in the South American Andean region which thrived from AD 1400 until 1532 (Smith, 839). Of particular note is the Inka road system. "As access routes for the movement of people and goods, these formalized roads were created to provide access to population centers but also to serve as a cost-effective reminder of state authority in otherwise remote regions for which there was little other daily evidence of Inka investment" (Smith, p.839)

A precursor to today's globalized information and telecommunications networks, there were a lot of interstital areas between points in the Inka system. "When viewed as a series of network links, the Inka road system encompasses a large amount of empty space in the Andean region in which there were few resources or inhabitants. Rather than being uniform or homogenous, these links show that Inka state control was concentrated on nodes of population and economic activity" (Smith, p.839)

The Degree Confluence Project seeks to "visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location," using the precision of GPS technologies. How and where do Other activities, phenomena, and, or cryptozoological critters intersect within deceptively saturated official maps of the way things work?

Frame-Leveled

2006-10-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

On Loren Coleman's Cryptozoo News blog last February the question "Why frame 352?" was posted. Frame #352 being the lone frame out of nearly a thousand in the Patterson-Gimlin 16mm filmstrip that has become widely recognized as a central cultural signifier associated with Bigfoot (and Fortean activity generally!)

One commenter to the aforementioned post suggests "Frame 352 displays a classic and recognizable human form. As humans we tend to extrapolate and describe things we cannot explain into anthropomorphic terms, making them less frightening to our psyches." (drshoop) Likewise, the appearance of friendly paperclips, smiling computers, avatars and emoticons, dwelling in computer interfaces everywhere are an attempt to familiarize the unknown. "We imagine we have more control because the icons seem to notice us," writes Norman M. Klein in an essay included in The Sharpest Point anthology, "but with each user-friendly step, we move farther from the programming itself." (Klein, p.27)

Frame 352 is of course a result of veiled "programming" as well. Beyond the film itself, this particular image was selected by some newspaper office, then reprinted, propagated and multiplied through the mediasphere. Culturally hacked to hype all manner of consumer schlock (see this post for more on these exploits) What makes the Bigfoot so fascinatingly photogenic at this frame may also be tied to human beings' narcissistic response when looking at animals in general. In his 1977 essay "Why Look At Animals," John Berger writes:

"The eyes of an animal when they consider man are atttentive and wary. The same animal may well look at other species in the same way. He does not reserve a special look for man. But by no other species except man will the animal's look be recognized as familiar. Other animals are held by the look. Man becomes aware of himself returning the look." ( Berger, p.4-5)

The theories surrounding Bigfoot as "missing link" speak to this want of familiar (family?) traces.

The level of engagement surrounding seemingly familiar faces bring me back to a previous post--the Fantastic encounter rendered as kinesthetic experience --the potential of this first-hand sort of experience design has been demonstrated, par excellence, by contemporary media artists. The performance duo GRANULAR~SYNTHESIS for example, operate by effectively weaponizing the process of anthropomorphization and amplifying the period of hesitation associated with the Fantastic.

Using custom built computer software for live performance, split-frames of audio-video information are extracted from pre-prepared digital recordings of human performers and then resequenced in real-time into kinetically unfathomable new formations. Media theorist Tom Sherman has written at length about these artists and describes their project as the assembly of "a technical apparatus, a machine, an instrument for processing recordings of human appearance and behaviour into something post-human, something we have never seen before." ( GRANULAR~SYNTHESIS : The story so far...by Tom Sherman) There is a reversal here of the usual anthropomorphic gesture, a moving away from human characteristics. "Granular Synthesis turns people into machines," (Sherman) any familiar traces are fleeting and glimpsed only in the interstices of "the essential characteristics of machineness (speed, precision, unnatural control)" (Sherman) . This audio-visual encounter is typically augmented through multiple floor-to-ceiling projections, surround sound and sub-audio that physically affects its live audience.

"There is no time for reflection or anticipation. No time. The perpetual moment machine scrambles and destroys narratives before they ever get started. The audience is carried through the work in the present tense. Clock or machine-time mean nothing to the audience during exposure to the work. As the model's presence is refreshed, rewritten, renewed, instantly/endlessly updated--so it is we are there for the moment and the moment only. Perpetually." (Sherman)

Like a first-hand encounter with an unknown animal, the (Techno)Fantastic realm opened up by GRANUAR~SYNTHESIS unfolds in real-time. The duration of uncertainty and anxiety is extended indefinitly by these kinetic engineers who unleash familiar, yet captivatingly other and unknown animations --terrifying and fascinating onlookers.

Fantastic Accidents

2006-10-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

“So perfect a monster is Bigfoot that he has become one of the three great popular mysteries of our time, sharing this distinction with the Loch Ness Monster and the UFO, or flying saucer. Other popular mysteries materialize from time to time but usually prove transient in their appeal.” (Sam G. Riley, A Search for the Cultural Bigfoot: Folklore or Fakelore?)

Riley's claim was made in '76, but I'd imagine these three are still title holders. These three entities are sustained both as "zoological entities" and "cultural phenomena." I'd like to consider the possibilites of the zoological cryptid with Lippit's theories in Electric Animal:

"the cinema developed, indeed embodied animal traits as a gesture of mourning for the disappearing wildlife...The medium provided an alternative to the natural environment that had been destroyed and a supplement to the discursive space that had never opened an ontology of the animal" (Lippit,p.197)

I've previously been hinting at the lack of straight-up "experience," the shivering sensations of some...thing...awry--and this is not specific to Bigfeet/Nessies/UFOs in your midst, but can be initiated by all manner of unknown, unexpected occurrences. The literature of the Fantastic comes to mind, prompting "that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event." (Todorov, p.15) This sudden real-time rupture of the of the world at hand, (an absorbing text or the here-and-now) throws everything asunder, if temporarily, as one grapples to make sense of the occurence. Blurry photos, shaky footage and otherwise poor documentation of cryptids suggest accidental, or chance encounters with the unknown. "Accidents...demonstrate that we have a speed of thought," notes video artist Bill Viola, a certain delay in making sense out of external stimuli, in a sudden change of events. Viola extends this logic to rites of passage and rituals which he describes as staged accidents, "designed to bring the organism to a life-threatening crisis state." (Viola, p.88)

There is of course a rich legacy of audio-visual experimentalists who have explored the possibility spaces made accessible through staged accidents, deliberate ruptures, and other engagements with the Techno-Fantastic realms. Here I'm thinking of the Expanded Cinema movement and what Erik Davis calls Experience Design, more so than dramatic narratives with supernatural plot twists. Although, the elaborately shocking stunt devised by movie producer William Castle for theatrical screenings of his 1959 film The Tingler elevated schlock cinema, for promotional ends, into the realm of the Fantastic, too.

Skeptics and believers of the Bigfoot pour over the Patterson-Gimlin filmstrip, plaster footprints and the like for indexical proof of "that thing out there," a zoological mystery eluding physical capture. Entertaining Lippit's statement in the company of Robert Smithson's notion of "non-sites" (photos, footage, and other debris collected from site-based works that are understood not as documentation pointing to the artwork but an integral part of the original whole)...I wonder what sort of experience design could be accomplished by staging accidents in the extended forms of the cryptozoological set. Genetic makeup become kinetic makeup and/or memetic engineering settles in. Exploring and experiencing these creatures first hand, in kinesthetic terms, shot through with the holding power of these "perfect monsters."

Tropical Attitudes

2006-10-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

Entropical or Ectropical?

Is the redundancy of the bipedal, humanoid (the popular image of Bigfoot) marked with entropy? Is it an example of a predominantly closed system whereby feedback is too predictable and thus a restriction of the Bigfoot's livelihood as cryptozoological creature? Or is this an abundance of evidence as to the Bigfoot's existence as networked social constellation-- an example of "ectropy"? The opposite of entropy, this term was introduced by mathematician/philosopher William V. Quine to signify 'useable' energy. Is the rich information environment in which the popular Bigfoot now resides an open system billowing with ectropic potentialities of signification for the great American monster?

Cultivated memetically for human cultural needs, the domesticated Bigfoot ( as image of bipedal humanoid ) is a potent signifier. Yet, with a menagerie of associations already in tow including T.V. specials and monster trucks, brewfests and tourist attractions, movie and tabloid fodder, the Bigfoot, as "hidden animal," is hardly so. What lies beyond the image, beyond the "art of the footprint," (so to speak)? How does the Bigfoot as mysterious phenomenon, paranormal mechanism, "an apparition walking in the landscape of our minds," as Rod Serling once described it, carry over into the information environment experientially?

"Interestingly, ectropy is also a disease of the eyelid," notes RAQs media collective in their Ectropy Index project description, "...In this disease, the eyelids do not close satisfactorily, leading especially to a slackening of the muscles of the lower eyelid, so that the orbit of the eye comes loose, and portrudes, ectropically, from its socket. Eyes that do not blink, or sleep, or never shut to occasionally 'not see' something, tend towards ectropy. The eye that wants to be all seeing, that wants everything in order, all the time, better beware of ectropy."

Encryptozoology

2006-10-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

The infamous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film which depicts the Bigfoot tromping through a Californian forest, has recieved acres of scrutiny over the years. Breaking down the footage into frame-by-frame analysis, skeptics and believers alike debate the nature of the creature's gait. The work of Eadward Muybridge comes to mind, as these motion studies arrest and interrogate the illusion of animation-if only in an attempt to see the illusionary animal for what it 'really' is! The interrogation of moving images in these Bigfoot afficionados' sites seems secondary- the main issue is concerning the discovery (or not) of dubious content.

Contemporary artist Kevin H. Jones has explored this footage using sensors that appear to track the activity of light/dark values on a screen that is displaying the Patterson-Gimlin sequence (see picture above). Jones inverts the subject of inquiry in this media spectacle. He inspects the medium---he looks into, rather than at the image, now electronic, a single point of light flitting speedily across the screen. The "anima" in question is not that of the potential man in a monkey suit, but the flucuation of information patterns. But this is terminal information... It is a loop, both technically and culturally. It has replayed to the point of recognition at the expense of its own exhaustion. Overload equals pattern recognition, and the Patterson-Gimlin film is overloaded, the Bigfoot-as-Image is overexposed. The Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot, the Bigfoot-as-Image is no longer "a difference that makes a difference" (Bateson), it has been discovered, exploited for commercial gain. It has been domesticated.

That the Bigfoot has most often eluded encounters, left nothing but fleeting traces, retained a certain autonomous status, manoevered in stealth-suggests that this creature is not so easily ensnared in traditional representational modes. Might the Bigfeet, (and cryptids generally) seek encryption of a sort less aligned with images proper as they come to inhabit and lurk in the augmented environments of information space?

Paranormal Mechanism 2.0

2006-10-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of technological accidents and malfunctions with audio-visual media because it's at these junctures: a vinyl scratch, a digital glitch, electronic noise overcoming the signal --that the hidden potential of the machine at hand is revealed--- these glimpses, ruptures breaks from official taxonomic structures open up possibility spaces for new kinds of crypto-techno-zoological goings on. In 1921, when a "large upright animal" terrorized a Himalayan expedition, a reporter went digging for clues. In a botched translation of the locals' description the journalist came up with the term "Abominable Snowman." It's believed by many that the well-publicized Abominable Snowman nurtured the Bigfoot's rise in the Pacific Northwest. Born out of an error, a mis-communique and then linked to a growing social web of folkloric debris--personal accounts, anecdotes, fictions and facts. Photographs, filmstrips and shlock tv. As a technologically encrypted animal the Bigfoot surely shuttles betwixt and between the social networks of Web 2.0, a folksonomic constellation of multiple users, and their multiple tagged images, movies, nebulously factual and/or fictional figments and other miscellany in a sprawling, collaboratively sustained vernacularchitecture of information. All assembled from instantaneously available resources to address available theories.

Cryptozoologists Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman describe the workings of a "paranormal mechanism" in their book 'Creatures of the Outer Edge' that they hold responsible for generating appartitions, Bigfoot and UFOs, etc that are then processed through the human brain...what is the bigger blurry picture that is rapidly being conspired by the global brain? and what sort of mechnisms are behind it?

Virtualization of Transport...Realization of Cryptids

2006-09-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

Thinking about things cryptozoological and technological, the gremlin is a crafty cryptid candidate. These mischevious mythical creatures purportedly sabotaged Royal Air Force jets during WWII. Rarely causing major catastrophes-- instead 'nickel and diming' the pilots with minor glitches, malfunction and other annoyances. Spielberg aside, are there gremlins lurking in the shadows of cinema? Audio-visual media are a variety of transportion device, carrying away the spectator's attention, travelling it to new vistas. Errors and aberrations (gremlins of the crypto-zoetropical persuasion ) do their darndest to disrupt the official business of this virtual transport.

Animals and Animation

2006-09-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

As native habitats were wiped out by increasing industrialization in the 19th century, animals were set in motion. Author Akira Mizuta Lippit suggests in his book Electric Animal that animals sought 'virtual shelter' in cinema--as animations. Adding a sense of urgency to Muybridge's motion studies, Lippit seems to imply that the famous photographer was creating an ark-ive (to be shot on twos no doubt). Today latter day animation outfits urgently, if only for economic concerns, "motion capture" actors' gestures, clone faces and synthesise voices --perhaps in an subconscious effort to save the human.

Following the animal-to-animation logic, we see today a dramatic return of the animal/animation. As cities and suburbs report rampant alligators, coyotes and other urban wildlife, there is also an explosive resurgence of animation. As animals return to cities, mobile devices bring animations (movies, websites, ads, GUIs, etc) in tow. the cybernetically fused animal/animation (re)stakes its claim.

"A man who is equipped like a territory is no longer an inhabitant; he becomes a habitat." - Virilio ( Crepuscular Dawn)

Cryptozoology

2006-09-28T18:32:00.000-07:00

Cryptozoology, the study of hidden, or unknown animals is most famous for its alleged encounters with the Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs. Mythological and supernatural beasts might also fall under/into the cryptozoo, but it is these "missing links" that seem the most elusive and prized.

These cryptids are sustained phenomenally by an architecture of participation and belief, a network of social interactions that continue to mutate and nourish the cryptozoological set. Making sense out these marvelous creatures, as lurking metaphors for sites ( or sights) of counter-hegemonic media production, I will adopt the role of "cryptozoologist", situating myself betwixt cartography and conspiracy, between animal and animation