It has been told that Weird Fiction slithers forth from a cine-molecular dawn, but what pray tell is the “cine-molecular?” According to various portents, a Cine-Molecular structure contains at least three images, typically sequential, and typically detached and emphasized in contrast to original time-frame. The cine-molecule then, one might suspect, is an equivalent of the still image—but this is not true! excepting cases of dissonant interlacing, but I digress—

In truth, the cine-molecule is closer in operation to quantum phenomena or other durations of uncertainty, it is a constellation floating undone– at once real and imagined. Not unlike Marcel Duchamp’s inframince, that interval between similar things that is just shy of imperceptibility.

The cine-molecule operates through extraction. Harnessing an inframince and prolonging its interval, teasing out novel possibility spaces. The result is a liminal, betwixt and between sort of legibility.  Oscillating.  A space-time jitter, wrinkle in time, or a micro-narrative of hesitation and post-human longing?

Lest I reveal too much, too soon, perhaps a revisionist history will suffice. Followers of Weird Fiction will rightly wonder at my ability to reflect on what has passed… so let me posit a disclaimer.  It is your choice, dear reader,  to swallow this like the serpent’s tail or with a grain of salt. The Cine-Molecule as ficto-quizzical phenomena contains trace memories of parallel movements in vidsonic space. It is a truly strange survival, a living fossil redolent of several antecedent forces. For now we will address the stalwart “QWERTY-core”

Combining the everyday schema of the computer keyboard layout (QWERTY) with the sentiment of extreme musical activities marked with zeal for danger, violence and stylish posturing in practice (i.e. hardcore, grindcore, vomitcore, etc) QWERTY-core involves a peculiar variant of data entry marked with shades of Lettrist hypergraphy, arguably.

In the hideous operating theaters housing QWERTY-Core antics, schematics would reveal a QWERTY keyboard that is mapped– with each letter corresponding more or less to an instance in one or several short video sequences, allowing an operative to jump to and fro through an episode of what we now know as a “cine-molecular structure.” Isolating and amplifying kinetic phrases, inciting temporal anomalies, arcane spells and very often awkward durations of uncertainty. Not so much awkward as awkwardness feebly masking chasms of cosmic terror, unfathomable Hertzian forces that permeate our every fabric of being, and, at times, have run-ins with the law(s of known physics).

QWERTY-core was the primary engine of the JiRCs, that tangled web of design scientists–each straining in their own directions– who hailed from a nameless outpost in the forestal abysms of Eugene, Oregon. It was this curious lot that coined the term QWERTY-core, claim regional aesthetes.

This “QWERTY-corps,” as it were, tasked themselves to code-cracking previously imperceptible phenomena encoded in 20th century visual dreck. They did so, primarily, by instigating [cine-molecular invasions] amongst popular moving image sequences. Emerging in an equally weird milieu of freakish, dionysian dance parties, the JiRCs weaponized the inframince as a means of survival, opening up micro-narratives in seemingly mundane visual media.

“Post-animation,” or “Re-animation” are terms often hastily applied by certain media scholars to describe this phenomena. A feeble attempt, friends, one that contributes ultimately in the ghettoization of this radical fringe, sidelining it to the footnotes in the annals of experimental animation. Far beyond the allusions to illusionism and indeed the amplifications of awkward gestures (that irresistable entry level stage of QWERTY-core so relished by the JiRCs) there is present an uncanny jitter that undulates like an Escherian loop. A depraved labyrinth at once enthralling and damned–wherein time quite ceases to recede into the naturally expected flow.

It is perhaps no mere cosmic coincidence that several members of the JiRCs crew were revealed as operatives of our own nebulous horde. Yes, temporary autonomous clones are regularly sent on reconnaissance, setting up skill-shares with like-minded mammals. I will put caution before audacity and zip my beak here, for I will likely get flack for meandering on so long as it is.