August 29th, 2010

Hybrid Models

Ficto-Quizzical colleagues, Metaphortean Research has led to discoveries and conspiracies of novel GIF speciation events. Read on:

“These anomalous forms may almost be called living fossils; they have endured to the present day, from having inhabited a confined area, and from having thus been exposed to less severe competition.” - Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species

Crypto-Zoetropicalism, or the study of hidden animation, has revealed a great swathe of living fossils basking in the white light of the white box. Hidden in plain sight, the movements of these creatures are implicit, not explicit. Their bastion of crypsis relies on the exploded view, a con-sequence of the time-honored tradition. Unlike sequential art, an acknowledged ancestor of the moving image, these crypto-zoetropical candidates began to memetically drift by way of Cubism and Futurism, modern isms intermingling but divergent also from nascent cinematic apparatuses.

Like the slowly exterminated fresh-water forms that Darwin refers to above, this particular menagerie persists by formal stealth as much as memetic isolation. Sheltered from the heterogeneity, density and toxicity of life in the oceanic Interweb, their fossilization may well dissolve into extinction.

Putting audacity before caution, several of these “living fossils” have been hybridized with the GIF species. If biodiversity is too hopeful, memetic contamination too much of a brag, perhaps the old haunt of context collapse will suffice as a provisional place-holder for these kinetically modified organisms (KMOs).

Is there much to be learned in from these pulsing hybrids? Can these animalized isms maintain their prowess in the thick of everyday media life? Entertaining the simultaneity of one and three chairs, myriad soup cans and untitled stacks is perhaps a whimsical reminder that “an infinite number of contexts [are] collapsing upon one another.” (Wesch) –Network culture is indifferent towards an anomalous [read: obsolescing even now] strain of GIF speciation. Exclusivity is not synonymous with heroism in battle.

July 27th, 2010

Atmospheric Perspectives

Perhaps this latest vector of Metaphortean Research will be of interest to the (((WFT))) clientele, too:

At once a meditation in the paranormal and a mediation moving alongside, beside, near, next to other phenomena, this is high dynamic range imagining. Informed by any number of vistas filtered by pollutants to produce a picturesque shift of values, this paramediation has its head in the clouds.

Atmospheric perspective relies on the interaction of spheres, evocation of tone poems, the persistence of gray areas and the notion, following an artist in the information environment, that “history is spatial” and that “there are going to be anachronisms in your neighborhood.”

This excursion will employ as its aide, a photo-document of a UFO in Mcminnville, Oregon circa 1950.

The Noosphere, a soft haziness modifying all other spheres, offers gradual gliding in the distance. Out of primordial depths, an extra-sensory meshwork with modules so intricate and numerous as to appear in shifting gradient, or moiré. Synchronicities as our witness, this grey goo scenario long ago consumed us, an ostensibly benevolent (or at least indifferent) form of auto-ecophagy: a gut-feeling or deja vu.

The Videosphere amplified this meandering miasma, attuning us tonally. Contrasting the fleeting memories of the mind by bringing out definition in rolling hills, sleeping giants to some, “timid giants” in Mcluhan’s terms. At any rate vision at a distance , no longer mere premoniton, but an offering of “a completely new video environment and image-exchange life-style, (Youngblood, Expanded Cinema) just over yonder.

The combined blogo/vlogospheric presence champions the familiar technological trappings of the networked landscape. Lines of flight/sight crisscrossing, darkened with proximity and displaced only by the suggestion of echo-phagy, seen/scene here as a mnemonic shelter of sorts, memory palace admidst weeds whilst still firmly roofed. One wonders if this is an epitome of server farming, a pastoral tone poem or idyll/idle/idol

In the sky: the cipher, the consequences of worlds colliding/colluding, or an impulsive break in the code, a sferic , whistler, sounding the alarm on so many techno-imaginaries.

An anachronism in the neighborhood while judgement is out to lunch and/or the pre-mature arrival of a future shadow: The Clogosphere.

May 19th, 2010

Polterzeitgeist Persists


Again, begrudgingly, The Metaphortean Researcher must give a nod to (((WFT))) without whom the Polterzeitgeist might never have been perceptible. However, it is indeed a motley Weird Faction that I will commend presently in review of this most recent series of engagements!

With many thanks to The Electromagnetic Archeologist for the spirit photographies, ’twas a successful engagement with the Polterzeitgeist Outreach Coordinator at the DIVA gallery in Eugene. After a spirited romp thru the Revenant Archives, ogling evidence of trad telepathies—of séances and clairvoyant horses—Irving Bleak then assisted me in establishing a link with today’s multi-modal phantom presence. Made manifest by way of all manner of real and imagined technologies, the residual energies of the Polterzeitgeist are loitering near Portland presently, invited to the area’s newest haunt next week!

This Tuesday, May 25th @ the Grand Detour, an exciting new space for “experiments in new media,” The Polterzeitgeist will again be conjured up! New channels, new modes of thought, this audio-visual exposé will unfold in conjunction with Deep Leap Microcinema’s The Internet is a Terrible Place to Live showcase!

May 14th, 2010

iMaging the Polterzeitgeist

Picture 4Dear fleshy minded mammals; (((WFT))), as you may know, has granted permission–or rather gave me a cosmically indifferent shrug when asked about permission— to move forward with  research into imaging the Polterzeitgeist.  To be precise, this will be an i-Maging, or iMaging of the Polterzeitgeist. Operating in conjunction with Irving Bleak and the distributed bodies of multiple tele-agents, our technical preview of iMage unfurling in the forestal abysms of Eugene, Earth this Saturday evening.

It is rumored that a second deployment of the iMage will be manifesting circa Portland, Earth in coming weeks.  More to be announced on that front.

At any rate,  paranormal mechanisms in tow, the iMage attempts to triangulate the epicenter of the Polterzeitgeist, then saturates that field with billions and billions of ghost queries, in hopes that one or more of these derelict data projectiles will compel the Polterzeitgeist to emerge.

Picture 5Picture 4

Not unlike finding a needle in a haystack, excepting that this hertzian haystack is filled with all manner of needles, and so it may take some finesse to hone in on the Polterzeitgeist proper.  The included pictures are redolent of Polterzeitgeist phenomena and in fact are the fascinating results of alpha-phase testing.

April 16th, 2010

Target Earth

A report from your intrepid Metaphortean correspondent on current events of relevance to (((WFT))), as this ficto-quizzical milieu is ever more alembically attuned to the skies this month:

While Portland, Earth reels back in splendorous springtime weather, it is elsewhere raining cats and dogs.  More mesmerizing still are the Fortean falls of objects within Wisconsin’s borders, and the near simultaneous ricochet of videographic shadow forms criss-crossing the networked cosmos.

Psychic bombardments plummet to Earth, authorities determine it is not space junk, this time.  More mesmerizing still is the looming prospect that these are derelict theory objects, ideas cooked up by the global brain some time ago, antecedent mental transmissions accumulating just outside of this Earth.  Likely cast forth into the noospheric yonder in the dawn of dial-up.  Returning now, the boomerang(e) of future influence upon the past.  As the saying goes, amongst the ballistically inclined, “be sure of your target–and what is beyond it.”

WEIRD FICTION : Invading Mankind's Information Ecosystems