Weird Fiction

Salutations, Happy New Year, and without further ado—findings from that intrepid embedded journalist, i.e. yours truly, The Metaphortean Researcher.

If the Metaphortean agenda is, at times, detoured when traversing this ficto-quizzical terrain; the latest (((WFT))) endeavor, “The GIF Economy,” makes up for this harassing labor tenfold. The GIF Economy, a menagerie created under the auspices of the antiquated Graphic Interchange Format, invites denizens of the Interweb to create, appropriate and share GIF animations that more or less illustrate core tenets of the Weird Fiction Mythos.

Of myths and menageries, recall the origins of cinema. Muybridge, as eccentric shepard, herding animals into animations. Capturing their movements, indexing the species, accumulating a Noachian archive of images. Antecedent innovations–magic lantern shows, the zoetrope, the thaumotrope and their kin contributed likewise in caging the vital principles for playback and analysis.

The GIF is in some respects a stationary species, a living fossil, a holdover from the kinship of philosophical toys. Of particular import: the “wonder maker,”or thaumotrope. A smallish disc on a string, with images on either side, spun by its user so as create a third image by way of superimposition. The thaumotrope, a cine-molecular conceit in two frames looping is the common ancestor of GIFs today.

In other reports, a GIF is dithered, limited to 256 colors, life in a browser, and its most splendid mega fauna typically weigh-in at no more than 1000 kilobytes. Of lines of descent, curvature and segmentation, there are a variety of speciation events to consider. Technocultural isolation, reduced meme flow and, of course, the Anomaly.
Crypto-zoetropical studies have made strides in identifying anomalous forms of animation including circuit-bent video games and data-moshing and other glitchcraft. This emphasis on cine-molecular variation within moving image arts is not, however, the distinguishing characteristic of the GIF animation, per se.

Limiting GIFs to a thaumotropical ancestry shot thru with pulses of the crypto-zoetropical is, at best, destined for deletionpedia if we do not consider the role of memetics.

Is this for instance a duck, or a rabbit? a still image or moving? The onlooker has no choice but to oscillate between animals ad infinitum. No need for a film projector, the mechanics are mental, part of a well-oiled cultural apparatus, a meme machine. Another two-frame loop, activated from within the mind, no strings attached. It is the strength of the meme pool that most vividly “animates” this of course. It’s pattern recognition rather than sequential logic.

Relatedly– the Bigfoot exists as moving image in an oft looped film sequence, recorded circa 1967, featuring the classic cryptid tromping through a clearing in Northern Californian woods. Over the years, skeptics and believers alike have poured over this filmstrip in attempts to understand the contents. Experts from both camps have broken down the sequence into discrete images in hopes of either exposing a hoax or proving the existence of Bigfoot as a living animal.

Memetic anatomy is what’s paramount here– “Bigfoot” begins and is sustained as a putty like thought-formation: rumor, report, filmic capture, tabloids, mass media and mass amateur mediation via digitized images, mashups, homages, reference hoaxes, spin-offs and jokes. This interplay of memetic nodes is amplified by computer networks, distributed globally across the Interwebs. Network realism is the lifeblood of a cryptid’s survival, photo-realism is secondary, actual occurrences sheepishly clawing at third place.

GIFs have facilitated Bigfoot, other cryptids, various memetic phenomena, yes. Strikingly, as context is collapsing galactically, globally and locally, the authority of photo-realist regimes does not compute. GIFs are contemporary cryptids, living fossils re-fueled, despite playback problematics and varied chokeholds posed by modern day browsers. Valuable operatives in a paradigm shift towards the ficto-quizzical! GIFs take the helm as stand alone memetic organisms thriving within the pervasively networked information environment. Abundant in internet forums, redolent of embarassing webcam moments, panopticoncentrated CCTV blips, celebrity gaffaws, unintended celebrities, faux-error messages, geocities artifacts, pop cultural in-jokes, optical illusions, visual trolling pranks and deeper, darker abysms of vile intent, GIFs prevail.

Hybridities and mutation are commonplace, as one memetically charged GIF infrastructure is piggybacked by another’s visual variant, thus altering the species. Modular and multiplex traits proliferate rhizomatically ‘cross the Interweb via recursive instantiations of memetic debris and endless bouts of ludic recombination,  Initially short lifespans beget meandering permutations and coalessences that irupt into novel and derelict theory objects. This sprawl is facilitated by automated GIF animation sites, the mandate to recombinate, manageable possibilities and the sublimely abject aesthetics that are ever present and richly wielded in GIFs.
Having successfully erected obliteratariums for the study of denizens of dark webs and negative net space, i.e. the obliterati—Weird Fiction here laterally move this stronghold of greymarket R+D, aiming at the polterzeitgeist that is, in other words, the GIF ridden, memetic lifeworld of Interweb phenomena today. Temporary Autonomous Clones and temporarily autonomous Lorkurers are stationed in the foyer, sifting through incoming GIFS, classifying visual projectiles and building up a reservoir of GIF animations online and on site. Ultimately, these galleries-cum-GIF strongholds likely to crop up offline, elsewhere, globally– will be as rest stops and road-side attractions for the space-time implosions predicted to manifest in the coming age of ubiquitous computing and spimal taps. Weaponized whimsy, symptomatic of second-wave vampling?

Again, dear readers, this ficto-quizzical is a curious lot for the fleshy mind of a mere Metaphortean Researcher to process in full. Till next time!

On track of the unknown neologism.  Looking for leads on the ficto-quizzical, origins of this species, possibility spaces and the like.

Bullshit detectors typically topple from an acute inability to read between the lines and, or, when in the vicinity of the (((WFT))) hypercentre.

Nonetheless there are established fields worth wandering and wondering into, naked facts that will jostle loose implied allegations of whimsy or hoaxcraft.

Ficto-quizzicism is a neologistic attractor, calling forth a small brigade of other such portmanteau. We can align it as a flotsomnambulant variation on ficto-criticism. Flotsomambulance itself a more technical term for space-time transience.

Most noticeably ficto-quizzicism is mere shades apart from the term “ficto-critical”. Rosslyn Prosser citing Amanda Nettlebeck’s notes on ficto-critical conduct in Processing Fictocriticism describes this expanse as one of: “self reflexivity, the fragment, intertextuality, the bending of narrative boundaries, crossing of genres, the capacity to adapt literary forms, hybridized writing, moving between fiction (invention/speculation) and criticism (deduction/explication) of subjectivity (interiority) and objectivity (exteriority)”–

In the Weird Fiction milieu, these puzzle pieces are generated from likely enough sources. The Weird Tales of Lovecraft, Blackwood, Shaver, Serling, Eshun and other such twisty pretzels. New media, residual media, emergent media, dead media and their kin. Information environments overrun by conceptual kudzu. Hi Fidelity Concepts: Sci-Fi, Weird-Fi, Sonic-Fi, even occasionally Anartic-Fi exploded in ad hoc amalgamations with lo-fi videographic techniques, glitchcraft, expanded cinema, networked performance and other audio-visual agendas.

Like so many accelerations to facilitate collidoscopic views of that elusive Higgs Boson, this is a collaborative operation spanning many nodes and perhaps infiltrated even now by future influences. Simultaneous Blogs beget vlogs beget vamples and short docs. Live performance begets networked writing begets research and development of concepts, costumes, camera-assists, bookworks, occasional artspeak and then repeat gestures unravel again.

Detonation sidesteps denotations, exciting confused connotations and an aesthetic of complexity. Associational structures coalesce from the debris that survives impact: mingling, mutating and meandering into new forms.

As letter forms go, ficto is not far removed from salvo. Accept this lexiconspiracy, at least momentarily, and curious correspondences in such a firing of arms (to strike a target or simply to salute ) offer up another puzzle piece–one that does…not…quite…fit…

Apologies dear readers: This  ficto-quizzical is a strange bird- a paraform that the fleshy mind of this lone mammal can only calculate so quickly!

Once again, a metaphortean report from a humble embedded journalist.  One who is inspired always by the neuroaesthetically inclined creatures who populate this ficto-quizzical milieu.  Particular notes: this curious lot has recently regurgitated their theories of cine-molecular sabotage; aligning thoughts to quantum claims of scientists pursuing the cryptid-like Higgs Boson particle. As (((WFT))) explodes the space-time of material memories, physicists continue to agree that saving your ancestors from fated collisions is no cause for alarm, paradoxically speaking. In other words, as Denis Overbye relays in his recent NYTimes article The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate, “In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus.”

Arguably, the possibilities bandied about concerning “future influence” on the Large Hadron collider could also be construed as an anomolous extreme of planned obsolescence. Planned, or structured obsolescence operates by building in a limited time frame of usefulness for a product, ensuring the need for consumers to continually dispose the old and buy again a familiar but newer model. The reverse engineering manifest in creeping featurism reaches its logical limits with the time-travel theories concerning the LHC.  Not unlike an adventure safari into the Jurassic that obsolesces various models of the future with every haphazard step away from the presented path.

We could read all instances of obsolescence as actions of future operatives, butterfly effects orchestrated to endanger in advance would be stationary species. From beta decks to tasmanian tigers– each extinction at once opening up an alternative universe focused on the future, and marooning the residuals in lost worlds, memory holes and the shadowy spaces of network culture (or shadow cultures of networked spaces)

Necessarily brief this post will be, emphasis on brevity and necessity.  Moonlighting in this Weird milieu for awhile now, I have found my mind so cluttered with restless flows of images, half-formed ideas and in other words am increasingly pestered both passively and aggressively into continuing my reports on these ficto-quizzical agents.  So…despite the current wave of brain addling heat… here are some Metaphortean musings on the creature known as “This Owl”:

This Owl is purported to be omniscient, panopticonscious, densely networked and, at times, creepy as all hell. Rarely materialized into “humanoid” form at Weird Fiction event-scenes, yet always quick to followup with reviews and anecdotes related to any particular evening’s occurrences. Some audiences have reported hearing a faint fluttering of wings, incessant ringing of phones and other anomalous sounds.

While shy of a confirmed link, or two, there is reason enough to consider the “Mothman,” or “Bird man” as an adjunct operative. Zoological authorities will always laugh off any cryptid by pointing to a commonplace look-a-like. In presence of Mothmania circa 1966-67 and onwards, experts aplenty have cited the barn owl to quell anxious denizens of the West Virginian countryside.

Truly, the colossal corpus and red glaring eyes don’t compute with typical taxonomies of owls but the point here is not merely Fortean notions of intermediacy. Owls, especially the species inhabiting info-ecosystems, are most curious and perhaps paranormal creatures, to be wary of…

Visual associations aside, This Owl, like the Mothman (and so many other monstrous creatures) is also a sort of portent or omen of impending crises. Alas, as noted, the heat is close at hand and my Metaphortean diagnostics are greatly incapacitated presently. I will have to end here, taking cover in shadier climes for a spell.

Regrettably, our embedded journalist was delayed while traversing the blogosphere. Determined to deliver another round of Metaphortean findings even if perched in a wayward abyss— I was paged to his service. Without further delay, here are the words of our colleague the Metaphortean Researcher:

Retrograde Remediation is a mode of moving backwards, or perhaps sideways, often (but not always) in the face of new media provocation. A medium re-framed in another form does not inherently necessitate a linear, forwards motion or mobilize, only, concerns of the market. Conceptual hacking of the remediation process can produce other hybrids, too. For instance database cinema, wherein computerization highlights valuable insight for the cinematic (in the hands of visionary cranks) Cinema subject to an identity crisis, realizing it is, and has always been, a database form– albeit one that has adhered to a stringent algorithm (or script). This hypermediacy in opposition to the dominant drive towards immediacy and efficiency in/of image production. Valid, convenient, these imperatives are—but denying so many parallel worlds and hybrid moments!

Exploded view diagrams isolate and arrest. A techno-taxidermy that sizes up perceived pathways for understanding of the complexities of so many mechanisms. A camera enters bullet time but does not reach escape velocity. Floating here, camera as carcass, a frozen fillet suspended for further analysis.

Weird Fiction operates on the innards of cinema, exploding narratives. A process not a product per se. Exploding narratives, then rummaging in real-time through the flotsam and flightpaths of hurtling audio-visual world/views. This is not guaranteed to produce novel forms of coherency or complexity but, as Irving Bleak claims “arational systems hold value,” too.

Imagine the mix as a live process of instantiating the cutting room floor, a perverse re-enactment of the discarding and refusal of data. Imagine any unnamed archivo-futurists, foraging this floor, thinking through their hands, piecing together dissociated knowledge. In any live milieu, ficto-quizzical or otherwise, music allows for more abstract associations while spoken words will fight for stubbornly literal visual returns. Words are not tied to their literal imaged counterparts, parallel worlds do exist! One can open up worlds by embracing the exploding view not as a finite map of known forms, of knowledge inventoried and complete. Instead as just that but also always a crisis ripe for re-viewing, an exploding ad infinitum, a gateway or nodal nook for z-access into on-going parallel processes. The logic of the loop, or stream of consciousness. At any rate, another procession of the damned