"Generative Sigil" by Joshua Madara The spread of advanced technology in everyday life has accompanied a retreat of religious language from mainstream culture. Not long ago, religion was more than a means of attaining amoral compass, the source of "values" that it is today. Although it still does take this tendency in certain cultures and circumstances, religion once was, throughout the world, the text of a cosmology that describes the way the world works. Religion was the key to explaining the mysteries of life, and even when its cosmology was proved wrong, its larger cultural weight served as a point of departure for more detailed, scientific discoveries. The motion of the spheres, the aetheric whispers of the electromagnetic spectrum, the heaving and quaking of the ball of matter we live upon--historically, these phenomena were not correctly understood by religious or spiritual explanations, but at least they were a place to start. The Galileos of the world needed a cosmology to…

In the shadows of myths, a new entity builds itself. It is called Dark Theory, and in the dark, it grows. From the broken pieces rubble, it constructs a new mortar, pasting itself up from the midden pits of cultural discards, the unwanted substance of thousands of years of stories and folktales, naming conventions, official designations, and jurisprudence. This excised material, this societal negative space, reassembles into a sprawling favela of unmapped streets. Like ancient books resurrected into new artwork by a counter-culture with insurgent spirit and a taste for its own blood, the darkness is cataloged, analyzed, and bootlegged, becoming dangerous and feral, in that it has been pried out from its history, and set upon new, machined legs.It is with myths that we color the outlines of our cultural terrain. We collide with the shapes whether we like it or not, but it is with narratives that we shade in the fields, providing us with a sense of depth at a distance. With this color,…

Our sense of vision is acutely human, because it is by our perception of the visible that we orient our world, and understand ourselves within it. We are creatures of light, who move within light, who build their lives out of light and its plethora of shadows, glimmers, reflections, and obscurities. And in this cast flame we judge each other, we attack each other, we watch each other, condemn each other, rule each other, and rape each other. We not only speak of our inner selves as illuminated, but we use spotlights to chase down other bodies. Whether it be the eyesight of a group of men facing down a single woman moving down the same sidewalk at night, a telephoto lens attempting to peer through the shroud of a person’s clothing, a police officer’s flashlight, a drone’s camera, or simply the contemporary presence of CCD sensors in our pockets and on our architecture, vision connotes a certain power, that is used negatively just as often as it can be positive. When we are critical of…

My partner, Rosalynn, is not only a senior dispatcher and calltaker at the Bureau of Emergency Communications [BOEC] here in Portland, but she is finishing up her Master’s Thesis as a candidate for her MA in Folklore, which is about the narrative structures in her workplace and the impact of multi-modal forms of communication on narrative in the workplace. We’ve had several conversations to record her own thoughts about the workplace, and for me to provide a point of perspective about certain technological aspects. This conversation is part of her forthcoming thesis, and with her permission, I’m publishing it here, because I think the things we are discussing about the unavailability of technologically distinct narratives for important strategic and emergency positions are very important. Interview with Adam Rothstein33:15 to 43:00October 8th, 2012Location: The Nighthawk, North Portland A: (33:15) (Unknown song playing in the background, sounds of other patrons at the bar talking)…

This is an introductory essay and explanation of the Open Card Deck Standard, and the Library and License that will support it. As you might be able to tell, I’ve spent some time thinking about this, in conjunction with conversations with a number of people on related topics. But this is only the beginning. I’d like to continue the discussion on this in a Google Doc, so if you are interested in this or anything related to various types of open-ended social gaming, please join in. Definitions Before we detail the actual standards, let’s make some axiomatic definitions. Card A single database entry, with defined content fields (name, artwork, etc.). Each entry is designed to be printed on a single piece of generally flat material, using either one or both sides. Deck A collection of cards, selected with particular use in mind, to be the limited pool for that use. A deck might be created, added to, split, or diminished in various ways, but the deck defines the difference between the…

drawing of a UFO encounter from Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore Editor’s Note: This theory piece on UFO documentation is by my partner. I’m posting it here because it is relevant to many issues that I am interested in related to authenticity and phenomenal evidence, and the work that she and I do together regarding technologically-informed revaluations of semiotic value (more on that soon, I hope). Also posted here because she does very excellent work, and because she isn’t quite as “network self-promotion focused” as I am, I feel it’s underexposed to people who might find it interesting. Enjoy! And do check out the UFO images linked from Photocat, these especially are worth looking at. Visual Documentation of UFOs: A New Question of Authenticity by Rosalynn Rothstein Documentation of UFO encounters demonstrate conflict between acceptable channels for observing natural phenomena created by science and the observational powers of any one individual. Margaret…

Cascadian Drone Ballads are a style of folk music originating in the disputed territory known as Cascadia. They represent a cultural internalization of the impact of the American and Canadian governments’ violent, technological incursion into this undeveloped natural terrain on the northern Pacific coast of North America, a identifying narrative device for those who live an off-the-grid lifestyle, and serve as a rallying point for activists fighting for Cascadian sovereignty both in the rural, mountainous areas and in the cities. This article will briefly theorize the music lineage of Drone Ballads and their context in the political and technological situation in Cascadia, and then illustrate this relationship as found in the lyrics of several songs in the Cascadian Drone Ballad style. Cascadia Cascadia currently has no sovereign rights as a state or territory, but its borders are generally viewed as encompassing the American states of Washington, Oregon, and northern areas of…

Read this: http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/04/an-essay-on-the-new-aesthetic/ Now, where do you start? Here’s where I start: politics is the elephant in the room. In the portrait of New Aesthetics painted by Bruce Sterling, the glitch-captivation is a worldview. As a way of seeing the world, it has its own political aspects. But there is more than needs to be said. The New Aesthetic reeks of power relations. Drones, surveillance, media, networks, digital photography, algorithms. This is largely about the technology of “seeing”, and how we see this new technology of seeing. But the technology is also for watching. The ability to watch someone is a form of power. It controls the flow of information. “I know everything about you, but you know nothing about me.” Or, “I know everything about you, and all you can do is make art about the means by which I know things.” photo via Demilit Tumblr In some ways, Bruce’s article makes mention of this problem, by noting the…

Okay, a quick word. Alexis Madrigal, whose opinion I very much respect, wrote this piece not exactly defending the police officer who pepper sprayed a bunch of absolutely peaceful students at UC Davis. Not defending, but sort of giving him a bit of sympathy by way of drawing blame to the institution that allowed the event to take place, rather than the individual (though Alexis clarified that he does not consider the officer blameless). I call bullshit. Absolutely. As an Occupier committed to non-violence, I cannot and will not excuse the actions of this police officer under any condition. First, go find the video on Youtube if you haven’t seen it. (You’ll have no trouble finding it.) It is brutality, plain and simple. This is brutal violence. Those people were sitting on the ground, and a person used a large amount of poisonous chemicals to cause them immense pain, to the point that they vomited, and a number were hospitalized. THEY WERE CHEMICALLY INDUCED TO VOMIT PAINFULLY, each…

The hutongs of Beijing are an architectural phenomenon that is quickly dying. In a heavily populated city like Beijing, land, especially uninterrupted spans of land, are the ultimate natural resource. And while hutongs have existed for centuries in their environment, a new rival for the resource has come about: the urban planner. Beijing’s urban planners are making quick work of the hutongs, and by most accounts, they will be gone for good in a short number of years. The difference between planned urban spaces and unplanned urban spaces, those that are spontaneously created by the total of intangible characteristics we might call “the city itself”, is similar to the difference between a nation and its territory. We like to think, as creatures of rational action, that we control our social terrain as if it were a part of our body. It would be easy to consider the relationship between political discourse and physical reality as a monadic, Enlightenment-era style cogito. However,…