critique of the invisibles

from Philip Sandifer’s Pop Between Realities, Home in Time for Tea 52 (The Invisibles):

So. Chaos Magic. The typical start date of chaos magic as an occult system and worldview is 1976, in a meeting between Peter J. Carroll and Ray Sherwin, but if you want to give it a date of public appearance you’d have to pick 1978 and the publication of Liber Null. It’s important to sort out what was going on here, and this requires flipping back in our playbook a bit because we haven’t actually dealt seriously with the evolution of modern occultism since about The Daemons. The signposts for this blog being what they are, Chaos Magic was invented in the Tom Baker era right around the transition from Hinchcliffe to Williams. It is, at least in its basic form, occultism’s reaction to punk. Where previous magical approaches focused on reinventing or subverting existing structures and traditions, chaos magic’s basic attitude was “fuck it.” Its core belief is that magic is simply the exertion of will upon reality, and that the trappings of magic are just there to shape what one believes in and thus what one can will. The core chaos magic belief is that of “consensus reality,” the default order of things that persists because we all believe it to be so, and the chaos magician’s basic tactic and maneuver is to defy consensus reality by imposing their own beliefs on the world, often changing their beliefs to fit the circumstances.
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But there’s a more fundamental problem that gets at the nature of chaos magic as a worldview. It is, ultimately, a worldview based on a radical individualism. In one regard it seems the perfect counterpart to the sort of hedonism implied by The Scarlet Empress, but there is far more to it. Central to chaos magic is the idea of imposing one’s will upon the world. However much one rejigs it to be about changes in perception and internal consciousness, the crux of it is still an immensely practical sort of magic that’s focused heavily on the idea that it is, in fact, possible to alter the world through the exertion of one’s will. It’s magic with a single-minded goal of doing things.

Which is to say that in hindsight chaos magic fits perfectly into the narrative of the nineties that has in hindsight proved so disastrous: the “third way” liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair that took for granted that it was possible to achieve meaningful social justice while fawning obsequiously at the feet of the most powerful people in the world. While it is largely a given that any attempt at radical reform of political institutions will swiftly be watered down and compromised, the triangulating leftism of the 1990s made the somewhat astonishing decision to sell our the possibility of major social change as its opening gambit, foreclosing on the possibility of revolution first and trying to bring one about second. In hindsight we can look at the consequences of the neoliberal consensus – a massively expanded wealth gap, a financial sector that can crash the global economy on the back of what is in practice little more than a terribly complex version of video poker and see no significant regulation in exchange, and all that good stuff.

No, of course Grant Morrison didn’t cause the financial crash. But as a form of radicalism, the one he spells out is fundamentally and irretrievably complicit in it. Chaos magic is magic for libertarians. It sprung up, unsurprisingly, in the late nineties because it was a flavor particularly suitable for the techno-libertarians who disproportionately dominated the early Internet. And it was, in hindsight, a complete and utter bust. It’s just another flavor of the Heinlein-style science fiction that animated Babylon 5 and space opera in general. It amounts to Robert Heinlein in fetish gear, which is mostly just redundant.

well worth reading in its entirety, including the discussion in the comments

hat tip to Technoccult’s Critique of the Invisibles

klf v david lynch

pointer to JMR Higgs’ The Red Room & The White Room:

Are there connections between The KLF’s ‘White Room’ and David Lynch’s ‘Red Room’ from Twin Peaks? Both are unreal places which represent a certain state of mind, but are there any, more concrete, links between the two?
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Those who have read my KLF book may remember that I refer to David Lynch’s creative process (which he writes about in {Catching the Big Fish}) and compare it to Jung’s Collective Unconscious and Alan Moore’s Ideaspace. All these are models which allow a number of artists to stumble upon the same idea at the same time.
{…}
So a musical motif which Badalamenti and Lynch uncovered for a series underpinned by the idea of the Red Room matched one from The White Room. Both stories are centred on fire, which is highly significant for both the KLF and Twin Peaks (“Fire walk with me”). They both include an otherworldly figure named Bob. Agent Dale Cooper seemed destined to remain in the Red Room for 25 years, while The KLF have vowed not to discuss their money burning for 23 years. Twin Peaks features a Black Lodge and a White Lodge (with the Red Room being linked to the Black Lodge), and this nicely echoes the KLF’s Black Room and White Room.

All in all it’s a nice example of how Alan Moore’s Ideaspace can be seen at play in the world at large, how the synchronicities keep coming, and of how much fun utter coincidences can be.

Hypersigils, Identity, and the Internet

pingback on nadreck’s Hypersigils, Identity, and the Internet:

However, there are individuals who, for varying reasons, recognize that one’s online identity does not have to reflect their offline identity. This is where the notion of hypersigils comes in. Through online communities and social media, individuals create an identity that is shaped by their intent, by their desire to become something other than their offline persona. Perhaps this is because they are painfully shy in person, and want to explore having a voice somewhere without the baggage of others’ expectations of who they were. Or taken further, those who are questioning their sexuality and their gender, and need an outlet for asking, exploring, and answering these questions. Or perhaps they just want to make a few subtle changes to their personality. Regardless, they use this online identity as a hypersigil. They create a narrative of who they are, whether formally on a profile, or just in behavior on forums. They iterate, evolve, flesh out this other self. They learn what to discard and what to keep in both identities, and — inevitably — affect their offline identity, their offline reality. They become more like they want to be.

comments on Nordic LARP

From Paul Graham Raven’s This Is a Game: A (very) Brief History of Larp Part 1:

But in the next instalment, I’ll argue that Nordic larp has a socially disruptive potential that makes it the more interesting end of the scene, while marking it as both an artform native to contemporary network culture and a new experimental praxis in narrative theory…

From This is More Than a Game: A (very) Brief History of Larp Part 2:

True to its network-culture demographic, however, the openness and conviviality of the Knutepunkt circuit stand in stark contrast to the more staid conferences of the liberal arts, resembling science fiction fandom conventions — an important nursery for larp of all types — far more than literary symposia; open discussion and dialogue are not just important to the scene, but central to it. It’s as if the community itself is a collective author, a gestalt entity — an interesting counterpoint for an artform where authorship is inherently unstable and slippery.

All this would be of some note even if larp were just another branch of the plastic or narrative arts as we already know them. What’s fascinating about larp is its seeming potential: all art could be considered software which interacts with the localised cultural operating system running on the platform of our minds, but larp goes one step further, achieving its aesthetic affect by kludging, amending or outright rewriting that code — hacking it, in other words. If mainstream larps are the equivalent of the homebrew software BBSs of the Eighties, developing and sharing new games to play on their newly-accessible hardware, then perhaps the Nordic school are equivalent to the FOSS hacker hardliners, trying to see how completely they can PWN the machine. Pure diversion and escapism have been sidelined somewhat in favour of philosophical and ideological exploration. The language of theory is everywhere, including many scene-specific coinings and neologisms: ‘narrative bleed’ (not always as undesirable as it might sound, apparently); ‘diegetic briefings’; ‘fictional positioning’; ‘formal transparency’. ‘Metagaming’. {…}

Stark suggests that “intense larp gameplay creates an altered state of consciousness”, and as I read game-design papers from the Knutepunkt circuit I kept hearing echoes bouncing back from Timothy Leary’s psychedelic theories of “set and setting”. Implicit in both is the idea that not only is the mind plastic, but that experimenting with that plasticity is something akin to a duty, a possibility for personal development that shouldn’t be passed up by those brave enough to take the plunge and step outside of themselves; a willing step toward becoming one’s own post-Nietzschean ubermensch, if you like. So we might say that the Nordic larp scene is pioneering the development of a new toolkit for meddling with identity and empathy; a non-invasive intervention methodology based on consensual manipulation of environmental triggers and narrative framing.

from Everything is a Game: A (very) Brief History of Larp Part 3:

Furthermore, there’s a realisation that the psychological phenomena which larp explores and manipulates might just be the missing link between a whole bunch of artforms, technologies and philosophies. Perhaps it is the ubiquity of the toolset in use, namely the human imagination, that lends it this interstitial quality: conceived in reductionist terms, Nordic larp is simply imagination-as-play.

Where does experimental theatre end, and consensual indoctrination into a covert ideology begin? Can a temporary intentional community, in and of itself, be a form of performance art? Can a performance art piece become a political movement instead of just a statement? These questions pivot on the fluid dualities of fiction and reality, of reader and subject, which can be upended with a flick of the wrist or a twist of the frame; if we assume altermodernism to have accepted and integrated (if not fully approved of) the ubiquitous ontological hollowness of the postmodern condition, then might Nordic larp be one of the first truly altermodernist forms, an experimental laboratory for the breeding of new metanarratives? {…}

No contemporary discussion of identity and allegiance would be complete without a mention of Anonymous; as such, I’d offer that Anonymous is nigh indistinguishable from a persistent larp set in a territory that maps almost seamlessly to the world in which it is suspended. There’s only one character you can play, and there’s no GM to tell you how to play it. {…}

But the counterculture has no monopoly on larpish behaviour. I’d also contend that the nigh-viral Six Sigma framework of manufacturing quality assurance took on very larp-like characteristics, especially as it trickled down — poorly understood and richly overhyped — to the very same small businesses that its progenitors were busily eviscerating in the mid- to late-Nineties. Imagine a larp designed to explore perfection and efficiency in the workplace, being played earnestly by a handful of converts among a workforce of disinterested and disenfranchised NPCs who haven’t had so much as a sip of the kool-aid… Well, perhaps I’m being unfair, here, but Six Sigma looked to me like an RPG for middle management long before I knew what Nordic larp even was.

again, hat tip to Technoccult’s The Strange And Exciting World Of Nordic Larping

courtesy of Technoccult’s post The Media Needs to Stop Inspiring Copycat Murders:

Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci on ways that media and law enforcement can reduce the number of copycat killers after a mass shooting:

1. Law enforcement should not release details of the methods and manner of the killings, and those who learn those details should not share them.
2. If and when social media accounts of the killers are located, law enforcement should work with the platforms to immediately pull them.
3. The name of the killer should not be revealed immediately. If possible, law enforcement and media sources should agree to withhold it for weeks.
Similarly, the killer should not be profiled extensively, at least not at first.
4. The intense push to interview survivors and loved ones in their most vulnerable moments should be stopped.

Full Story: The Atlantic: The Media Needs to Stop Inspiring Copycat Murders. Here’s How.

These points are not unlike forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz’ principles for not propagating mass murders:

Don’t start the story with sirens blaring.
Don’t have photographs of the killer.
Don’t make this 24/7 coverage.
Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story.
Not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero.
Do localise this story to the affected community and as boring as possible in every other market.

Applicability to discussion about how stories replicate from text to actuality should be obvious

false consensus and pluralistic ignorance

from Everyone agrees with us on climate change—especially when we’re wrong by John Timmer:

The authors of the study have found evidence that two well-known behaviors—the “false consensus” and “pluralistic ignorance”—are helping to shape public opinion in Australia.

False consensus is the tendency of people to think that everyone else shares their opinions. This can arise from the fact that we tend to socialize with people who share our opinions, but the authors note that the effect is even stronger “when we hold opinions or beliefs that are unpopular, unpalatable, or that we are uncertain about.” In other words, our social habits tend to reinforce the belief that we’re part of a majority, and we have a tendency to cling to the sense that we’re not alone in our beliefs.

Pluralistic ignorance is similar, but it’s not focused on our own beliefs. Instead, sometimes the majority of people come to believe that most people think a certain way, even though the majority opinion actually resides elsewhere.
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The false consensus effect became obvious when the researchers looked at what these people thought that everyone else believed. Here, the false consensus effect was obvious: every single group believed that their opinion represented the plurality view of the population.
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In the end, the false consensus effect is swamped by this pluralistic ignorance. Even though everybody tends to think their own position is the plurality, those who accept climate change is real still underestimate how many people share their views. Meanwhile, everyone overestimates the self-labelled “skeptic” population.

The authors suggest that this could, in part, be a result of the media’s tendency to always offer two opposing opinions, even on issues where one is a fringe belief. They also point out that it would be good to perform a similar study in other nations where the dynamics of public belief are different.

hat tip to Technoccult for this one!

New Aesthetic

from the Wikipedia entry on New Aesthetic:

The New Aesthetic is a term used to refer to the increasing appearance of the visual language of digital technology and the Internet in the physical world, and the blending of virtual and physical. The phenomenon has been around for a long time but lately James Bridle and partners have surfaced the notion through a series of talks and observations. The term gained wider attention following a panel at the SXSW conference in 2012.

The New Aesthetic is a nascent art movement or collective that is documenting “eruption of the digital” and “revels in seeing the grain of computation”. Developing from a series of collections of digital objects that have become located in the physical the movement circulates around a blog named “The New Aesthetic” and which has defined the broad contours of the movement without a manifesto. The New Aesthetic as a concept was introduced at South By South West (SXSW) on March 12th 2012, at a panel organised by James Bridle and included Aaron Cope, Ben Terrett, Joanne McNeil, and Russell Davies. What really propelled the ideas around the New Aesthetic into critical and public consciousness was an article written by Bruce Sterling in the Atlantic Magazine, and which both described the main outlines but also proposed some key critical areas for development. The response from across the web has been rapid and engaged with a number of significant contributions already having been made.

The author Bruce Sterling has said of the New Aesthetic:

The “New Aesthetic” is a native product of modern network culture. It’s from London, but it was born digital, on the Internet. The New Aesthetic is a “theory object” and a “shareable concept.”
The New Aesthetic is “collectively intelligent.” It’s diffuse, crowdsourcey, and made of many small pieces loosely joined. It is rhizomatic, as the people at Rhizome would likely tell you. It’s open-sourced, and triumph-of-amateurs. It’s like its logo, a bright cluster of balloons tied to some huge, dark and lethal weight.

Matthew Battles, a contributor to Metalab, a project of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, gives a definition that makes reference to purported paradigm examples:

New Aesthetic is a collaborative attempt to draw a circle around several species of aesthetic activity—including but not limited to drone photography, ubiquitous surveillance, glitch imagery, Streetview photography, 8-bit net nostalgia. Central to the New Aesthetic is a sense that we’re learning to “wave at machines”—and that perhaps in their glitchy, buzzy, algorithmic ways, they’re beginning to wave back in earnest.

One of the more substantive contributions to the notion of the New Aesthetic has been through a development of, and linking to, the way in which the digital and the everyday are increasingly interpenetrating each other. Here, the notion of the unrepresentability of computation, as both an infrastructure and an ecology, are significant in understanding the common New Aesthetic tendency towards pixelated graphics and a retro 8-bit form. This is related to the idea of an episteme (or ontotheology) identified with relation to computation and computational ways of seeing and doing: computationality.