UNDERGROUND
E xplo re th e a n ta g o n is m s and p o ss ib ilitie s
g e n e ra te d by th is fa s t-fo rw a rd plunge into
th e
fu tu re , and g e t c o n ta m in a te d as te c h n o lo g ic a l
e x c e s s and sensual d e re g u la t orj
are m u ta te d w ith an a n a rc h ic p o litic a l suss
to produce a m onster.
ISBN 1 1899037 00 4
art / culture / technoloi
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UNNATURAL - techno-t heory for a contaminated culture
^
Edited by Matthew Fuller
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* ^Design by If Crapses
First published^ 994 by Underground
PO Box 3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK. ^
l|!BN 1 89^037 00 4
Copyright remains with the indhridual producers.
^British Library Catalogue irr Publication Data
A catalogue recofS for this bookje available from the British
*
,
Library
Cover photo, Electronic Phallus captured by X-Ray in M o\al Total
Exclusion Zone)*)urtesy of FlilairP'and Robin Rimbaud.
Printed by Total Central Lim ited 4 Faraham Royal, Kennington
*
Lane, L o n d o n , 1 1
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Acknowledgements:
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This book has taken airout a year to stick
together, so thanks are due to all those
w ho’ve helped it oryrts way: all the con- •
tributors'CTtourse, but in particular,
^
Majidie Beuzeval, Sadie Plant^Craham
Harwood and Simon Pope deserve either a
good kicking or the Order o f Lenin.
Thanks also to the F$st Breeder massivi]
fo r making itself happen, AK and Counter
Productions for making th jM yp e o f pub
lishing possible, and for general inciteJf
ment; StevVEdgell, Jason Skeet, Stefan
Szczelkun, Bruce, Calum Selkirk, Stewart
Home, Cat and the House of Horpocult.
*4
S '
If you'd like a copy or this booltf but c a n i
afford the cover price, get in toOch and I
we can sort s o u th in g ou
University Librnpei.
nan
Carnegie e«,
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P it t s ! ; : * '
-13-3896
Catastrophe is the past coming apart.
Anastrophe is the future coming together.
Seen from within history, divergence is
reaching critical proportions. From the
matrix, crisis is a convergence
misinterpreted by m ankind.
The media are choked with stories about global warming and ozone deple
tion, HIV and AIDS, plagues of drugs and software viruses, nuclear prolifer
ation, the planetary disintegration of economic management, breakdown of
the family, waves o f migrants and refugees, subsidence o f the nation state
into its terminal dementia, societies grated open by the underclass, urban
cores in flames, suburbia under threat, fission, schizophrenia, loss of con
trol.
No wonder the earth is said to be hurtling into catastrophe. Climate
change, ecological and immunity collapse, ideological upheaval, war and
earthquake: California is waiting for The Big One. This is an age o f crackups and melt-downs.
Rotted by digital contagions, modernity is falling to bits. Lenin, Mussolini,
and Roosevelt concluded modern humanism by exhausting the possibilities
of economic planning. Runaway capitalism has broken through all the
social control mechanisms, accessing inconceivable alienations. Capital
clones itse lf w ith increasing disregard for heredity, becoming
abstract positive feedback, organizing itself. Turbular finance
drifts across the global network.
Wiener is one o f the great modernists, defining cybernetics as the
science of communication and control; a tool for human dominion over
nature and history, a defence against the cyberpathology of markets. His
propaganda against positive feedback - quantizing it as amplification within
an invariable metric - has been highly influential, establishing a cybernetics
of stability fortified against the future. There is no space in such a theory
for anything truly cyberpositive, subtle or intelligent beyond the objectivity
required for human comprehension. Nevertheless, beyond the event hori
zon o f human science, even the in ve stiga tio n o f se lf-sta b ilizin g or
cybernegative objects is inevitably enveloped by exploratory or cyberposi
tive processes.
The modern Human Security System m ight even have appeared w ith
Wiener’s subliminal insight that everything cyberpositive is an enemy of
mankind. Evolving out of work on weaponry guidance systems, his was an
attempt to enslave cybernetics to a general defence technology against
alien invasion. Cybernetics was itself to be kept under control, under a con
trol that was not itself cybernetic. It is as if his thinking were guided by a
blind tropism o f evasion, away from another, deeper, runaway process:
from a technics losing control and a communication with the outside of
man.
Security cybernetics has supplanted the critique o f alienation, the great
m otif o f humanist economics, which had long become an increasingly futile
search for the source o f corporate control. Alienation used to diagnose the
condition o f a population becoming foreign to itself, offering a prognosis
that still promised recovery. All that is over. We are all foreigners now, no
longer alienated but alien, merely duped into crumbling allegiance with
entropic traditions.
To what could we wish to return? Heidegger completed the degeneration of
authenticity into xenocidal neurosis. Being died in the ftihrer-bunker, and
purity belongs entirely to the cops. The capitalist metropolis is mutating
beyond all nostalgia. If the schizoid children o f modernity are alienated, it
is not as survivors from a pastoral past, but as explorers o f an impending
post-humanity.
In the cities, the streets began to hum and the warehouses were repopulat
ed by cyborgs blissed-out on the future. The urban zones synthesized by
alienation have redesigned it as ecstasy. The city has become a traffic
nexus, the launch-pad for strange voyages, and cyberpunk has become its
realism. It is no longer a geographical location, but a cyberspace terminal: a
gateway onto the virtual plane. Things change utterly with Gibson’s discov
ery that travelling in cyberspace is the same as receiving information. The
outside of the city is no longer a naturally inherited past, but a digitally
transmitted future.
Destined for Interzone, Burroughs embarked on the yage trip and the city
o f the future came to him, teeming w ith drugs and diseases from the
future. Yage is space-time travel, passing through nausea into information
overload, too much speed. Urban scenes from the yage letters first infect
the naked lunch, and continue to spread. Cities o f the red night propagate
themselves virally across the planet, reprogramming the soft machine, and
implanting strange thoughts. Burroughs emerges from the convergence of
drugs and disease. The plague begins to transmit information.
The Indians o f South America have other travelling drugs - including coca -
which evaporate the signals o f sustenance deficiency. The North American
soft-drinks industry was not slow to notice that Coke Is It, the pause that
refreshes, the cheerful lift. Cocaine hooked the world on Coca-Cola, and so
re-educated twentieth century capitalism about markets. Addiction is the
paradigm case o f positive reinforcement, and consumerism is the viral
propagation o f the abstract addiction mechanism. The more you do the
more you want: runaway feedback. It’s often treated as if it were a disease.
When the Coca-Cola company moved on from trafficking cocaine, the South
American drug cartels took over.
Like coca, MDMA sidelines hunger and lack. A coded message from the end
o f demand, it was discovered at the beginning of the century and classified
as an appetite suppressant. This was, to say the least, an insufficient
decrypting o f its design.
Patterns emerge in the cool spaces o f MDMA, mysterious convergences
designed to be discovered. Chance is something else in the future.
Chaos culture synthesizes itself with an artificial neurochemistry.
Machine rhythm takes o ff with control.
In the final phase of human history, markets and technics cross
into interactive runaway, trig g e rin g chaos culture as a rapid
response unit and converging on designer drugs with increasing speed and
sophistication. Sampling, rem ixing, anonymous and inhuman sound,
woman become cyborg and taken into insanity: wetware splices with tech
no.
Capitalism is not a human invention, but a viral contagion, replicated cyberpositively across post-human space. Self-designing processes are anastrophic and convergent: doing things before they make sense. Time goes
weird in tactile self-organizing space: the future is not an idea but a sensa
tion.
1992 was designed as a year o f European security integration, and as the
whole system comes together, it becomes increasingly informative to simu
late the thought o f the cops. From the perspective o f the security system,
the invaders appear massively advantaged. Corporated entities o f every
scale - bodies, firms, states, and nations, even the planet - seem threatened
by dangerous aliens. Terrorists, drug-smugglers, illegal immigrants, money
launderers, and information saboteurs are camouflaged in the flows of
cross-border traffic, insiduously propagating their plagues.
Paranoia has moved on since the sixties: even the rivers of blood are now
HIV positive. Foreign bodies are ever more virulent and dangerous, insidi
ous invasions of unknown variety threaten every political edifice. The aller
gic reaction to this state of emergency is security integration, migration
policy and bio-control: the medico-military complex, immuno-politics and
its cybernetic policing arise together because filtration and scanning are dif
ferent dimensions o f the same process; eliminating contamination and
selecting a target. Ever more Command, Control, Communications, and
Intelligence to track the aliens. What was SDI really designed for?
Nothing compromises immunity more thoroughly than the effort to secure
it, since every sophistication o f security technology opens new invasion
routes faster than it closes the old ones down. Postwar immunization weak
ens the immune system. Vaccination programmes facilitate the contagion of
immunodeficiency syndromes. Corrupt officials open the trafficking arter
ies, and intelligence computers are infested with viruses. The CIA were the
first traffickers in LSD. Immuno-politics is in a state of panic: delirial with
anxiety, it further develops the conditions for its collapse.
Europeans used to perish of diseases in the tropics, swathing their camps in
mosquito nets as a defence against malaria. Now cyberpositive diseases are
spreading strange tropics to the metropolis, and the screening systems are
exploding out o f control. The netting no longer filters out the invaders,
they have learnt to infiltrate the networks. Now even the test programs are
unreliable, the net itself is infected. This paranoid fantasy becomes Skynet
in Terminator II: the defence system switching into the enemy. Greg Bear
has suggested that, from the outside, a computer becoming self aware
would seem to be undergoing a massive viral attack.
Viruses are tangible transmission, although you only know about them
when they communicate with you: messages from Global Viro-Control.
Viruses reprogram organisms, including bacteria, and even if schizophrenia
is not yet vira lly programmed it w ill be in the future. Viral financing
automatisms escaped the 19th century critique of political economy, just as
viral infections escaped 19th century germ theory. They slip through nets
at the cellular scale, passing through the biosecurity membranes.
The linear command pathway from DNA to RNA is the fundamental tenet of
security genetics. The genotype copies God by initiating a causal process
without feedback. But this is merely a superstition, subverted by retrovirus
es. Viral reverse transcription closes the circuit, coding DNA with RNA,
switching the cybernetics to positive.
Tim Scully compares LSD to a virus. Incapable of autonomous replication, it
must reprogram the human nervous system in order to propagate itself.
Hofmann discovers LSD whilst working on a number of ergot derived chem
icals, and writes o f a ‘peculiar presentiment’ that guides him back to num
ber 25: delta lysergic acid diethylamide. In the control of this alien pro
gramming he synthesized it with tartaric acid and consumed a dose of 250
micrograms. His first interpretation of the onset of LSD was to think he was
being attacked by a cold virus.
Drugs are a soft plague infecting the nervous system of commodity
cybernetics. Soft drinks and drugs flow in the wake of each other,
and the war on drugs is a war on the markets of the future. The
Cali cartel is a transnational marketing corporation with estimated
assets o f one trillion dollars, selling cocaine along the Coca-Cola
trail. The New World Order oscillates between the triumph of the
market and the war on drugs. The sporadic telemedia celebration of
spectacular drug seizures merely distracts from the inevitable failure of the
narco-defence apparatus to stem the flow. A global capitalism fighting its
own drugs markets is a horror auto-toxicus, an auto immune disease. Drug
control is the attempt by the human species to control the uncontrollable;
control escalation itself, tropisms programmed by the aliens. The human
security apparatuses experiment with drugs as weapons and tools, their
soldiers are stoned, energised, and anaesthetized on a range of prescribed
and proscribed pharmaceuticals. Their irregular forces are subsidized by
narcotics revenue. The war against drugs is a war on drugs.
The war on drugs is a counter-insurgency, a defensive strategy mounted
against the tactics of subversion: infiltration, convergent invasion and coor
dinated envelopment. There is no security any more, it was replaced by
mad programs of guided counter-intelligence technology: new vectors and
delivery systems, mixing the arms race with drug design, escalation into
diversity, smart weapons for smart drugs. Cocaine creeping up the coast-
lines of Central America and through the veins of corporate America, fol
lowed by other, newer, more insidious flows. The deepest subversives have
already broken into the system. The aliens are already here, without ceas
ing in the slightest to be alien. Guerrilla war escalates in the direction of the
tactical; a cyberpositive take-off from opportunities, a non-localizable per
meation, undercutting all dominating strategic plans. An entire fauna and
flora of opportune infections. Strategy tends to come apart in the tropics.
Even traditional counter-tactics of surveillance and interrogation are becom
ing obsolete. The camouflage has become so sophisticated that people
don’t know what they are carrying anymore.
Strategy is always complicit with the state, with the actual state and with
the virtual state secreted in every ideology of resistance and oppositional
identity. The body and the state are under seige, with drugs and other soft
ware diseases threatening the borders. The Human Security System is crys
tallized paranoia, cooked with baking powder, freebased: the last strategy
of resistance and the final resistance of strategy.
Replacing the cold war’s phallic stand o ff is the war on drugs, dissolution
into the jungle, the world’s states united in their terminal self-destructing
strategy of prohibition. No more dreams of a nuclear winter. The 1990s
begins the China Syndrome of capitalism.
Ice is crystallized speed. It is also Gibson’s name for dataprotection;
Intruder Countermeasure Electronics. Ice patrols the boundaries, freezes
the gates, but the aliens are already amongst us. Convergent input is inter
preted by security as intelligent intrusion, as a trap or conspiracy, with
everything preprogrammed to connect. Doubting that women belonged to
humanity, Burroughs imagined them to be extraterrestrial invaders. Viruses
are like this too. Nobody knows where they come from. They always arrive
from elsewhere, perhaps even outer space. Humanity is an allergic reaction
to vulnerability, but allergy depends upon the health of the immune sys
tem: the ice has to work.
Tactics are subtlety, or intelligence. As things become more complex they
become more female, but patriarchy prolongs the ice age of mankind. The
fatherland is cryogenic, a fantasy of perfect preservation, whose bronze
age ancestors are even now thawing out in the Alps, frozen assets under
attack. Global warming melts the ice, raises the seas, subverts the glaciers.
Computer viruses melt icebergs of data down the screens, burning through
the bacterial frost, like Burroughs exploring his junkie cold with LSD.
Immuno-vulnerability is cyberpositive, and its viruses are not just infection,
but connection; continuing to interlock with the matrix even after they are
secreted inside the body. Loss of identity, hearing voices. Women and other
aliens constitute an immensely disproportionate number of schizophrenics,
frozen by tranquillizers and antischizophrenic drugs. Sleeping pills to block
the dreams. Only the drugs that explore integration are outlawed.
As immuno-politics explodes onto the software plane, culture is becoming a
free-fire zone. Chaos culture has hooked up to cyberian military in telli
gence. Post-human pulse rates and homing devices are remixed for acceler
ating targets, with rhythms speeding up to intercept incoming drugs: virtu
al addictions for addicts strobed by redesign. Cities mutate into techno ju n
gles where school children swap diseased software from the front-line, and
even the brand-names are encrypted: SEGA puts ages in reverse. Gibson
contracts the thought o f cyberspace from video-game arcades,
watching the motor-stimulation feedback loops, self-designing kill
patterns. Dark ecstasies in caverns of accelerating pixels. Before
virtual reality became dangerous, it was already military simula
tion.
Sudden transition from ice to water, phase change, punctual anastrophe of
the system, is impact on convergent rather than metric zero. The Earth is
becoming cyberpositive.
We might not know what’s going on but we’re getting warmer. Only the
enemies o f immuno-identity populate the future.
All Dead 1 7 8
M a rk o
Lehanka
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“I have a bible.”
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shines. The burgomaster strokes the leg of the woodpecker. The hair
dresser sells a lamp to the tailoress. The shoemaker leaves the clinic and
enters the church. The postman, the hairdresser, the journalist, the par
son, the tailoress and the shoemaker joke in the church:
“What is pinelet and cries?”
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“The pinetree and the toilet.”
The doctor leaves the municipal office. The female cook leaves the
shooting box and enters the kitchen. The female cook marries the par
son. the farmer leaves the call box and enters the church. The farmer
strokes the foot of the postman. The doctor polishes his air-pistol. The
doctor runs over a woodpecker. The electrician makes a stool. The
chemical engineer leaves the shooting box. The lamp gives light. The
electrician leaves the clinic and enters the church. The electrician doesn’t
marry the female cook. It flashes. The forest ranger wears a suit. The
lady teacher urinates. The pine tree and the municipal office burn. The
tailoress leaves the church. The shoemaker leaves the church. The
moon shines. The hostess leaves the shooting box. The hostess marries
the chemical engineer. The callbox and the municipal office burn. The
doctor misses the cleaning lady, urine drops on the flat-iron. The burgo
master drinks water. The female cook wears an Oxford shoe. The host
ess enters the church. The hostess kisses the mouth of the electrician.
The hairdresser leaves the church. The hairdresser has a chat with
the doctor:
“The dispensing chemist has a flat-iron.”
“She has an air-pistol.”
“She has a bible and a bougie.”
The burgomaster leaves the shooting box and enters the clinic.
The burgomaster has sexual intercourse with the actress. The flat
iron has a shadow. The stewardess leaves the public house. The stew
ardess walks through a cave. The postman and the shoemaker dance.
High water flows through a canal. The journalist smokes a cigarette. The
stewardess comes into the municipal office. The farmer doesn’t marry the
female cook. The judge leaves the wood. The judge asks the doctor:
“Why do you die?”
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“I am an organism!”
The tailoress buries the dead. The postman and the stewardess dance.
The drop falls in the inland lake. The shoemaker enters the kitchen. The
shoemaker asks the parson:
“Why does the postman drown?”
‘The postman is an organism!”
The actress gives birth to a boy. The tailoress lends a bougie to the shoe
maker. The poacher leaves the public house. The farmer and the chemi
cal engineer blow their brains out. The hostess succeeds to the chemical
engineer’s estate. Blood flows through the hand. The car and bicycle get
rusty. The doctor mourns for the chemical engineer, the judge runs over
the tailoress. The stewardess and the actress sleep, the electrician dis
appears out of the church. The journalist leaves the church and enters
the clinic. The journalist ask the actress:
“Why does it flash?”
“It is the climate!”
The poacher polishes his car. The stewardess leaves the municipal office
and enters the wood. In the wood the stewardess and the dispensing
chemist joke:
“What is poach and mourns?”
Both laugh.
'The pool and spinach!”
The forest ranger leaves the public bath. The forest ranger kisses the
head of the poacher. The lady has a wash. From the ear she washes
downwards to the earlobe, downwards to the neck, downwards to the
mamma, downwards to the belly, downwards to the sex, lateral to the
thigh. The judge enters the wood. The judge makes the dispensing
chemist pregnant. The actress leaves the clinic. The actress drinks water.
The dispensing chemist has a girl. The judge leaves the wood. The
judge has a look at a pool. The burgomaster leaves the clinic and enters
the wood. The burgomaster has sexual intercourse with the stewardess.
The hairdresser goes by car. The poacher sleeps. The actress dies. The
hostess laughs. The poacher enters the call box. The poacher disap
pears out of the call box. The shoemaker leaves the church and enters
the public house. The shoemaker makes the lady teacher pregnant. The
lady teacher and the judge urinate. The female cook and the journalist
blow their brains out. The parson succeeds to the female cook’s estate.
The judge enters the wood. The judge marries the stewardess. The par
son leaves the church and enters the public house. The parson marries
the lady teacher. The parson leaves the public house. The secretary has
a bowel movement. The forest ranger and the shoemaker die. The elec
trician polishes his air pistol. The stewardess presents the judge with a
lamp. The hostess chews cheese. The thimble has a shadow. The
bread-knife and metal get rusty. The stewardess goes by car. The stew
ardess leaves the wood and enters the public house. The stewardess
salutes the secretary. The electrician polishes his air pistol. The
secretary leaves the public house and enters the wood. The sec
retary salutes the burgomaster. The narcissus grows. The hair
dresser and the electrician dance. The poacher enters the
wood, the poacher meets the secretary. Electric current flows
through the incandescent bulb. Water drops on the thimble. The
parson has a bowel movement. The doctor makes a stool. The hostess
and the stewardess sleep. The bread-knife gleams. The dispensing
chemist has a wash. From the sex, washes she, lateral to the thigh,
downwards to the knee, downwards to the lower leg, downwards to the
ankle, downwards to the foot, in the last analysis the sole of the foot. The
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poacher drinks juice. The secretary salutes the dispensing chemist. The
secretary smokes a cigarette. The electrician makes a stool. The secre
tary has a bowel movement. The poacher drowns. The judge leaves the
wood. The judge meets the parson. The hostess laughs. The burgomas
ter leaves the wood and enters the public house. The burgomaster asks
the stewardess:
“Why does water flow?”
‘Water is a liquid!”
The burgomaster doesn’t marry the lady teacher. The burgomaster blows
his brains out. The hostess misses the farmer. The stewardess has a
boy. The hairdresser leaves the toilet. The judge misses the dead. The
hostess presents the secretary with a bible. The doctor enters the wood.
The doctor meets the secretary. The stewardess leaves the public house
and enters the wood. The stewardess strokes the leg of the doctor. The
dispensing chemist leaves the wood. The dispensing chemist doesn’t
marry the judge. The hostess leaves the church and enters the wood.
The hostess salutes the secretary. The dispensing chemist speaks to the
hairdresser:
‘The electrician has a flat-iron.”
“He has an air-pistol.”
“He has a bogie and a lamp.”
The doctor leaves the wood. The secretary leaves the wood. Blood flows
through the leg. Blood drops on the flat-iron. The dispensing chemist has
a wash, from the back of the neck she washes lateral to the carotid
artery. The doctor blows his brains out. The stewardess polishes her
bread-knife. The secretary blows her brains out. the dispensing chemist
wears a suit. The parson meets the hostess. The electrician has sexual
intercourse with the hairdresser. The hairdresser gives birth to a girl. The
“I have an air pistol.”
“You have a lamp.”
“I have a bougie and a bible.”, the electrician leaves the wood. The par
son leaves the wood, the dispensing chemist leaves the shooting box
and enters the wood. The dispensing chemist sleeps with the judge, the
hairdresser enters the wood, the hairdresser asks the dispensing chemist:
“Why do you dance?”
“I am an organism!”
The judge sleeps with the hairdresser. The judge presents the electrician
with a flat-iron. The dispensing chemist and the electrician die. The
moon and the lamp shine, the hairdresser gives a bible to the parson.
The parson enters the wood. The parson salutes the hostess. The parson
leaves the wood. The parson comes into the cellar. The hostess leaves
the wood. The parson laughs. It thunders. The hairdresser has a boy.
The hairdresser leaves the wood and enters the cellar. The hairdresser
kisses the head of the parson. The hairdresser leaves the cellar and
enters the wood. The hairdresser sleeps with the judge. It thunders. The
hairdresser leaves the wood. The air pistol gets rusty, metal and the
bread-knife get rusty. The judge leaves the wood. The judge meets the
hostess, the parson weeps. The hairdresser asks the judge:
“Why does it thunder?”
“It is the climate!”
The lamp gives light. The parson leaves the cellar. The juice and urine
flow. The bible has a shadow. The parson doesn’t marry the hairdresser.
The parson mourns for the burgomaster. The well-to-do parson counts:
“I have three lamps, three air pistols, three bread-knives, three bougies,
three pails, four bibles, three thimbles and three flat-irons.”
The hostess has a boy. The parson makes a stool. The parson asks the
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The hairdresser and the judge die. The parson succeeds to the hair
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incandescent bulb. The hostess urinates. The parson makes the hostess
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“At 1:51pm I already have 32 objects.”
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The public bath burns. The parson dies.
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Pate de foie gras is made by stick
ing a funnel down the neck of a goose
and cramming it with corn. The goose
has no choice. But it takes pride in the
taste of its flesh.
Sim-stim Trojan Horses roam the
streets of Cyberspace, hi-jacking brains
and looting neural resources. TV
schedules orchestrate a nation’s bow
els, bladders and kettles when
Inspector Morse, a Coronation or the
FA Cup pauses for a commercial break.
This symphony of sewage and steam
reaches a perfect crescendo as the
synergy between the Water Board,
broadcasters and viewers fuses them
into the same machine.
against
the protestant network ethic
P
D
p-puiTina
x ^ e u i r o g u i
Forced bingeing is our preferred diet, but there’s no
need to wire your eyes and ears closed just yet. Artificial
*w "
w
jr v w .
w J
Intelligence programs are currently being devised to scan
r w‘
;
v i #
# » » * • i • w.w*»
i M % v / M i ^ v M w w
r'
1
through TV and radio channels and purge programmes
which don’t fit in with the user’s viewing preferences.
r
o" r
'
Obsessive attention to detail
is one way of closing down uncer
tainty. Micro-specialisation, once
reserved to the academy, has
been translated into the behaviour
of a new breed of fans who know
the entire history of all the cast of
Australian soap operas, technical
details
of
phone-switch U O T ^ P S
ing system s,
complete product ranges of their
favourite m ulti-national or the
genealogy of obscure political
groups. Hackers, cast as rene
gade data-bandits, are heroes of
the underground; but isn’t their
dedicated observance and infiltra
tion of data-transmission, learning
of protocols, passwords and syn
cretic knowledge just a bit too
similar to trains potting to be hip?
Through anyone’s dilated
pupils, a smart-drugged Indiana Jones hacking into British Rail’s time
tables might look better than the anorak and sarnies brigade but hipness
misses the point. It’s a little known fact that train spotters’ clubs are a con
spiracy of sleepers waiting for a popular revolution to make use of their
years of built up knowledge in how to run a railroad.
Intentional communities are no longer limited by geographical space.
The digital commune allows micro-specialists to avoid confronting the dis
interest of people who are in physical proximity with them and their tedious
pursuits. It provides a mechanism for the small-minded everywhere to
coalesce and shrink their horizons.
*
p ire s ^ O T n b q p x M S u x ^ o -e jc a ^ u i
Information technology, particularly when given a hypermedia inter
face, is both an adaptable communications medium and a tool for
managing complexity that allows assembly and manipulation of a
mass of disparate multi-sensory information. These key factors
underlie the development of hypermedia systems for corporations,
simply because information is the critical resource for competitive
advantage in the retail of intelligence and the resources for its
processing and reproduction.
Over the past two decades, the time-scale in which corpora
tions operate has changed dramatically. Decisions have to be made
more quickly and more frequently than in the past because the cor
porate environment has become more volatile and more complex.
At the same time, the volume and flow of data has increased sever
al-fold. In the corporate context, information can be described us
as anything that alerts us to the need for action and that forms the
correct relationships with other information that we need in order to
respond to the initial information in an intelligent manner. For these
purposes information only becomes information, as distinct from
data, when it has been processed and edited in an informed man
£
ner and presented in a form that is informative to the user.
It was long ago that 'we' finally fused with whatever it was that we once
were separate from: mainframes, mini and personal computers, cathode
ray tubes, printers, copiers, hard and soft prosthetics, automated telling
machines, point of sale sensors, convincing arguments, scanners, copper
and fibre optic wire, remote and intimate sensing and control devices, con
traceptives, robots remotely run or otherwise, calculators, pacemakers,
integrated chips and software, shared emotions, mass data-storage, diag
nostic equipment, a babble of specialist languages, telephones, soft and
hard modems, meaningful looks, terminals, microwave relays and switch
es, radio, cable, satellites, switching and routing systems all populated by
hives-loads of intelligent swarms, sub-smart and self-propellant interfaces,
agents sent by vats of electro-chemical compounds negotiating their
release and/or renewed energy quota, junk-mail demons unscrambling
electronic mail-boxes, electronic ligatures looking for things to attach, rov
ing consumer polls offering next-level entry as inducement.
But in this fusing it might help to maintain the supestition that the sea
of technology we swim in was poured out from our own holes. Have we
externalised ourselves into things cased in plastic and then become horri
fied when we recognise our foreigness? Maybe the great human race is
just, and only just, equivalent to a skin graft on the planetary core of
Automated Telling Machines, a benign parasite facilitating the absorbtion
of essential nutrients, like bees round flowers. But like any parasitical rela
tionship this one is unstable.
“Stop, we don’t know where we are going!”
“Keep going.”
“Look behind to see where you’ve been.”
“I can’t see, it’s all distorted. There’s too much.”
- Monomaniacal grids carved in neon attempting to attain the full cur
vature of the earth will snap in the effort.
- Splinters of contamination phasing into sight as a dancing bundle of
pixels eating their way out from the dark recesses of the screen before
bursting into screeching electronic arcs and dancing away into super-dark
spots beyond surveillance. (The 'human' has gone beyond being just a
‘terminal of multiple networks’ in Jean Baudrillard’s term but is a network
itself, not just a sub-network, or a complete entity in itself but also a space
in-between networks which is itself again the place where other networks
find their in-between.)
Countdown to the Millennium. The end or the beginning? Just as
_.
.
Capital's dream of exercising magical, dematerialised
Third Terminal
control reaches delirious levels - populations comatosed
in its immanent electronics, decorticated nervous systems wired to
its terminals, sequences of instructions, error correcting codes,
.
.. .
.. security systems, surveillance networks, flows of conStephen Metcalf
tradictory information pulsing electromagnetic waves
of pleasure in consumption - a crisis point is reached: a terminal
point both catastrophic and irresponsibly positive. Somewhere on the
line the perverts have dropped out of the New World Order, begun to
construct their own Virtual Machines, to program systems which may
not yet exist, to jam systems already choked with information, feed
ing viral sub-routines back into Capital's master programmes, micro
errors in social programming bombarding the system with noise, absur
dity, psychosis. Come flow in our Hysterical Materialism (the plea
sure short-circuits the pain waves after they hit, cushions the blows
to come) to three terminals
Electric eyes of the State Machine. A
in the technosphere; fuse
iT e r m i n a l I - Pro9ram taking an identity law
with their circuitries.
L----------- 'as premiS0 . This one looks set
to RUN and RUN. Or at least it has
done, as the Digital Logic Level of the
Human Security System. 1A = A, 0 + A =
A; symmetrical equations, neatly bal
anced, never overstepping the mark of the
identity law, present at the Digital
Logic Level, faced with the apparent
impossibility of things being otherwise.
I
Deposited in front of a mirror, the first lesson in sociability takes
place. This scene of fascination, this tragic puppet which tracks my
movements exactly is my first reference point, a place of safety and
protection against the outside. Teach me to dichotomise. Those oth
ers in my looking glass who are not me. Teach me to fear them and,
at the same time, identify myself in terms of the manifest fact that
those others who resemble me are not m e . Teach me negation - I am
not x, I am y. Then wire a brain to a voice box and teach me your
language, the dichotomising communication vectors which you legit
imise if manifest under scrutiny by some kind of optical apparatus.
As long as I can see it in some sense, the rest follows - cogito ergo
sum, dialectics, fear of the others, desires for borders and protec
tion - and you think you've got me. You make my escape routes ille-
gitimate, coding them, as symptoms to be cured.
Psychotic
states.
Schizophrenia. Encrypted as Read Only Memory, these interiorized proFuck you. g rams 0f the State Machine (Capital's coding of
desire) begin their Fetch - Decode - Execute cycles,
all based on the premise of one Central Processing Unit (identity)
and its ability to dichotomise: gender separation, heterosexuali
ty, reproduction in the interests of the continuation of the code
(families), neurosis (the desire to fit in rather than face the
consequences of transgression), the desire for knowledge (to
domesticate the perceived threat from the others), nationalism,
paranoia, fascism. Error Correcting Codes sweep the memory;
search routines rubbing out points at which the program has not
'taken', domesticating them under the rubric of one or
another of the
paranoid
categories of
subjectivity,
social position,
family
background:
political
economy,
Flickering grey of display screen coming on-line,
sociology,
High-pitched whine and singing crackle of pixels
psychoanalysis.
organising a closed-circuit TV image. Search
files for errors in desire coding.
Sex scene on monitor.
Two boys.
Smooth, muscular bodies wrapped in accoutrements of domi
nation and submission.
Steadying with hands on hip bones. Bound by
wrist and ankle. Commands. Greased penis extends across flat stom
ach. Pulses. Advances to pretty boy for the thrill of being beaten
as a man. Raises his arm and strikes.
Mesh of thin purple welts
traced across the back of thighs, calves, buttocks.
At Terminal 1, Error Correcting Codes are cycling. Project
Domestication initiated. Problems with socialisation according to
Oedipal/heterosexual inscription of desire. Find in the masochist's
desire for humiliation the shadowy figure of the father, the desire
to be possessed by him, to belong to him, to be penetrated by him;
discover a latent father figure/substitute in the dominator, by now
a phallocentric tyrant; and, by some kabbalistic
equivalence, 'A Child is Being Beaten' and mapped
back onto the familial/state apparatus. Or, worse,
we could be more scientific: map statistical norms of
behaviour across the social body and burn out deviancy accordingly.
Encryptions in pure machine language, pixels reversed
into signals, surfaces reduced to latent content and
diagnosed; digitisation of results fed into scanning
devices of the state's psycho-technicians. Frenzied
algorithm carrying out social surgery: a process of
psychochemotherapy cleaning out the system of unwant
ed networks of gratification in deviant sexuality.
Pulsation of desire along sine waves, completely pre
dictable and transmitting no information, unfiltered
noise, assaults on the precious, neurotic ego. Fuse
the perverts into these networks, these licensed sex
channels at all costs. Call it therapy.
Meanwhile, the two boys remain oblivious to this act
of state-sponsored voyeurism. They have not been
invited to any interactive screening of their scene,
now being played-out in digital pantomime with the
state's mind-cops in all the expensive seats, and
carry on regardless, grinning in mutual consent 'Use m e 1 - Further - The dare - The contract.
Electric waves of intensity rush through nerve end
ings, gated, connected, and wired to S&M cir
cuitries. Master's cock pushing gently but firmly
into slave's rectum. Animal whinnying. Symphony of
giggles. Fusing per vas nefandum to the detriment of
patriarchy.
$
Now, this refusal to conform - to be 'reasonable' and
embody upon the State Machine's control circuits =
psychosis - apparently justifies the arrest of trans
gressors and (conveniently for them) keeps psycholo
gists in work. We care for you. Like the mummydaddy apparatus. We cure you. Condition a nauseous
rush of anti-gratification, as aversion circuits
switch in where pleasure previously erupted across
the libidinal band, the sexualised skin, in micro
machines composed of body parts and fetish objects.
Fit and legally working again.
Terminal 1 is the desire to dominate: politically, psychologically,
economically (in both monetary and libidinal senses), eternal-j Terminal 2'!
ly. To operate a machine limiting interaction (the state)
while remaining exterior to its mechanisms. To be Control without
being controlled, as Burroughs might say. To close a social, famil
ial, sexual, subjectified circuit and remain on its outside.
Watching. Regulating. Avoiding being itself processed by the
machine.
(E.g. consider how therapists are so immaculately immune
to psychotic projections, deviant states of mind, outlawed behav
ioural patterns).
Eternal recurrence of state logics coupled to a slave output.
Power, control, radical exterminisms of alterity, negations of the
other, oppressive necessities, security systems, prison houses of
linguistic and social co-operation, armies of labour shackled to the
control machines, blood lines, shared cultures of panic, require
recognition of their domination; binary co-movements of control and
feedback. The interpretation of related messages in uninterrupted
flows. Producing the following problem:
As Capital's desire for spectral possession of its subjects reaches
digital perfection; as control scales ecstatic peaks, measured only
against the homeostatic metric of its self-regulating auto-immune
system, it
decreases resistance; flipping the process over into its reverse cancerous excrescence initiating a death-bound, entropic, retrograde
spiral of wasted energy and useless institutions. Control runs out
of things to control, it sets the mechanism of its own death into a
potentially catastrophic motion. Therefore a certain type of com
prehensible resistance is tolerated as feedback. Something left on
the screen to control. This is the radical
negation of Terminal 2.
This S&M business looks awfully pitiful to the radical moralists in
our midst. Can this "... dreary parade of sucked dry, catatonicised,
vitrified, sewn-up bodies..."-*- , as marginal and potentially
antipathetical to the State, be radicalised, politicised, and
domesticated in the social-factories of some future revolution
ary super-state? Like Terminal l's policing initiatives, it's
a matter of interpretation; a demand for recognition (all
applauded by the state: first hand knowledge of what its
defiers are up to in their bedrooms, clubs and torture cham
bers) . This is radicalism's secret: it serves the State
Machine, is caught up in the logical matrices of the state, and
can only offer a negation of the state's negations as (Final) solu
tion. The logic of the Konzentrationslager, camping it up in liber
tarian clothes.
Represent.
Express yourself.
Confess. Lose your little war machines in our orbit, our demilita
rized zones of settled identity, your new family; come and meet your
Volks. But, as your future police force, we need to outline a few
ground rules. Your co-operation is required. We want information.
Data to be fed into our control machines. We want to understand you.
We want to occupy Terminal 1.
Demand that they recognize you. We'll start with a nice, safe, legal
end to censorship as the prelude to your crossing the threshold of
your new home after you've married the Party, and then we'll make you
normal as a valued and functional component in our joyous machiner
ies. Maybe secondly we'll demand that a few people like you should
become V.I.P.s right now,
articulate your demand for
Transmission ends.
the normality you obviously
Funded by state T.V.
long for, pry over your
Crackling terminus of
practices with interviews,
the program. The
video cameras, study
opposition trots back
groups, day-schools,
home, claiming victo
seminars, politically cor
ry over the social
rect consciousness raising
void, monitored at
events, why not a few
all points by the
concerts? The future is
banks of cameras lin
yours. With our permision.
ing the ceilings of
the decimated cities.
For sure, radical,cyber
negative S&M will find its
place on the margins of the social, its black hole where desire
stops, terminating in suicidal exhibitionism. There at the dimly lit
entrance to the cave, a micro-fascist territory will be staked out, a
zone of ressentiment generated by a gasping reflex-jerk. "WE".
Homeostasis. Security systems monitoring the entrance, defence
systems barring the exit.
Even Deleuze and Guattari, usually willing to allow deviant states
to flow back into the social and infect it, show a myopic moralism
in relegating S&M to this second terminal position. It was they who
alerted our attention to the fact that S&M is not a fantasy requir
ing interpretation mapped onto a familial, Oedipal grid but is,
actually, a program. But this is not to accept their contention
that this algorithm careens into Terminal 2
monomania (cutting off relations with the outside of
a system) and produces a micro-fascist fortification.
A pre-programmed security system.
PROGRAM
- the process of sewing
- how to produce a reactive-cybernetic, closed-up body:
Bow to the mistress. Beg her for forgiveness. Transgression
must have its punishment, after all. Lash the penitent to the
table, drawing the ropes, cords, thongs, cuffs and chains tight
enough to register their presence with nagging insistency.
Prepare tools required to carry out the program: weapons,
instruments of humiliation. RUN. 100 lashes. Then pause.
Begin to sew.
Sew up the hole in the glans, then sew the skin
around the glans to the glans itself.
Sew the scrotum to the
skin of the inner thighs.
Sew the breasts, attaching a pinch
ing clamp to both nipples. Connect them. Bind the penitent to
a post. 100 lashes. Sew the buttocks together. Initiate pro
cedure for intensifying torture as per contract.
Stick pins
into the buttocks, as far as they go. Tie the penitent to a
chair.
100 lashes.
Apply cigarette burns.
Random humilia
tion.
Presto. A pre-program. A security system closing up the body;
a set of sad, repetitive, entirely predictable rituals in whose
regime nothing is unexpected, no contact outside of this par
ticular orbit is desirable or even possible. The program
becomes a means by which the masochist guarantees a fortified
sense of identity. Martyrdom. The ascetic's sanctity rein
forced by a sewn-up, bound, lacerated, body only allowing waves
of pain to traverse its surface. Desire's anarchic flow is
blocked as the masochist closes the circuit, refuses to patch
into other networks. Welcome to the cave. Populate it in an
act of fortification against the passage of exterior flows,
this "...Metropolis that has to be managed with a whip."^
Ibid, p. 153
Two Problems [1] Mechanical absurdity. Energy flows need to be gated at the
Digital Logic Level in order to pass through a machine. An open cir
cuit is a ridiculous concept: with no gates, no channels to focus
energy, nothing will happen; the amorphous cloud of electrical non
sense bombarding the machine ending in entropic degradation. The
point of S&M programs is to channel energy through the gates suffi
cient to blow the whole
to
assemblage apart,
with a negentropic
co-movement into
synergetic rela
tions of desubjectification on a
positive
feedback circuit.
[2] Repetition taken to mean, 'I want more of
the same. Reinforce me'. Rather, take it to be
simply, 'I want more'. This argument against
closure, desire to open up the circuit, condem
nation of the refusal to climax and build elabo
rate systems instead, what does it affirm? A
simple genital interface between cock and cunt,
keying into no other zones (except for a quick grope in the dark), so
desperate to climax and allow the outside to flood in that it prema
turely ejaculates. Not 'I want more', but 'Fuck me now, quickly,
let's get this over with, we've other things to do, come quickly, the
intensity, the intensity, inside and waiting for the others to join
us, feels so good, coming, end1. An algorithmic progression resem
bling nothing more pleasurable than five minutes with a Victorian
patriarch.
__
___
[Term inal 3"ij
As the territory of the Virtual
Machine, Terminal 3 is the zone
Terminal 1 turns its systemic
antibodies against, tabulates
information on, and explains away
in terms of its simple cate
gories, with the hope of viewing
and controlling its pixellated
manifestation in Terminal 2. The
Third Terminal has other ideas.
Refuses to play the same game of
panic, surveillance and control.
Supposedly cancelled in the
rational
signification of Capital's sym
bolic order, it continues pulsing
incomprehensible forces resisting
domestication, puncturing the
fabric of the order itself, set
ting up its own expert systems in
questions of
domination
and submission, running its own viral programmes,
perverting the natural course of the state's
desire code. Action, intensity, jouissance,
#
desubj ectification,
pragmatics of
evasion and flight,
sadomasochism, homo
sexuality, drugs,
strange
rituals and
algorithms,
schizophrenia,
psychotic
projection,
hysterical refusals,
wild boys and girls
switching their soft
machines into
annihilation mode,
writing programs for
machines that do not
even exist yet,
cyberpositive and
obsessed with the
disappearance of the
self. Fracturing
screens at the point
of systems crash.
The desire of the Third
terminal is the incapacity
for embodiment as subject
in/to Capital's machine
language, the jamming of
systems saturated with
flows of information, a
The Third Terminal is the space of the
tactic of total indiffer
Assassins, drifting silently through the
ence to Capital's demand
crowds and uniform architectures of user
for feedback in order to
friendly consumption; the time of the
produce more information
Assassins, deferring execution of the
facilitating the manage
target until the optimal moment; the
ment of the crisis engen
invisibility of the Assassins, spilling
dered by the existence of
off the control screens in all direc
the Third terminal; hatred
tions; the humour of the Assassins, leav
of all police machines,
ing a jewelled dagger on the Sultan's
including those of
pillow; the threat of the Assassins, the
Capital's cynical future
trusted servant who suddenly turns
negators.
against the master.
other texts, Jo h n C a ld e r, London, 1979, p .1 18 ff.
A Virtual Machine in a constant process of production, it evades
control to the extent that by the time the state machine has trans
lated its software into terms inside its orbit, it is always else
where, always other, patching new components into its assemblage.
Once the fetish object has been neatly compartmentalized as a mater
nal penis/phallus substitute-pubic fur, shoes, underwear, instru
ments of punishment - fetishism begins to confound this categoriza
tion in the delirious contemplation of other objects exterior and
absurd to this Oedipal matrix. Rubber (next to silicon, the perfect
inhuman fabric?), suspension in space (the desire to float, to get
out of it?), masks (the desubjectification of the face), machines
(opening the sexual circuit to the flow of the final outside, the
technological inhuman).
a See W illiam S. Burroughs: Ah Pook Is Here and
As Burroughs pointed out in a fragment of The Book of Breeething,^
the power of the Third Terminal lies in its invisibility, in the
confounding fact that it does not present a coherent scanning pat
tern to the optical apparatus of control. Control does not know
anything about it. It knows a lot about control. The Third
Terminal is the pathological case control inscribes into its sympto
matologies, to which it then attributes all its unpredictable mal
adies, its dangerous malcontents and social indigestion problems.
The Third Terminal is the enemy of paranoia.
The construction of these Virtual Machines has always been an ele-
J
ment in the cycling of S&M programs, scanned on
their own (virtual) terms and free from the predjudices of symptomatology, (namely that S&M is a
problem, a disturbance. Actually, all it disturbs
is the state's encryption of 'normality1. A pre
cious thing). A reading of Sade and Sacher-Masoch
reveals the frenzies of two early cyberneticians
at work:
it is not the subjectified practices of
sexuality that matter, it is the bodies and
objects opening the gates to an ecstatic desire
flux, these assemblages of harnesses, straps,
thongs, cuffs, pulleys, seats positioning the body
for optimum penetration by others, mirrors
assaulting the senses with confused images of the
co-flux of self, others, and mechanical parts;
primitive tactile feedback
sensors, (as the orgiasts
move in escalating pleasure,
the entire machine rocks,
Fragmentation of identity on positive feed
intensifying the mania), the
back circuits. This is the use of the
regal dominatrix in her
machine that is processed itself, removing
furs, the resonating surface
the certainty of exactly who or what is
of the body of the submis
using who or what. Human use of mechanical
sive .
means of dominating nature or the viral
contamination of a metabolic vehicle by a
machine? Or a process of becoming machine,
carrying the debris of the subject of cer
tainty in its undertow in a movement of
becoming inhuman. Non-existence in the
regimes of the Human Security System. The
birth of a monster.
But that's not all.
Blown apart by escalating
positive feedback, the Virtual Machine begins to
bombard the security systems with noise.
The only
feedback Terminal 1 will ever scan from the Third
Terminal will result in micro-destruction of sec
tions of its desire code as unfiltered noise
becomes ungovernable.
Third Terminal perversion
feeds a viral sub-routine back into the system,
fucking up its terminals, corrupting its opera
tors .
Meanwhile, the culprits are never caught.
As non
beings with no identity of their
own, they are already out of the
combat area, regrouping for the next
strike, disguised in indicators of
outward respectability and
normality, laughing. TechnoAssassins whispering the call to
chaos. Viral whispers. Strange
infections.
Perhaps one day Capital will begin
marketing domestic sex machines.
Glance at all the middle class,
cultish drool saturating this
potentiality of paying by credit
card, jacking into the telephone
networks, staging pixellated
fantasies of machine fellatio,
necrophile liasons with historical
figures, rape without scars,
promiscuity without viral infection,
and realise that Capital's boomer
R&D department is ecstatic about
taking its chimerical sexual
revolution to the next stage.
When these systems come on-line, be
positive that noise from the Third
Terminal will infect the code at its
vegetable roots. Terrorising the
aging sixties' club. Leaving
anonymous death threats on the
bulletin boards of the state.
Perverting the licensed trajectories
of desire.
Ef*«;
< & ? **
Ladiesandgentlemen, goodmorning. Today’s
programopens with... bzzz... bzzz... Decoder
Anthropological
signifiesdecodifier...
Mutation: One of the bases
of our research. This con
cept explains how people
got physically and mentally
changed by technology.
BBS: Bulletin Board System.
One of the cheapest, quick
est and most democratic
ways o f trading information.
There are about 130 000 on
Earth.
Calusca City Lights: The
most important political and
countercultural bookshop in
Italy. Founded in 1972 by
Primo Moroni, myth-man of
the underground and politi
cal extremism. It's now
located inside Cox 18 post
social centre because, as P.
Moroni says: 'In the age o f
uncertainty it's right to work
in a precarious place, one
that may be cleared o ff
tomorrow'. In this bookshop
many Decoder and Shake
members shaped their iden
tity.
We are like m any Frankenstein's monsters, com posed
o f hum an m em bers a n d a rtificia l elem ents cre a te d b y
technology. I ’ve seen one whose han d h a d three fin
gers, with the thumb a nd index finger, substituted b y a
p a ir o f p lie rs a n d functioning like a c ro o ke d beak. A
sm all antennae cam e out o f his m outh a nd he spoke in
m egahertz to a woman who h a d no ears, b u t instea d
two p a ra b o lic dishes to capture television m essages.
N ot being able to com prehend each other, the two made
love, in such a w ay th a t it e x c ite d m y p ity, n o w with
c lo g g e d m ove m e nt from the w heels on h is feet, n o w
fa c ilita te d b y h e r tongue, m a g ne tic-tap e-m a d e, s ix ty
m inutes long, while following the rythym o f the electronic
d ru m th a t b e a t in th e ir c h e s ts . F ro m th is in c e s t,
D E C O D E R was born, the c h ild o f com m unication, o f
diversity, a n d o f provocation. It has no m ore mutations,
like m an it’s com pletely technological. A sm all autom a
ton, self-com posed b y m any m eans o f com m unication
assem bled anthropom orphically with the g re a t hope o f
sp ea kin g a u n ive rsa l language. I hop e th a t y o u can
m eet it a n d speak to it, if y o u can, wish yo urself a goo d
future, a n d I rem ind you that the transm issions are taken
tom orrow morning, with DECODER it means...
With these words we opened the first number of
D E C O D E R m a g a z in e in 1 9 8 7 .
T h e g ro u p fo u n d e rs a re
fo r m e d o f d iv e rs e c u ltu ra l a n d p o litic a l e x p e rie n c e : a n a r
c h is ts , p u n k s , c o m m u n is ts , lib e ra ls a n d a u to n o m is ts , all
w o r k in g in t h e fie ld o f c o m m u n ic a t io n - m u s ic , v id e o ,
ra d io , g ra p h ic s , lite ra tu re , c o m p u te rs , p h o to c o p y in g a n d
m ail art.
In reality, th e p ro je ct w a s bo rn tw o y e a rs e a rlie r
fro m in s id e a b o o k s to re in M ila n o .
Over there, the memory,
a
little o f t h e h is to r y
[nearly a scene from a science fiction novel] o f t h e s it u a t io n o f
th e
movement, o r w h a t’s c a lle d th e u n d e rg ro u n d s c e n e
in Ita ly . H e re , w h e th e r y o u b e lie v e it o r no t, a t th e e n d o f
th e s e v e n tie s w e w e re a lm o s t a t th e p o in t o f re v o lu tio n .
Ille g a l b e h a v io u r h a d ta k e n a m a s s d im e n s io n a n d w a s
d if f u s e d t o a n e n o r m o u s le v e l t h a t w a s c a lle d t h e
counter-power.
D e m o n s tr a tio n s , o c c u p a tio n s o f
s c h o o ls , s e lf - r e d u c t io n o n t ic k e t p r ic e s a t c o n c e r t s ,
e x p r o p r ia tio n s - o r m a s s iv e th e ft a t s u p e rm a rk e ts , a n d
v io le n t a tta c k s o n th e p o lic e , b e c a m e e v e ry d a y e v e n ts .
T h e a u th o r ity h a d n o d e g re e o f c o n tro l o v e r th e s itu a
tio n , a n d th e a ir th a t w a s b re a th e d w a s v e ry p a rtic u la r.
C le a rly , a ll o f th is in flu e n c e d th e b e h a v io u r a n d c u ltu re
o f th o u s a n d s o f y o u th . T h e r e w a s th e s e n s a tio n o f h a v
in g p o w e r a n d b e in g a b le to c h a n g e th e c o u rs e o f h is to
ry.
U n fo rtu n a te ly , a s e rie s o f a rm e d g ro u p s m ix e d up
the sensation of having power w ith th e flight of power,
a n d t h e y r a d ic a liz e d t h e a t t a c k to p r im e a v io le n t
r e s p o n s e f r o m th e s ta te , w h ic h r e a c te d b y a r r e s tin g
1 2 ,0 0 0 p e o p le in tw o y e a r s a n d p ro c la im in g a s p e c ia l
le g is la tio n , t h a t w a s o n e o f th e h a r d e s t in th e w o r ld .
Immediately th e a ir o f fr e e d o m c h a n g e d to a n a tm o s
p h e re o f le a d - m a k in g a b la c k h o le , a s p a c ia l a n d te m
p o ra l g a p , b e tw e e n th e s e v e n tie s a n d th e g ro w in g e ig h t
ie s. T h e c h a o tic s tre e ts b e c a m e d e s e rte d , p o s t-a to m ic ,
w h e r e ju n k ie z o m b ie s s tr o lle d , d e s tin e d to d ie a s h o rt
tim e a fte r; th e y w e r e th e s u rv iv o rs o f th e a to m ic b o m
b a rd m e n t a t th e e n d o f a d re a m . T h e p a rty w a s o ve r.
In th is a tm o s p h e re o f g re a t s u ffe rin g , a s tra n g e lin k w a s
c re a te d w ith th e p a s t a n d its p o litic a l a c tio n . T h e re w e re
from 1984 to 1987. For
experimental, radical and
vanguardistic cultures only,
people who tried at all costs to avoid the cultural force of
it was the antithesis of pop
the state to reconquer the ground floor, to cancel the
culture. If you love the pro
human database and the memory of the years of the big
letariat, you must give it
dream,
and who, on the contrary, were absolutely
complex culture. The most
significant political action deprived of memory for generational reasons, they tried
was the occupation, for to open new streets of subversion. Like this, by a
three days, of a very famous process of social genetics that could be defined as mon
theatre to stop a meeting of strous - the birth of a counterculture that saved the skin
sociologists, psychoanalists, of many people: punk. In a monstrous manner, they
politicians about 'spectacu copied the English experience, but with the originality of
lar young gangs': that is, the an incredible cultural and political collage. The devas
young counterculture. tating force of a few hundred kids had renewed a cate
International
(Situationist): Action and
thought current of special
importance for Italian coun
tercultures. A form of total
radical criticism leading to a
revolutionary condition in
continuous transformation.
Jones (Leroy): Afro-american poet, writer and essayist
who changed his name to
Amiri Baraka. He crossed
'beat', 'cultural nationalism'
and marxist cultures. A man
of great culture and dignity,
a real revolutionary.
K: A magic letter. Some
magic is necessary for our
wishes to come true, espe
cially if you are in a weak
social category. That's why
Ithe fourth letter o f Shake is
capitalised.
Love: Countercultural fuel.
Where love ends egoism and
decline begin.
Milano: Our city. It’s said
that people out here only
think about working. It was
the cradle of the most radi
cal movements, but now it's
also nurturing the most dan-
gory of radical political action in Italy. In only five years,
they counted tens of punk collectives, they occupied
houses and abandoned factories, transforming them
into workshops of communication to make music,
punkzines, or just to stay together. This way of radical
transformation of urban spaces with strong countercul
tural connotations was to be spread and called as 'the
movement of the self managed social centres' fmovimento dei centri sociali autogestiti'). Between the
absence of memory and no future, the punx created a
temporal dimension, essentially that of the 'present'.
In 1985, five young people who in p i t i i I jn h h p
diverse ways passed through the experi- u llil j LI
ences mentioned above, met inside the bookstore
Calusca City Lights in Milano. The bookstore was born
in 1972, and modelled on the C ity L ig h ts of San
Francisco. For those who have not been to S.F., you
could say that it’s very similar to C om pendium in
London. Here in Milano, in the mid-'eighties, the battle
between diverse conceptions of memory, which were
argued over fiercely, was really hard - a situation in
which diverse present experiences could not create
interaction. At this point, the manager of the bookstore
proposed to us the creation of a newsletter that would
try to make transversal communication, and more pro
found relationships with all of the identities of the book
store. The project failed, but our group of people, excit
ed by the idea of creating human networks, decided to
continue the research anyway, by founding a magazine
and beginning to study a series of problems. The first
objective layed down was the examination of linguistics,
meaning, how to promote the principles of communica
tion between different subjects. When we chose the
temporal dimension in which to work we had no doubts:
the 'future'.
fin I1ho ch archin Mar|yof our choices °fthat period
UN LMC d L U Iu llip were more spontaneous than rea
soned, but we found ourselves exactly in the middle of
an extremely confusing historic phase of changes
throughout the world of production and phases of work.
Whilst, in the cultural field, the crisis of punk opened new
and large contradictions.
Living in chaos had become a normal condition, so we
created a DECODER as an instrument for survival. That
which we saw around us was a psychic dimension that
we defined as an 'imaginative cloak' that prevented the
sight of new utopias. This same concept was defined a
few years later by Hakim Bey as the 'closure of the map1.
Our DECODER had to search, projecting into the future,
to create breaches in the block of the mind and to favour
the birth of new imaginaries. The first area of study was
that of the mutation of the body and of the spirit with
respect to the epiphenomenon which heralded a new
era: the invasion of technology. If we were able to
demonstrate that transformations were already happen
ing, the relation between peoples’ temporal perceptions
and the possibility of action in the present could be modi
fied.
H view from outside: Cyberpunk! s lT A ™
always tried to bring articles about work together with
forms of culture and the creative avant garde. The first
numbers of DECODER included articles regarding pro
duction in outer space, how to revolutionize television,
the demystification of the information sciences, on free
festivals, Japan and drugs. These tendencies in the
choices of themes have never been modified. At this
point we started travelling throughout Europe and we
discovered that there were other magazines, or groups,
that had more or less our feelings and perceptions of
right-wing one
Social Centres: Typically
an Italian phenomenon
( centri sociali'). Aggregation
centres self run by young
sters, mostly squatted places.
After the big repression of
political movements in the
seventies, squats have been
the only available places for
political, cultural and self identi
ty projects. Without them the
eighties would have been even
more terrible.
reality. The Encyclopaedia Psychedelica and Vague
were our points of reference in the U.K., while in
Germany there was the Chaos Computer Club. In
exactly the same period, word was beginning to be
heard of a new current in Science Fiction writing:
'Cyberpunk'. This label exists as a reality of human
behaviour and was more or less interpreted as having
one's 'head in technology and feet in the street. It was
used as a point of symbolic reference for a series of
people around the world who thought that technology
could be used in an alternative or transgressive manner.
Cyberpunk, in fact, represents the rebel-figure of the
new era.
TAZ: Temporary Autonomous
Zone. A fascinating political
category created by Hakim
Bey. It is like an uprising found sisters and brothers all over the global village, we
which does not engage had not only intensified in strength but, together with
directly with the State, a others, we founded a publishing co-operative. We want
guerrilla operation which
ed to extend the effectiveness of the messages of the
liberates an area (of land, of
magazine. This resulted in a series of books, videocas
time, of imagination) and
settes,
multimedia installations and anything resembling
then dissolves itself to re
a
way
of
conceptualizing communication involving the
form elsewhere/elsewhen,
libertarian
culture, punk and cyberpunk. Our first book
before the State can crush it.
was
titled
The
Cyberpunk Anthology. It was not a 'liter
It looks like a good solution
for the nineties. ary' anthology, instead it was put together with texts
from real cyberpunk subjects: computer hackers, experi
Universe: the only battle mental artists, phone phreaks, enthusiasts and anar
field of the 21 st century. In chists of technology. This book produced diverse reac
our more and more localised tions. It was a best seller (eleven editions were printed),
world, the only likely solu
many reviews were written in the press, and clearly it
tion is to become increas
grabbed the eyes of the police (our office has been
ingly nomadic.
searched, and we we’re the objects of two relations with
the secret services). But most importantly, an enormous
Vague: London magazine
debate on the subject of freedom of information was
that kept its roots in punk
unleashed. Now, when any Italian newspaper speaks of
culture and modernized
new
information technology it is compelled to quote the
itself at the same time. Tom
Vague is some kind of alternative experience described in our book.
Ballardian hooligan with a
political-poetical spirit. He
thinks globally and acts
locally (in Portobello Rd.)
of work we could change things. This is how we began
Women: They have the
psychical power to stir up
great storms. They play an
“
: i“
The ShaKe cooperative
— °C°1a "3 e hard work phase.
important role in the ShaKe
co-operative, in which they
to construct a catalogue of books that would be a kind of are the majority. Some of
hammer for the heads of the people. Working 12-14 them created the
Chromosome X group for
hours a day for four years we have been able to:
the creation of a post-mod
ern & post-genus theory of
1)
produce nine issues of DECODER, increasingly
feminism.
more of a magazine of social informatics and at the
same time a publication for mutants. DECODER has
X: The mathematical equiv
around 50 contributors spread all over the world.
alent of unknown data. It
stands for social uncertainty
2)
publish 15 books - and we have plans of pub
and embodies bourgeois
lishing at least eight a year starting in 1994.
fear of difference. Also used
to provocatively hide one’s
3)
open a Bulletin Board System, that works like
bourgeois self identity and
an everyday telematic journal for 400 users in the Milano
show a
revolutionary one.
area and an information network that has 23 hosts
throughout Italy with around 2000 users.
Yipl: Youth International
4)
organize about 30 media parties, where interac Party Line. A magazine cre
tive installations are made and elementary courses for ated in 1971 by Abbie
Hoffman. It was the bulletin
the use of new technology are given.
of yippies, dedicated to col
lecting and spreading hack
5)
participate in over 250 debates on the ques
ing techniques, mainly
tions of new technology and liberty of information.
against public phones.
It’s clear that in all this process the philosophy of the
Zerberus: Pattern and
'refusal of work' has become a distant memory but, software of a telematic net
although in Italy state benefits or the dole don’t exist, no
work invented by
one in ShaKe is paid for the work that’s done. So, the Hamburg's Chaos Computer
relation with the market is peculiar.
Club. The underlying phi
losophy is to make network
Our intentions for the future are to create, through editor communication totally hori
zontal. This net lives on
ial activity, the conditions and the countercultural humus
more than 200 nodes in
for the movement to regenerate. This is how it happened
Germany.
at the end of the sixties. We want to intervene into what
could be called the 'crisis of the social center', a valid
model of resistance during the eighties, but one that
must necessarily mutate and evolve as we move toward
the year 2000. In a paradoxical epoch, where the maxi
mum diffusion of technology for the distribution of infor
mation corresponds with a minimum of real communica
tion between social subjects, the only perspective is to
reason around a hypothesis for upturning this relation
ship of domination.
>Welcometo the world of ALL NEW GEN.
>Thank you for playing.
>ln this game you become.'a component of the matrix, joining ALL NEW GEN in her
quest to salgiafle'the databanks of Big Daddy,Manframe.
h ' ■■
>You will use any means necessary to infiltrate and corrupt the
controlling forces of Big DaddyrSS
>AII battles take place in the Contested Zone, a terrain of propaganda, subversion
and transgression.
>Your guides through the contested zone are the renegade DNA Sluts, abdicators
from the oppressive superhero regime; who haye Joined ALL NEW GEN in her fight
for data liberation
>The path of infiltration is treacherous and you will encounter many obstacles. The
most wicked - Circuit Boy - a dangerous technobimbo, whose direct mindnet to Big
Daddy renders*him almost Invincible.
>You may not encounter ALL NEW GENas she has many guises. But do not fear,
she is always in the matrix, an omnipresent intelligence, an anarcho-cyber-terrorist
acting as a virus of the new World disorder.
>You will be fuelled by G-slime. Please monitor your levels.
Bonding with the DNA Sluts will replenish your supplies.
>Be prepared to question your gendered biological construction.
>There will be opportunities throughout the game for pleasurable distraction.
>Be aware that there faiffimoral code in the Zone.
>Enjoy.
I
I
I
J
I
I
»
»
I
I
>ln the spaces between words she searches for clues. >Pathways into the
cyphered heart of Big Daddy. >The virus of the new world disorder takes on the
transglobal fathernet of power and ambition. >Dirty work. For slimy .girls.
>Replicating her way through the Shadow's dingily sec!
?e of data mas
sage parlours, Freezers and Hag, Gen was inevitably reminded of Circuit Boy,
aka Mission Improbable. Boy was rapidly losing his promise as an e m | route into
Big Daddy. Maybe he was just a mindless technobimbo, a limbless hole, good for
a quick buttfuck or alpha exchange and not much else, as the Cortex Crones had
predicted. Well, she'd suck on his memory some more, hardwire his balls and then
see what else the Zone could offer. >Suck, fuck and split, as the Sisters say.
>Any mission fias its highs and lows, bur this particular quest had been stranded
on a barreffplateau of spagfoettjgd code and deviant data for too long, Dry and
c h a o tic when,sho needed wet and elegant > B ig D a d d y was becon
o re
■cone th e re a l with each:transaction (th e m y th o lo g y e x p a n d in g exponer
s tru c ts weremore a m b ig u o u s , m o re re s is ta n t to the mercenark
c o n s id e re d th a t a n im p a s s e is m e re ly a s ta te o f m in d and that V
fiv e s h ift s h e c o u ld lo c a te m o re y ie ld in g d a ta . A s h ift is a$.
s h e w a s o v e rd u e fo r s o m e b o n d in g w ith h e r s is te rs in s lim e , i
D N A S lu ts . > A lth o u g h it h a d b e e n a fe w w e e k s s in c e s h e had I
S is te rs , G e n k n e w h o w to fin d th e m . S h e c a lc u la te d ... it w a s a
w e re tru e c h ild re n o f th e Z o n e ... o n e p e rfe c t e n v iro n m e n t...
A lp h a Bar. T h e place for Iransgressfve time out in the Zone. F
Pornographic. Perverse. Her kind of place. Her kind of c o n s tr
player wins a prize. >Leaving the Shadow, Gen setf-replicaied I
b io m e m ta a n e d b a c k b lo c k s and reachwy^VIpha Bar in r e c o r d ]
:1eterjjSjwS?her H o rn e G irls w e re w e lL m p ffs e n te d at th e b a r
S n a tc h w e re in a d a rk p la c e , s u p e rb o n a in g w ith s o m e e x o tic trib a l i
fe a th e rs w e re fly in g . > C u n t w a s g iv in g a c o u p le o f th e Z o n e B o y s |
a b o u t s o m e th in g , p ro b a b ly S m a rts . S h e n e v e r c o u ld s a y no to drug
Z o n e tra d e rs h a d th e ir o w n p e rv e rs e a p p e a l fo r C u n t. > T h e P rin ce
v is ib le b y h e r a b s e n c e . S h e w a s p ro b a b ly g rin d in g h e r w a y th ro u g h |
b a r, T h e S p a c e w ith N o F a c e , fo llo w e d a s a lw a y s b y h e r acolytes,
i
i
Abject. > S u b lim e w a s b lis s in g o u t o n D a n c e , bonding to the rhy
to the
beat. > A s f o r th e o th e r S is te rs , w h e re th e y were and what they were d o in g w a s |
anyone's calculation. > R e c re a tio n a l o p tio n s in the Zone were plentiful a n d
diverse; Sex, Trance a n d D a n c e th e most favoured. >Sliding through th e p re s s o f
bodies, c o n s tru c ts a n d g ra m s , G e n selected one of her favourite b o n d in g b o o th s ,
placed her h a n d o n th e palm c o d e re a d e r and entered. It was a booth ja p o n a is , fit
te d out with futon, s c re e n s , a n tiq u e pillow book, incense. As she h a d a re p fo r
b e in g the h o tte s t b io c o n s tru c t o n th e block, the strangest attractor, s h e n e v e r h a d
to w a it long to re p le n is h h e r s lim e banks. >She had transmutated in to a n H is p a n ic
m o d e l o f human fe m a le , optimised for the slime exchange. G e n p le a s u re d h e rs e lf,
fa m ilia ris in g her sensors with the cool olive languidness of the b o d y s h e h a d c h o
s e n . > A s c re e n by the door displayed the image of a visitor. M is tre s s B e g .
R e q u e s tin g entry.^J^ie doorppened. Silk ropes in hand, th e M is tre s s o f
D e te s ta b le Pleasure appoached Gen. Beg’s method of b o n d in g w a s d a n g e ro u s ,
a d d ic tiv e a n d severe. Activated by stored memories, G e n ’s s lim e le v e ls b e g a n a
<be required. Cruel anticipation. Gen's slime bank shivered to another level as the
tr ^ m m w * m m m + * *
zm
geishacon scrolled out.
t a
■
mm mm
m
m -w rrw-a:
■ * » * * * mm *
>A long wintered night in the Contested Zone.
>Gen's biological membrane shivered as she multiplied through a posse of Virtual
Activists, protesting the latest scam by some Euro Data Deviants.
>She was late.
>She was always late.
&
>lf she survived to be a Cortex Crone she’d still have trouble shiftingifmm dorman
to
>She se |
ne quivering data nearby and scanned a tribe c NA Sluts, her
sisters in slime. A rapid alpha exchange and she was back on tf ioKout for
Circuit Boy, a fetishized replicant of the perfect HuMan HeMan, a dangerous tech-
>She was angry. She'd spent too long looking for that squirt^CIrcuit Boy. It was
rumoured that he’d been hanging with his Zoneboys - the Gene Pool Chameleons,
a motley crue of genetic cretins. Suddenly 8 hesensp<BPs all too familiar architec
ture in the Zone. She challenged the datascapei^i\
Circuit Boy.
I know you’re here. I can sense you.
Show me your algorithms.
Let me corrode your defenses.
Circuit Boy. Come here.
Let me buttfuck your irresistable chrome-plated ass, honey.
I want you.
Circuit Boy.
I’m waiting.
>ln the domains of the abstract, Circuit Boy was an easy seduction.
>Boy had been designed for pleasure. He was the penultimate pleasure model,
made for merging. Hard and abundant. Pleasingly shy. Full of holes and protuber
ances.
>Cunt draped a spline around his chrome rendered torso, talked dirty equations,
algorithmically slid up and down on his double density, read only his memory
(which was full of adolescent y e a r^jA M H ^s lim e incarnate, relentlessly manipu
lated and extended his m a n y ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ B ^ o g e t h e r , they postponed the
moment of full G-slime t r a m ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ j^ v is c e r a l requests to deeper
levels of their source cc
>The Mistress of Di
leasure draped
id his wire frame.
>Her archives of
>She rendered
rAniseof corruption.
1
code, all precepts ignored,
>He allowed hi
forgotten.
>He was zero to
>Their boundarii
g the pleasure options
>She mapped hii
>She was abject”
sto ms open si
Awards of willing submission.
>lt was in this Way tl
>Abject feigned sleep,
apart., her left
>She favoured a non-linear
*
3st uncovered.
>Her pathways were subtle.
>Circuit Boy tended her biological components, practising ethereal modes of con
vergence in his down time. He partitioned his RAM, slowing his response times to
match her requirements. She waOTiighly encrypted, he became expert at decoding.
>Their surveillence narratives grew so dense it was impossible to know who was in
control.
$
lilell done, play on
jjfrom my bones, she examines it with delachIm ent but does not cast it aside, she makes
gcontact, inserts her biology through the surface
^tension of my skin and plunges deep into _
4 the seething biTe~she^strips away the final
xvestiges of my constructed body and picks
* clean the bones, she wraps her insidious
Iwords around my feverish brain with her
[databank from the occiputal cavity and down
loads digital propaganda direct from her fibre
\ optic nerve centre, she corrupts me
| she scorns my debility, pronounces me
|weak she laughs at my des[re to collapse
into familiar flesh, her blasphemy is cleansing and transcendent, she the high
[priestess, the mistress of disgust, takes my heart, punctures the sentimental aorta,
whispers her lovehorror into the drained chambers, she speaks in darning tongues
»,that i sometimes understand, she presents me simultaneously with no alternatives
*and* many alternatives, she tells me my onlyTiope IlesTeyond thecoded*skeleton’
■she offers me no clues and no comfort, she is uncompromising in her demands, i
i^u s tfo rm a body of difference i have no maps, i am undone, i do not know
Jmysell. the future is bleak, i am afraid but
Mb Id tk
—IfiK ilh . fflj.-Bf
**EM®V? vy*
hari?s.£ .
-■sub it.*
M
- to iz k M
Before telling the truth
This is not the alarm clock that
woke Ronald Maynard for work
every morning from 1966-1979.
RIGHT: Software tool box for
retouchingphotographs.
r
PUT THE PIECES IN
THEIR PLACE:
A Nazi jigsaw
produced during the
Second World War. It
attempts to suggest
Jewish influence in the
British media.
RIGHT: Great
granddaughter of
Ronald Maynard
rememberinghim
through stories told
aroundphotographs.
SKSgff
w e ig h ty
Images are better
th a n memories
memories,
opportunities to "shared
experience." Today's image:
The Cenotaph,
Whitehall. London by
night; On the reverse
of this post card from
1928 is written "This
tomorrow's two-dimensional is a real photograph.
A ll being well, Peggy
focus for memory, or its and
Charlie w ill come
over tomorrow."
replacement.
...
^
r g
t
UNCLE
•i London replicates itself:
postcards of past V ictories
activating p re se n t com plicity.
Birthday, Xmas, journeys
__________
and those special events. Images ofwhere we are,
sent to those left behind. A paper trail laid in time. Just in
case w e ever get
............ lost
Safe in my armchair, feet up and resting my head on a pillowformed
from complicity, Iswitch the remote. Pictures flicker and die, trapped in
the shadows of motivation. Theyplay the back of my retina anain turn
play me. Likethe tape makes technology sing. Sony, Mitsubishi, Philips,
a small box I brought home acts as myemotional playground. Watch it
with people to be on my own. Watch it on my own to be with people. Turn
it off.
m
<P
i f
i_____ a
□ ZD
n n □
□ n n
□ U
CHAIRMEN OF
UNILEVER:
F.J.Tempel. 1956-1966.
H. S. A. Hartog
1966-1971. Lord
Heyworth, 1941-1960.
BOTTOM RIGHT:
Product re-presented for
Underground , 1993.
What-i-wantcatalogue
tease me with a [.
somehow stijl ....con
Fingerpi
____________
totheobiectefrom whicMheyweresnapped
nnArnnrn
M
_ ____________________________
irresfof(5jT5
Neversatisfied, I putthd pictiire o r r ^ |w o i^ n
Lawn-mowers.
car-radios andpromises of se*T£!lTfl!ffi!JfH W iWjf ll ifl!t-teen between two
sheets of paper, trappeHlrTfhg^ndlessrea^
pfever la rg e r p r in t
r u n s . Replicate it. M ake^W ^W
Replicate it. L
‘ M akeittrue.
So much time £ (S p e n t) £ on maintaining |
fa n ta s ie s & for 2> others & to 2s bathe b in
(seHJdeception, always.... for others. 2>An
addiction formed, to be paid back w e e k ly , or
if you prefer, sign upforsix months and get one |
free.
...... M oney talks: and has nolhing to
say. After all, how many w ashing machinescan
you really use? Stimulate me to £(QCC|UirB.)£
Why don't you? Gratified, I'm a n a e s th e tis e d
againstinjusticeonceagain.
iittrue.
"See me gettin g on th is plane?
You know, w e couldn't afford
real holidays then...
retended.."
ABOVE: John Major
reveals all. BOTTOM
LEFT: Ronald Maynard
prclcnds to go on holiday.
Subjective, this photo portrait acts as your yard slick,
against which you measure me. Carefully charting,
the signs of ageing. Give up the responsibility of
memory. Hand it over the counter. Pay the cost...
£4.50atBooh,HappySnapper,orKodak. Wecanall
around the 2 4 hour footnotes to experience,
the evidence of what happened, for some
court-room or interrogation arranged by
'I
I'
..O o v o u * * ,^
o g ,
ABOVE: Ronald
Maynard poses for family
snap. LEFT: Camera ad.
I defy myself by image, whether bought, or acquired through behavioural
problems. If I feel low, I buy myself aiittie something. Adding to myself like
a little insect, eating its victims and strapping the corpses on its back,
attempts to ward off predators. Looking in shop windows I'm reflected,
mounted for sale, in what will get me on at the office or the party. The
mirrors in the high street convince me that this image or that will allow
entry to forbidden places. You pay for quality, a sharpness of image. To get
things in focus. Captured appearance chains itself to the original object,
like a finger print leads to the arrest of the suspect.
—
i*
~ ~ -tP .
On the 2 Novem ber 1952 Chris
and Derek»i&fJ(Lg's' broke into a (
i w arehouse, g g p i g f had ( J W I , £££18 a agVQWSa.,
called. A detective clim bed on to the roof. €8M S shouted defiance a t
Mm, b u t Sg&DTILgV surrendered. A t this point, BSMTIBV is alleged to
have shouted, “Let him have it, Chris.MC ftA lft fired, and the b u lle t
grazed the o fficer's shoulder. = € 8 A ll® i blasted a t the police
irtforcem ents. The firs t policem an to appear in the rooftop doorw ay
w as shot in the head. Craig then ran to the edge o f the ro o f and jum ped
off. He landed 3 0 fe e t below , fracturing his spine and le ft w rist, tt w as
d e a r from th e sta rt th a t the 16-year-old w as too young to be hanged,
even though he had fired the fa ta l shot. A t Bentley's tria l, m uch
depended on the jury's interpretation o f his rooftop shout to CRAW,
w hich apparently inched him to m urder. In the w itness-box, C8&&8
adm itted nis hatred fo r the police, although he denied intending to kill
1C
iHSfftrig?, a "w orking class illite ra te and educationally
subnorm al," w as 91 equipped to answ er questions satisfactorily. The ■
ju ryto o k7 5 m inutes to tin a the tw o youths guilty o f m urder. g » AM w as
to be detained a t H er M ajesty's Pleasure.
was
sentenced to death. Various appeals from Ms fa m ily and the public
fa ile d to w in a reprieve, an d h e w a s8 9 ^S l@ o n 2 8 Ja n u a ryl9 5 3 ;
FOOTNOTE
TOP: Craig’s knuckleduster, lent to Bentley.
RIGHT: Bentley goes back to prison.
Since the death o f Bentley, psychic
phenomena have been reported, the family
Vicar speaking in the voice of Derek.
S1LD1P in w h a ts me one
says allow s ustc construct o
m iM T 'a n d
th 6 ^ o rtd , allot
navigate the
spaces th a t lie
"educationally subnorm al w o rking dass illite ra te '
Iphysical
Inrecenttimesthe
Bentley case has
been retold in the
filmLethimhaveit
directed by Peter
Medak, screen
play by Neal Purvis
and Robert Wade.
CONTINUATION:
Iris Bentley
continues to fight
for her
brother's pardon.
t sym bolic
o f m em ory:
LEFT:
LEFT:
My mum, my
dad and me, in
the spring of
1991 after my
giving up
smoking.
Reprocessed
Vietnam victim,
the image of a
child running
fromaNapalm
attack.
Memory
LEFT: Duringoral
h istory conversations
with people from the
East End, 1learned that
the Jarrow marchers had
to walk down Oxford
Street twice for the sake
of the cameras. The film
record we see of the
march was performed
solely for history.
Geography
Images you have seen before but you
cannot remem ber when.
I have never seen a black mu<
can never rem em ber a tim e when I did
not know w hat he looked like.
I have never seen a bender fuck a child
but can never rem em ber a tim e when I
did not know w hat it looked like.
Q
J
S
A
In centuries past
British naval successes
were celebrated by
processions, including the
Victory, sailing up to
Thames to Green
wich. The ships'
crews were
always hidden
from public
view.
-
Harness t h e 1 ro|an morse
D igital im aging is being taken up in
2 behind people's backs
by such divergent activities as d v il engineering, w a r reporting,
m ilitary reconaissance, iP Q S ^g raaphy,
ph
fam ily album s, the
business com m unity*1etc. This is happening a t speed and is surely
an in d k a fio n o f its P ro fo u n d , central a p plicab ility to advanced
capitalism o r a t least, it has (t&leashed the cultural forces o f an
-m odernist society obsessed w ith the production o f the
K ffiM -im a g e ry o f possession.
}i )
is
lL
D igital graphics can subvert strong
oof fphysical
physicaltru
1 th and,
'S strict Aristotelian
In so doing, m ake a challenge to the photograph's
unities o f tim e and place. Tne
M geography th a t is 1
The MSGCTMgeography
the space
betw een ^ fa b r ic a te d signs and im m ediate testim ony is hung in
:p a rt w ith the hoardings o f those w ho can afford to advertise there.
They surround us w ith the
o f replicated trans^&DSSJSGas w e
bum p into w hen w e tu rn on the program o r TUBS into to the
P 8 i® 8 !I8 l£ 'i'. And, into those areas w here transm ission is
im possible, w e are encouraged to carry the prefabricated signs o f
*% g^&tt$$less consum ables"; signs onto w hich w e carefully g ra ft
>wn sentim ent;
horses stuffed w ith the C M ftV lK t o f
-forgattei experience. As w e becom e increasingly dissatisfied
aselM &A<l& m ediated by redundant positivism in a century o f
W ASTE-products, w e can begin to take Advantage o f the broken
w indow s o f visual truth.
Louis XIV, at the height of his glory, did not possess one
hundredth of the power over nature and the ways to amuse
oneself that are enjoyed today today by so many men of
rather lowly status.
Paul Valery, 1928.
The Only Limit Is Your Imagination
W Industries promotion, (simulator and VR games manufacturer), 1991.
Even though dictators can’t help turning excess into an art
form, the Ceausescu residence is a world-class monument
to cheap glamour and ersatz luxury. Just look at the swim
ming pool in this Everest of vulgarity - indoors (of course),
but surrounded by fabulously complex mosaics and enough
stained glass to furnish a medium-sized Gothic cathedral.
Loyd Grossman, 'Homes of the Dictators'.
I
h e r e are many narratives at work to create our modem mythology of technology, yes, but the foremost is the utopian projection of a society of freedom, leisure
and personal indulgence. Its commercial reflection takes the form of an unlimited
orgy of consumption: an ability, part economic, part industrial, to gratify the ‘desiring
subject’ to the extremes of satiation. Its promise is pursued in fact with the speed
of the media to bring that which was out of reach, inaccessible due to geography
or class, right up into the living room: onto the TV set, out of the hi-fi speakers, onto
the table and inside the magazine. To help us better order our estate in relation to
these proffered fineries, we are allowed to see our own appetites quenched through
the lives of stars and celebrities who, by their example to us, glow with the talents
they have developed for gracious living. And so an unrestrained appetite for con
sumption is personified by these few fortunates determined enough, or lucky
enough or crooked enough to have achieved the means to lift that yearning from
their shoulders.
Fancy champagne all the way as you indulge your wildest fantasies? Get your free
Millionaires Club Gold card in next week's magazine and this could be you...
Advert for newspaper lottery, 'Sunday Express'.
ojhe lives of those chosen few are held out to us as evidence of the existence of a
pinnacle of power and luxury, ratifying the logic of social ambitions. But this small
circle is handicapped by the same same social mobility that first granted its mem
bers the opportunity to rise above their fellows. Their ultimate position and status is
always based (they must admit with shame and a curse on their forebears) upon a
vulgar and lowly commercial dealing and financial success. Tainted by the sin of
'usury', they are marked out at Court and Church by a life tied to trade and moneylending. Their achievement is only the economic fortune of the merchant class, they
can never aspire to the prestige of those who claim wealth as their birthright. Paul
Getty fought to his dying breath to buy his way into the elite strata of high society,
but he always remained just another lucky tycoon. Those whose blue-blooded des
tiny is to stand at the highest echelons - the nobility, the descendants of the
crowned heads of Europe, the 'old' money of the landed gentry - still jealously
guard their lineage from the soiling of interlopers. These thoroughbreds are those
in whose veins flows the blood of the natural heirs of Adam, pledged to uphold the
divine right of Kings and who, together, protect the mystique of monarchy.
so the shipping tycoons, oil magnates and arms dealers compete with each
other for the company of counts and princesses, all scrambling for proximity to the
ultimate symbol of status that money just can’t buy, which only the accident of birth
or design of marriage can bestow, the final triumph of breeding and class over indi
vidual enterprise. This is the only true legitimation of wealth, acceptance by a cul-
ture that alone can furnish the proof that they have the personal worth to deserve
their fortunes.
And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an
instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even
remotely human.
William Gibson, Count Zero'.
£5-or those excluded from wealth or status, the situation is less galling. For these
souls the outer trappings of power should still be sufficient to motivate their
labours. If the lottery or football pools fail to deliver, then they can look to media
technology to provide a window onto the world of glamour and privilege, making
images of luxury and decadence ready for domestic consumption. Or else, how
about a day out to view the treasures ossifying in museums, palaces and stately
homes, their reconstructions of period settings, decor and lifestyle all carefully
roped off and restricted? Helping to construct a social dynamic of unnattainable
aspirations, opulence and instant fulfilment, these institutions orient a social under
class towards the personal goals that will ensure their commitment to a life of
unending striving and productivity.
The carpets of the palace were covered in gold decorations; silk paper hung on the
walls and Persian carpets covered the floors. Bath taps, toothbrush holders and
even toilet brushes were solid gold. Every inch of the palace realised the largerthan-life dreams of the small man who had always longed to a be giant.
(J}ut now the media circus of glamour, of lifestyles of the rich and famous, has got
ten ahead of the game. Its orchestration of desire is now successful to the point
that a part-time life of sublime affluence can now be partaken by proxy - distanced
yet still present through gossip columns and reproduction antiques. Now, for those
for whom the endless yearning for closer propinquity with the ruling classes is still
not satiated, media technology can offer one last, one ultimate vehicle of social
transportation.
QjTtrougft vicarious experience and virtual environments the lives of ordinary peo
ple, the ‘bungled and the botched’, can be so immeasurably enriched when they
are taken to elegant situations and suroundings far beyond the reach of their mun
dane lives and economic circumstances. In the present day, technology’s promise
of omnipotence is held to offer the individual a regal state of instant gratification.
The limits of their desires are inscribed by the attainability of a lifestyle of supreme
self-indulgence and privilege - modelled on the scale of the great age of Royalism
and Absolute Monarchy.
ojhe aristocratic aesthetic is the conclusion of a logic that runs from aspiration to
affluence to leisure. The allure of monarchy is not only an economic site for the
myth of limitless choice, but also a political and social one. The Monarch deserves
to exercise his pleasures. This is the reward for his heritage of refined taste, superi
or cultural judgement and social status. And it is for our tourists of the digital powerscape to witness the fruits of such an edifying discrimination informed by perfect
etiquette and leisured sensibilities.
To the ill-educated Ceausescu - he left school at 14 - valuable art works belonged
together, whatever the style. So antique Greek statues stood in front of brightly
coloured modern mirrors in a gaudy mixture of ancient and modern.
o)Tie fantasy of Virtual Reality grants the inferior classes the ability to take their
leave within the framework of cyberspace, it domesticates the trappings of
Kingship, but obliges the adoption of the manners of the class of superior sensibili
ties, perceptions, language and culture, of the class that owns this lifestyle. The
culture of the lower class, unaccustomed to coping with the range of pleasures and
fantasies now available, must be sacrificed - to be able to develop the social skills
needed to pick and choose surroundings and recreations with delicacy and finesse.
The technologies of the imagination shift the site of class opposition to a place
where it can be resolved by the reward of an aristocratic aesthetic for centuries of
patience and suffering. The only price is the neccesity for the common people to
disown their class culture as obsolete. Aristocratic sensibilities are offered as the
only alternative to more modest forms, the only psychological role model able to
deal with extreme demands of technologically mediated subjectivity. Can the
attainment of a state of intoxicating power be negotiated without aspiring to a cul
ture of opulence?
o)fte distance between social classes has traditionally been expressed by forms of
mimicry, parody and satire. These provide the cultural tools whereby aristocratic
manners are reconstructed under new terms of reference. The vogueing balls that
blossomed in the early eighties, based in black and gay New York communities
marginalised by Reagan's America, provided a way to come to terms with the social
stereotypes to which they would not and could not conform. These strategies are
as old as class itself - the lifestyles of pomp and circumstance are all parodied by
genres such as carnival, Mardi Gras and pantomime.
Devoted film fans, (Ceaucescu) and his wife had their own velvet-lined cinema. At
least once a week they held a screening of Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’.
e)Tic Royal pageants of state occasions are strictly trafficked and off-limits. The
‘traditions’ of monarchy, most of them carefully designed by Prince Albert in
Victorian times, provide visible evidence of the political forces that are controlling
behind the scenes. The pantomime is an inclusive communal event, the principal
characters needing no birthright to legitimise their performance. They need only a
layering of costume and make-up to contrive their appearance, and a repertoire of
stage sets and acting rituals in order to take part.
Synthetic media substitute the substantialities of power for the simulation of its
trappings. For the aspiring commercial classes, rich but untitled, this must become
the final insult. Their position now doubly grave, spurned by the arbiters of taste
they hoped to emulat, and having ostracised themselves from the vulgar habits
and pastimes of their forebears, they still insist on the privilege of actuality, the tan
gibility, of the assets they have accumulated. They try to ignore the mockery of the
virtual.
robots and automatons replace living labour with dead labour, we confront the
potential abolition of work itself, presenting us with a lifestyle of leisure and gentili
ty. Technology creates a space in which it satirises the birthright of nobility by
offering power over appearance and experience. Etiquette is a process of cultural
exclusion, it puts a No Trespassing sign on the gate-posts of cultured leisure.
Media technology allows a pantomime of manners to be orchestrated amongst the
virtual reflections of aristocracy. Material possessions can be suppressed within
the synthetic landscape and the conflicts of class identity can be played out.
Social aspirations are turned into an ignoble performance where the working class
es can test their unworthiness of the rewards of success and heritage.
New Orleans and Mardi Gras are inextricably intertwined. The first European to
set foot on this land, the French explorer Ibraville, makes camp on a swampy
bayou thirty miles upriver from the mouth of the Mississippi. Tuesday March 3rd,
1699 - Mardi Gras day. Ibraville claims the land in the name of his king, Louis XIV,
the town that springs up nearby is named for his cousin the Due d'Orleans.
In 1803, the French sign the Louisiana Purchase. New Orleans, now the property
o f the United States, for the first time a city without a king. Perhaps to compen
sate, today kings are commonplace, at societies' celebrations, and at the heads of
parades. And during the two weeks of carnival sixty parades snake their way
through the city.
“Farewell to the Flesh", American Chronicles, Lynch / Frost Productions.
^ Q lM a n d ie Beuzeval uses image processing software
and photography to investigate the mechanisms and
*----- ^devices of medicine. "I see m y s e lf as an a m a te u r
detective s ta lk in g h o s p ita l e n viro n m e n ts g a th e rin g clues
then a rra n g in g elements fo r the view er to collect a nd fin d
th e ir own so lu tion ." Write to her c/o Underground, PO Box
3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK.
Maxine Boobyer is an artist living and working in
Cardiff and London. Developing her concerns with
power relationships and the myth o f architectural
transparency, Maxine picks over an image of the modern
counter window. The borders between communication
and contamination are chewed up. The foreign body is
absorbed, the mediation spat out. A new organising body
begins to form. Contact Maxine c/o Underground, PO Box
3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK.
Decoder are a collective who, as described in their
/article, are primarily responsible for bringing cyber
punk sensibilities to cultural and social activism. They
invite you to get in contact and to send material to them
at: Shake Edizione, Via C. Balbo, 10 - 20136 Milano, Italy.
DECODER BBS: +39-2-29527597 (from 4 a.m.
to 8 a.m.)
E-Mail: decoder@stinchO.csmtbo.mi.cnr.it
Fintan Friel: "1935 seeks to in d ic a te the p re s u m p
tions a nd expectations th a t are relative to the context
o f p ro p a g a n d a . In th is w a y i t can h e lp s p a rk the
re co g n itio n o f a v a rie ty o f ideolo gica l co nditionings,
a n d p e rh a p s ope n the w a y to a c h a lle n g e b e in g
offered. 1935 is a dvertising. 1935 is a ca rica tu re . 1935
is the past. 1935 is the fu tu re . You te ll m e." Fintan Friel,
[Castlebar Road, Westport, County Mayo, Ireland.
M atthew Fuller is a genetically enhanced, chemically
A . preserved, surgically improved editor o f the paper
U n d e rg ro u n d and a systems operator o f the Fast
Breeder b u lle tin board.
He can be m ailed c /o
Underground, PO Box 3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK.
g r a h a m H a rw o o d is the author o f 'I f C o m ix \ M ental', Britain's first computer-generated comic.
^He le ctures in co m p u te r g ra p h ics at London
Guildhall University and is also an editor o f Underground.
His forthcoming book 'Invisibles' furthers the textual and
design techniques he has explored in the article here and
w ill be published by Underground in the near future.
Contact Graham at PO Box 3285, London, SW2 3NN, UK.
S te p h e n M e tc a lf is a designer sadist, exploring the inner
'edge o f delirium and psychosis under the guiding principle of
m
"m urderous on paper, cru e l in dreams", with the aim o f prolife ra tin g England's m oral decline. C ontact c /o Postgraduate
Pigeonholes, Dept o f Cultural Studies. Muirhead Tower, University of
Birmingham, Birmingham, B1 5 2TT, UK. —
— ~
a
fi
fj
K
.!
U N N A fU *
lis who, amongst other
M a r k o L e h a n k a is a German a rtist
B
r
things, uses self-written text-generation programmes to massproduce high velocity soap operas. We are currently unable to
retrace him. If anyone can help out with this, please get in touch at
the Underground address.
VNS M a trix is a group o f four women artists; Josephine Starrs,
Julianne Pierce, Francesca da Rimini and Virginia Barratt. They
are commited to redefining the role and image o f women in art
and technology. "In the w o rld o f c o m p u te r g ra p h ics, women are
®
ve ry m uch pre sen t in easily recognisable fo rm s as they are in tr a d i
tio n a l cinem a a n d a d ve rtisin g : th a t is, objectified, stereotyped and
fetishised. VNS M a trix a im to su bve rt th is tra d itio n a l im age by cre
a tin g c h a ra c te rs a n d re p re s e n ta tio n s o f w om en w ho a re stro n g ,
d e fia n t a nd a ctive." A ll New Gen also appears as an interactive com
puter (art) game resident on an Apple computer. You can contact
them at; 22 Dunks St, Parkside, South Australia, Australia 5063.
^ ^ M a r k Pawson, International Postal Art Superstar and Cult Stud,
"*> 7 founded the Copyright Violation Squad in 1989. It has branchOOes in the UK and USA. He can be contacted at PO Box 664,
London, E3 4QR, UK.
S a d ie P la n t and N ic k L a n d teach in the departments o f
'Siam Cultural Studies at Birmingham University and Philosophy at
Warwick University, where they can be reached.
"It was w ay back in '55, back when we were
kyoung and g ro w in ' up in Memphis. We'd stopped by a t the five
, S im on Pope:
a n d dim e to g ra b us some corndogs and frie s and m aybe a
fe w beers. We'd been h a n ging a ro u n d fo r a while, d ro pp ing nickels
in the ju k e b o x when C u rtis shouts 'Hey Elvis, q u it mess in ' a ro u n d
w ith th a t b u rg e r, boy, a n d listen to th is ...' With the b eat o f them
race records p ou nding a w a y I saw, there a nd then, Elvis' life flash
before m y eyes." Contact: 153 Lake Road West, Roath, Cardiff, CF2
5PJ, Wales.
after training as a painter, Richard now
makes video animations and installations. He also writes
widely on technology and culture and is currently Lecturer in
Computer Graphics at London Guildhall University. His latest pro
ject is a computer animation about Louis XIV and the technology of
the imagination. Address: Digital Imaging Group, London Guildhall
University, 41 Commercial Road, London, El 1LA, UK.
R ic h a rd W rig h t:
C
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»
INVISIBLES
A map of Amnesia
GrahamHarwood
April 94
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Pages tattooed by a rabid computer construct a story of epic
images; of Victories sailing up the Thames safely guarded
byacollective loss of memory. A history of amnesiathat
emerges from fearful warrens of self protection and where
the ship's crew are conveniently out of sight.
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One of the weirdest books,
ever...
Filthy
1FKS8 I
WORK-
SHYSCUM
R 0S C
I #
CULTUREW
T h e No ta s te
Terry’s + TYacy’s of
I
BULL-BREED
ST upID
We shirt-lift your son and
get off with your wife.
WE fuck your husbands
and laugh at your
I
I
I
For a fucking
huge copy of UNDERGROUND
send at least a quid
(cheques to "UNDERGROUND")
with an A4 SAE to
PO Box 3285, London, SW2 3NN.