PVI

If Neurocam is an art project, they're in good company, for it seems Melbourne is the home of ARG-art. Have a look at this article on PVI for instance. Here is the PVI website.

Identity confluence

Abundantly absorbing thoughts from Mr. Elmo Oxygen on identity fragmentation. There's a wealth of theory in existentialist circles on the matter, and if you want to delve into the early cybertheorist thoughts on identity, try Sadie Plant or Donna Haraway. But the world has moved rapidly since the days of Plant and Haraway, and their writings may seem dated, even historic, to today's internet (af/in)fected youth (who around here remembers MUDs?).

Elmo's thoughts touch more on literary theory than cybertheory though. The waters between fiction and realiy, contends Elmo, are muddied. Elmo the writer finds himself being infected by Elmo the character. This brings me back to my original frame of reference; Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, in which the author Dermot Trellis, finds his life invaded by the characters he writes of.

I'm am overwhelmed with joy to see one of the Neurobloggers pick up on O'Brien's masterpiece. Chris Titan posts an excerpt from Thomas C. Foster's essay on At Swim-Two-Birds. Chris has also written to me privately to point out that John Furriskey, the nefarious Irishman currently wooing Xul Solar (nb. new URL), is also a character from At Swim-Two-Birds. Xul had never mentioned O'Brien's work before this, and I can't help but wonder if he's picked up on my own research to fuel his narrative.

Xul's world is a mise-en-abyme, just as O'Brien's is. Foster points out in his essay that "O'Brien builds in so many frames that interact so freely that it becomes nearly impossible at times to identify the frame in which a given scene is taking place". Likewise, Xul is constantly darting in and out of frames. One minute he's berating Luther for spreading rumours, the next minute he's spinning (what seems to be) complete fabrication, and then he'll take a further step outward, and address his readers almost as himself, the author.

Xul's labyrinth

I have been asked to expand on the connections between Roland Barthes and Xul Solar. I don't wish to dwell on this for too long, as I find it inhibiting to wait for stragglers. I suggest either of his two most well-known volumes; Image, Music, Text or SZ. The following passage from SZ concerns writerly texts and may be of use...

The writerly text is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent language (which would inevitably make it past) can be superimposed; the writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world (the world as function) is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages.

I want to move on now to Alain Robbe-Grillet's 1959 novel In The Labyrinth. This is another work which, I feel, has been highly influential on Xul. For example...

Outside it is snowing. A soldier trudges through the streets of an unfamiliar city, carrying a mysterious package on a journey to a street he can't remember. He pauses for rest in an empty tavern, observing in detail the dust and the circular traces of a wine glass on the tabletop. On the wall is a picture of a bar scene. Separated from the raucous patrons are three forsaken soldiers. Or is this a snapshot from the past, a fragment of memory? Outside it is snowing. A child stands at a lamppost, silent and unhelpful. This is the same child that once led him to the tavern. He enters and is inspected by the patrons and bartender. On the tabletop the wine glass has left circular impressions in the dust. Outside it is snowing. Inside we are in the labyrinth.

If your head is spinning, don't worry - it's not an unusual response. Some have said it was Robbe-Grillet's intention to do just that. Xul seems to shift in and out of the Neurocam narrative, in and out of Methodius' narrative, of Beltaine's and Elmo Oxygen's, and yet his feet remain firmly in the warm waters of his own world.

The death of Xul

Today, Roland Barthe's treatise commonly known as "The Death of the Author" (from his 1977 book Image, Music, Text) is holding particular resonance with me...

As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins. The sense of this phenomenon, however, has varied; in ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose ‘performance’ — the mastery of the narrative code —may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’. The author is a modern figure, a product of our society insofar as, emerging from the Middle Ages with English empiricism.

The Death of the Author, of course, concerns itself with themes such as subjectivity and phenomenology. I have been amused by assertions that Xul and I are in collusion, or even more laughably, the same person! Certain people would do well to familiarise themselves with Barthe's infamous treatise, as it may offer an understanding of where Xul is coming from.

Futhermore, I offer Barthe's concluding passage as something to ponder...

We are now beginning to let ourselves be fooled no longer by the arrogant antiphrastical recriminations of good society in favour of the very thing it sets aside, ignores, smothers, or destroys; we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.

The semiotics of Xul

This passage from Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller holds particular pertinence at this time...

There are days when everything I see seems to me charged with meaning: messages it would be difficult for me to communicate to others, define, translate into words, but which for this very reason appear to me decisive. They are announcements or presages that concern me and the world at once: for my part, not only the external events of my existence but also what happens inside, in the depths of me; and for the world, not some particular event but the general way of being of all things. You will understand therefore my difficulty in speaking about it, except by allusion.

Xul Solar has disappeared, or at least his words have, and there has been little indication of when they will return anew. Perhaps for Xul, words have lost their power, their meaning - signifiers snapped clean from their signification, awash in the ether.

He has left us, instead, with an image. A man driving a taxi, stolen it seems, from Constance's blog. Are we to believe that this is an image of Xul himself, is it it merely a signifier - where Xul has found failure in words - are we to read this as a farewell of sorts? Or perhaps, have we just jumped into the taxi ourselves, buckling our seatbelts as Xul smiles from the driver's seat - "hang on, it's gonna be a crazy ride!".

Further introduction

By way of further introduction, as partially requested by Luther King. I began research on my doctoral thesis after completing honours in literary theory last year. Before this I had completed a degree in cultural studies and critical theory. I am still in the 'incunabula' stage (as literary theorists like to joke) at present, and am considering including a chapter on the narrative world constructed by Neurocam 'operatives'. What has sparked my interest are the renegade narratives spawned by various 'players'; people who aren't necessarily operatives but who contribute to the 'unveiling' by weaving their own mysteries. This, I think, is the principle modus operandi of the Neurocam narrative; the contradictory nature of shrouding and unveiling, of myth-making and myth-busting - these work at once against and with each other.

My primary text of comparison is by the Irish author Flann O'Brien, entitled At Swim-Two-Birds. Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller is also prescient in my research, as is the work of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

I provide here two passages from At Swim-Two-Birds which relate to my studies of Neurocam: from page 9...

I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many openings.

...and from page 25...

Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before - usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimbleringers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature. Conclusion of explanation.

...it's compelling stuff, I'm sure you'll agree. Keep in mind this was written in 1939, decades before these ideas became mainstays of postmodern theorists, even longer before O'Brien's ideas were used in the animated 'fractured fairytale' film Shrek.

I hope this provides somewhat of an introduction to my work. This blog is intended to act as a clearing house for my ideas and thoughts, Blogging is a device used by many postgraduate researchers, and is by no means intended to become part of the Neurocam narrative as such, but I have a suspicion that may be inevitable.

Incidentally, the 'large words' of which Beltaine accuses me of pilfering from a thesaurus include "poststructuralism" and "diegetic" - hardly words foreign to a student of literary theory. If the words look to big Beltaine, keep in mind this is a research blog of a particular discipline.

Roles reversed

It seems my research has taken unexpected twist: the researcher has become the subject. Where normal research tactics would deplore this occurance, my own discipline revels in it. What more could a researcher in metanarratives hope for than to fall into the narrative themselves.

Sadly, I cannot permit myself to play. I must remain impartial and strictly observant, although no research is ever strictly observant, as sociologists and anthropologists have realised for decades. All I can do is ask, please, don't mind me, I'm just watching.