Works

Tristan Abbott, Bomb Media, 1953-1964
 
John Freeman, The Steorn Exploit and its Spin
Doktors, or "Synergie ist der name of das Spiel,
my boy!"

Neal King, Secret Agency in Mainstream Postmodern
Cinema

George Kuchar, AncesTree

Michael D. Snediker, Subjunctivity.  A review essay
of Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, intimacies. U of
Chicago P, 2008.  


Reviews
 
Susanne E. Hall, Tracking the Field.  A review of
Joe Amato, _Industrial Poetics: Demo Tracks for a Mobile
Culture_.  Iowa UP, 2006.

Chris Funkhouser,  Bionanomedia Expression. A review
of Eduardo Kac, ed., _Media Poetry: An International
Anthology_. Chicago: Intellect Books, 2007, and Kac,
_Hodibis Potax_.  Ivry-sur-Seine (France): Édition
Action Poétique, 2007.

Elizabeth Freudenthal, The Double Helix and
Other Social Structures. A review of Judith Roof,
_The Poetics of DNA_. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2007.

Amy Ongiri, The Color of Shame: Reading Kathryn Bond
Stockton's Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame in Context.
A review of Kathryn Bond Stockton, _Beautiful Bottom,
Beautiful Shame: Where "Black" Meets "Queer."_ Durham,
NC: Duke UP, 2006.

Keith P. Feldman, "fuga." A review of Edward
W. Said, _On Late Style: Music and Literature Against
 the Grain_. New York: Pantheon, 2006.

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                  Notes on Contributors


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                         Abstracts

Tristan Abbott, Bomb Media, 1953-1964

* Abstract: This essay sketches a dialogue between
the government-sanctioned, nuclear "scare" films of
the 50s and 60s and the dissident, nuclear-themed
popular media of the same time period. Through
their direct and indirect indictment of the
government's fallacious claims about the causes,
effects, and survivability of nuclear war, these
popular films served to shift the enabling dialogue
of nuclearism in such a way as to greatly diminish
the actual threat of war.  While the positive
effects of such dissident media were usually
unintentional or else incidental, their success
has nonetheless yielded a set of lessons for
making anti-nuclear statements which are both
viable and effective.  Nuclear annihilation is
unique in that it is a potentiality that gains
inevitability through its own discussion, and so
texts that wish to diminish its power need to
address a set of specific criteria, as is
outlined in the essay. --ta

John Freeman, The Steorn Exploit and its Spin
Doktors, or "Synergie ist der Name of das Spiel,
my boy!"

* Abstract:  This essay considers one of the more
intriguing techno-events of this decade: the claim
of the Irish technology company Steorn to have
produced a perpetual motion device, the Orbo.
Although its promised demo in July 2007 failed
to produce a working device, events leading up to
and beyond the failed demo offer a case study in
what Galloway and Thacker define as an "exploit,"
"a resonant flaw designed to resist, threaten,
and ultimately desert the dominant political
diagram." Selecting its own jury to test and
validate the Orbo, the company has resisted the
normal scientific validation process. Enlisting
the aid of an "outernet" workforce, Steorn has
challenged traditional business models as well.
Unfortunately, Orbo's failure has put a reverse
spin on the Steorn Exploit and its viral
marketing campaign, demonstrating that viruses
not only spread but also mutate.  Embarking on
its own exploit, Steorn's on-line forum has
morphed into a webmind whose emergent
properties recall Goertzel's psynet, "a self-
organizing network of information-carrying
agents." "Mobile agents," forum members create
new links and provide each other feedback as
they sort through the multiple drafts of
Steorn's narrative. Scripted into this
narrative, they must also do battle with other
counter-exploitive elements such as Herr Doktor
Mabuse, a nightmarish perversion of Steorn's
original vision.  Soldiering through the
elements that have brought down similar social
network enterprises, the forum has thus far
survived.  Whether or not it endures depends
paradoxically on the very spirit of
contestation that drives its--and Steorn's--
operations. --jf

Neal King, Secret Agency: Elements of
Postmodernism in Mainstream Cinema

* Abstract: A set of English-language feature
films, mostly released at the turn of the
century, offer protagonists who do not know
that they are spies. Scholars have suggested
that such culture can be postmodern in theme,
in clarity, and in production at the same time.
But this essay shows that these films hew to
norms of classical narrative and have been
used to shore up a modernist sense of authorship.
They follow on Jameson's influential formulation
of a postmodern aesthetic, using surreal film
style to convey hallucinations and telling of
protagonists who come to know that they are
brainwashed. But scholarly arguments that
Hollywood has sacrificed clarity to postmodern
ambiguity are based on selective studies of art
films and stories of insanity, and are
disconfirmed by studies of these mind job films.
These movies owe neither to large-scale demand
for postmodern themes nor to postmodernity in
financial affairs, but rather to a small group
of filmmakers who took inspiration from
brainwashing scares and such novelists as
Burroughs and Dick. Those filmmakers emphasize
their own modernist authorship by using flashy
technique to tell provocative stories of
compromised agency. --nk