‘pataphysics has been a methodology in my artistic and radical education practices for over a decade. I see it as a conceptual framework for invoking imaginative power for real world effects. And therefore significant in the reality-co-creating spaces of Web3, particularly DAOs and other decentralised patterns of coming together.

‘pataphysics offers a way to think about how anything new gets created and the significance of a known-unknown, or outlined absence, for inviting internally felt needs and possibilities into being in that process.

I will start by sharing the story of how and why I came to ‘pataphysics, and then explain how it offers a framework for the work of community-nurturing, shared-reality-building, and future-visioning offered by the technological possibilities of Web3.

[Please note this text is in draft form, full of typos and grammatical errors. Sharing in this state to active seeking and gladly welcome any feedback on concepts/structure/edits: @lossyecology]

Dream state: Projecting Spaces

“the doorway to the invisible [bodies] must be visible” - René Daumal

My use of ‘pataphysics as a creative methodology began as a workshop;

In 2010, I was regularly engaged as a freelance artist to lead gallery-based workshops for visiting groups. I would lead the group to a pair of unassuming locked, handle-less doors which were painted the same colour as the gallery walls, and intended not to be looked at.

I would instruct the group that these doors were highly significant; they were the doors to ‘The Lighthouse’, and that to enter The Lighthouse, they must close their eyes and ‘go inside’.

Regarding each of their (internal) lighthouse as real, I would then invite them to answer questions, which would encourage the formation of the contours of each of their known unknowns;

Is it cold or warm? Large or small and cosy? Is it well lit? Any furniture? Are you there alone? How does it feel? Show me how you move now that you are inside your Lighthouse?

And the answers would flow without hesitation. Each knew/felt exactly what their own lighthouse was like.

That absent space indicated by the locked doors was a void space; a vacuum into which participants would project their internal and eclipsed selves, unmet needs, and latent possibilities and desires.

Build state: Seeking tools

Next, I would invite the workshop participants to create a diagram of their lighthouse, and we would embark on a journey to find clues, remnants, remembered affects of their lighthouses, including in the artworks on display in the gallery.

Carrying internal keys, portals, entry-ways into external resonances of their internal dreamscapes, that unlocked the potential of materials, colours, shapes, forms, textures; tools for the materialisation of those lighthouses.

Later the workshop participants would cast their lighthouses on the wall using overhead projectors; each would physically embody and enter into what had previously existed as an internally sensed reality, now externally built out of drawn lines and coloured light; visible, tangible, inhabitable.

The invoking of imaginative possibilities facilitated by the outlined absence - the signifiable void - of The Lighthouse, is the invocation of spaces that have ‘pataphysical properties;

They need not conform to real world limitations and concerns, and yet can still be felt as real, and impact the real.

I offer here that in this technological moment, Web3 and DAOs might also be conceived as such outlined absences; outlined vacuums of dark matter potency, ‘pataphysical spaces of (re-)imaginative projection and emergent reality co-creation.

And that the philosophy-methodology of ‘pataphysics offers a framework for how the emergent cultural forms in Web3 might be conceptualised and nurtured.

What is ‘pataphysics?

’pataphysics (a facet of our universe IMO) was named by French symbolist playwright Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896).

(According to Jarry, ’pataphysics always appears with an apostrophe before p to avoid a pun in French.)

‘pataphysics is commonly described as ‘the science of imaginary solutions’. A pseudo-science for the properties of all things absent (yet identifiable), pretend, metaphorical, imagined and representational - once they are treated as real. The layer on top of metaphysics. What happens when you regard the metaphor as the real, and build another layer on top. A layer that no longer has to comply with the constraints of resemblance to the original referent - or the laws of irl - and yet can still be experienced.

The salient feature of ‘pataphysics is that what is imagined is also experienced.

‘pataphysical realities are that which can be experienced without having to comply with the constraints of ‘reality’.

Years after The Lighthouse workshops, I carried the methodology it offered into my work on activating neurodivergent potency (existing beyond the constraints of externally-defined knowledge on the bodies of those who don’t conform to the fiction of ‘normal’).

Before we go into that, a note on Reality:

Lossy Ecologies

‘Lossy Ecology’ is a concept I named in 2016, after spending time with neuroscientists studying embodiment, as part of research towards my artist book, also called ‘Lossy Ecology’.

Lossy Ecology (the book) outlines the idea that we exist in an ecosystem of realities (compressions/filtered viewpoints/cognitive capacities).

(According to a neuroscience theory called ‘predictive coding’, there is no single, stable ‘reality’ as such; we each have internal working models of reality. Those working models of reality are informed by our bodies, our past experiences, our socialisation (our values, what we are taught to focus on, how we interpret and organise experience), and our tools (agency we are afforded).)

The book co-opts computational neuroscience theory and terms and combines them with biomimicry/pattern words, both of which are incidentally also being used across the systems-thinking, tooling and decentralisation-visioning in Web3, as well as the social justice future visioning in the work of e.g. Emergent Strategy, by adrienne marie brown, which was published within a month of Lossy Ecology.

It does so to interrogate the universalist assumption that a single, factual reality exists, within which embodied differences can be objectively measured and defined.

The texts collectively articulate an approach to notions of ‘self’ or ‘body’, and how bodies and experiences which resist static and dominant forms of representation, might evolve their own means of self-definition, through the cognitive escape routes (rabbit holes) offered by 'pataphysical co-creation of new realities.

‘Neuro-’ emergence

Permit me this tangent, as it speaks to the collaborative and community aspects of how the ‘pataphysics of on-chain existence IS not just co-creation of structures and new ways of being-together, but also co-creation of new realities.

But also how the trauma wisdoms of under-resourced communities offer sources of re-imagination for how we might create new structures and flows of value (resources) in new ways;

The imposition of externally modelled knowledge onto neurodivergent and disabled bodies without consent has enabled all manner of harms.

For example, the official psychiatric classification of autism defines the autistic-status body as “abnormal” without ever defining normality, and which cannot but be read as meaning ‘not quite human, incomplete, as something that happened to a ‘normal’ body’.

A dehumanising representation that historically has been used to ‘justify’ electro-shock behavioural “treatment”, harvesting of genetic data with questionable means of consent, and use of AI to “teach” autistic children “correct” social communication, and a $7 Billion autism industrial complex capitalising on the interaction between ideologies of: autism-as-behavioural-problem and autism-as-disorder and autism-as-cause.

The prevalence of the ableist construct of ‘normal’ combined with the one-size-fits all social structures of industrialism, has also been the source of socialised disconnects neurodivergent folks, which once internalised, cause us to mask and hide and camouflage parts of self; replicating the self-negation of normativity and systemic-erasure within our own self-relationship as invisible-over-adaptations-into-burnouts.

‘pataphysical bodies

Being cast as societal projecting-spaces for ‘not-normal’ is to also embody representational voids.

The systemic invisibility cloaks imposed on ‘neurodivergent' bodies, that cast them into sites of societal projection and dehumanisation, also produce representational voids that can be re-fashioned into spaces of reality co-creation.

This is the work I do in The SOLA System; providing a heterotopia outside of dominant zones of cultural identity-formation and knowledge production, where other possibilities are not only available to be felt and articulated, but also co-created.

A ‘pataphysical body exists because of, not in spite of, its political and representational invisibility, as a loophole/rabbithole out of consensus reality and into the magic of a lossy ecology (an ecosystem of perceptual realities) beyond externally imposed meanings.

That [systemic] invisibility is a stealth-mode power that is activated when coming together.

Just as the representational voids of unseen bodies contain ‘pataphysical potency.

So do the not-yet-realised futures of web3.

‘pataphysical futures

A ‘future’ is an outlined absence.

The emergence of blockchain technologies has signalled the possibility of co-creating new futures whereby to imagine that future is to create it.

Futures that are digital yet untethered from the constraints of both material life, and previous/dominant stuctures (models of reality and the structures built upon them).

Meaning that the culture emerging in this space (and the fears projected into it from outside) operate according to ‘pataphysical law; they aren’t about communicating an existing reality, but co-creating new realities simply through communicating/coding them.

This has unlocked a flow of resources into a space of not-yet; a lighthouse.

So what are the traits of ‘pataphysical co-creation?

Composable identities as ‘pataphysical selves

As mentioned, the ‘vacuum of self’ that Marshall McLuhan predicted as a “highly traumatic” result of electronic self-representation is, for some, a release from confines of imposed universalism.

For some, visibility within dominant hegemonies and mainstream culture is to negate self - reflecting the degree to which that dominant culture is built on pre-assigned roles within imposed hierarchies and ideologies, such that to be visible is to exist only in the terms that its word-based forms of legitimisation (passport, given name, medicalised body, etc.) make possible.

On-chain identities appear to offer a radically different relationship to identity and self representation.

“Web3 gives creators the chance to be born again over and over, discarding and circumventing limits or requirements for pre-existing identity, reputation, or experience. […] It’s possible that Web3 shifts the decision of identity design to the individual instead of having visibility as a prerequisite to “authenticity” or validity of expression.” - @itstheelword with @rafathebuilder

Multiple selves, self-as-activity, self-as-archive, composable identities…

Situated knowledges that were previously conceived through reductive or stigmatised identity-status, might occupy the ‘vacuum of self’ offered by Web3, to develop their own forms of cultural identity and belonging that are not tethered to existing constraints of institutional and cultural validity, physicality, singularity.

An electronic self, a representation of self that can exist untethered to notions of self as fixed, singular identities within a universalist consensus reality, is a ‘pataphysical self.

Web3 thus enables the possibility of inhabiting ‘pataphysical selves, and the invention of previously impossible tools and structures that could be directed towards activating new forms of belonging.

Blockchain is a technology which is lossless in its possibility;

And so bodies previously compressed out of consensus models of reality might build here into new forms of visibility and agency into a true realisation of a Lossy Ecology.

Co-creating in a Lossy Ecology

I’ve been fascinated by recent articulations of the concept of ‘Lore’ as it applies to DAO formation, and decentralised patterns of collaboration.

I’ll link to some here:

What I want to offer to this exploration of ‘lore’ is that lore is an expression of ‘pataphysics at work;

To quote Venkatesh Rao in Lands of Lorecraft: A millennial management Science is being born, in reference to frameworks by Rafael Fernandez, Kei Kreutler, and John Palmer.

“

• Marketing is the story insiders tell outsiders to influence them in some way

• Lore is the story insiders tell themselves to manage their own psyches

This is a critical difference. Lore has a great deal of resemblance to, and overlap with, marketing, but is primarily a paradigm for managing the insides of an organization (to the extent there is an inside to such things as loose communities and ecosystems).

This means lore is a live modality even within nascent, early stage, and stealth efforts that have no marketing presence in an external context at all.

An implication that creates the sharp contrast to traditional marketing is that lore cannot be engineered in the same way marketing can be. While you can shape lore as it emerges, it is a matter of subtle gardening and curation. You do not go around trying to invent brand names, logos, and brand-identity postures for emerging lore. You are not pumping “messaging” into scarce “channels” pointed at distant “markets.” You act like a gardener trying to make your own garden thrive, cutting away unhealthy bits, and supporting the healthy bits.

This is why I ended up framing my contribution to the discussion a “memetic forecast” rather than a “marketing strategy.” Lore is something you witness, and attempt to shape as it emerges, if it emerges, not something you design and execute.

“

To follow this logic;

Blockchain offers a tool for co-creating new realities, not just existing in 'consensus reality' in new ways.

This inward co-creating is what also IMO encourages emergent patterns of collaboration,that don’t flow through pre-defined top-down structures, but form murmuration through co-feeling out in the dark/structuring according to agency not hierarchy.

Where marketing is communication of a pre-established reality, lore is the co-creation of an emergent not-yet-reality that we inhabit as we build; that we believe, in order to realise.

Lore is native to web3 because web3 is an undefined reality that we are regarding as real (believing in).

To treat something that doesn’t yet exist as real, requires belief.

Lore emerges when belief exists.

Belief is a component of lore.

(And incidentally also of all on-chain assets that are divorced from their real world referents, and therefore fluctuate in value according to belief).

To nurture lore is to nurture belief.

That belief is invoked by the naming of representational voids (e.g. ‘future’) and the memetic forecasting of what will fill the voids of the potential futures offered by blockchain.

This process is ‘pataphysics in action.

The lore that emerges out of those representational voids allows us to inhabit (experience / feel) ahead of time/ in real time, the magic of co-created realities.

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