Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Virtual world mourning

Death rituals continue moving and developing online. A recent example is this story about an Entropia player who memorializes his dead fiancee in that virtual world.

After five years, Jacobs had finally found a way to make his late love a permanent part of their virtual world, honoring her in the virtual setting that meant a great deal to both of them.

Here's a different, interesting, sad approach:

One of the ways he initially dealt with the grief was playing as her character in Entropia, but Mindark has a one-person-one-avatar rule and he was asked to stop.  

(thanks to Arnaud Leene)

Statue violence in Venezuela

A statue of the Virgin Mary weeps blood: a 2011 recurrence in Venezuela of classic Catholic lore/Gothic.

Google translates thusly:

 suddenly the Virgin of the Mystic Rose which was in the place began to pour from his eyes a red liquid.
These people assume it's blood and are waiting to see what happened.  

Meanwhile one religious statue had its head sawn off, and more Virgin Many statues bedecked with red.

Monstrous musical mixing

Mad theory about musical history: audio sampling was inspired by a monstrous musical instrument.

Behold the cat organ!

[I]nstead of pipes, there were sixteen cat heads each with its body confined; the tails were sticking out and were held to be played as the strings on a piano, if a key was pressed on the keyboard, the corresponding tail would be pulled hard, and it would produce each time a lamentable meow. The historian Juan Christoval Calvette, noted the cats were arranged properly to produce a succession of notes from the octave… 

You see, this isn't just horror, but a Gothic anticipation of remixing and sampling:

 cat-calls that are not merely cat-calls, but something more—a form of music semiotically reassembled from the distinct voices controlled by the device...

[T]he cat organ functions symbolically, based on the association of cats with devils and an immaterial, supernatural order where normally antithetical animals come together in a peacable kingdom

Betancourt runs with this to Autotune and the housing bubble.  And, naturally, to a nice glance at contemporary IP isues:

A consideration of this early example of semiotic reassembly offers insight into contemporary ethical questions that could be asked about the use of sampling in digital capitalism.

Here's Google's copy of the Weckerlin book.

(via MetaFilter)

Some Vincent Price tidbits for you

Here's a fun thing: Vincent Price telling you short-short stories. These minitales are from an album (vinyl recording, children) called Odyssey, dating back to around 1970, and lovingly digitized by the teeming cultural brain that is WFMU.

The stories' topics are varied, from local history (California, Oregon, the Dakotas) to Ripley's-style horror.  Price is often a character.  Some are adverts.  All end with a cheerful "so long!"

(thanks to involuntary informationalist Hugh Blackmer)

Today's severed head story

Speaking of Catholic Gothic, a relic is now for sale, one with all kinds of horror attached.  It's the head of Saint Vitalis of Assisi (d. 1370), allegedly.  

He's apparently the venerated patron of those suffering from some sexually transmitted diseases. Or "[h]e was known as a patron against sicknesses and diseases affecting the genitals" (wiki).

He died in 1370, and word of his sanctity soon spread due to reports of numerous miracles performed on those with bladder and genital disorders.

Sadly, or appropriately,

[t]he head sat for many years in the family hall in County Louth, but was recently uncovered in an outhouse. 

(thanks to Arnaud Leene)

 

Monastery accused of depravity, sort of

A monastery is being closed down for decadence. The pope is apparently unhappy with some Cistercians at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme.

Some of the charges are classically entertaining:

Anna Nobili, a nightclub dancer who became a nun, was invited to perform her "holy dance" before an audience including archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican's cultural department. For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines...

 Italian press reports have speculated that the inspectors from the Vatican suspected homosexual relations between monks at the monastery.

Others are more modern, but not nearly as titillating: 

The monks living there now had opened a shop selling organic produce from their kitchen garden, but this was shut down in 2009 amid accusations of their having secretly stocked the shelves from a neighbourhood grocery.

That Guardian article could be considered an example of British Gothic's obsession with Catholicism.  It's a durable trope, seeing the largely Catholic South as racy and repressed, hypocritical and heinous, fun and very scary.

(via John Crowley)

Severed feet: one step forward...

Canadian authorities claim to have identified the former owners of some severed feet.  Said authorities also reassure us that things aren't disturbing:

“All of these individuals deaths are well documented and there is enough evidence to suggest that these deaths were not suspicious,” he said, linking them to misadventure and suicide.

However, Infocult is pleased to learn that "Three feet remain to be identified". 

Coincidentally, Terence Malick's new movie appeared, and advertises itself thusly.  Note that the film is all about the fundamental nature of humanity and the universe.

(thanks to D'Arcy Norman on Twitter, who protests his innocence in vain)

Gold serfing

Gold farming reached the next level, as Chinese prisons have begun forcing prisoners to level up for cash.  Yes, it's involuntary gold farming, forced play for someone else's benefit.

In a dark moment, I think of this as the ultimate in gamification.

Sometimes economics is witchcraft

Gothic macroeconomics, continued: if the US economy is better off than it might have been, thank some Romanian witches for their benevolent intervention.

It's a cute short story, for a painting sold on Etsy.

...Dressed in their purple ceremonial garbs that shield them from evil, the three set up their cauldron in the middle of the Capitol rotunda and proceeded to boil up a powerful brew consisting of swamp water from Foggy Bottom, dried Russian moles, soiled congressional laundry and old bones from long-forgotten skeletons secreted away in legislators’closets. ...

(thanks to Jesse "Babushka" Walker)

Where do babies come from?

Today's disturbing myth, from webcomic Married to the Sea:

(via the sublime Wurzeltod empire)