Electric Wizard
I am an electronic thaumaturge in Seattle, Washington. Imagine if Richard Cavendish’s Man, Myth, and Magic: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion, and the Unknown and Charles François’ International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics had a bastard child together; I am kind of like that. I am interested in how intentions inform environments that inform intentions etc., and how boxes (machines, people, societies) think and act outside-the-box (cf. transcendence). I explore these themes through a synaesthesis of magic and technology (q.v.). I teach classes on interactive media and physical computing in the context of ritual magic, and write and lecture about these same subjects and cybernetics.
I am available for consultations, commissioned or cooperative works, exhibitions, classes, workshops, lectures, or articles. Please email me for more information: joshua@hyperritual.com.
Selected Works
Many of my projects are exhibited privately, and some of the items displayed in my portfolio are sketches for those projects. I am developing some public works for 2011 and 2012, and intend to continue in that direction. Here are some things I have written, presented, and taught, in the last several years, all of which have been about cybernetics, magic, or both, and have emerged from my continuing dialogue between these two subjects.
- Sep 2007 “Re/Considering the Cybernetic Model of Magic” (presentation, Ekstasis!)
- Jul 2008 “Of Magic and Machine” (article, Patterns: The American Society for Cybernetics Newsletter)
- Jul 2009 “Cybernetics for Transumanists” (presentation, Seattle h+)
- Mar 2009 “Miracles of Autonomy: Cybernetic Perspectives on Paratheatrical Ritual” (presentation, Cybernetics – Talk – Dance – Anticommunication conference of the American Society for Cybernetics)
- Jul 2010 “The Cybernetics of Cyborgs” (presentation, CyborgCamp Seattle)
- Nov 2010 “Beginning Interactive Multimedia for Ritual Magic” (online class, Arcanorium College)
- Jun 2011 “Build Your Own 3D Sigil Generator” (online class, Arcanorium College)
- Sep 2011 “Electronomicon: Book of Electric Names” (art installation, Esoteric Book Conference)
- Sep 2011 “Automagica Theoretica” (online class, Arcanorium College)
- Robomancy.com — the premier resource for robotic magic
This is a running list of projects I am interested in developing.
- Principia Cybermagica: An Electroluminated Hyperscript — an inspired and inspirational collection of correspondences between cybernetics and magic, illustrated with generative and interactive art
- Chaos Engine — an experiment with parallel non-trivial machines having occult sympathies and antipathies
- Description of how to use Conceptual Blending to generate novel ritual forms with technology (Sørensen meets Imaz and Benyon via Fauconnier and Turner)
- Survey of to-date quantitative methods/analyses of magic and related phenomena (Carroll, Hood, Weir, etc.)
- Experiments using the REG-1 to test Carroll’s equations of magic
- Ways of using the EPOC to measure gnosis and apply it quantitatively to algorithms involving Carroll’s equations of magic
- Survey of magical models, constrained to subjects the model builders felt were necessary and sufficient for efficacious magic
- Analysis of intentional ambiguity, incongruity and multiplicity in Spare‘s work (inspired by Ansell‘s analysis)
- Linguistic agent that responds in Clean Language
- Comparison of interactive computation with Bruce Lee’s anti-algorithmic position
- (Semiotic?) rules for generating magical correspondences (Crowley, Richardson, Skinner, Whitcomb, etc.)
- Analysis of plausible reasoning in the occult, and ways to apply that to magically thinking-doing agents
You Can Find Me…
- on Twitter
- on Facebook
- on Google+
- on LinkedIn
- via email: joshua@hyperritual.com
Like any autopoietic machine, I can die for want of sustenance, or drift towards destinies which make me a stranger to myself. // Félix Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (edited to read in first person voice)
There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level. // Bruce Lee, The Art of Expressing the Human Body
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the mind, there are no limits. // John C. Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer
Liberation is indefinitely progressive. // Paul Foster Case
My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know; and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such Beings. // Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice
What are we coming to / No room for me, no fun for you / I think about a world to come / Where the books were found by the Golden ones / Written in pain, written in awe / By a puzzled man who questioned / What we were here for / All the strangers came today / And it looks as though they’re here to stay // David Bowie, “Oh You Pretty Things”
I sing the body electric / I celebrate the me yet to come / I toast to my own reunion / When I become one with the sun / I sing the body electric / I glory in the glow of rebirth / Creating my own tomorrow / When I shall embody the earth // Wade Lassiter