The Coniunctio of Cybernetics & Sorcery
What is magic, that a machine may do it, and a machine, that it may do magic?
ELDRITECH blends art, magic, and technology to innovate experiments in theoretical and applied sorcery. It is inspired by fictional technologies that interface between physical and metaphysical ontologies, such as the Krell mind amplifiers in Forbidden Planet, and the witchmath and Tillinghast’s resonator in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Eldritech conjures what may be vulgarly perceived as supernatural horror in technology, but which is a means to power for the sorcerer, necromancer, and witch. In so doing, Eldritech challenges popular and emerging assumptions about “high” and “low” technologies, “high” and “low” magics, magic qua technology, and technology qua magic.
Eldritech is the research art enterprise of Joshua Madara a.k.a. tchnmncr. I am an occult technologist and techno-occultist, which just means I do much the same sort of thing as new media artists but primarily for occultism rather than aesthetics per se. I work in mixed and multimedia, and although my works feature electronics and computers, I consider them part of the Great Work of all arcane Arts and Crafts (ars magica), being especially the reification of spirit via technē. My basic conceit is that anything, including computers and robots, can be a spiritual as well as creative medium, and a locus of encounters with the bizarre, eerie, grotesque, macabre, numinous, sublime, uncanny, and weird.
I invoke the ghost in the machine, and explore the capability of diverse and recombinant media to haunt (be haunted, haunting) and enchant (be enchanted, enchanting), and to be vessels and portals.
Krell’s Last Dreaming is the Eldritech blog.
Instead of deducing that we are ‘nothing but’ machines, let us increase the mechanical world to embrace mystery.
Ramsey Dukes (Lionel Snell)