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Exposition

"What the Probes Report": An Exercise in Operative Fiction (last edited: 2024)

About this exposition

With Operative Fiction, we propose a practice of spatial storytelling that proceeds along the lingual dynamic of prepositions rather than verbs. The text body is embedded in the medial spatiality of a printed book, a digital interface, or a performance space. Thus, the site (of the text) becomes a constituent and inextricable part of the storytelling. Methods of spatial production invade the text's very texture; in turn, textual compositions influence the unfolding of space, place, and site. Not only the story (conveyed through the text) but the text itself, with its material and procedural potential, activates the site of its action; it entangles itself in the texture of the digital surface. Furthermore, our prepositional practice shifts the spatial (and textual) focus from “location“ to “position” and “positioning”, thus activating the relational potential of multiple textual and chrono-topical layers. We begin our exercise in Operative Fiction with Thomas Ballhausen’s “What the Probes Report” by transposing the text from the surface of a printed page (FLORA, 2020) into the digital interface of a Research Catalogue exposition. The non-human protagonist, evoked through and evolving throughout the text, disrupts a subject-centred mode of narration: it is entangled in the word- and landscape of its development, thus becoming—by means of its procedural logic and function—a constituent part of its staging. The line, speculatively re-enacting the machines' functions, is the same, drawing the digital landscape's topographic texture. Applying a drawing technique typically used in a performance design draft, we explore the friction between staging and spacing by deploying minimally visible images and textual suggestions of direction. The operational plasticity of the technical images enables the congregation of dramaturgical intensities (staging) while disseminating and dispersing the story through the technological means of the exposition into hyperlinked virtual spaces (spacing). In addition to a linear reading mode, following the initial chronology of the story, we also propose a contingent reading mode activated through time codes. Acting simultaneously as elements of the drawing and as hypertext, these timelines imply the duration of a staged terrain, sometimes congregating multiple time zones within a topographic entity. Timelines act as “more-than-texts”, creating a multiplicity of positions and neighbourhoods, intertwining temporal aspects of space with the speculative grammar of the story.

type	research exposition
keywords	literature, science fiction, drawing, textuality, more-than-human collaborations, spatial storytelling
date	18/11/2022
last modified	28/10/2024
status	in progress
share status	public
affiliation	University of Applied Arts Vienna
copyright	Elena Peytchinska; Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1818707/1818708

Copyrights

name	OF_entry
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Explorer__
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	JUICE_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Mariner
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Relay__c
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	InSight_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Dawn_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Phoenix_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Nimbus_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Helios_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Zond_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	STEREO_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Luna_-01
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Explorer_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Luna_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture, picture

name	Juice_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Luna_3
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Zond_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Juice_3
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Dawn_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_1
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Mariner_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_3
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_4
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

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