Exposition

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

Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
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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.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsliterature, science fiction, drawing, textuality, more-than-human collaborations, spatial storytelling
date18/11/2022
last modified28/10/2024
statusin progress
share statuspublic
affiliationUniversity of Applied Arts Vienna
copyrightElena Peytchinska; Thomas Ballhausen
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
languageEnglish
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1818707/1818708


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2352404 Explorer_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2352407 Luna_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2352840 Juice_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2352938 Luna_3 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2352942 Zond_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2352970 Juice_3 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2353535 Dawn_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2354739 map_1 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2354742 map_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2354758 Mariner_2 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2354870 map_3 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2362613 map_4 Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2988877 Mariner Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2989098 InSight_ Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2989159 Dawn_ Elena Peytchinska CC BY-NC-ND
2989653 Phoenix_ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2989672 Nimbus_ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2989712 Helios_ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2989767 Zond_ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2989822 STEREO_ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2989924 Luna_-01 Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2990344 JUICE_ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
2990529 Explorer__ Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND
3114130 Relay__c Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen CC BY-NC-ND

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