TENTACLE CONFIGURATION

It is the continued effort of certain organizations / institutions / individuals to create digital zones of ambiguity. At which the physical, biological, and virtual converge. The text creates itself in the emission of low-humming lights. User-body operating interface with the mannerisms of an occult performer. They shape the text in their likeness. Taking the abstract segments of their consciousness and rearranging them into primitive images. White text crawling through black screen void.

Labyrinths are made from abyssal tools. Your movement hidden behind a screen. You can tell that you are moving, and that your movements are contained within a structure, but not where exactly you are moving, or what the structure looks like. The minotaure creeps through low-poly textures. There is an inference that these zones are not tactile, that they are merely an allusion to the possibility of physical space, but this is not the case. The act of obfuscation and the act of annihilation are not one in the same. The artificial fog that negates your seeing is a tool. The machine cannot contain itself, so its methods must be rendered in half-formed states.

A set of reclusive figures arrange the make-up of a simplistic organism. They write the code for two probability functions, the first is post-variable and the second is pre-variable. The variable slot is made as a placeholder. In each iteration, it replaces itself with vocabulary pulled from a micro-lexicon. One of them murmurs something about NEW CHRONOLOGIES. Another says something about ARTIFICIAL FIELDS. When the program is finished they activate it and feed the results into a spreadsheet.

Zona reveals its potentialities. Tendrils extend from the central mass. Tissue forming in the shallow underside of the membrane and slowly pushing through into the open air. Frivolous dermal layers shedding through exposure. Out of each tendril comes further tendrils. Secreted fluids coagulate on the surface of the half-formed environment. Globules dotting the virtual interior. The potentialities of the mass are revealed in its byproducts. Synthetic proteins extract raw data from each globule and display their contents on your HUD. Two columns running down your peripheries. Your vision clipping through the emptiness.

Each blank space creates the parameters for a new field. In the zone between POST-CLITORUS and PRE-TENTACLE the embryo of an unfettered academia is conceived and nourished. The machine extracts new couplets under the pretense of furthering the potential routes for your knowledge-base to expand. Enigmatic moments crawl from their alcoves / reveal the places where they have been hiding. You study the residue left in their cavities. Materials derived from their contents is utilized to explore the anomalous zones between each variable.

In a prominent essay titled, “The Tentacle Configuration” someone tries to map the physical existence of digital programs. In the first section there is discussion of the hardware that houses these mechanisms. Ambiguously, we can say that there is a server somewhere. In the second section there is discussion of the interior space (i.e. virtual zones). In the same manner that we think of ludological space and architecture. In the virtual there is a room / there is a place for you to inhabit. Often structures are given Escherian qualities and shallow textures, but still they are operable. They have dimension. When you operate a virtual facsimile—vessel capable of occupying this space—your traversal is real. The labor you perform is not biological, but still there is a labor.

The name, “Tentacle Configuration” comes from a metaphor about dynamic virtual architecture. The tentacles of the structure are mobile. Hallways can curve and rearrange when you’re not looking. They are not subject to the traditional physical laws (unless employing a self-constraint). When the configuration of the tentacles changes, you are in a new structure. One building becomes an infinite arrangement of foreign interiors.

These couplets occupy a more primitive physical space than the dynamic virtual architecture of the tentacle configurations. Here, we instead see two proto-limbs. They lack the muscles and joints that would grant them a direct flexibility. They are not capable of changing their shape or orientation. Instead, they operate with an interior mobility. They cannot move their proto-limbs, but they can change each’s characteristics. POST-DECADENCE cannot dislodge itself from the left column, but it can reorient itself to become POST-GLITCH. The machine adapts to fluctuations in its complexity.

Meanwhile, you find yourself in a mutated variant of the tentacle configuration. On the box-set monitor, through layers of dust, you see a simple 10x10 grid. Three geometric symbols sit at different positions. Each variable is a static object. You picture a courtyard of belvedere torsos. Their composition suffering degradation. In the virtual zone, each statue is subject to an abstract erosion. Not withering into soft edges, but suffering from problematic code that might mutate and change its shape into something else entirely. The temporality of the couplets expands into a tactile space. The expansive space behind the screen that blinds you.

User-body attempts to interpret the interface as it converts from one dimension to another. Shifting from the Tarkovskyan Zone of the longue duree into the non-Euclidian aesthetics of the Escherian. Disparate bytes combine to form primitive facsimiles of the ASCII monitor. You read data in the manner of a submarine pilot. Comparing the shape and placement of dots on a slow-refreshing monitor.

The configuration changes. Space rearranges itself. Escherian architecture flattens into two-dimensional renderings. Rudimentary graphics attempt to map the complex roots of the rhizome. When it changes again you look for patterns. But there are none. The tentacle configuration is not built upon patterns, it is built upon the organic movements of molluscular appendages. It is a spectre pulled from the AI corpse. With the sentience of a low-function creature.

The configuration changes again. You imagine the tentacles as chthonic gods, their behaviors enigmatic and uncaring. Occupying digital zones of ambiguity. Your praxis is a haphazard ritual for appeasing creatures that you do not understand. The organism yawns and writhes without your consent. The new arrangement of the three geometric symbols continues without pattern. Each new iteration is unpredictable, but you get the sense that it is not random.

Another proposal arrives at the forefront of your skull. The grid is not the tentacles, it is the ground underneath them. The organism rests upon a flat plane. Its thrashing changes the topography of the landscape, thus changing the placement of each object resting upon it. The grid becomes an aerial representation, neglecting height or depth—one in the same. The movement of the statues then is not the movement of the tentacles, but the aftermath of their apocalyptic behavior. In this proposal you note that the grid is no longer an obscuring surface. It is a debriefing.

The configuration changes again and you think that the tentacle model may be incomplete. You remember that this is only one model, that it runs parallel to its peers, but that it is not all-encompassing. Your praxis is the occult ritual that you had always assumed it was. Not because it is done for the appeasement of these unfathomable beings, but because it is haphazard and built on conjecture.

You reframe the grid as a rudimentary landscape. You reframe the three geometric symbols as independent subjects. In the new model you view each subject as a micro-structure. Fractalizing the greater landscape. Each micro-structure is then characterized by its own internal Escherian arrangements, which do not affect its external behavior. The movement of each micro-structure, similar to the tentacle configuration, is organismal. But the grid itself is two dimensional. It is static and unchanging. Variables are dependent on the whims of the micro-structures. The surface absorbs the qualities of the interface, siphoning the fluidity of the glass monitor. The user-body enters the digital zone. It enters each micro-structure via engagement. Operating the surface as it would operate an out-moded screen. Knowing that there is nothing visible beneath, or that what is beneath has not yet been rendered. Its characteristics yet to be fully-formed. The invisible labyrinth does not yet have walls, but it knows where the walls will eventually be, and where to make you stop and turn. An epitaph reads over each dead-end. “This is not the end.” But in the moment it does not feel true.

“Doubt can be an abyss.” The procedures that allow for your entrance into the first (◼) micro-structure are difficult to describe. They are reminiscent of speed-running techniques. Pressing your weight against fragile surfaces and adjusting your vision / velocity until you wriggle your way onto the other side of the wall. Body of gelatin breaking down along the increasingly permeable membrane.

The interior is comprised mainly of corridors. Low-poly textures stretch over the face of each wall. The room is not a labyrinth. Your navigation does not require a guiding thread. The layout is hyper-simplistic. At the end of the hallway you find a metal contraption plugged into the wall. Its posterior surface clinging to an indent in the texture. When you remove it the cardinal directions refresh and you are facing the other direction. In your departure, you use the same clipping techniques that allowed for your entrance. Returning to the greater landscape, you notice that your position has changed again. You remain close to the first (◼) micro-structure, but the others have shifted dramatically. You perhaps have as well, but only as a component of ◼, not as the independent agent that might have preferred to see yourself as.

The user-body becomes unstable. You feel a disconnect between yourself and this vessel. It steps with a wider gait / the spine curves with a stronger posture / the head wobbles at a more melodic pace. When you collapse onto the ground, the user-body lags behind.  

The tentacle configuration does not account for the spatial anomalies that might occur within the body of the subject. It is only a tool for measuring and understanding complex architectures. The anomalies that afflict the mobility of the user-body lack study or research. In this moment of intense nausea, when your limbs are lagging behind your reflexes, you curl up on the ground. The metal contraption (⬢) resting in front of you, its non-action emanating a holy ray. The tentacle configuration slithering its way into your brain. Slime trailing along each tendril as it enters your every orifice. You feel as if your body is being suspended high over the grid-landscape. But you remain where you are. In prayer posture at the base of the metal contraption (⬢). The landscape changes three times.

And then you are fine again. The lag subsides and your limbs begin to move in unison. The organism releases you from its hallucinatory suspension. The metal contraption accepts your prayers. Holding you in place as the landscape rearranges itself. Microstructures locomote in the likeness of false statues, running from one posture to another. The interface asks you to confirm your coordinates, to record and archive what you’ve experienced. You do so, mapping the potentialities of each new model (spatial and temporal).

The metal contraption crawls its way into your inventory and you trudge forward into the gardens of the second (▲) microstructure. Its pyramidal shape foreshadowing your inevitable ascent / descent. You feel a sense of relief at the possibility of exploring another plane. Cave texture evoke a familiarity that the strictly virtual is often incapable of capturing elsewhere. You anticipate spelunking. You anticipate more metal—metal adjacent—contraptions. Pending operations trail along the periphery of your interface. The user-body drags you forward.

By Mike Corrao

Mike is the author of two novels, Man, Oh Man (Orson’s Publishing) and Gut Text (11:11 Press); one book of poetry, Two Novels (Orson’s Publishing); two plays, Smut-Maker (Inside the Castle) and Andromedusa (Forthcoming – Plays Inverse); and two chapbooks, Avian Funeral March (Self-Fuck) and Spelunker (Schism – Neuronics). Along with earning multiple Best of the Net nominations, Mike’s work has been featured in publications such as 3:AM, Collagist, Always Crashing, and The Portland Review. He lives in Minneapolis. @ShmikeShmorrao