undercurrent

This is so utterly flabbgergasting I don't know where to begin ----

What puzzles me most is: what goes on in his mind when he 'produces' these texts?

Specifically, what is he is interpolates his own synonyms into the body of the otherwise shamelessly reproduced text? This seems to be shooting himself in the foot; such a strategy will hardly mask his plagiarism from the clued-in reader, AND it also removes any possible defence of the 'it's manipulation of text as found object' type....

Interesting as the other extreme of the Land identify theft controversy; here is Landtext stolen without attribution (rather than the Land name being appended to text he didn't author)...

He’ll probably justify it as a Sokalesque stratagem for exposing inept peer review.

In which case, fair play to him!

the real pathos is in the way he's added an hour and eighteen minutes to the time in the 'let us say one is drunk' quotation. Maybe such deft touches suggest a level of actual psycopathic self-delusion, that at some level he actually believes he is 'processing' the texts into something novel...?

LOL!
That's EXACTLY the sort of thing I meant... What is he thinking when he does things like change the time? 'Ha! They'll never identify the source NOW... ' That would be psychopathically deluded; but, then, the alternative is no less so; i.e. he actually convinces himself, as you say, that he is 'doing' something to the original....

michael's new discovery at :
http://www.3ammagazine.com/fiction/2003/feb/trash_palace.html
has another gem...

--

Can what is playing you make it to level - 2?

Corrosion places you as a schizophrenic, transsexual Chinese-Latino stim-addicted LA hooker with implanted mirrorshades and a bad attitude.

--

Corrosion! LOL!

The great thing is, his replacements are always so much worse than the original!

>Interesting as the other extreme of the Land
>identify theft controversy;

And like Sphaleotas, Gargett's is in effect a sophisticated gambit: his 'insurance policy' is the fact that Land can't make any consistent objection without shedding the inhuman mechanismo of the Flow Flux Klan that infuses all of the 'quoted' writings - which, of course, isn't going to happen. Of course the monkeyflake journal editors, publishers, etc. might have a different view...

And in one sense one _can_ agree that 'spreading the infection' of these writings is more important than authorial propriety, but if that's the idea then why _without exception_ affix _your own_ name, rank and qualifications (and often photo) to every piece. In order to shuffle up a theory-journo career ladder, of course...

Ultimately, what one _can_ say without fear of betraying either schizoanalysis or remixological culture, is that this guy is a real sad bastard!

Robin, think we should blame the journals for publishing his essays: it’s a year or so I know AG from his brilliant piece ‘Deprogramming the Body’ (http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=347) at Ctheory, an apparently heavily armored journal with you-know-who editors. The text is a minimalist amalgamation of ‘No future’, ‘Hypervirus’ and ‘The Thirst for Annihilation’. Upon discovering the article, I sent two emails to the editorial board and Arthur Kroker. He told that he has already taken the case seriously and will investigate personally. Now the irony is that one year passed and he is still working on it! This absolutely fits Michael’s comment: Sokal-ing academic journals.

The interesting point: AG’s old biography is nothing but Nick’s short bio at Virtual Futures (Routledge, 1998): “the dark side of digitalization”.

> Land can't make any consistent objection
> without shedding the inhuman mechanismo of
> the Flow Flux Klan that infuses all of the
> 'quoted' writings - which, of course, isn't
> going to happen.

One of the stranger effects of Ade’s technique – which broadly preserves the original cadences – is that while you’d swear Nick’s the author, the writing itself often drifts into nonsense.

Copyright’s a different question altogether, especially when it belongs to Mrs Broadhurst.

> The interesting point: AG’s old biography is
> nothing but Nick’s short bio at Virtual Futures
> (Routledge, 1998): “the dark side of
> digitalization”.

In the biography attached to the 2003 essay, ‘Reading War with Nietzsche and Reading Nietzsche with Kant, Rimbaud, and Bataille’, he credits himself with two non-existent books, _Albert Camus: Absurd Creation_ (Ashgate, 2002) and _States of Paranoia_ (Wallflower Press, 2002).

>especially when it belongs to Mrs Broadhurst.

Hell hath no fury...

a couple of points on Reza's response:
1.Academic periodicals run by canadian 'transgressive' neoliberal aesthetes are a pretty soft target. It's not as if he's smuggled a paragraph of rabid irreligion into the New Yorker front page.
2.Any 'brilliance' comes from the texts themselves not Gargett's 'reinterpretation'; as Michael rightly says the apparently random stitching and modification of them serves no purpose except destroying their focus and energy. If it's some sort of prank, or an attempt at disseminating the work, rather than a feeble attempt to get 'credit' from someone else's work, why didn't he just submit one of the texts intact?

>>>In the biography attached to the 2003 essay

The one I’m referring to was at ‘Get Underground’ journal attached to his article entitled: The Emergence of Synthetic Reason. (Obviously “borrowed” from de landa’s work). both his essay and biography has been removed; however, you can find some hints here: http://www.getunderground.com/underground/author.cfm?Contributor_ID=186

>>>Any 'brilliance' comes from the texts themselves not Gargett's 'reinterpretation'

....yes, i used the word brilliant in an ironic / sniding tone.

>>>If it's some sort of prank, or an attempt at disseminating the work, rather than a feeble attempt to get 'credit' from someone else's work, why didn't he just submit one of the texts intact?

actually, he did ... a piece at Azimute journal and now removed. i have the text somewhere on my machine in a zip file. ... will try to find it.

The great thing is, his replacements are always so much worse than the original!

If not sensless:

Included in Sphaleotas' latest discovery are these gems of Gargetting/ garbling:

'Modernity discovered irreversible time' becomes 'modernity discerned irreversible time'

Even better: 'organized around the Gaian attractor' becomes 'organised around the GAIN attractor' (eh?')

and, most hilariously, 'coarse materialism' becomes 'course materialism' - of coarse it does!

All the evidence points to Sphaleotas and Gargett being one and the same person. Lets face it, knowing how sad we know Sphaleotas to be...

Get her!

conspiracy theory #1 : given that they evidently share an identical monomaniac propensity for collecting every land and land-related text ever written,
***Sphaleotas and Reza are the same person***

conspiracy theory #2 : given the priceless gargettisms quoted by mark above,
***Gargett is in fact the Microsoft Word SpellChecker***
- it's all an automated hyperstitional bluffing tactic by the Architectonic Order of the Paperclip. (I'll be checking in future for Heidegger=Headgear, Deleuze and Guattari=Delouse and Guitar, etc.)

reza:
>....yes, i used the word brilliant in an
>ironic / sniding tone.

...yes - a victim of the enforced desubtlisation of ASCII text, should have given you the benefit of the doubt..

>>>***Sphaleotas and Reza are the same person***

Unity through demonic-possession: Now we are one.

>>>conspiracy theory #1 : given that they evidently share an identical monomaniac propensity for collecting every land and land-related text ever written,

i should add: + any text written by Michael Sphaleotas and Robin Undercurrent.