There are numerous threads running through the work Tingleguts Home Dematerialization Endurance Game and Little Death Release Kit (March 2021) that tie it to concepts related to a period or condition of post-internet malaise. Whether it’s the brainwave entrainment device that allows players to attune their brain to particular frequencies, the Herkimer Diamond that was ritually charged during a ceremony performed atop the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan just outside of Mexico City that enables them to attune to other players telepathically, or the seven airpods which were found on the ground on walks around Manhattan and within the game are called HandJobs because they are shaken in one hand and tossed onto the playing board to be read during processes of divination called Reading the DNA and Snowden Storms, participants in the game are repeatedly drawn back to notions of networks and interconnectedness and to focused attempts to emerge into alternate states of human connection that operate outside of surveillance.
Within the world of the game, the internet of things extends to include the mind in that it reveals that the brain is programmable and networkable, and inanimate objects like the Herkimer Diamond because it can be programmed by the mind and facilitates metaphysical connection between players. At the same time that the HandJobs, entrainment device and goggles, electronic baby shushers, and quartz crystal Herkimer Diamond address the physical structure and technology underpinning the network of things, the game also concerns sex and sexuality in overt and hidden ways that address the online porn ecosystem that the network is notorious for enabling.
An aspect of the hidden sexuality of the work is enabled by its availability only remotely which limits interaction and allows for the contents of the black zippered case to remain secret and speculative to all but those who have encountered the game in physical space and have also agreed to play according its rules.
Tingleguts Home Dematerialization Endurance Game
and Little Death Release Kit (February 2021) Version 1
Tingleguts Home Dematerialization Endurance Game
and Little Death Release Kit (March 2021)
Game includes one custom painted brainwave entrainment controller device, two custom painted LED light goggles, seven found airpods, two custom painted baby shushers, one custom painted carrying case with mystery contents, one custom painted game board, one Herkimer Diamond programmed during a ritual performed atop the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, Mexico, two custom painted found bottles with mystery contents, and one crystal ball. BE devices use LEDs housed in goggles which flash at particular frequencies such as Delta, Gamma, and Theta that are associated with particular mental states like focus, cognitive processing, physical and mental relaxation, creativity, insight, dream and meditative states including loss of bodily awareness. Choose a state and program your mind to it in a few minutes. Within the game the handful of found airpods are called HandJobs because they are used during processes of divination where they’re collected into one hand and cast onto the playing board.
This flag was designed on September 11, 2001 in my apartment in Alexandria, Virginia. My experience of 9/11 included escaping from the golden triangle business district in Washington, DC with three colleagues in a car that inched by the flaming Pentagon in a traffic jam along highway 395. It is included here as a footnote to the Game project because of the effect 9/11 has had along with the internet and networked things to exhaust and deflate through surveillance fears related to protection from threat to life.
Thank you!