Sisyphus, by Tiziano Vecellio

Parafiction Link

http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/octo.2009.129.1.51

Raqs Media Collective

http://www.raqsmediacollective.net/

The Parallel World in Panels

Jordan Johnson

One of the most prominent forms of sci-fi media to address the idea of parallel worlds is the comic book medium. Parallel worlds are a regular part of many comic book mythologies; often used as a tool with which to order the infinite number of narratives that occur in the context of the universe created. The topography created by the comic book form lends itself to the description of a space and manner in which parallel narratives interact.

Although the parallel world performs many functions in the context of the comic book narrative, most commonly it is interpreted literally and is depicted as a space in which aspects of the narrative (fictional histories) are re-written or re-interpreted.

The idea of the “multiverse”, (a term coined by psychologist William James in 1825) is also a popular convention of many super hero comic universes. Usually described as a space that functions outside of, but contains and connects a string of dimensions that are a part of the narrative of that universe as a whole. The DC comic universe provides a good example of this space, which is represented by “The Bleed”, a liminal area outside of space and time that serves as a buffer between the various worlds, as well as acting as a connecting vein through which travel between realities is possible.

Parallel World in Sound?

What is a "Parallel World"? How does it relate through sound? Maybe even a Panorama created with sound. With the help of a friend, I explored improvisation, both of us at the piano, which we recorded first, and then both of us vocalizing twice, creating the sound of four voices.



Art by aadrianmusic

Imagined Realities in The Country of the Blind

H.G. Wells must have heard the saying the grass is greener on the other side more than a few times in his life as he takes this idiom and runs with it. He creates a greener space in the parallel worlds of “The Country of the Blind.” Whether romanticizing about the world of the blind or that outside, Wells’ protagonist Nunez allows his imagination to distort reality and create a paradisiacal fantasy that can never be attained.

H.G. Wells introduces this tale with an unstable narrator who immediately admits “the rest of this story… is lost to me.”[1] The narrator establishes a temporal and physical lower world that is “somewhere over there”[2]. This is a story of an Other World with over a dozen versions altering and editing the facts. It is also one with unreliable citizens who revise reality to suit their collective condition of blindness. From the beginning, H.G. Wells is hinting to the reader that everything read, seen, or heard should not be trusted. Or rather, various versions of one narrative can exist.

These are tempting fictions that contain the possibility of a better life. The country of the blind is a paradise “with sweet water…slopes of rich brown soil…and great hanging forests of pine” [3] where Nunez can be king. The outside world is freedom where he can escape servitude.

It is only when Nunez enters these worlds that his absurd fantasies reveal themselves to be false. Despite various attempts, Nunez is never fully able to fit in with the blind citizens. He is punished for his difference and bullied into an irreversible surgical procedure. When he finally escapes to the outside of the valley wall, he becomes paralyzed with thoughts of the “Unexpected” and ultimately returns to the blind. Paradise is not so kind and freedom not so empowering.

By the end of the tale Nunez is again creating a fiction of the Other World. He imagines the outside world to have “stirring beauty, a glory of day…and a place of palaces and fountains...”[4]. However, this paradise is never reached. H.G. Wells ends the story in a state of suspension, where Nunez is laying under the vast sky in a space between worlds. The story will change the moment he enters this outside world. Reality will revise his narrative, adding to the multiple versions that already exist “somewhere over there.”

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[1] H.G. Wells, “The Country of the Blind,” 1904, http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/3/, 2010.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

1

The parallel world I think of now: National Forests and National Parks managed by foresters, firefighters, and loggers working on a plan originally made well over a century ago and constantly amended to fix the future. I think of Yellowstone and the ideas of America’s Park with its enormous lodge and thousand campsites. In Yellowstone, for the first several decades, forest fires were stomped out because they threatened to ruin the conservation the park held or the aesthetic at least. Rainbow trout were introduced to fuel recreation. And other improvements on nature were made. The idea, still seen in the mission—“for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations…”—of the Bureau of Land Management, was to create an escape into nature.

Conserve the past for the future.

The past predicts the future.

Historical myths look backwards.

The land is held as a piece of the past managed for present and future generations. Once inside the boundaries, you can touch the past in and around your campground. You can promise your kids they can do the same in forty years. Initially, fire didn’t exist in the park as if it didn’t exist in the past. Rainbow trout existed as if they always had. The predatory rainbows overtook the native fish, and the lodgepole pine grew too thick. Then in 1988 fires started, spurred by drought, that couldn’t be stopped. The thick pine trees, the most perfectly managed forest, fueled the largest fire since 1910. It couldn’t be stopped, contained, or controlled. As the fire burned those in charge realized this was natural—lodgepole actually need fire to release their seeds—and so they made a new policy (Live and Let Burn) and changed the past, present, and future. The image of a perfect park changed. The trout are still there and now fires are “let burn.”

How many people were let down when the park wasn’t their perfect? How may various parallels of the park exist. Joe could remember the park one way, hold that, and Billy another.

This brings me to garbage.

Everything in the woods: A forester walks around scaling trees and projecting their growth; a wildlife biologist sneaks through thinking of how to make more mature elk herds, better grouse breeding areas, and/or more controlled predator populations—“There, see those chickadees? We need more.”; A hiker walks through enjoying the natural beauty of it all—is it nature at this point?—maybe they leave a snack wrapper along the trail so someone else walks by and realizes: “Assholes. They’re what ruins the perfection of places like this.” I hate being reminded I’m not alone in the woods or even that I’m not the only person who’s ever been there. Have you ever been sixty miles from any highway, house, or human and found shit-stained toilet paper?

Garbage: an interruption, a footprint in the present to remind the future of the past. But where does the garbage, the interruptions, stop? Superficially, the garbage defaces nature, but below it is the trail, probably put in by the CCC in 1934. That also defaced nature—remove nature step by step. Along the trail is the manicured forest worked by Wild land-Urban-Interface crews. Don’t forget the units logged at various times between 1900 and present that are now managed by foresters checking to see if land practices worked effectively or if the leave-timber is ready for to be harvested. This spot exists on the map of his gps, connected to a larger map with units and timber sales drawn all over it. He knows this piece of nature as something different than you. The same is true for mining claims—mineral rights reach a mile into the ground. And property lines, grazing rights, hunting zones. A million footprints to remind you of the past. Deeper than all of it, maybe inside you, exists the romantic abstraction of nature. This is where you will find your sublime: this is where you will touch the supernatural. The Romantics climbed mountains they pretended had never been explored. Isn’t it all just garbage? Isn’t it all just getting away from what natural really is by creating dialectics that mislead and misguide? Support atavism. Support a return to nature. But who can handle that much violence?

Instead, go find the sublime in an empty box store. You can’t see down the aisles or through the forest of shelves. Listen to echo of nothing, imagining standing in a large, secluded canyon. Maybe predators are stalking you, waiting for their chance. Yell, “Hey!” and listen to the echo bounce back to you to prove emptiness. You’re alone, secluded, removed from reality like the Village of the Blind. Return to your side of the dialectic when you’ve had enough.

These are parallel worlds: fictional worlds we all make up, walk through, and ruin.

literal exploration

a parallel world is so open to interpretation that only hypothetical parameters can be constructed. btw i think i did this wrong.

a parallel world is:

a secondary (at least +1) dimension or world or perspective. given that there is a primary to have some type of relationship to.

An exact day for day, atom for atom, thought for thought repeat of some kind of timeline, except PERHAPS quadrillions of years ago/away and bazillions of light years this way/ or that way. as an example: a solar system with the same exact mutations in the evolutionary process, same exact events with the same exact people named, raised, and killed in the same exact manner, with the same exact number of hairs on their head, whilst they are thinking of the same exact thoughts at the same exact time, as it was done in the primary world. of course this might be a laughable poke at the idea of the infinite and endless expanse of time and space, yet those words by definition lend itself to that. someone named Jason Lee in a different time and place, is a bfa4 graphic designer in Norman and Tom's class. ironically, writing a paper about parallel worlds, thinking that he himself is the first and primary Jason Lee, but he will never know this and he probably is not.

A video game (technology and computers to be more general) can be argued to be a parallel world. The movements and actions commanded by an interactee are simultaneously being executed by this secondary world's environment and inhabitants. this idea conveniently puts the parallel world on the level of the television, xbox and internet. a world within another world, yet still being parallel. this relationship can only be represented by concentric circles or the layers of a jawbreaker. this interpretation may not mean anything to the class, but this different stance on the idea of parallelism juxtaposed with the idea of the parallel world is interesting to me.

Thought and reality, or imagination and actuality, or the conscious and the unconscious, or organic actions and inorganic actions. from the first person perspective of a sentient being. interacting and moving through time and space, while at the same time having unconscious brain, heart, kidney, stomach, nerve, skeletal, mutagen, microbiological, subatomic activity. perhaps lending itself to the idea that, all secondary parallel worlds line up their own respective and distinctive traits to create the primary as a whole. like some kind of epic heavenly glow of a planetary eclipse. or a human body. all are different in some way but share one thing.

Are parallel worlds still considered parallel, if they are only parallel for a fraction of a second? Time is a factor that must be considered when dealing with anything in the first to 27th dimension. Like a pack high speed chameleons running through an endless wallpaper store. dynamically evolving and devolving relationships between worlds and dimensions, through the stretch of time. Do worlds manifest its parallelism once it comes in contact with another world and copy one anothers actions events and entities? perhaps this can be the third answer to the war between fate and choice.

Since, in geometry, parallel lines never intersect; is it safe to say that, by definition, there is no type of direct or indirect interaction between two worlds? simply a sharing of an x or y axis (definitely not both, that would be a congruent world [and with that what does a congruent world constitute? {and just to be cynically curious, what are the parameters of a perpendicular world?}]) Thinking about parallel worlds from a mathematical perspective, leave them to be interpreted in the 3rd dimension (x,y,z) given that two parallel entities cannot be points which only leave lines, planes, and full objects. entities parallel in the 3rd dimension must share 2 out of the 3 axis's. this opens another dimension of interpretation.


Parallel worlds cannot be simply put.

Jason Lee
BFA4 graphic design