Back to index of Nerve 9 - Autumn 2006

Flunstellas

By Neil Winterburn

I have been investigating the Flunstellas phenomenon for the past five years. A Flunstella is a FLock/cLUster/conSTELLAtion of language, ideas & memories that has been disembodied from an individual, and so floats through social spaces often interpolating with other Flunstellas. In an attempt to explain Flunstellas, both to people that like a bit of Artspeak & those who don't, I've decided to write this statement in two parts:

Flunstellas in Plain English
I joined the Flunstellas organization after a near mystical out of body type experience I had in a nightclub. I was drunk and down to the point where I felt I almost didn't exist. Here's a snippet of a story I wrote about it.

"...But that moment I was so low that it felt like I faded down and I could see other peoples' worlds projecting beyond their bodies. I could see/imagine that woman's worklife, home life, her ideas and memories of all the different parts of her life and mind projecting out beyond the walls we were in, like constellations mapping out her consciousness."

So taking the idea that 'language is the mirror of the mind' and jumping to the conclusion that, more specifically, your language is the mirror of your mind and my language is the mirror of mine, I asked friends and strangers to take part in experiments in which we created our own Flunstellas. We made them with string, paper and other materials, and in virtual interactive spaces. All these experiments have been documented and turned into interactive digital projects.

Flunstellas in Pretentious Wank-Speak
Flunstellas are coexistent, yet solipsistic language systems. Each is sovereign language territory of an individual or a group. I've used, as signposts, both the heterogeneous associationism of Hume, and the almost closed nature of cognitive systems, according to social constructivism. Instead of subject(s)/object, Flunstellas are multiple self referring systems in a single environment, more like system(s)/environment than subject(s)/object. Data flocking has also been a major reference. Each is a hetwork of 'internal' language, representing its makers internal mental processes through prose, drawing & other modernist devices and 'external' language/behaviour represented through media, such as documentary footage of the maker, or views of politics or last nights tv. In my research, the two methods I have deployed the most have been communication games in real social spaces, and the development of shared virtual spaces, in which collaborators create language networks for end users to interact with.

Find out more at www.flunstellas.org - download up to 7 interactive projects for free.