authority | virtual

Few never-built buildings have attracted as much attention as Jeremy Bentham’s“Panopticon.” And it’s easy to understand why.

The panopticon was a prison. As Bentham imagined it, a circular tower would stand in the center of a ring of cells stacked several stories high. By manipulating light and perspective, the contents of the central tower, where the warden was to sit, was concealed from the prisoners, while the cells and their contents were always visible, lighted by small windows in the exterior wall.

As Foucault later said, the Panopticon is a simple idea, once someone has thought of it. But why is it important? Influential?

A common interpretation of the panopticon adopts an almost religious tenor. The warden — unseen, though (for all we know) all-seeing: pan-optic — knows exactly what happens within his domain. He, and only he, has the power of unobstructed observation, including the power to observe his own material agents, his prison guards, prison doctors, and so on. But he himself cannot intervene. To be seen is to lose power; to be seen is to inform everyone else that the prison is suddenly not under observation, that the grip of power has slipped.

As Lacan/Zizek would argue, to see the prison warden, to see him walk about in person, deflates virtual authority: once the warden can be seen, he becomes impotent, flaccid, perhaps funny, but certainly not nearly as threatening or powerful as he might have seemed before. In other words, the idea of the prison warden is more powerful than the person himself — and as such, he must remain concealed in the tower, invisible yet omnipresent, in order to maintain power. Likewise, the idea of being monitored is more powerful than actually being monitored.

kycmaerxthaere | parallel virtual + physical universe

The Kcymaerxthaere is a vast alternate universe created by Eames Demetrios, a California-based artist and filmmaker who began installing the plaques in 2003. The premise of the project is that the Kcymaerxthaere exists as its own parallel world, but its remnants are often visible in our own, “linear” world—intersections that Demetrios endeavors to commemorate by physically marking their presence.

Exploring the Kcymaerxthaere requires a hearty imagination as the fictional universe is based on the theory that we can change how we perceive our visual environment, or as Henry David Thoreau said,

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” 

With a bit of mental flexing, these stories — accessible in virtual form online, and in individual physical sites, honour evens from the parallel world in our linear world. 

Kcymaerxthaere is a global (and more) work of 3-dimensional story telling. It is an alternative universe that is largely consistent with our linear world in some ways, though it has many different stories, rules, creatures, even laws of science it seems.

In a way, it is a bit like a novel with every page in a different place. Reading the markers and sites in situ is a kind of transformative experience that connects you to possibilities and stories in a whole new way.

Kcymaerxthaere is a parallel universe that intersects with much of our linear Earth. The name comes from the cognate words kcymaara (meaning "the true physicality of the planet") and xthaere(which is a shape with almost an infinity of edges or dimensions--infinity minus 29 to be precise). We explore and tell stories of these other realms through many media, but most famously by installing bronze plaques and historic sites that honor events from the parallel world in our linear world. - Eames Demetrious - creator of Kcymaerxthaere.