# jg ballard and garmes > undeath x sex x video garmes / terminal boredom = the near future > ~ paraphrasing hyper ballard n.0 a scenario: in which you in your virtual research lab attempt to address the enviable question about "j.g ballard and video garmes" and start remixing free associating (and co-dissecting) the varied mental states ontological modalities and hi-tension narrative threads which make up 'the ballardian' // video here **booting up a quick garme of ballard** "ballard": the disturbingly convoluted artificial nature of resonating inter-relationship between the real(tm) and the (sci-fi) imaginary in the context of radical social change the complex geometries of our dented psychological fenders precisely because of appearances there seems considerable potential dialogue between j. g. ballard and video garmes a contested arena of intellectual simulation / simulation still largely unexplored - mostly because few understand ballard / video garmes? shanghai jim the bard of shepperton was uniquely obsessed by and fully embedded in the family friendly a-calypso of the modern electronic media b.landscape - and was himself a copywriter for an advertising agency (that is the generation of persuasive media) ir whole body of literature is arguably a violent response to the unchecked expansion of the western global pillage lifestyle as a dis-eased mechanism of complex digital entertainment - a system of seduction spectacle and serious amusements the unique reality of ballard's ww2 childhood internment in the civilian camp at lunghua - of adults trying to retain a semblance of already pre-considered 'daily life' / reality(tm) and sudden surrealist re-juxtapositions of material objects / private myths caused by the continual physical upheaval of war - literally formed ballard's particular conceptual viewpoint and unique aesthetic angle of final approach this queasy aesthetic a painfully heightened sensitivity to media the heavy fluid interzone termed ballardian - is unconsciously understood embraced and celebrated by many worldwide - particularly skateboarders parkourists and everyone who's ever flown in a plane player-developers have now also started to play with.in the ballardian. perhaps ir natural reduction of ballard's work to the usual deadpan scenes (cyphers) of drained swimming pools concrete car parks abandoned hotels and esoteric sexual practices with dead astronauts in unusual dis-locations speaks more about an (aggressive immediate) need to neurally reduce complexity to cliche in order to seemingly manage and control it - or even make it remotely understandable (ie. fun(tm)) most video garmes already perform this (dis)function - a largely uncritical romantic idealization and freakish oversimplification of vastly complex and frightening electronic hyperreality **a forever scientifically fictional present** the immediate near future danger posed to any truer understanding of ballard posed by video garmes is that any arty wit can come along and seemingly provide ir project with instant weighty depth and cultural cachet by misquoting / misunderstanding ballardian symbolism this is indistinctly non ironic considering the ballardian originates and operates at the surface - a philosophical filter or screen a darkly visionary potentiality a disquieting hum at the public electronic margins of interstitial voids the reason there haven't been any video garmes directly referencing or influenced by ballard is because many have already been directly referencing ir at a subconscious level a central element of our modern life continually addressed in ir work by already being part of a vast global network of advertising / consumption there's already a violent sexualized process of recreationally psychopathlogical disturbance in operation 24/7/365 - all in the service of maintaining and expressing status quo null video garmes are perhaps already ballardian - not in that they necessarily resemble or are directly suggestive of the conditions described in ballard's novels and stories - dystopian modernity bleak human generated landscapes and the psychological effects of techno-social / environmental developments etc.- but that they're direct manifestations of an already existing mediation-network of raw capitalist ideology **internalizing the ballardian circuit** in many ways indie garme developers have always already missed the ride on ballard and if they are to incorporate what they consider is ballardian they must now actively jump beyond - to what might be called the hyper ballardian or neo ballardian - simply to engage at all with such ancient texts ir (/mundane) existential implications one suspects the specific application of a little zizek ointment could also be beneficial this radical displacement - this constant troubled shifting of aesthetic priorities in the attempt to suggest the texture of everyday life is precisely what is deliciously dangerously imprecise about the magnetic idea-field which defines "the ballardian" this is what it means to have a ballardian 'nervous breakdown' - a deconstruction of the electrical system of the alien spinal column of media occurs it's precisely the juicy threat of having to fully engage with the (concrete) global mediascape surface and willingly re-find our collective selves among the giant jungian ferns and crystallized forests that terrifies and enthrals; a true psychic ground zero for the hollow (digital entertainment) consumer soul **video garme ballardianism** a list of popular video garmes with ballardian moments or with a ballardian feel **+** painkiller: snowy bridge abandoned factory military base hell levels **+** the sewer level of mirror's edge (but not m.e generally; that's neuropink) **+** the sewer level of half life 2 (but not inside the combine mega-tower) **+** next car garme (if only they'd replace crash dummies with the famous) **+** the city of watchdogs / gta 5 (pc with a no-people mod) **+** the light and hyper-anal detailing in project cars **+** the architecture of syndicate / remember me **+** the postmodern mediascape of superhot **+** the sweet glitches in skate 3 **telling ir (ballardian) story** "ir story" is developer sam barlow's (failed) attempt to tell a digital story with j.g ballard maybe one could also attempt to **+** use a subjective understanding of the ballardian to tell a digital story **+** tell a digital story about what we feel about the ballardian / j.g ballard **+** tell a digital story in a ballardian manner style or aesthetic approach when dealing with the ballardian in / as video garmes the main point is not merely to tell a story but 'boldly evoke' to suggest to strategize - and thankfully sam barlow seems aware of this important distinction perhaps ballardian garmes work best as tiny modular laboratories for emergence of 'strange' / abstract and unplanned events and ir neo-scientific pressure testing sam states that jim's 1970 novel atrocity exhibition 'pushes against the boundaries of printed media and touching on aspects of digital stories to come'. it also seems to parallel the constant experimentation of miles davis particularly as embodied in ir electric period indeed there's a strange gutenbergian air around the atrocity exhibition as though 'ballardian experimentation' generally is simultaneously bleeding edge in its hyper-modernistic print based newness - and historically fecund / deeply evocative culturally sam however implies the appeal of jim's condensed novel lies in the ability to 'navigate the book by free associating the imagery and ideas it contains.' not only that: ballard suggests we moderns navigate our world / generate all meaning via nonlinear free association of / inside electronic media landscape images; a 'nervy' forensic alphabet of desire **update patch**: turns out ir story is simply a linear police procedural told with vhs video ballardian tonalities; illustrators eric peterson guy billout and painter jeffrey smart easily evoke a ballardian mood through psychologically exacting geometric composition and a restrained modality of light akin to the metaphysical terrain mapping of giorgio de chirico // some jeffrey smart paintings here ballard: making players media (research) personalities reading talking writing and now also playing about / around ballard seems to turn all players / researchers into infamous (/canadian) philosophers of communication theory / public intellectual performance artists / social media prophets with unlikely names eg. herbert marshall mcluhan brian o'blivion theodore miles and robert what one imagines all such nameless confused and oddly fascinated researchers busy researching a strange case - inevitably ir own bizarre existence - with inherently limited information. andrzej gasiorek states that "[..] these texts are principally reflections on the problematics of agency" (jg ballard - contemporary british novelists series page 56) such interventions and self-insertions into the ballardian realm represent an important ongoing attempt to critically re-engage with the project of literary meta-psychoanalysis set up by ballard in the 60s with ballard there's not only a discussion and analysis of the atrocious zeitgeist but also a fundamental questioning of what crime is more truly being committed and exactly where; perhaps the main philosophical transgression in/of the atrocity exhibition lies in the desert real itselves to partially answer this we must turn again to the incredible cut-ups of william s. burroughs and how literary fragments reveal the cross-sectionizing dimensionality of time in the modern virtual age - the flattening of hyper-mediated events / life into a totalizing simultaneity of now in such a space only cryptic gestures and sexualizing technological tension exist; the constant surveillance of oblique sideways glances by bad actors caught in a bizarre stage production by dark hostile unknowable forces with jim at the wheel (or perhaps as the very chrome on the front fender) we find ourselves continually crashing at terminal speed - and in desperately slow stylized motion - into the ragged shining brilliance of a (forever missing) present // video here // republic of bob