Text: Bo-Yi Shen
There is no start or end, only the process of a fall, diving infinitely towards a ground being stripped of its foundation. The worldly body gradually blends into oceans, deserts, volcanos, the sky, and the wilderness. The body separates from the self in unceasing motion, as eyesight begins to unravel, the ears fade into silence, and the skin touches the planets, its membrane expanding steadily yet explosively, feeling the rough, intricate, fierce, and steady energy of physical matter. The self is constantly lost in the fall as you strive to pick up the fading pieces.
墜落前的夜晚，映入眼簾一具緩緩燃燒的三角形火焰，背景與中間是一片的虛無黑暗，但卻湧現海浪不綿的聲景，隨著時間流逝，三角柱燃燒成灰燼，岸邊的海洋影像則從黑暗背景逐漸浮現1，你感受到行星波動的無限韻律，拍擊著自己受到大數據之海制約的耳朵。於此同時，你感到自己生命的必朽性，如同火柱閃現般短暫，終將煙消雲散，化為塵埃。各種龐大的身心焦慮，無論是自律、工作、學習、賺錢、死線、疫情、人設、世界大戰、累積自己、感情經營與人情事故，在這片無窮無盡的海洋面前，不過是滄海一粟，你感覺到很自在，想成為小水珠，跟這片汪洋融為一體。然而，人造的船笛長鳴硬生生劃開海洋的律動，古怪的感覺緩緩在心裡種下陰影。
墜落前的凌晨，海灘連結火山口的黑色沙漠。2 你見到無數人們，跳下圓形火山口，讓自己瞬時跟地球共融。灼燙的火，包覆著墜落的身軀，屍駭成為灰燼，隨著濃煙渺渺飄起，經由空氣循環落下成為你腳下的黑色沙漠。你踩著眾人的屍骨灰燼，彷彿被無數屍骨抓著雙腳，踩入流沙深陷其中，無法動彈，沙漠正在一滴一點吞噬身體。
你陷入絕望處境，羨慕那些人躍下火山的瞬間痛快。在沙漠即將湧入口鼻，失去意識前，你看見一隻披著黑色VHS磁帶的巨獸出現在沙漠3，祂從嘴裡噴射災難性地核能光束，無限的強光與能量，摧毀了你的記憶、過去、傳統與歷史。如果說班雅明的「歷史天使」，被進步的風吹著倒退走，想挽留面對的歷史廢墟4；那巨獸的進步之光，則是災難性地溶解一切。在放棄生命之際，你發現你不只想保存自己，更想保存那些被摧殘殆盡的歷史——人們忽視的角落與被壓迫的事物。
你知道這具有血有肉的身體終將逝去、死亡與湮滅，就像跟黑色流沙融合的絕望。但我們總可以透過「媒介」留下「第二肉身」——檔案、文件與藝術保存的歷史。時間，如現實流沙般不斷流逝，分分秒秒吞噬著我們有限的肉身；媒介，卻可以倒轉與重新操作時間，以儀式與魔法讓幽靈以另類姿態復活。作為死去幽靈的你，將隨著媒介的演繹與播放而重新復活，躍出螢幕，感染、詛咒、附身與侵佔觀眾的身體與意識。5
如今數據之海的各式媒介，隨著平台傳播，有如病毒席捲人類。人類大量被數據計算、預估與控制，加速更新上傳，讓自己成為各式關係連結的訊息。這些訊息脫離了歷史，成為集體眾生的數位洋流。當中無用與擾亂系統的幽靈被隱蔽，只剩下無限增生的計算、統計與反饋的「平滑媒介」。人類的性慾、肉體與心靈，漸漸被分析、剖開與徵招成各種有用的平台數據，甚至景觀、行星與地表也逃不過數據平滑的塑形。你原本以為數據只是單純重現人體或自然地景，但其實數據正在塑造自然風光。三億年後，太陽毀滅，所有人類的有機肉身全面滅亡，平滑的數據訊息會延續我們的生命，不止地運算地景嗎？6
Faced with the total dominance of data media, you feel an urge to escape, to return to the rawness of nature, using the infinite powers of the wilderness, inner spirit, spontaneity, pre-reflection, and meditation to counter the alienation of data calculations and to fight against the alienating effects of civilization by exiling the self from society and extra-sensory connections with nature. However, your find there is no “nature” to return to, only a semblance of nature that has been mediatized, and what looks like a desert has been filled with eroded corpses, not at all the nature you knew. The black desert that engulfs you, like toner, like cat litter, can bury poop as well as people, along with all kinds of obsolete media. You strive to break loose from the mediatization of the black desert and return to nature but realize that you are being haunted by all kinds of dead spirits.
The palate is filled with dried-out and delicate sensations, and as the running sand invades your body, you cannot distinguish the boundaries of your inner and outer bodies. You start to fall into the abyss, your consciousness fading away, feeling the violent dizziness and unease while reveling in the ecstasy of death, a bona fide immersive experience, eventually coming around to a place of communion with the dead. Why must there be a dichotomy of “media alienation” and “return to nature”? Instead, why not create an alternative form of “eccentric media”? Nature has been corrupted and infiltrated with all forms of media, and massive quantities of electronic junk are littered across the Earth’s surface. Obsolete media, such as corpses, are deposited in the soil. But media never truly dies. They will eventually be dug up by future alien visitors to be dismantled, deconstructed, reassembled, and sewn together from various body parts like Frankensteins, framing and composing scenes from the United States, Mexico, Japan, and Taiwan. Through conjuring rites with mysterious triangular and circular symbols, they become reanimated with foreign souls.
Dead media can be reanimated and reenacted not as a human puppet figure, but as a strangely contorted body covered in scars. Perhaps that VHS cassette beast emitting destructive rays have also been assembled in this way? How shall we construct eccentric spirits of the stars, rather than modern beasts of destruction? Or perhaps we should strive to assemble an eccentric medium between future alien visitors and ancient forebears, rather than frictionless media for the extant human race?
幽靈滲入內在，也在大地遊蕩。祂不只在歷史檔案之內，更是在歷史之前與歷史之後，在人類誕生之前，在人類滅亡之後。人類自視甚高的現代繁榮，在幽靈看來不過是一片蒼涼荒野。7 幽靈所到之處，只見腐朽、死亡、衰頹與破敗，宛如Ｔ.S.艾略特詩中呈現的殘酷末日8，死亡白噪音就像背景，隱藏於人類喧囂的文明生活前景後頭默默作響。
Human beings attempt to create grand civilizations, fabricating all manners of architectures, art, and histories to immortalize themselves in defiance of nature, but nature inevitably devours and destroys these contradictory and “incorruptible” creations. We are fated to become ghosts, leaving behind only traces of our planetary paths. In light of the futility, why not just give in? Why not head down the path of our own destruction? Why bother exhausting planetary resources to devise all kinds of media? In spite of the futility, you are not content to achieve personal nirvana but believe you must create “eccentric media” to account for the telltale but consequential alternative time, to counter the frictionless media of data, and to fight the beasts of modernity as you are drawn into a future of annihilation.
“Beep… bopp… zzz, bleep…”
Suddenly, you hear an eerie crackle of a short circuit. The flowing sands retreat, the beast unravels, and the surroundings are laced with stray currents, buzzing wildly. These electric currents do not serve the purposes of human contraptions and data flow but dance with a mind of their own. The black sands which had devoured human bodies gradually turn into light tan deserts, and corpses in the black desert revert to a state of life before they had leapt into the volcano, and the entire desert is restored to a beachfront. You stare at the burning triangular prism, feeling at ease.
1 三角火柱與海浪意象，呼應王湘靈的〈invisibility〉（2020）。
2 火山與黑色沙漠，回應丁昶文引用的〈被感染的夢〉（2023）系列。丁昶文對話日本三原火山的黑色沙漠。在日本，曾經有許多人跳下三原火山自殺。
3 〈被感染的夢〉（2023）中VHS磁帶的大型鷹架裝置，配合聲響與舞台燈，如同巨獸在展場的壓抑氛圍。該巨獸的原型有如在媒體中曾經藏身於三原火山的哥吉拉。
4 班雅明（Walter Benjamin）（莊仲黎 譯），《機械複製時代的藝術作品：班雅明精選集》，台北市：商周出版，2019。頁220。
5 〈被感染的夢〉除了回應三原火山的哥吉拉，同時也有關於該火山的貞子傳說。在《七夜怪談》原著中，擁有超能力的貞子母親山村志津子也是投身於三原火山而死。而貞子同時繼承母親的超能力，透過錄影帶再次來到現世。
6 哲學家里歐塔在〈如果思想可以擺脫身體〉中提到太陽爆炸後的滅亡未來，不再有人類有機身體。「太陽爆炸後剩下的事情，將不會有一個人，一個地球的、有智力的、感性的以及有感覺的夥人可以見證它，因為他將與其地球視域意識一起被燒毀。」
7 Jean-François Lyotard’s L’Inhumain. Causeries sur le temps.
7 王湘靈的〈Missing Deadline〉（2014）的攝影系列作品中也呈現文明廢墟的荒野氛圍。
8 T.S. Eliot. (1964). The Waste Land 1922. Grolier Club.