Previews of 2009

I have landed in Mauritania, and, as I await my navigational provisions, I thought it fitting to mention what 2009 has in store for labyrinths and labyrinthians. 

The crises of navigational ethics may have dominated the critical brain-space of contemporary labyrinthology in 2008, but despair not: 2009 promises to be an enriching, edifying, and exciting year for labyrinths and labyrinthians.  

The CLP has compiled a list of developments to debut in our new set of months that have already grabbed the imagination and ignited the eager anticipation of the international labyrinth community.  

Here are three developments which I greatly await, and my colleagues will be sharing theirs soon: 

1. In March, Californian labyrinthect Skye Morgan will be unveiling The Cube in an office park outside of Los Angeles. One part art, one part social commentary, and one part functional labyrinth, The Cube is a five-story labyrinth constructed entirely from cubicle partitions. The corridors of nondescript, gray cubicle walls underneath numbing fluorescent lights hanging from drop ceilings are purported to make for an extremely claustrophobic and disorienting navigation. No word has yet been leaked about the nature of the center and great room of The Cube, but I, for one, am up for the challenge.    

2. On June 16, labyrinthologists will finally be able to get their hands on Stephon Crete's equally acclaimed and maligned Procodic Boundaries: On the Ballast of the Perimeter. Though shrouded in much mystery, Dr. Crete is expected to unveil significant new corollaries to his Vector Theory, furnish complete data tables from his measurements of labyrinthons, and, most astoundingly, incorporate his theory of salvific magnetism into his so-called Unified Labyrinth Theory.  Labcritics, get ready to spill some ink! 

3. Brazilian experimental composer, who boldly goes only by the name of Thiago, will be premiering Caminhada, an epic symphony written exclusively for Balinese-styled gamelan, Gamelan gong kebyar. In an interview, Thiago revealed that he scored the symphony after navigating the sublime East Amazon Edge Labyrinth. (I am scheduling my first navigation for the fall of this year. Do I have any willing co-navigators?) While not explicating any details about his notation and transcription, Thiago stated that he developed a system by which he assigned pitches and duration based on the length of corridors, juncture composition, and chamber arrangement. He found the gamelan to be best suited to "perform the navigation." Apparently, each performance of the symphony will be different, representative of the alternative congressional and egressional routes the East Amazon Edge Labyrinth permits.  The first performance will be at the Sydney Opera House in midsummer. Get your tickets while they are still available.  

Crete Sneak Peak

John K. and I have both been in talks with a book rep at Paragone Press, and it looks like the publication of Stephon Crete's highly anticipated new text Procodic Boundaries: On the Ballast of the Perimeter is closer than we initially thought. Apparently Crete finished the manuscript this past autumn and there is now a tentative publication date of June 16, 2009. Good news for labyrinthians! Scott, the rep at Paragone, was good enough to send over a .tiff of the jacket for our perusal.



We hope to be able to post an exclusive excerpt from the text in the near future.

Crete's Labtech

As Alex has noted, Dr. Crete is notoriously secretive on the subject of his equipment. While Crete occasionally modifies existing equipment (see "Crete in the Field,") he primarily invents his own labyrinthological technologies, or labtech, as Crete styles it. However, due to the controversy his latest monograph is generating, Crete is demonstrating greater transparency in his fieldwork, perhaps in an effort to legitimize what Stalle has cast as "Crete's labyrinth heresy."

(Await more on this conflict in Parts Two and Three of Alex's interviews with Stalle. Also, expect a sneak-peak of Crete's monograph soon.)

Dr. Crete has made available images of a number of labtech prototypes and "obsolescent models" to a coterie of labyrinthologists. In keeping with our mission at the Cincinnati Labyrinth Project, I will share the images and descriptions with all of our fellow fervent labyrinthians. Moreover, while my knowledge of Crete's labtech is really only inchoate, I will try to explain the applications of the labtech to our project: the Paul Brown Labyrinth.















Crete developed one of his earliest models, The Lodestone P2A [above], in the late 1980s, when a Geiger counter he was employing in a Mesoamerican labyrinth near Hidalgo, Mexico was registering a titanic reading of Becquerels (Bq). Crete's detection of high levels of radioactivity in the labyrinth not only spawned his theory of salvific magnetism, but also inspired him to tweak the Geiger counter into The Lodestone P2A. According to Crete, The Lodestone P2A measures the electromotive force between parallel walls in labyrinths, much in the way that the electromotive force courses between two terminals of a battery.
















The MagneTrapper Q12 [second incarnation, above], more commonly referred to by Crete's team and Cretinists as The Gullet, emerged after Crete speculated the existence of a new particle, called the "labyrinthon." Crete believes that, in the electromagnetic field between parallels walls of labyrinths, labyrinthons collide at high velocities and energy levels. The Gullet was an early attempt at "trapping" these particles. Crete eagerly awaits the reopening of the Large Hadron Collider to release trapped particles and collide them at yet higher velocities and higher levels.




















Crete's innovative and modular Flux Displacer [above], charmingly inspired after reading Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass, allowed Crete to measure electric displacement, capacitance, and magnetic susceptibility in labyrinths. Crete has only revealed what this marvel of labtech measures, but not what he is hunting for in the measurements. My suspicion is that Crete studies the effect the labyrinth navigator has on the magnetic field of the labyrinth, and, more interestingly, the effect the labyrinth's magnetic field has on the navigator.

If we at the Cincinnati Labyrinth Project should solicit Stephon Crete in our project, then we would be blessed to have some of his labtech, even the prototypes and early models, at our disposal.

One disclaimer: the utility of Crete's labtech is not ultimately certain. Some labyrinthologists dispute the functionality of Crete's instruments. But, if Crete's salvific magnetism theory holds true, then his labtech could assist our project in the following ways:

The Lodestone could help us determine whether we should build a rectilinear or curved labyrinth, as well as the distance between labyrinth walls.

The Gullet could help us determine the length of the labyrinth, based on the intensity of the magnetic field in Paul Brown Stadium.

The Flux Displacer could help us determine the number of turns, as Crete claims to have demonstrated that the number of turns in a labyrinth contributes to wild, and even dangerous, magnetic flux.