Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT is a multi-layered work designed to be experienced in various ways, depending on the experiencer’s preferences and level of engagement.
Structure and Components
The work consists of two main elements:
Original Notes: A PDF or EPUB document containing the author’s initial draft, providing background information and links for further research.
Audio Conversations: Chapter-by-chapter discussions between Joseph Matheny and Sequoyah Kennedy, exploring the material in depth.
The Time: Far In The Future.
The Place: An Archeological Find At Bev-El (Beve-Hill? Beverly Hills!?!?!)
Scientists have dug up the remains of a movie made in the closing years of the 20th century. As it was seemingly designed to persuade, seduce or trick people into practicing the outlawed art of THINKING, all prints of this shocking work had been banned, seized and burned. Except this one historic copy.
Statio Numero: an interdisciplinary media experience.
This limited series is the third and final act of The Liminal Cycle, a meta-trilogy.
Knowledge of Liminal and Xen, which comprise the first two parts of the trilogy, will be necessary to understand this work.
Statio Numero
A story about persona, identity, liminality, and voice.
Xen: The Zen of the Other (as Ezra Buckley)
Liminal Cycle Part II
The third and final part, Statio Numero, is available now. This trilogy is called The Liminal Cycle.
In a world devoid of rites of passage, Ezra Buckley finds himself confronted with the genuine prospect of having a life-changing, Liminal experience in the woods of Big Sur. What is it that he experiences? Is it the legendary Watchers of Big Sur phenomenon or something else? Will he survive it? Is it even real? Xen is a work that confronts the questions of identity, modernity, life, the other, and the place for rites of passage in the modern world.
This trilogy is called The Liminal Cycle.
Now also available as an audio drama and on Audible.com
Part one of a trilogy, with Xen: The Zen of the Other being part two. The third and final part is titled Statio Numero. This trilogy is called The Liminal Cycle.
A newly updated and final edition of the Ong’s Hat companion book. I wanted to have a final version now that I am finished with this project. Many people still want to review the material, so here it is in all its infamy.
Contributor to The Big Black Book
Become Who You Are
Beats In Time: A Literary Generation’s Legacy (Chapter 12 is my interview with Diane DiPrima) also to be included in Conversations with Diane di Prima to be published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2021/22
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Transmedia: Who Invited the Lobsters Anyway?
Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat by Michael Kinsella – While clearly, this is a book about my transmedia project, it also includes a lot of things that I wrote as examples, so I include it here. Metamodernism, anyone? And no, this is not by any means a definitive account of the project.
Rebels and Devils: The Psychology of Liberation edited by Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D. introduced by S. Jason Black foreword by Nicholas Tharcher contributions by William S. Burroughs Joseph C. Lisiewski, Ph.D. Timothy Leary Ph.D., Robert Anton Wilson, Austin Osman Spare, Genesis P-Orridge, Aleister Crowley, Joseph Matheny, Peter J. Carroll, Israel Regardie, Jack Parsons, Phil Hine, Osho, and many others
Black Book Omega: CIRQUE APOKLYPSIS by Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D. Joseph Matheny, Nick Pell, Calvin Iwema, Wes Unruh, Antero Alli (more info here) 
Contributor YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts(more info here)
Introduction to The Art of Memetics Aside: When I posted about this book on Greylodge, Seth Godin referenced the post as a good example of “How to write like a blogger“ This made me happy. 😉
The Art Of Memetics Pirate Edition
Contributor/Editor: This is Not a Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming with Dave Szulborski (Excerpt here )I edited and contributed to: “This Is Not a Game,” which was included in the annual Tween market report that went to marketing executives worldwide in the toy, gaming, and youth market industries. Also, I appeared as myself/in character, in person, in the “Catching the Wish” ARG by Dave.
Third Realm (The Yellow King)
Written and executed by me, produced in conjunction with Foolish People
http://www.argn.com/2009/10/puzzles_for_the_apocalyps
4P2
My first foray into the True Crime arena. Formula: Just put up a single, spooky web page that purports to be a recruitment drive for an organization whose actual existence is speculative at best and at worst is fiction presented as fact or paranoid, hysterical hand-waving in the interest of selling books, and you will get all kinds of reactions. In all fairness, I think the theories mentioned read as good fantasy crime fiction, and this was a conceptual attempt at that very thing. Apparently, it succeeded. The unnerving side of this was the equal amount of applications I received asking to join (Really? Join a group of underground serial killers? Really?) or outright death threats by people who really believe in such things. (Someone summed it up pretty well in this article from The Fenris Wolf)
This was an ARG/Transmedia style story with occult/horror/conspiracy elements, started in 2004 and ended in 2006. It utilized the Web, print (booklet), radio, phone trees, theater, and news wire services. [A version of the doughnut shop scene from this story was used in the Amsterdam production of Terra: Extremitas by Foolish People.] This project was done in collaboration with my late friend Dave Szulborski. There’s a loooooong story about this project. Maybe someday.
Contributor: What Would Bill Hicks Say with Ben Mack, Amelia the Great, and Soft Skull Press (along with Jeff Danziger and Martyn Turner; writers Neal Pollack, Robert Newman, and A.L. Kennedy; and Thom Yorke of Radiohead and others…)
Contributor: 2004-2005 Exquisite Language project for the 2004 ELfest and collected in the Spring
2005 issue of of 2 Gyrlz Quarterly. NOW AVAILABLE AT POWELLS.COM
Introduction, afterward, and editing for Poker Without Cards– First Edition. I orchestrated the first release campaign for this book, with the main character becoming “real” on the Internet for a while. After the first few months, I turned it over to the author. (statement regarding this work here)
GALT’S ARK: The Black Symphony, First and Second Movements
Produced by Cthulhu
The Players: Joseph Matheny, Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D.,
Father Daniel Suders & Nicholas Tharcher
Illustrated by S. Jason Black, Jonathan Sellers, Weirdpixie & MobiusFrame
THE BLACK BOOK Volume III, Part I
THE BLACK BOOK Volume III, Part II
(The Black Books are considered the workbooks for The Psychopath’s Bible, which I wrote an infamous jacket blurb for.)
The Incunabula: Ong’s Hat Project
[ Reviews | Interviews, etc. | Wikipedia | History] This was an ARG/Transmedia style story that started in 1988 and ended in 2001. It utilized zines, BBS, early Internet, Web, CD ROM, CD Audio, DVD, print (book, graphic novel, and magazine), radio, phone trees, fax, and news wire services. I gained and leveraged exposure in both the mainstream and alternative media to distribute over 2 million copies of CD ROM, ebook, and print versions of the story combined. Story elements from Ong’s Hat were also included in the EA Game, Majestic, which unfortunately ended prematurely due to 9/11. It was the subject of a full 4-hour show on Coast to Coast AM, the subject of an article on the Weekly World News, and has been covered on many radio shows worldwide, books, newspapers, magazines, etc. Links to media here
Description: “…a bizarre Internet phenomenon: an “immersive” online experience—part mystery, part game, part who knows what—known as both the Incunabula Papers and Ong’s Hat. The Incunabula Papers/Ong’s Hat was, or is, a “many-threaded, open-ended interactive narrative” that ”weds an alternate history of chaos science and consciousness studies to conspiracy theories, parallel dimensions, and claims that computer-mediated environments can serve as magical tools…. the documents provoked a widespread “immersive legend-trip” in the late 1990s. Via Web forums, participants investigated the documents—manifestos—which spun up descriptions of brilliant but suppressed discoveries relating to paths that certain scientists had forged into alternate realities. Soon, those haunted dimensions existed in the minds and fantasies of Ong’s Hat’s many participants. That was evident as they responded to the original postings by uploading their own—all manner of reflections and artifacts: personal anecdotes, audio recordings, and videos—to augment what became “a really immersive world, and it was vast”. – The Chronicle of Higher Education—-
“Ong’s Hat was more of an experiment in transmedia storytelling than what we would now consider to be an ARG but its DNA – the concept of telling a story across various platforms and new media- is evident in every alternate reality game that came after.” – Games Magazine 2013
Though Ong’s Hat may not have set out to be an ARG, the methods by which the author interacted with participants and used different platforms to build and spread its legend has been reflected in later games. –Know Your Meme
The Incunabula Papers are arguably the first immersive online legend complex that introduced readers to a host of content, including what religious historian Robert Ellwood has called the “alternative reality tradition. – Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat
As a companion piece to understanding some of the history of the transmedia work that centered around Ong”s Hat you may also want to read Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat, reviewed here.
The Incunabula Papers CDROM was recently included in the BNF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) digital art collection.
Game Over? (currently re-vamping this for re-release)…but if you just HAVE to have it now, someone is selling one for $900 over here. 😛
What Really Happened at Ong’s Hat?
The Incunabula Papers (CD ROM) Free ebook versions here
Incunabula: The Graphic Novel Free ebook version here
Why DVD? (B and N Digital Bestseller)
- A booklet published in April-99
- Over 100,000 in circulation to date
- Available from booksellers nationwide in October reprinted by:
- DVD Creation Magazine
- Videography Magazine
- (printed copy sent out with each issue – July,1999)
- Video Systems magazine
- and many others
Joseph Matheny 