Multidisciplinary Artist | Liminal Fiction | Alternate Reality Games
LINK TO Gizmodo piece on Ong’s Hat, from 2/21/19 Chosen one of The Best Long Reads Of The Month, picked by Digg’s editors Chosen as a “WEEKEND READING PLEASURE” editor’s … Continue reading Gizmodo-Ong’s Hat: The Early Internet Conspiracy Game That Got Too Real
What lies at the heart of Ong’s Hat? Listen to this episode of Decoder Ring: LINK TO DECODER RING PAGE Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. Every … Continue reading Slate-Decoder Ring: The Incunabula Papers
Ong’s Hat, also known as The Incunabula, is the original ARG and laid the ground for all future experiments in transmedia storytelling. Join me as we take a brief look … Continue reading Ong’s Hat: The Original ARG – Sex, Drugs & Quantum Physics
Topics include: Crimbus gifts, planning our funerals, Scary German Lady, Philly Legends: The Bubble Fairy, Josh is home alone, Alien Alloys, BFS Road Trip, Corrections and Josh’s Chaos Dimension: Ong’s Hat, … Continue reading Best Friend Simulator Episode 16: Those Mummy Flippin’ Flintknappers/ Ong’s Hat
Legend Tripping Online:: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat reviewed by Lynne S. McNeill for Western States Folklore Society http://folklore.usu.edu http://www.folkloristics.com McNeillReviewOfKinsella Also: Lynne and Legend Tripping Online:: … Continue reading Legend Tripping Online:: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat reviewed by Lynne S. McNeill for Western States Folklore Society
Review by Joseph Laycock for Religious Studies Review Texas State University, Philosophy, Faculty Member Article first published online: 12 SEP 2014 Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search For Ong’s Hat Review from … Continue reading Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search For Ong’s Hat Review from Religious Studies Review
Story from the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper on the legend(s) of Ong’s Hat. Some excerpts: “Two weeks ago there were these young kids, like 19 or 20, … Continue reading Life in the Pines: Ong’s Hat
Dominique Angela M. Juntado, M.A. Doctoral Candidate in Social & Cultural Anthropology University of the Philippines Diliman Email: dmjuntado@gmail.com International Journal of Social Sciences Abstract Having been written for fellow … Continue reading CREEPYGAMING & THE NARRATIVE: A THEORY-BASED POP CULTURE OF ‘PLAYABLE’ LORE
Sec. 1: MW 2-3:15 & T 6:30-9 (film screening) / Sec. 2: MW 4-5:15 & T 6:30-9 (film screening) This course examines three major folklore genres – legend, rumor, and … Continue reading English 3700: American Folklore: Legend, Rumor, and Conspiracy Theory
Matheny himself was there at the beginning of the ARG, when the increasing prominence of online media got him thinking about new forms of storytelling. “I’ve been a tech person since the Eighties,” he reminisces. “I was an IT expert and moved up into software, and I used to play the Steve Jackson games a lot. I also played the Flying Buffalo play-by-mail games, which were kind of like a LARP but done through mail, phone and faxes. You would send your mailing address and your phone number and you would start getting stuff in the mail.
If one takes the Turnpike to exit four and follows Route 70 east, they will come to Route 72 at Four Mile Circle. Taking a hard left leads to a … Continue reading Ong’s Hat: Piney Ghost Town or Gateway to Another Dimension?
Óli Gneisti Sóleyjarson Technilcal College of fHafnarfjordur, Iceland Folklore Volume 124, Issue 2, 2013 review
On the Internet, seekers investigate anonymous manifestos that focus on the findings of brilliant scientists said to have discovered pathways into alternate realities. Gathering on web forums, researchers not only share their observations, but also report having anomalous experiences, which they believe come from their online involvement with these veiled documents. Seeming logic combines with wild twists of lost Moorish science and pseudo-string theory. Enthusiasts insist any obstacle to revelation is a sure sign of great and wide-reaching efforts by consensus powers wishing to suppress all the liberating truths in the Incunabula Papers (included here in complete form).
In a day and age when legends are as likely to be transmitted online as they are face-to-face, folklorists have begun assessing how our established concepts apply to the digital realm. The convergence of different forms of media has increasingly diminished the traditional boundaries between folk and popular culture and the digital and analog world. If the legend continues to thrive under these new conditions, folklorists will want to determine how the closely related legend-trip has similarly transitioned to the online environment.
In Legend-Tripping Online: The Search for Ong’s Hat, Michael Kinsella seeks to answer this question using the example of the Incunabula Papers—a conspiracy theory, an alternative reality game, and a mystical experience all wrapped into one. The “Incunabula Papers” refers to two documents, Ong’s Hat: Gateway to the Dimensions! A Full Color Brochure for the Institute of Chaos Studies and the Moorish Science Ashram in Ong’s Hat, New Jersey and Incunabula: A Catalogue of Rare Books, Manuscripts & Curiosa—Conspiracy Theory, Frontier Science & Alternative Worlds. Allegedly produced by banished Princeton faculty studying chaos theory at the Moorish Science Ashram in Ong’s Hat, New Jersey, these rogue professors perfected a device known as The EGG, which made possible interdimensional travel. The group then “embedded within [the Incunabula Papers] enough clues for its intended readers” to join the quest “but not enough for those with little faith to follow.” For folklorists this legend complex provides new challenges capable of expanding the body of legend scholarship. Legend-tripping online will not replace legend-tripping in the “real world,” as folklorists have found with some other forms, but rather exists in addition to and follows the same principles as the classic legend-trip.
Source: http://monoskop.org/log/?p=8717 On the Internet, seekers investigate anonymous manifestos that focus on the findings of brilliant scientists said to have discovered pathways into alternate realities. Gathering on web forums, researchers not … Continue reading Monoskop Log reblog – Michael Kinsella: Legend-Tripping Online: Supernatural Folklore and the Search for Ong’s Hat (2011)
This material is also available in tablet and ebook reader friendly formats at Archive.org , Smashwords and as a Kindle version on Amazon.com INCUNABULA A Catalog of Rare Books, Manuscripts & … Continue reading INCUNABULA: A Catalog of Rare Books, Manuscripts & Curiosa Conspiracy Theory, Frontier Science & Alternative Worlds
Part of the “original 4” pieces of the Ong’s Hat storyline. It appeared in print as Advances in Skin Science, later to be released on the Internet as ADVANCES IN … Continue reading Original Boing-Boing Article: Advances in Skin Science
Joseph Matheny 