Joseph Matheny's Blog, page 9

Someone sent this to me recently. It’s an interview Don Webb did with me in 1994 for the legendary Fringeware Review. I had almost forgotten about this. After reading this … Continue reading Fringeware Review Interview with Joseph Matheny

Is BTS an ARG? (and other not so pressing questions) From the Substack Today is the day that the broadcast of the series, The Incident at Ong’s Hat, on BBC … Continue reading Launch Day For “The Incident at Ongs Hat” and Episode 2 of “Behind the Scenes”

Is BTS an ARG? (and other not so pressing questions) From the Substack Today is the day that the broadcast of the series, The Incident at Ong’s Hat, on BBC … Continue reading Launch Day For “The Incident at Ongs Hat” and Episode Two of “Behind the Scenes”

Ong’s Hat: The Beginning (Authorized Version) Reissued, authorized, and final version, 2021.  Available as Kindle, Print, and Audiobook  Free versions on Archive.org and Lib-Gen ONG’S HAT FAQ REVIEWS “…a bizarre … Continue reading Ong’s Hat: The Beginning (Authorized Version)

The Liminal Cycle, an interdisciplinary media experience. It is presented in three acts across multiple mediums. Part 1 Liminal: By Cameron A novella presented as a movie treatment for a … Continue reading The Liminal Cycle (A Trilogy) by Joseph Matheny

The Origin Story of Joseph Matheny and the Ong’s Hat ARG I sat down with Jerry Gaura of TOOWi Arts to discuss the origins of me as an artist and … Continue reading Information Golem: New Mini-Series from TOOWi Arts

Behind the Scenes Episode 1– David Metcalfe

From the Substack

A new series will premier on BBC 4 Radio Limelight on air and then as a podcast after every Friday broadcast for the next five weeks. The series starts on Fri, 27 Jan 2023. It is a five-part series titled The Incident at Ong’s Hat.

LINK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hg08

The series is inspired by Ong’s Hat: The Beginning along with elements from my personal life.

A new episode will premier every Friday. (Episode list can be found here.)

The credit list can also be accessed by clicking “show more” below the description. I make an appearance playing “myself,” or at least a fictionalized version of myself, as it were.

In anticipation of the premier, I am sharing some raw audio interviews conducted as background material by the producers. I will run one behind-the-scenes piece every Friday before the broadcast and podcast release of each episode. I am calling this series Behind the Scenes.

Here is an RSS feed for your convenience, or you may wait for this Substack to remind you each Friday for the duration of the series.
https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/232444.rss

Linked above is the first interview with my friend David Metcalfe. It is raw and unedited.

If you don’t know about David, you should. I consider him one of the preeminent researchers into the nuanced world of liminal places and states.

From his vision document: David Metcalfe is currently a Scholar in Virtual Residence with the Windbridge Institute and the Editor-in-Chief for the Windbridge Research Center’s Threshold: Journal of Interdisciplinary Consciousness studies – a researcher, writer, and multimedia specialist focusing on the interrelationship of art, culture, and consciousness, in 2011 he established the Liminal Analytics: Applied Research Collaborative to focus on testing and deploying a unique combination of applied scholarship, market intelligence, digital media, and social network development in order to build strategic, multidisciplinary lines of communication.

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: The Incident at Ong’s Hat was not written by me. It is a true crime podcast story using elements of the Ong’s Hat narrative, along with elements taken from my personal life, with my permission and participation. This is part of the reason I am sharing the interviews behind this story. I think seeing both sides, the facts and the fiction, will shine a light on the process.

1. The Incunabula Papers

Limelight The Incident at Ong’s Hat

Episode 1 of 5

CREDITS

Sarah Larsen, a yoga instructor, and her friend Charlie Brill went in search of Ong’s Hat, a fabled gateway to another dimension. Now Sarah is missing, and maybe this urban legend isn’t a legend at all…

Cast:
Charlie – Corey Brill
Sarah – Avital Ash
Rodney Ascher – Himself
Det. Stecco – James Bacon
Casey – Hayley Taylor
Ringo – Benjamin Williams
Kit – Randall Keller
Denny Unger – Himself
Joseph Matheny – Himself
Newscasters: Elizabeth Saydah, Dean Wendt

Created and Produced by Jon Frechette and Todd Luoto
Inspired by Ong’s Hat: The Beginning by Joseph Matheny
Music by Blue Dot Sessions, Jon Frechette, Chris Zabriskie, Anthéne, Macrogramma (under Creative Commons)
Editing and Sound Design – Jon Frechette
Additional Editing – Brandon Kotfila and Greg Myers
Special Thanks – Ben Fineman

Written and Directed by Jon Frechette
Executive Producer – John Scott Dryden

“Ong’s Hat Survivors Interview” courtesy of Joseph Matheny
Visit thegardenofforkedpaths.com and josephmatheny.com

A Goldhawk production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

As is my custom, after a year of commercially making Xen: The Zen of the Other audio drama commercially available, I am releasing the entire bundle for free on Archive.org and Youtube. It is released with a Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International. You may download and listen to it, share it, or post it, as long as it is not for commercial purposes, with no changes and full attribution to the source.

Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ezra-buckley-xen-the-zen-of-the-other-audio

Youtube:

A personal downloadable version

Reviews and more info

Ong’s Hat: The Beginning (Authorized Version) Ong’s Hat: The Beginning (Authorized Version)

Reissued, authorized, and final version, 2021. 

Available as Kindle, Print, and Audiobook 

Free versions on Archive.org and Lib-Gen

ONG’S HAT FAQ

REVIEWS

“…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.

Various reviews here.

Dedicated to the memory of my dearly departed friends: The members of The Formless Ocean Group (*) – Nina Graboi, Elizabeth Gips, Paddy Long, Betsy Herbert, and Robert Anton Wilson. 

Also to my “non-fog” departed friends: Mickey Hollenberg, Dave, DW Cooper, Dr. Hyatt (Alan),  humdog and Diane DiPrima. 

 

Tonight we just have some things to discuss about upcoming investigations, and look back on what we are truly grateful for. Especially ‘You’ our viewers. Added to this is some audio recorded on a night hike in the Pine Barrens with the UK BBC who came over the pond to investigate the mystery surrounding Ong’s Hat.

https://www.youtube.com/@squatchtalkspodcast