Forgive me while I scrounge around the entrance of this rabbithole: I deeply appreciate the apparent decision to connect the dots between Turquoise Hexagon Sun and Blue Rose in this. That cultural link in the artifact of this hexiflexidisc is a succinct symbol that summarizes a lot of the thematic and stylistic direction of Boards of Canada. It's a very rich parallel.
Unpacking what I mean a bit here, it helps to know Twin Peaks and some of David Lynch's artistic vision. In short, the Blue Rose represents phenomena that are perpendicular to reality as we usually perceive it, that transcend time and space in some way, that are supernatural. Lynch in more than one place has said that he thinks electricity and its ubiquity and influence in our modern lives is a fascinating and underexplored topic. Electronic recordings offer a means of transcending time, and I wonder if it's no accident that the blue rose of Giraud's Mirror has a sort of electric glow to it. Without going into any spoilers, this is a major aspect of virtually all of Lynch's works, alongside the notion that we live in, essentially, a sort of dream. The illusory electrical world of perception.
BOC explores overlapping territory in the insidious nature an organization's influence can have on followers and the broader world. Inextricably tied in with this, again, is electricity; in BOC's context, the sort of demonic potential in the imperfection of recorded (electronic/electronically mediated) materials and their decay. That uncanny imperfection of recordings and their decay reflects the inevitability of human bias and the fallibility of perception and memory. Moreover, the relationship between electronic materials and folks who consume/use them involves power dynamics of influence and control.
The internet as it exists today, threatening presence of social media, surveillance capitalism, genAI, and all, is an extreme example of this--truly a sort of inferno in its own right. It exploits and amplifies our human faults to a point of self-destructive feedback. Simultaneously, it offers a hypnotizing facsimile of experience in the form of a never-ending kaleidoscope of recorded past events while the powers that be exploit and destroy more and more of the world and the human spirit.
I'm not feeling equipped to try to go much deeper with this right now, except to say that making the decay of recorded materials a conspicuous aspect of an artwork goes a long way in showing that a recording is an artifact that seems to reach toward--but never actually succeeds in--transcending time. Like the blue rose and the works of turquoise hexagon sun, it sits in the uncanny, supernatural space between real experience in the present moment, ghosts of the past, and potential futures.
The blue rose hexiflexidisc (don't you love to say that) is like an artifact from outside of time. It sits apart from Inferno and falls enticingly from its book. It's small, flimsy, diaphanous, unassuming, yet it contains a lot. Very much like film! As to the influence it can exert, just look at how long this rambling post got!
Verde Hexagon Hashbrown
