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Exposition

"What the Probes Report": An Exercise in Operative Fiction (last edited: 2025)

About this exposition

With Operative Fiction, we introduce a practice of spatial storytelling driven by the dynamics of prepositions rather than verb-centric narratives. Here, the textual body becomes embedded in the medial spatiality of a printed book, digital interface, or performance space. The physical or virtual site of the text thus becomes integral to the storytelling process. Spatial production methods merge into the texture of the text itself; simultaneously, the text reshapes the unfolding of space, place, and site. The material and procedural qualities of the text actively engage and activate the digital interface as a site of narrative unfolding, intertwining textual and spatial experiences. We begin our first exercise in Operative Fiction with Thomas Ballhausen’s What the Probes Report, transposing the text from the printed page (FLORA, 2020) into the digital interface of a Research Catalogue exposition. The non-human protagonist – emerging through and evolving within the text – disrupts subject-centred narration. It becomes entangled in the linguistic and scenic fabric of its own development, thus, through its procedural logic and function, becoming an active agent in its own staging. A line, speculatively re-enacting the machine's operations, simultaneously traces the topographic texture of the digital landscape. Using a drawing technique typically applied in performance design drafts, we explore the friction between staging and spacing by deploying minimally visible images and textual cues of direction. The operational plasticity of these technical images enables dramaturgical intensities to gather (staging), while also allowing the story to disperse through the digital architecture of the exposition into hyperlinked virtual spaces (spacing). Alongside a linear reading mode, which follows the story’s original chronology, we propose a contingent reading mode activated via time codes. These time codes function both as compositional elements within the drawing and as hypertextual links. They suggest the duration and shape of a staged terrain, occasionally layering multiple time zones within a single topographic entity. In this way, the timelines act as more-than-texts, generating a multiplicity of positions and proximities, and intertwining temporal aspects of space with the speculative grammar of the story.

type	research exposition
keywords	literature, science fiction, drawing, textuality, more-than-human collaborations, spatial storytelling
date	18/11/2022
last modified	30/05/2025
status	in progress
share status	public
affiliation	University of Applied Arts Vienna
copyright	Elena Peytchinska; Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
language	English
url	https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1818707/1818708

Copyrights

name	OF_entry
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Explorer__
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	JUICE_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Mariner
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Relay__c
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	InSight_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Dawn_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Phoenix_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Nimbus_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Helios_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Zond_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	STEREO_
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Luna_-01
copyright	Elena Peytchinska, Thomas Ballhausen
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Explorer_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Luna_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture, picture

name	Juice_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Luna_3
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Zond_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Juice_3
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Dawn_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_1
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	Mariner_2
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_3
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

name	map_4
copyright	Elena Peytchinska
license	CC BY-NC-ND
usages	picture

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