Fog simultaneously obscures (dissimulates, dissapears) what already exists, while also producing new objects (however fleeting)– a diffuse moving ‘screen’ for laser projections, as well as for nightclub patrons to project their own interior and imagined ‘images’
The technologies of fog in a highly connected society also carry more subtle connections to empire, global control networks, and implicitly militarized (yet sanitized) entertainment cultures. For example, the glycerine-based fluids sometimes used to produce nightclub fog may also be used in constructing explosives and thus may also trigger false positives during airport screening procedures.
On the role of fog in producing sensations of escape into abstract/non-logocentric space:
“dark, hot, loud, a fog infused with trinket light…miasma of fog and sweat…I slip off through the fog…fogged light and muffled beats…Fire alarm—tripped by the fog machines…looking at feet or fog, or the lights above, or unfocusing…With light and fog, empty glass-walled office spaces become something else…a lot of fog and dim reddish light…spectacle, but reduced to its minimal, formal elements: beats and fog…Light refracted through fog and steam” (Wark 2023)
“…fog gave us the sense that we were entering a portal out of the sweltering city” (Witt, 2024, p. 46)
On the use of fog for military, social engineering, and statecraft purposes:
“Conditioning air and conditioning people are two sides of the same operation” (Furuhata, 2022, p. 2)
“To put it polemically, the atmospheric control over artificial fog that enveloped the Pepsi Pavilion is a scaled-down version of commercial, industrial, and military geoengineering that controlled and modified weather.” (Furuhata, 2022, p. 38-39)
“War constantly pumps cooling Aer (Fog of War as a cooling system) into the battlefield to simultaneously cool down warmachines and make them blind. While the cooling system strategically offers warmachines new opportunities to get hotter, the blindness is necessary for warmachines to be incinerated by their own frenzy.” (Negarestani 2008, p. 130)
On the secondary effects of fog deployment:
“Personnel employed in the motion picture, theatrical, and music industries often work in fog or smoke filled environments purposely created for atmospheric effects… the most common agents used to create special atmospheric effects are glycol-water mixtures and mineral oils” (Teschke et al, 2003, p. 13)
“If you’re flying, you may get pulled aside by a TSA agent for a swab test. Also, your baggage may get swabbed. The purpose of the test is to check for chemicals that might be used as explosives. The test can’t check for all the chemicals that might be used by terrorists, so it looks for two sets of compounds that can be used to make many types of bombs: nitrates and glycerin. The good news is the test is highly sensitive. The bad news is nitrates and glycerin are found in some harmless everyday products [including machine-generated fog], so you could test positive.” (Helmenstein, 2019; emphasis added)
“Compared to the control group, the entertainment industry employees had reduced lung function (both FEV and FVC) and increased chronic respiratory symptoms: nasal symptoms, cough, phlegm, wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath on exertion, and current asthma symptoms” (Teschke et al, 2003, p. 87)
