<LEXICON>
The following are terms and concepts that feel essential to this work. The first paragraph of each entry contextualizes what + where my understanding is from, and the second positions how I’m viewing the concept or using the term within this project/my practice. (Occasional third paragraphs add additional context to ways in which I am using the term/concept).
This is a growing collection. If there is language I use in this project that could use clarification or context, please let me know. <3
terms:
<affect theory> <AFK + IRL> <AI + algorithm + machine learning> <anti-capitalism> <ARG> <artifact emotion> <belief> <chimaera> <coding + decoding + encoding> <contagion + transmission> <creepypasta> <cyborg> <digital vernacular> <embodiment> <gamification + degamification> <glitch feminism> <hauntology> <hypertext fiction> <interdependence> <intersubjective flow> <magic> <matrix of domination> <meme> <monstrosity> <mythopoeia> <narrative transportation> <nonperformance> <performance> <praxis> <proteus effect> <queer time> <reality + the real> <speculative> <system> <transmedia storytelling> <virus + parasite + worm> <worldbuilding> <world-destroying>
AFFECT THEORY
Affect theory (n) is a way to frame and analyze the, “visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing that can serve to drive us toward movement, thought, and ever-changing forms of relation” (Duke Press’ The Affect Theory Reader). Essentially, it looks at the things we sense and feel, how those sensations are constructed, and what they construct. My understanding and framing of affect theory comes from a critical theory perspective, primarily informed by the writing of Lauren Berlant and Sara Ahmed, though I’m becoming increasingly familiar with and impacted by the writing of Mark Fisher, as well.
Within this project and also in general, I am particularly interested in the ways affect is coercively played upon within capitalism and neoliberalism. In Cruel Optimism, Berlant frames the importance of assessing our relationship to these (often cultural) attachments (our “feelings”); that the “object” of that attachment/feeling itself may not be cruel, but your relationship to it may be. I’m curious about the impact of affect on belief. At what point does a performed belief become an embodied feeling? Do those deeply embedded feelings construct realities? If a feeling/attachment that has been planted in us by a system outside our own internal system builds the foundation for a belief——is that truly a belief, or is it a constructed, affective reality that we’ve been coerced into?
When, throughout this work, I refer to something as affective, I mean it is (intentionally or “naturally”) impacting these internal experiences and constructions.
AI + ALGORITHM + MACHINE LEARNING
AI (n) or artificial intelligence, simply refers to systems that are built to perform tasks that are typically associated with human intelligence. An algorithm (n) is a sequence of rules/instructions/commands that a computer must follow to perform a calculation or operation. Machining learning (n) is a branch of AI which uses data sets to train algorithms, to grow and refine their performance over time. Machine learning can occur in supervised, semi-supervised, or unsupervised ways, sometimes operating in a “black box” where data is taken directly from an algorithm and combines variables in ways that are unknown, even to those who designed them or inputted the variables.
AI, and specifically AI that uses algorithms built off of machine learning, is interesting to me because of its ever-growing ubiquitousness, alongside a false framing that these systems are performing in neutral ways. As if data itself is ever neutral. These tools are not inherently oppressive, but the reality is that they are coded by human beings, with our biases and intentions, and are almost exclusively controlled and employed by oppressive power structures. Machine learning is relevant to this project because it’s something I employ and interrogate in my arts practice. I am curious about the ways digital data mutates, and the ways it mirrors and/or distorts AFK systems. I also want to add here that there are individuals, and particularly artists, who are interrogating the functions of AI and machine learning, so that they might operate more ethically—such as Kite, who uses Lakota ontologies to reframe the communication that happens between humans and computers, through Lakota practices of communication with rocks (computers essentially being melted stone).
ANTI-CAPITALISM/ANTI-CAPITALIST
Anti-capitalism (n) is a broad political ideology in opposition to capitalism (our current economic and political system, centered on privatized means of production, trade, and industry for profit) and capitalistic policies, ideals, and values. This can include organized and specific systems and philosophies such as socialism, communism and anarchism—but it is not limited to them. Anti-capitalist (adj) can describe any person, space, action, practice, etc that carries this opposition to capitalism.
I am never not thinking (/screaming) about the harmful ways in which capitalism determines a person’s “value” in our society, and actively harms us by prioritizing the individual hoarding of resources over collective health, joy, access, rest, creation, etc. Capitalism’s entanglement in/dependence on/reinforcement of the matrix of domination (particularly racism and ableism) makes it especially insidious and necessary to obliterate. I want my work, where it’s situated, and who it is in dialog with to challenge the idea that capitalism is something old, organic, or inherent that we are stuck with. I don’t see things changing drastically in my lifetime, but that doesn’t make the push against capitalism any less urgent or essential to me. I strive to hold myself accountable to anti-capitalist values, and it is within that framework that my work exists.
ARTIFACT EMOTION
Artifact emotion (n) is a concept coined by Ed Tan, to refer to emotional responses to non-narrative aspects of a film (the aspects that are related to the film as an “artifact”). Without this language, artifact emotions may be written off as personal appreciations or just the results of good design—but artifact emotion states that these reactions are more than that, and that they’re actually important emotions to pay attention to when creating and consuming film (or games, or other art).
This was an exciting term for me to encounter, because it’s a concept I began really considering after seeing Crisóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s stop motion animation film La Casa Lobo, which I reference in this project. A strength of this film is the way in which León and Cociña’s animation style (life size cardboard and found material puppets and environments that are constantly being built and rebuilt, rather than articulated at joints) translates the film’s themes of trauma, control, and fear. There’s something about the medium itself that speaks. I’m interested in the way that context, situated knowledge, education, etc effects our individual experiences of artifact emotion. For example: the joy I felt noticing interior shots in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series that directly reference interior shots from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, is rooted in my love of set design and the way my background in film history has trained me to notice certain things. This noticing itself adds an additional layer of artifact emotion. My big question within the context of this project, then, is in what ways does artifact emotion impact belief?
EMBODIMENT
Embodiment (n) is a framework that looks at how bodies are produced by and engage with the world. It asks what is it to be a person, and argues that we are not simply conscious computers (brains) operating a machine (the body)—but rather, that cognition is a full body/system process which also includes how we interact with our environment(s) and what we know about the world (physically, culturally, psychologically etc).
Both cognitive science and the humanities tell us that what we culturally tend to view as “understanding” or “knowing” (something that is situated in our minds—a space separate from our bodies) is incorrect. This interests me both as an educator and as an artist, and also broadly as a person with a body (whatever that means). I’m curious about the ways that this is not reflected in the way we hierarchize types of knowing and expressing knowledge, particularly in spaces that are deemed to be educational or academic. For example, where do things like generational trauma exist within our bodies, and how do they translate into non-conscious ways of knowing and existing?
GAMIFICATION + DEGAMIFICATION
Gamification (n) is the use of game elements and principles in non-game activities (most often employed as a marketing technique, but also used in education, work, and other settings). While it is not an inherently harmful concept, it is a process that is quickly made coercive, and largely serves capitalistic means—working to get people to be more productive (engage with labor), or to consume (engage with products and services). In her 2015 lecture Degamification for the Queerness and Games Conference, Andi McClure puts forth the idea of degamification (n) an alternate process that would instead, “look at social systems and ask what it would be like to intentionally remove resemblances to the naive notion of games frequently applied in gamification”.
These concepts are essential to my work, as a person who engages with games and interactive pedagogical practices, and strives to be anti-capitalist. The games that I find most powerful (Kentucky Route Zero, A Night in the Woods, Firewatch, Gone Home—to name a few) don’t actually involve a lot of what would typically be considered “gameplay”, which is most often defined through its relation to rules, competition, and arriving at some sort of success or win. Rather, they focus on elements of storytelling (both the narrative itself and the mechanics and methods of storytelling), and ways that games can be used to engage with healing, rest, joy, and even theory. These two terms (and the way gamification is employed) helped crystalize for me how the common mechanics of gaming align really easily with capitalism and capitalistic values, and offer a lens for pushing against that.
GLITCH FEMINISM
Glitch feminism (n) is a concept coined and explored by curator/writer/artist Legacy Russel in their Glitch Feminism Manifesto (2013) and subsequent writings. It explores a socio-techno construct of gender and sexuality, and applies the digital concept of a “glitch” to physical systems and structures. In Russel’s own words, “[Glitch Feminism] embraces the causality of ‘error’, and turns the gloomy implication of glitch on its ear by acknowledging that an error in a social system that has already been disturbed by economic, racial, social, sexual, and cultural stratification and the imperialist wrecking-ball of globalization—processes that continue to enact violence on all bodies—may not, in fact, be an error at all, but rather a much-needed erratum” (framing glitches as a space of liberation).
I’m drawn to glitch feminism because Legacy Russel and everything they have conceived of within their writings around glitch feminism, is badass. It’s an acknowledgement that our systems, structures, and even our lenses are built, and can be hacked, undermined, and rewritten. For me, glitch feminism rejects a lot of what is difficult about feminism (in Russel’s words, “feminism as we know it is codependent upon the same structures it aims to fight against; it cannot exist without accepting and acknowledging the systems that are already in place”) and replaces it with a way to manipulate the things that manipulate us (rather than to reach for some kind of equality). Sometimes the future can feel really bleak and impossible for me, and glitch feminism provides a beacon—particularly as someone who grew up essentially being told I’d been coded wrong. Embracing and creating glitches as a way to threaten normative systems is something I’m really interested in exploring across all my areas of practice. This framing is particularly relevant to how I’m approaching ideas of coding + decoding + encoding, contagion + transmission, and virus + parasite + worm within this lexicon and work.
HYPERTEXT FICTION
Hypertext fiction (n) is a genre of non-linear digital literature where the reader navigates through sections of text by choosing links (à la gamebooks such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series) to other sections of text, with varying levels of clarity about where you will end up. This choice-making implicates the user/reader in the narrative. Hypertext fiction may include images in addition to text. A hypertext fiction narrative may be axial (having a central storyline with links that branch off then return to the central storyline), arborescent (branching off into mutually exclusive storylines), networked (having multiple starting and ending points - or no set end), or a mix of the three forms. Hypertext fiction is often used interchangeably with cybertext (a term which was coined in the 90’s by speculative fiction author Bruce Boston), though cybertext is slightly more complicated (usually involving code/calculations that actually shift based on your choices, vs just jumping from choice to choice).
This project (though not fiction) is a hypertext project, following the genealogy of hypertext fiction. My interest in hypertext fiction feels especially centered around my love of reading when I was young (I distinctly remember the Give Yourself Goosebumps series of children’s horror gamebooks), my interest in nonlinear and/or potentially circuitous storytelling (particularly as an inquiry into how we actually experience time/memory/processing/etc), and digital mediums. I think the potential for stories to mutate, and shift between styles (for example, to become more like prose, or to vary drastically in length from link to link, etc) or be re-experienced as a completely different narrative is generative and radical.
INTERDEPENDENCE
Interdependence (n) is the way we depend on one another, and is in many ways an antidote to our culture’s focus on independence—a false ideal that serves capitalism, propped up by privileges such as whiteness and financial access. Interdependence is one of the ten principles of disability justice as outlined by Sins Invalid (a disability justice based performance project) who state, “8 interdependence: we meet each others’ needs as we build toward liberation, knowing that state solutions inevitably extend into further control over lives”.
I have a tendency toward independence, and I’m working to be critical of the ways in which this is a result of my privilege, a trauma response, and not in alignment with my values. I’m especially interested in the way interdependence is framed within the disability justice movement—as not only necessary, but as liberatory. As something that sees the inherent value in each person, and allows us to build against oppressive systems. It also relates also to my interest in embodiment, serving to complicate my previously defined boundaries between my “self” and things I consider not to be “me”. This project looks closely at isolation. I’m curious about the way oppressive power structures benefit from the ways we’ve culturally separated ourselves from one another to such an extreme, and how we can shift to viewing ourselves as parts of an interdependent, living system.
INTERSUBJECTIVE FLOW
Intersubjective flow (n) is a concept that is best defined for me by game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator and artist Celia Pearce in her 2008 piece Communities of Play: The Social Construction of Identity in Persistent Online Game Worlds, where she talks about Csikszentmihalyi's concept of “flow” (where one’s ego falls away and they are completely engrossed in an activity for the pleasure of it—to the extent that time and bodily needs often fall away from consciousness) contextualized within multi-player gaming communities, where players produce what Bernie DeKoven (who Pearce references) calls “CoLiberation, an optimal balance of individual self-awareness and group connectedness”—through keeping one another in this state of flow. In the piece, Pearce talks about how intersubjective flow through play creates a safe space where individuals are able to creatively express themselves in ways that they would not alone and/or out of flow.
Csikszentmihalyi’s flow is a concept I was introduced to in high school, and has been on my mind a lot recently in regards to technology and my attention span; primarily thinking around the ways in which social media interrupts my access to flow, and how this relates to systems of power and control (who keep me on my phone). DeKoven also uses intersubjective flow and his idea of CoLiberation to more deeply examine group dynamics—such as the balance where one is not so self aware as to become self conscious, and not so immersed in the group as to take on the collective traits and lose autonomy, which is really interesting to me from a psychological and pedagogical perspective. Intersubjective flow’s potentiality to engage with embodiment and push against capitalism in gaming and interacting is one of the primary reasons I chose to build an AFK element into this project, which otherwise lives online and is most likely to be encountered alone.
MYTHOPOEIA
Mythopoeia (n) means “myth-making”, and is a narrative genre (in literature, music, film, and I would argue in gaming and other visual storytelling mediums as well) that creates mythologies and uses traditional mythological themes and archetypes. The term was popularized after J. R. R. Tolkien used it as a poem title in the 1930’s. The poem was inspired as a defense to C. S. Lewis stating that myths are “lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver’”, and argues the value of myth making as a creative act that can uncover universal truths. It has been criticized as a genre under the argument that it is unable to recreate the way that mythology has traditionally come into being (slowly, more “naturally”, and collectively/culturally) but Joseph Campbell argues that mythopoeia still fills a “niche” for modern myths.
My initial interest in mythopoeia is very closely tied to my interest in speculative fiction (which it fits under the umbrella of) and in worldbuilding, but I’m including it in this lexicon for Tolkien’s specific push against the idea that the generation of new narratives is not a worthwhile practice or undertaking. Like Campbell, I too would push against the idea that myth-making needs to be a slow process with a “natural” framing (something I always find suspect), especially because of how the internet has shifted our experiences of communication, time, and space.
PRAXIS
Praxis (n), as defined by Paolo Freire, is, “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it”. In the “Design Pedagogies” chapter of Design Justice, Sasha Costanza-Chock situates Freire’s definition of praxis by saying, “for Freire and for popular educators inspired by his work, the goal of education is to transform oppressed individuals into subjects who engage in collective action to transform their conditions of oppression”. The Highlander Research and Education Center includes praxis in their key principles of pop ed by saying, “praxis: real learning takes places through the cycle of reflection and action to transform the world”. So, praxis can be looked at as a cycle (or in my mind, more of a web) of informed and varied action and reflection that works to transform the world. Some less situated definitions work only to separate praxis as “practice”, from theory as “text” or “thought”—but I believe praxis requires intention and knowledge (and a break from a singular understanding of what knowledge is).
Praxis comes up a lot in the communities I’m a part of (usually in debates that aren’t nuanced, and that argue for practice over theory), so it is something I’m working to deepen and expand my relationship to—particularly as someone who gravitates toward my inner world, and as someone who also has the privileges of comfort, access to academia, and time to just think. I’m drawn to the way Constanza-Chock talks about praxis. I think it can exist without “theory” as we currently define it academically, and I would even say that praxis asks us to examine the way we frame theory. Theory has been gatekept in ways that limit our collective ability to value and practice praxis (which is why in my experience, the conversations around practice vs. theory become rightfully heated). Within this project, I’m curious about how a better understanding of praxis might result in new ways that we iterate futures where we can better show up and care for one another.
PROTEUS EFFECT
The Proteus Effect (n) describes a tendency for the (real life) behavior of a person to be influenced by the characteristics of their digital avatar(s)—whether that is in gaming, social media, or other digital representation. The term was coined by researchers Nick Yee and Jeremey Bailenson in 2007, and is a reference to the the ancient Greek sea god Proteus (for whom the term protean comes from, meaning change or able to take many forms, after the nature of the sea).
I’m interested in the Proteus effect as a digital phenomenon that speaks to the connection between representation and the sense of self, particularly in a time where a huge percentage of society maintains a social media presence. I’m curious about everything from Instagram filters that change your appearance in selfies to non-human avatars in games. I’m curious about the ways these shifts are being intentionally and unintentionally employed, and how to subvert harmful employment. Some of what I’ve read about the Proteus effect enters into some slippery-slope territory for me—particularly statements around gamers who play violent games—which isn’t an invalid line of inquiry, but becomes concerning when conversations and data are not contextualized (I always think here of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and how it is used to make sweeping statements about “natural” human behavior, but can actually only be used as a reflection of white, middle class, college educated boys, who also knew their professor and the results he was seeking to produce). We know our digital avatars can impact or AFK behaviors, and I’m curious how far that impact extends—what are its entanglements with embodiment and belief?
SPECULATIVE
To be speculative (adj) means that something that is based on speculation, built on a certain degree of unknowingness, with projected understanding, meaning, or belief. Merriam Webster’s definitions for speculate include: “to meditate on or ponder a subject : REFLECT”, “to review something idly or casually and often inconclusively”, “to take to be true on the basis of insufficient evidence : THEORIZE”, and “to be curious or doubtful about : WONDER”.
I first became familiar with speculation through “speculative fiction”—an umbrella term for styles of literary storytelling that includes some fantasy and sci-fi, prose in imagined/nonlinear universes, new weird, mythopoeia, alternate history, etc. More recently, though, I encountered it in Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice, in which she states that design is, “also speculative, it is about envisioning, as well as manipulating, the future. Designers imagine images, objects, buildings, and systems that do not yet exist. We propose, predict and advocate for (or, in certain kinds of design, warn against) visions of the future”. This generative framing of speculative work is deeply tied to my conceptual framing of chimera and their potentiality.
SYSTEM
Systems (n) are individual parts acting as a whole. This includes our societal systems (a collection of doctrines, ideas, principles that come together to establish ways of existing and moving through the world), as well as organic systems (such as your digestive system, a collection of organs that perform individual tasks within the function of digestion). Often this term takes on a negative connotation culturally, even Merriam Webster includes the definition, “an organized society or social situation regarded as stultifying or oppressive : ESTABLISHMENT”.
This felt almost like a silly thing to include here, because it’s so common a term, and seemingly easily defined, but the way systems are so ubiquitous is exactly why it was important to be included. I’m very interested in exploring ways to point to our constructed systems, the ways in which they’re constructed, who constructs them, and who their construction serves—as well as the reality that as constructed systems, they can be deconstructed. Within this project I am particularly thinking about shared language between how we talk about constructed systems (in society, in tech, etc) and about organic systems (in nature, in our bodies, etc), and ways this can be used to create slippage. It also feels relevant to my framings of interdependence, embodiment, and coding.
WORLDBUILDING
Worldbuilding (v) is the construction of (usually “imaginary”) worlds. It is most commonly associated with fantasy, and may be employed for fiction, tabletop and computer games, or other media such as films or even music (eg: the Gorillaz and the universe/stories/characters that have been built around them). Worldbuilding is often a complex and multi-layered task that necessitates creating many different aspects (the world’s history, geography, ecology, physics, technology, inhabitants, cultures, customs, politics, etc) and therefore uses a wide variety of skillsets/knowledge bases. Worldbuilding can happen individually (like Tolkien’s Middle Earth), as a shared effort with explicit roles (like in Dungeons and Dragons campaigns), or in more decentralized ways (as with creepypastas). It feels important to also note here that “worlding” (per Gayatri Spivak, within postcolonial studies) is related to the colonial/imperial practices of mapping, creating records, and traveling in order to build and hold power over others. This is a context I want to be conscious of, particularly as a white person.
My primary interest in worldbuilding is as a radical act performed by individuals who exist within oppressive systems. A practice which requires creative skills, and the time and space to grow them—which are not-coincidentally difficult to access under capitalism (or are even demonized, it isn’t a coincidence that satanic panic targeted young people who played D&D). Worldbuilding as a speculative practice allows us to imagine systems and ways of being outside the ones we’re trapped within. Working to increase the accessibility of radical worldbuilding is something that is always on my mind, whether I’m working on an art piece, community building, writing a curriculum, etc.
WORLD-DESTROYING
World-destroying (v) is something I haven’t seen “officially” defined as a term/practice, but I consider it an essential counter-balance to worldbuilding. The intentional destruction or disassembly of worlds. (It seems like it is potentially used in a similar or at least relevant context by Stephen Joyce in a piece about the games BioShock and The Last of Us in the book Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, but I have not yet read it).
During the closing of a weeklong leadership training residency, back in 2019 when I ran an arts nonprofit, my friend Rheanna said, “it’s okay to let poison things die”. She was talking about the institutional spaces where many of us worked. It really stuck with me. I think we need to remember that not only can we let poison things die, we can choose to dismantle or burn them.
AFK + IRL
AFK is an acronym/internet slang for “away from keyboard”, meaning that you are not at your computer/device. IRL is also an acronym/internet slang, but for “in real life”, and is used to signify that something is happening the physical realm, not in digital space.
Out of habit I use IRL and AFK somewhat interchangeably, but an important distinction that I’d like to highlight, is one that Legacy Russell brings up in Glitch Feminism, referencing Nathan Jurgenson’s critique of “digital dualism” (the idea that our lives on and offline are separate). Russell states, “Jurgenson argues that the term IRL (“In Real Life”) is a now-antiquated falsehood, one that implies that two selves (e.g., an online self versus an offline self) operate in isolation from each other, thereby inferring that any and all online activity lacks authenticity and is divorced from a user’s identity offline. Thus, Jurgenson advocates for the use of AFK in lieu of IRL, as AFK signifies a more continuous progression of the self, one that does not end when a user steps away from the computer but rather moves forward out into society away from the keyboard” Legacy continues by adding, “The glitch traverses this loop, moving beyond the screen and permeating every corner of our lives”. The binary of “AFK”/online is additionally complicated in that it predates cell phones, and in our current culture (at least for me, as an urban 30-something American with an iphone) many of us are infrequently truly “AFK”.
ARG
ARGs (n) or “alternate reality games”, use transmedia storytelling to map narrative gameplay onto the “real” (physical) world. ARGs, while controlled by a game designer(s), typically evolve based on player involvement and choices, and involve solving puzzles to move the plot forward. The genealogy of ARGs has been traced back to novels of the early 1900’s, performance art, and interactive theater—but their popularity and visibility rose directly alongside the internet, in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, after which it was quickly co-opted as a marketing tactic, particularly for films and tv series.
ARGs are interesting to me, because where I personally most often encounter or hear about them is through their use in marketing (often around the types of media I like to consume: horror and sci-fi), or the form’s relationship to the way QAnon developed (which very much mirrored an ARG). These two relationships—each rooted in a game designer who is employing ARG tactics from a position of power, in order to achieve a specific goal unrelated to just gameplay—tell me that something worth investigating is happening between play, belief, and the viral spread of information within ARG gameplay. Within this work, I am especially interested in ARGs’ design principles, including 1) presenting narrative components as archeological artifacts to be collected and reassembled, 2) a transmedia nature, not confined to a single platform, 3) encouraging collective (vs individual) gameplay, 4) the TINAG (“this is not a game”) aesthetic, which means that the games occur in real time, all included elements operate as one would expect them to in the “real” world (like phone numbers, email addresses, websites, etc), and rules/boundaries are discovered rather than laid out as such. ARGs are effectively constructed to collapse the game’s reality with the player’s reality, which makes for great immersive gameplay—but what happens when these tactics are being used on individuals who aren’t aware and/or consenting to participating?
BELIEF
Belief (n) can be broadly defined as the acceptance, conviction, or trust that something is real, true, or exists.
Belief is one of the major concepts I’m working to examine and untangle in this work. Belief is a complex construction that can be analyzed through many lenses (neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy…) and does not have a simple or singular origin point. For the scope of this work and my own interest, I am primarily looking at constructions of belief through lenses of affect theory, embodiment, and performance. I am curious about the ways that we are influenced through our cultural interactions to adopt beliefs, and where those beliefs live in our bodies. I am curious (and wary of) the ways performed beliefs construct realities. We are living in a time where cultural belief is especially fractured, and where the grounding of belief itself has seemingly become murkier than ever. Meanwhile, that messy, poorly rooted belief is being weaponized. A 2022 report found that 1 in 5 Americans (or 1 in 4 Republicans) believe in QAnon despite the multitude of ways it has been debunked. We’re living through a global pandemic while significant portions of the American population believe wearing a mask infringes on their rights. There are people who believe they are unsafe when there is a trans woman in the bathroom. More importantly: within each of these categories, there are people who are simply performing this belief, because the investment of others in that belief grants them power. While manipulations of belief are by no means new, I’m curious about the specific moment we’re in now, what has led to this ramping up of widespread belief in extreme realities, and how the transmedia tools that are being employed to construct those realities/beliefs can be undermined, degraded, glitched, and re-co-opted.
CODING + DECODING + ENCODING
Coding (v) is the process of assigning code to something, for classification, analysis, or identification. Decoding (v) is the process of converting coded information/language into a language that is interpretable. Encoding (v) is the opposite process, converting information/language into a coded form.
There are several groupings of terms in this lexicon (this one, contagion + transmission, virus + parasite + worm) which I am interested in for the way that they primarily speak to biological agents and behaviors, but are also used to describe digital agents and behaviors, and can also be used in reference to the agents and behaviors of thought. Coding, decoding, and encoding feel relevant to this work because they speak to a process of construction and deconstruction. I’m curious about behaviors that might be considered “coded” into us, how our behaviors, beliefs, and bodies are “coded” by others within society, and how we might hack, decode or encode that coding.
CONTAGION + TRANSMISSION
Contagion (n) is the (often defined as rapid) transmission of something through direct or indirect close contact. Transmission (n) is the action, mechanism, or process of passing something from one place or person to another. The “something” in both these cases can be biological, such as disease or infection, or more ephemeral, such as ideas, traits, or emotions. In transmission it can also be heat, electricity, or sound.
There are several groupings of terms in this lexicon (this one, coding + decoding + encoding, virus + parasite + worm) which I am interested in for the way that they primarily speak to biological agents and behaviors, but are also used to describe digital agents and behaviors, and can also be used in reference to the agents and behaviors of thought. With contagion and transmission in particular, I am interested “peer-to-peer horizontal transmission” (also sometimes called “virus of the mind”), the empirical fact that when something fascinated is picked up by the brain, it wants to spread it.
CREEPYPASTA
Creepypastas (n) are collectively generated digital horror legends. The term itself is a portmanteau of “creepy” and “copypasta”, though creepypastas function differently than copypasta, as they are usually shared by being built upon or as a narrative function, rather than just being copied and pasted to different sites. (“Copypasta” is a play on “copy/paste”, and refers to blocks of text that are copied and pasted online, usually to disrupt/annoy). Creepypastas are presented as real narratives/experiences, typically shared anonymously, and are often generated in a forum space, where other users can upload their own text/images/etc as evidence in support of the initial component, building out the narrative. Structurally and conceptually, creepypastas take advantage of real world instances of the unknown, uncanny, and unsettling, such as tv episodes that were pulled from the air, the extensive American history of secret and unethical government experiments, and moments of cultural slippage between storytelling and reality.
My interest in creepypastas is rooted in the Slenderman (also stylized as “Slender Man”) narrative, perhaps the most famous creepypasta, both for its viral reach and for its AFK impacts. I am fascinated by the extensive amount of worldbuilding that happens within creepypasta generation: a single paragraph may become the nexus of many more pages of writing from multiple authors, photoshopped images, documents/evidence, audio files, social media accounts (from the perspectives of characters), games, and even entire YouTube series. There is something really attractive to me about the decentralized, collaborative nature of this dreaming. I think it is fascinating, and not coincidental, that this worldbuilding is happening specifically within the context of the horror genre, which is another thing I aim to explore in this work.
CYBORG
Cyborg (n) is a portmanteau of “cybernetic” and “organism”, and refers to organisms that have integrated technology (differing from an android, which is a humanoid robot). Cyborgs are common in more visually obvious ways in science fiction, but some theorists argue that the way humanity is entangled with technologies (digital or analog) makes us cyborgs already.
My conceptualization and employment of chimaera is partially informed by Donna Haraway’s framing of the cyborg in A Cyborg Manifesto, which argues that humanity has become so intertwined with technology that it is no longer useful or effective to form strong boundaries and distinctions between them. I see both cyborgs and chimeara as occupying a refusal of ontological boundaries. I also want to acknowledge the dual ways that the cyborg can either further oppressive agendas (for example, the ways in which sci fi imaginings of the cyborg often eliminate or “fix” disabled bodies), or create an escape from them (for example, the way Janelle Monáe has framed their cyborg alter ego Cindi Mayweather within Afrofuturism and posthumanism, as a fluid being without boundaries/gender/limitations).
DIGITAL VERNACULAR
Digital Vernacular (n) “vernacular” is the language that is used by “everyday” or non-institutional people in a specific site, and the site for digital vernacular is the internet. So digital vernacular encompasses the many ways communication happens online.
Digital Vernacular looks at the internet as a site of not just of language construction, but of folklore construction. This framing of a vernacular web (an interview with Robert Glenn Howard, referencing Clifford Geertz) has been essential for my own understanding, particularly when he gets into how “remixing” happens online (another area of crossover with Legacy Russell’s Glitch). Howard explains that the idea of the vernacular web (which predates the internet) is that our language / culture / understandings all come from the large web of interactions that exist around us and that came before us. Digital vernacular speaks to the specific (and literal) manifestation of that web that exists online. This concept is important to me in re: to how I’m looking at constructions online, but also in the ways in which I am constructing and engaging with my own vernacular web in this website.
HAUNTOLOGY
Hauntology (n) a haunted ontology, is a concept coined and explored by Jacques Derrida in his 1993 text Specters of Marx. Ontologies are a philosophical framing of the nature of being/becoming/reality, which often work to examine how we categorize, classify, and systemize entities. Hauntology looks specifically at the ongoing presence of elements/entities from the past (like a ghost), and the ways in which things that “exist” are “haunted” by things which do “not”.
Philosophy is admittedly outside my general wheelhouse and sometimes hard for me to grasp, but I’m interested in hauntology within the framing of the internet, where cultural objects can become simultaneously enshrined and also disconnected from linear time, into a constant present. I’m excited by how the concept is employed in Line Henriksen’s “‘Spread the Word’: Creepypasta, Hauntology, and an Ethics of the Curse”, which “explores what digital monsters and curses might teach us about ethics as a question of responding to that which haunts and hoaxes” and uses the term to analyze western understandings of reality and time, and the way queer time / spectrality / the internet disrupt that understanding through haunting: absence and a deferred present. (This essay has been integral to this project and is one I hope to revisit and understand more deeply as this project continues to unfold).
MAGIC
Magic (n) is broadly define as a power to influence a course of events using mysterious, supernatural, or otherwise unexplainable forces. It felt really important for me to define magic within the context of this project, given the ways it is misappropriated and employed by white supremacy through things like the alt-right’s use of “memetic magic”, as well as categorizations of individuals and behavior like “woo-anon” (which refers to the explicit and intentional wellness to extremism/white supremacy pipeline). As I write this I am sitting in the lloyd center mall underneath a “magic theater” (think: sleight of hand tricks and ventriloquism), I have friends who practice ancestral forms of magic, and I’m definitely a person who doesn’t rely solely on western explanations of how our world works, so I’m interested in the many ways magic is framed and defined.
I write about this in my short speculative essay about my conversation with Bogosi Sekhukhuni: but within this project I’m especially curious about whether or not alt-right bros are using “magic” when they employ memes to influence behavior. They think they are, and they are absolutely exercising a power to influence events, so I think it’s a place for arguments to be made. Either way, it constructs a reality, and one which is dangerous.
MATRIX OF DOMINATION
The matrix of domination (n), sometimes also referred to as the matrix of oppression, is a sociological paradigm that looks at interconnected social classifications (such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age) and the way their interconnectedness impacts the ways individuals in those categories experience oppression within our current systems. Kimberlé Crenshaw expanded upon this concept with her concept of intersectionality, which explicitly examines the way these oppressions impact individuals when combined (for example: Black women have different experiences of racism than Black men, and different experiences of misogyny than white women, because Blackness and womanhood together form a specific identity that is acted on in specific ways by systems of oppression).
This one is pretty straightforward, but felt important to define for folks who may be unfamiliar, since I reference it a bunch. It’s a way for me to frame my own privilege, as well as look at who is included and left out of the conversations and spaces I’m participating in.
MEME
Meme (n) is simply an element of culture (a behavior, idea, image, etc) that replicates and spreads virally, from individual to individual through imitation. Culturally, memes are frequently understood to refer to internet memes, usually a sourced image with added text that is altered by each poster, to slightly adjust its meaning.
My interest in memes is primarily the idea that they move virally, and that they mutate as they do so——something which particularly visible in internet memes. As I learned more about QAnon and alt right bros on 4chan and how they use memes, I also became increasingly interested in memes as vectors for violence and violent ideologies (though memes of course are not inherently harmful or oppressive, and can be and are also used in opposite ways as well——especially amongst oppressed communities, wielded with humor).
MONSTROSITY
This entry still needs to be added, but briefly: my understanding of monstrosity is informed by the ways in which bodies at the margins are framed as “monstrous” (looking to disability studies, and trans theorists such as Susan Stryker). It is also obviously related to how I’m using chimera.
NARRATIVE TRANSPORTATION
Narrative transportation (n) happens when someone consuming a narrative becomes immersed or even lost in it (metaphorically: transported into the narrative’s reality).
What I find most interesting about narrative transportation is the rift that can occur between the reality the reader/viewer/consumer is in physically, and the reality of the narrative. Narrative transportation can literally shift the behaviors of the individual experiencing it. This is in part because of the way the consumer begins to perform the narrative, which (per L.F. Dal Pian, M.C. Dal Pian, and M. Dal Pian in “21st Century Transmedia Storytelling: Experiencing Narrative Transportation.”) is a “convergent process, where all mental systems and capacities become focused on events occurring in the narrative” (emphasis my own), which leads to the divergent process of elaboration, “in which persuasion leads to an attitude change via evaluation of arguments”. Probably unsurprisingly, this is interesting to me because it is incredibly useful to understand how to manipulate narrative transportation, because naturally storytellers want their audience to be immersed in the story——but it can also be dangerous if individuals are unaware of the ways their reality has shifted, and the impact it may have on their behavior or beliefs (potentially non-consensually).
NONPERFORMANCE
Nonperformance (n) is the failure to operate as expected/socially mandated/etc. My understanding of nonperformance comes from Legacy Russell’s work around glitch. Russell frames nonperformance not as a failure but as a refusal performed by who are not served by performance as expected.
This concept is important to this project and to my work in general because it offers a strategy for (queer, trans, disabled, Black, etc) bodies that do not conform to a society/system’s conceptualization of performance, but who are still trapped within that society/system. In this interview, Russell says, “There are ways of asserting oneself into a narrative in order to cause a certain bit of chaos, which I would say is a complicated choice, because chaos, coercion and distraction are things that capitalism has found its own way of putting to action. I think it’s less about the notion of error—because there are many sorts of errors—but about thinking about who or what is a glitch in terms of questions of survival”.
PERFORMANCE
Performance (n) is used in a couple similar but separate ways throughout this project. I am thinking about performance as the opposite to nonperformance (see above), but I am also thinking of it through a lens of queer theory, which sort of situates all behavior as performance by framing gender as performance (as it is not biological, but a set of socially constructed and agreed upon expectations).
[definition will go here. performance is one of my primary inquiries for this thesis, in re: to constructions of belief. i’m looking a lot here to Andrew Peck’s “Tall, Dark, and Loathsome: The Emergence of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age” and the way he frames construction of online folklore as performance, and also queer theory, which sort of frames everything as performance (through the lens of gender being a performance) and thinking again about constructions of reality, and how performance constructs reality]
QUEER TIME
[definition will go here. especially writing into: how it’s employed in Line Henriksen’s “‘Spread the Word’: Creepypasta, Hauntology, and an Ethics of the Curse” in re: to how we build ethics in an unstable time. and also in re: to utopia as as nonspecific, non-site, non-arrival, challenging space and time–directly conflicting with the straight imagination in the conversation between Legacy Russell and Zach Blas.]
REALITY + THE REAL
TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING
VIRUS + PARASITE + WORM
CHIMAERA
[definition will go here. focus will be on how “the real” is something that I don’t have an interest in defining because I’m not a philosophy major lol, but that different communities of people define differently, and how “reality” is a construct that is often enforced through power.]
[definition will go here. this one is straightforward, just gotta get to it.]
[definition will go here]
There are several groupings of terms in this lexicon (this one, coding + decoding + encoding, contagion + transmission) which I am interested in for the way that they primarily speak to biological agents and behaviors, but are also used to describe digital agents and behaviors, and can also be used in reference to the agents and behaviors of thought. [More here. Will be focusing on these terms particularly in re: to power and productivity within capitalism].
Chimaera (n) might refer to 1) an imaginary or mythical animal compounded of incongruous parts. 2) An organism containing a mixture of genetically different tissues, formed by processes such as grafting, or mutation. 3) a fabrication of the mind; which is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.
Obviously, given the title of this project, chimaera are an important conceptual element of this work. I was initially drawn to the element of monstrosity in chimaera, the mutated, stitched, Susan Stryker’s trans Frankenstein of it all. I think there are elements of Donna Haraway’s cyborg there, as well. What I think is most exciting about the chimaera, though, is the way it inhabits impossibility. In the ways that transmedia storytelling often grafts one reality onto another, chimaera graft their (im)possibility onto our reality, we say they cannot exist, but they’ve been constructed, one way or another, so they do.
As a note: I somewhat fluidly and occasionally unintentionally shift between “chimera” (the American English spelling), “chimaera” (the British English spelling), and my favorite “chimæra” (the dated British English spelling—I love an æ). I’m always referring to this same concept, though. At first I felt a quiet nag to be consistent, but I suspect that’s rooted in a learned drive toward a specific kind of academic coherence, which I don’t feel is necessary to honor.