Toward a Minor Tech:Teodora-500: Difference between revisions
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'''Rendering Minor Worlds''' | '''Rendering Minor Worlds''' | ||
Critical renderings of speculative virtual imaginaries are increasingly emerging today as a form of collective utterance that responds to the current states of emergency that we find ourselves in socially, politically, ecologically and technologically. The recent crystallization of immersive worlding as an experiential storytelling practice situates itself within the political context of resistance through its search for modes of being-otherwise. Kafka writes of literature that it should “affect us like a disaster, that grieves us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone” (1904), foregrounding the affective and transformative power of storytelling - stretching forwards from his time to the present day, we see this practice of critical storytelling extended into the realm of virtual ecologies with artists like Ian Cheng, Lawrence Lek, David Blandy and Larry Achiampong, Sahej Rahal, Juan Covelli and Keiken | Critical renderings of speculative virtual imaginaries are increasingly emerging today as a form of collective utterance, a minority language that responds to the current states of emergency that we find ourselves in socially, politically, ecologically and technologically. The recent crystallization of immersive worlding as an experiential storytelling practice situates itself within the political context of resistance through its search for modes of being-otherwise. Kafka writes of literature that it should “affect us like a disaster, that grieves us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone” (1904), foregrounding the affective and transformative power of storytelling - stretching forwards from his time to the present day, we see this practice of critical storytelling extended into the realm of virtual ecologies with artists like Ian Cheng, Lawrence Lek, David Blandy and Larry Achiampong, Sahej Rahal, Juan Covelli and Keiken formulating critiques of our contemporary context by producing minor worlds that speculatively explore alternative narratives. As Stengers urges us, these practices attempt to imagine “connections with new powers of acting, feeling, imagining, and thinking”(2015). | ||
A question, therefore emerges: how can we position and conceptualize these novel modes of expression that operate within the scales of virtual game spaces and their underlying networks of exchange? | A question, therefore emerges: how can we position and conceptualize these novel modes of expression that operate within the scales of virtual game spaces and their underlying networks of exchange? How can practices of worlding enable us to abandon “habitual temporalities and modes of being” (2018), as Helen Palmer puts it, and think beyond ourselves, speculatively, towards possible futures and fictions? | ||
Similarly to the properties of a minor language formulated by Deleuze and Guattari in their analysis of Kafka’s writing (1975), today’s turn towards the production of | The turn towards immersive world design is enabled by the recent deployment of game engine technologies towards critical digital experimentation, enabling artists to produce increasingly complex digital artifacts. Similarly to the properties of a minor language formulated by Deleuze and Guattari in their analysis of Kafka’s writing (1975), today’s turn towards the production of virtual worlds as sites of alternative possibilities is deterritorializing the existing entertainment-centric and economically-driven mode of existence of immersive game productions. Within the parameters of the game engine itself, the various features, interfaces and functionalities of mainstream game design software are geared towards competitive ludic productions. However, with the increased accessibility of gaming technologies, we see the emergence of collective efforts to utilize game engines critically, towards the production of minority worlds, game spaces where the entertainment-focused properties of commodified games are replaced with experimental assemblages and their affect constellations. | ||
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]] | [[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]] | ||
[[Category:500 words]] | [[Category:500 words]] | ||
Revision as of 15:52, 20 January 2023
Rendering Minor Worlds
Critical renderings of speculative virtual imaginaries are increasingly emerging today as a form of collective utterance, a minority language that responds to the current states of emergency that we find ourselves in socially, politically, ecologically and technologically. The recent crystallization of immersive worlding as an experiential storytelling practice situates itself within the political context of resistance through its search for modes of being-otherwise. Kafka writes of literature that it should “affect us like a disaster, that grieves us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone” (1904), foregrounding the affective and transformative power of storytelling - stretching forwards from his time to the present day, we see this practice of critical storytelling extended into the realm of virtual ecologies with artists like Ian Cheng, Lawrence Lek, David Blandy and Larry Achiampong, Sahej Rahal, Juan Covelli and Keiken formulating critiques of our contemporary context by producing minor worlds that speculatively explore alternative narratives. As Stengers urges us, these practices attempt to imagine “connections with new powers of acting, feeling, imagining, and thinking”(2015).
A question, therefore emerges: how can we position and conceptualize these novel modes of expression that operate within the scales of virtual game spaces and their underlying networks of exchange? How can practices of worlding enable us to abandon “habitual temporalities and modes of being” (2018), as Helen Palmer puts it, and think beyond ourselves, speculatively, towards possible futures and fictions?
The turn towards immersive world design is enabled by the recent deployment of game engine technologies towards critical digital experimentation, enabling artists to produce increasingly complex digital artifacts. Similarly to the properties of a minor language formulated by Deleuze and Guattari in their analysis of Kafka’s writing (1975), today’s turn towards the production of virtual worlds as sites of alternative possibilities is deterritorializing the existing entertainment-centric and economically-driven mode of existence of immersive game productions. Within the parameters of the game engine itself, the various features, interfaces and functionalities of mainstream game design software are geared towards competitive ludic productions. However, with the increased accessibility of gaming technologies, we see the emergence of collective efforts to utilize game engines critically, towards the production of minority worlds, game spaces where the entertainment-focused properties of commodified games are replaced with experimental assemblages and their affect constellations.