Toward a Minor Tech:Fartan

Rendering Minor Worlds

A Research Agenda for the Cartographing of Computational Worlding Practices

Author: Teodora Sinziana Fartan

Bio:

Teodora Sinziana Fartan (b. 1995) is a researcher, computational artist and writer based in London, UK. Her research-artistic practice explores the new spaces of possibility opened up by collaborations between software and media, with a particular focus on the new modes of relational and affective experience rendered into being by the networked data exchanges facilitated by interfaces and data flows. Driven by speculative storytelling, Teodora’s practice explores the immersive, interactive and intelligent more-than-human entanglements taking shape within algorithmically-mediated spaces. Teodora is currently a PhD Researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University and a Lecturer at the University of the Arts London.

Keywords: worlding, algorithmic storytelling, critical rendering, minor worlds, container model

Abstract:

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Intoduction

The contours of a techno-artistic practice concerned with the critical intersection of software and speculative storytelling are becoming visible within the landscape of contemporary new media art: in the midst of late techno-capitalism, artists are dislodging existing hi-tech systems and platforms from their conventional roles and repurposing them as technologies of possibility that seek to de-center the master narratives of the Western imagination. Practices of worlding materialise, therefore, as portals into fictional terrains where alternative modes of being and knowing are envisioned; they refuse a totalising view of the megastructure of the capitalistic imaginary and instead zoom in onto the cracks appearing along its edges, where other narrative possibilities are starting to sprout and multiply. Through the evocative affordances of algorithms, they teleport us forwards, amidst the ruins of the Anthropocene, “where unexpected alliances emerge from the debris of what has passed” (Tsing).

In what follows, I aim to at once activate an initial cartography of ‘worlding’ as an emergent, algorithmically-driven artistic praxis and propose a tentative politics of worlding by situating it as a form of resistance that critiques the present through its algorithmical conjuring of a radically different mode of existence from the techno-scientific rational imaginary of late capitalism - one that, I argue here, also proposes a new aesthetic framework rooted in the procedural and generative affordances of computation and the complex networked relations that it produces. Looking through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of a minor literature, we can trace an emergence of minor worlds as potent and powerful assemblages countering the majority worlds enabled by capitalist platforms and master narratives - what can these minor worlds reveal about more-than-human collaborations and the critical role of software within speculative practices? How do they become operative as instruments for decentering the master narratives of our present ? What alternative knowledges do they cultivate and what potentialities are opened up for encountering these?

Throughout this paper, the worlds conjured by artists such as Ian Cheng, Sahej Rahal, Jena Sutela, Lawrence Lek and Larry Achiampong will be proposed as objects of analysis for the ways in which worlding at once becomes operative as a form of critique and activates a process critical ‘future-making’ as defined by Montfort (13), where potent acts of imagining the future have the potential to feed into its materialisation.

The Emergence of Practices of Worlding

Today, there seems to be a widespread view that we are living at the end - of liberalism, of capitalism, of Planet Earth, of civilization; engulfed in the throes of late capitalism, conjuring a possible alternative seems almost out of grasp. William Gibson’s statement from ‘Pattern Recognition’ describes the fraught present condition with surprising accuracy:

"We have no idea of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our parents had a future, or thought they did. For us things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile ... We have only risk management. " (200)

Gibson makes reference here to the near-impossibility of imagining a future in a present that is marred by ecological, political and social unrest. This statement can be applied to our own contemporary context, where asymmetrical power structures, surveillance capitalism and the threat of climate change deeply complicate our ability to think of a possible future.

Moreover, in the wake of the Anthropocene, feminist critical theory has long called for experiments in imagining modes of being otherwise - from Stenger’s bid to cultivate “connections with new powers of acting, feeling, imagining and thinking” (24), to Palmer’s vision of abandoning “habitual temporalities and modes of being”() in favour of radical speculation, Haraway’s request for authorial attention to “what worlds world worlds” () or LeGuin’s plea for a search for the ‘other story’, an alternative to the linear, cyclical narratives recirculated perpetually within the history of narrative, we can trace the emergence of a collective utterance, an incantation resonating across feminist epistemologies that foregrounds contemporary experiments in thinking otherwise.

Particularly, in the case of worlding, imagining otherwise takes shape within a more-than-human entanglement with technologies that are capable of procedurally rendering a simulation or a glimpse into an alternative mode of being.  Worlding makes use of algorithmical processes and tools such as game engine technologies or machine intelligence to envision a radically different mode of existence from our those dictated by the cultural narratives of capitalism - through the decentering of the master narratives of our present, practices of worlding draw on alternative sources of knowledge in order to speculatively engage with the uneven landscape of the future, its multiplicities and many textures and viscosities.

The world-experiments that emerge from these algorithmic worlding processes constitute hybrid assemblages of simulated spaces, fictive narratives, imagined entities and networked entanglements. Positioning themselves as counter-mythologies to the crises and anxieties of our current Anthropocentric moment, the speculative futures proposed by these worlds are inviting collective participation in acts of envisioning.

So.. what comes after the end of the world? Or, better phrased, what can exist outside the scaffolding of the world as we know it, dominated by asymmetric power structures, infused with injustice, surveilled by ubiquitous algorithms and continuously subjected to extractive practices? As Mark Fisher notes when claiming that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than that of capitalism” (1), casting one’s imagination into a future that refuses the master narratives of capitalism is no easy feat. To think outside ourselves, towards possible future alternatives, has become a difficult exercise.

Worlding attempts to intervene precisely at this point and open up new formats of relational and affective experience that become modes of being otherwise through the generative and procedural affordances of software. The etymological choice of the term “worlding” reflects the of flux of software processes through its denotation of an active process - the turning the noun ‘world’ into the verb ‘worlding’ becomes evocative of a process in a constant state of becoming - the ‘activity’ contained in the term ‘worlding’ expresses its energetic aliveness and suggests the existence of a process that is in constant flux.

This attention to the processual and relational quality of worlding emerges from Harways proclamation that ‘the world is a verb, or at least a gerund; worlding is the dynamics of intra-action (Karen Barad’s word from Meeting the Universe Halfway) and intra-patience, the giving and receiving of patterning, all the way down, with consequences for who lives and who dies and how.’ For Haraway, therefore, worlding becomes a practice of collective relationality, between world-maker and world-dwellers, as well as a networked process of exchange rooted in practices of care.  Haraway, therefore, situated worlding within a social context and hints its potential to critique the present and engage in powerful re-formulations of the fraught narratives of the past.

To provide a tentative definition of worlding as it is understood within resistant practices underscored by computation, I’d like to draw from a the working definition provided by Ian Cheng, who begins by first defining a world as “a reality you can believe in: one that promises to bring about habitable structure from the potential of chaos, and aim toward a future transformative enough to metabolise the pain and pleasure of its dysfunction” and then formulates the definition of worlding as “the art of devising a World: by choosing its dysfunctional present, maintaining its habitable past, aiming at its transformative future, and ultimately, letting it outlive your authorial control” - here, Cheng acknowledges the inherent complexity of worlding as a praxis that not only posits the challenge of thinking beyond contemporary systems of restraint, but also, as Haraway acknowledges, highlights the transformative potential of speculative narratives. He also refuses to ascribe any particular form, medium or technology as an ideal way of model of worlding - rather, discreetly and explicitly, without directly mentioning software, Cheng’s definition evokes the agency inherent in intelligent and generative software systems, where the question of authorship becomes a disputed territory between the human and more-than-human - in Cheng’s case, this refers to artificially intelligent systems such as ‘BOB(Bag of Beliefs)’ (2018-2019), a project where Cheng experimented with algorithmically scripting the possibility for BOB, an artificial lifeform, to self-legislate its feelings of being upset caused by repeated mismatches between its beliefs and reality - arguing that the capacity to achieve a state of cognitive upset and to act upon it is a strong marker of consciousness, Cheng experimented with scripting agency into BOB through its quest for updating its beliefs and matching them to what it perceived to be its reality.

As such, Cheng proposes worlding as a practice that is profoundly concerned with an understanding of reality, as evidenced in one of his most extensive projects. In the same line of thinking, Shaws and Reeves-Evison propose when addressing the instrumentalization of fiction as practice: ‘far from being an escape from the world, fiction takes us to its symbolic centre and might allow us to establish some leverage within the tangled contingencies and hidden conventions that lie there’ (7). In this sense, fiction is understood as a self-reflexive process where the complex underlying mechanisms of fiction become referential to its mode of existence. Following this line of thought, one may ask, what would the symbolic centre of worlding look like?

Beyond defining worlding as a practice that makes use of algorithmic processes to envision a simulation of a world, I want to address here the open-ended nature of the possible formats through which the process of worlding, or a world instance, can be encountered: whilst many worlding experiments initially unfold as immersive game spaces or, machinima (“animated filmmaking within a virtual 3D environment” (Marino 1)), many of these worlds frequently generate supplementary, satellite artefacts that their algorithmic means of production further allow, manifesting, for example,  as networked interactive installations or physical renditions of born-digital artefacts (such as sensor-based systems or sculptural 3D printed objects), as seen in the work of Keiken or Sahej Rahal; they may also feature intelligent systems and agents, such as Ian Cheng’s implementation of AI in ‘BOB (Bag of Beliefs)’, or even employ AI as a the main generative methodology, as demonstrated in Sutela’s sonic explorations of alien languages. Consequently, it seems that we are in need an open-ended definition for the kinds of mediated forms that can constitute or reference worlds - from gamespace environments to sonic resonances or interactive assemblages, the common denominator of all these artefacts does not lie in their media specificity but rather their software ontology. I propose, therefore, that the symbolic centre of worlding, as understood within the context of contemporary techno-artistic practices, is software, and more precisely, that centre takes a form, albeit abstract: the network. As Tara McPherson suggests “computers are themselves encoders of culture” (36) structuring not only representations but also epistemologies. What kind of knowledges become encoded in these emergent software worlds?

Envisioning Networks

Another vector through which the exploration of the multifarious networked core of worlding can be theoretically approached emerges from Anna Munster’s theorising of ‘network anaesthesia’ - in her discussion of networks, she calls for heightened reflective and analytical engagement with “the patchiness of the network field” (2), or the uneven and relational connections at play within the conceptualisation of a network. Munster proposes the concept of a network anaesthesia as a sort of state of complacency that our consciousness tends to slide in, where our attention is being engulfed by the perceived infinity and intricacy of the scales of overlapping connections at play - this sensorial overload ultimately acts as a veil, cloaking the multiplicity and unevenness that marks the specific relationality of a network. In order to attempt to engage with a networked system, Munster proposes that, as theorists interested in decoding the networked experience, we must attempt to understand the relation of forces at play within networks from a relational standpoint:

“We need to immerse ourselves in the particularities of network forces and the ways in which these give rise to the form and deformation of conjunctions— the closures and openings of relations to one another. It is at this level of imperceptible flux— of things unforming and reforming relationally— that we discover the real experience of networks. This relationality is unbelievably complex, and we at least glimpse complexity in the topological network visualisation.” (3)

For Munster, therefore, the structuring of relations and their interconnectedness is paramount to any attempt at making sense of the essence of a networked artefact or system. This relational perspective towards networked assemblages opens up a potent line of flight for the conceptualisation of algorithmic worlding as a process - if the centre of this practice is a network, that can in itself sustain and operate a world within several possible mediatized outputs of varying degrees of complexity, interlinked in a constant state of flux to one another, then any attempt to understand such a world must involve conceptual engagement with the essence of its network (the processes through which relations open and close and the states of flux that they enable). Engagement with algorithmic worlds, therefore, moves from here the perceptual into the diagrammatic, from a practice of observation to one of sense-making, involving not only visualisations but also an understanding of relations and flows. This echoes back to Haraway’s conception of worlding, where the practice is conceived as a process of patterning, where the flux of relations at okay not only produces patterns, but also effectively communicates.

To further situate worlding as a resistant practice, I’ll draw a parallel between Munster’s perspective on the network and the fourth theory of images put forth by Flusser in his discussion of technical images. Despite being inherently narrative structures, practices of worlding operate by entering into a more-than-human collaboration with algorithmic technologies, rather than relying on textual formats. They therefore operate a multiplicity of algorithmic processes in order to envision possible worlds.

Technical images operate via a similar principle in that, to Flusser, they represent ‘envisioned surfaces’ (33) - whilst the technical image is an amalgamation of computed particles, I propose here that a “technical world”, to paraphrase Flusser, is an assemblage of computed relations. Similarly to Munster’s conceptualising of anaesthesia, Flusser notes the deceptive quality of technical images - he claims that  “at first glance, technical images appear to be surfaces” (34) and that we must look very closely at these to observe their underlying essence. Both Flusser and Munster, therefore, comment on the conceptual slide from looking (or perceiving) and observing (or generating the perceptible) - I argue here that engagement with worlds necessitates an increased type of observational attention, one that allows us to understand the object of discussion differently. I’ll circle back to Cheng here, who seems to engage in such an process established by showing some increased tendencies towards engagement with not only the network itself, but also the networking:

Ian Cheng, excerpt from Emissaries Guide, 2017 (Permission requested but not yet received - will update upon reply)

Cheng experiments with the essence of the network - the above diagram does not seek to formally capture the elements of a network assemblage, but rather, to create a “ topological surface” (Massumi 751). As Munster inflects,  the goal is “not to abstract aset of ideal spatial relations between elements but to follow visually the contingent deformations and involutions of world events as they arise through conjunctive processes” - in Cheng’s diagram, we see a phenomenological and epistemological topology of the network, where affective relations are mapped in the context of algorithmic scripting - between excitement and competition, observation and acting, a spectrum of relational flows and possibilities are mapped, effectively demonstrating the essence of the network though its flow of relations.

Flusser situates ‘envisioning’ as an explicit power of technical images, specifically in the context of computational technologies, by asserting that it encapsulates what he perceived to be an ability to unleash new powers of invention. He saw the immersive and affective potential of film or television as only a premonition to the possibilities to come from the merging of the procedural with the visual: “The photographs, films, and television and video images that surround us at present are only a premonition of what envisioning power will be able to do in the future. Only when we focus on computer-synthesised images, images of the nearly impossible because ungraspable, unimaginable, and incomprehensible, can we start to even suspect what sort of hallucinatory power is at hand.” (37)

Flusser speaks of the power of algorithms as hallucinatory and limitless - he anticipates the development of interactive and immersive media that moves beyond visuality and into relationality, whilst also recognising the abilities of computation for envisioning possibilities yet-to-be-imagined. Flusser devised three meanings for images: as suspended perception (cavern painting), contribution to history (painting) or method for programming behaviour (television) and speculatively anchored a possible fourth meaning in this capacity for “envisioning”, foregrounding the network as the catalyst for the elevation of the image within this fourth sphere. Similarly to technical images, synthetic worlds are rooted in digital code and networked operations - whilst they present a certain visuality, this is inherently

Envisioning, therefore, becomes a core approach within the process of worlding, where an instance of a world materialises procedurally, emerging as a volumetric or relational assemblage. Flusser hoped that a transition from linearity to a networked mode of existence would ‘make it possible to take the political, economical, and social ‘powers’ out of commission’, echoing the previous calls for a method of critical practice that not only operates with multiplicity at its core, but also has political agency and poses a threat to the capitalist machine. Furthermore, Flusser also speaks of the role of the artist within this context, who takes on the role of an ‘envisioner’ and  stands ‘at the most extreme edge of abstraction ever reached, in a dimensionless universe, and they offer us the possibility of again experiencing the world and our lives in it as concrete’ (38) - I contend that here, Flusser contemplates what is to become enabled through emerging technologies such as game engines:  Flusser foresees here certain practices that underscore the process of worlding, such as the ordering of chaos into logic - when a world is algorithmically conjured a speculative worldbuilding process takes shape that requires the author to have a  “capacity to step from the particle universe back into the concrete”

Works Cited:

Cheng, Ian, et al. Ian Cheng: Emissary’s Guide to Worlding. 1st ed., Koenig Books and Serpentine Galleries, 2018, https://shop.serpentinegalleries.org/products/coming-soon-ian-cheng-emissaries-guide-to-worlding.

Cheng, Ian, ‘Worlding Raga: 2 – What Is a World?’ Ribbonfarm, 5 Mar. 2019, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/03/05/worlding-raga-2-what-is-a-world/.

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