Toward a Minor Tech:Fartan

Rendering Post-Anthropocentric Visions:  The Emergence of Worlding As a Practice of Resistance

Author: Teodora Sinziana Fartan, London South Bank University

ORCID ID: 0009-0003-7172-8541

Keywords: worlding, algorithmic storytelling, critical rendering, more-than-human entanglements, minor worlds, practices of resistance

Abstract:

This paper formulates a strategic activation of speculative-computational practices of worlding by situating them as networked epistemologies of resistance. Through the integration of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of a ‘minor literature’ with the distributed software ontologies of algorithmic worlds, a tentative politics for thinking-with worlds is mapped, anchored in the potential of worlding to counter the dominant narratives of our techno-capitalist cultural imaginary. With particular attention to the ways in which the affordances of software can become operative and offer alternative scales of engagement with modes of being-otherwise, an initial theoretical mapping of how worlding operates as a multi-faceted, critical and anti-capitalist storytelling practice is formulated.

Introduction:

Emanating from the fog of late techno-capitalism, the contours of a critical techno-artistic practice are starting to become visible - networked, immaterial and often volumetric, practices of *worlding* surface as critical renderings concerned with speculative computation through their intersecting of software and storytelling. By cultivating more-than-human assemblages that foreground possible world instances, these practices become politically charged as networked epistemologies of resistance, where dissent is enabled through the production of alternative knowledge systems and relational entanglements outside the ruins of capitalistic discourse.  

In their quests for speculative possibility, world-makers are dislodging existing hi-tech systems and platforms from their conventional economical or institutional roles and repurposing them as technologies of possibility which seek to de-centre the dominant narratives of the Western cultural imagination. A reversing of scales therefore occurs, where 'high tech' becomes deterritorialized and mobilised towards the objectives of a 'minor tech', which seeks to counter the universal ideals embedded in technologies through foregrounding "collective value" (Cox and Andersen 1).

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the (mis)use of software such as game engines, machine learning and generative algorithms for the artistic exploration of crossovers between the technological, the ecological and the mythical; specifically, through the emergence of increasingly capable and accessible platforms such as Unreal Engine and Unity, game engines have become the creative frameworks of choice for conjuring worlds due to their potential for rapid prototyping and increased capacity of rendering complex, real-time virtual imaginaries. Whilst worlding can exist across a spectrum of algorithmically-mediated techniques and frequently stretches across several software practices and systems, it is most often encountered through (or integrates within its technological assemblage) the game engine, as we will see in the course of this paper.

In the ontological sense, practices of worlding materialise, as algorithmic portals into fictional terrains where alternative modes of being and knowing are envisioned; they refuse to adopt a totalising view of the megastructure of capitalism’s cultural imaginary and instead opt to zoom in onto the cracks appearing along its edges, where other narrative possibilities are starting to sprout and multiply. Through the evocative affordances of software, practices of worlding teleport us forwards, amidst the ruins of the Anthropocene, where “unexpected convergences” emerge from the debris of what has passed (Tsing 205).

In what follows, I aim to at once activate an initial cartography of ‘worlding’ as an emergent techno-artistic praxis and propose a tentative politics for thinking not only *through*, but also *with* worlding as a software practice that can facilitate processes of imagining outside the rigid narratives of techno-scientific capitalism. It is particularly through its computational and networked character that worlding becomes a practice of multiplicity which offers a potent framework for thinking outside of our fraught present by algorithmically conjuring radically different ontologies - these modes of being-otherwise, I contend, also bring forth a new aesthetic framework rooted in both the affordances of the technological platforms used in their inception and the relational assemblages forming within these: the network, in itself, becomes unearthed throughout this paper as the essence of algorithmic worlds and is proposed as a mode of conceptualisation for these practices.

Within the context of political resistance, by approaching these algorithmically-rendered worlds through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of a 'minor literature' (16), we can trace the emergence of minor worlds as potent and powerful assemblages for countering the majority worlds of capitalist platforms and dominant socio-cultural 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 de-centering the master narratives of our present ? What alternative knowledges do they draw upon within their ontologies and what potentialities do they open up for encountering these?

Throughout this paper, the worlds conjured by artists such as Ian Cheng, Sahej Rahal and Jena Sutela will be proposed as objects of analysis for the ways in which worlding at once becomes operative as a form of social and political critique and activates a process of collective engagement with potent acts of imagining futures where a co-existence together and alongside the non-human is foregrounded.

On Worlding

Today, there seems to be a widespread view that we are living at the end - of liberalism, of imagination, of time, of civilisation, of Earth; engulfed in the throes of late capitalism, conjuring a possible alternative seems exceptionally out of grasp. In his novel *Pattern Recognition*, which is presented as a reflection on the human desire to detect patterns and meaning within data, William Gibson formulates a statement that rings particularly relevant when superimposed onto our present state:

"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. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition… " (200)

Gibson makes reference here to the near-impossibility of imagining a clear-cut future in a present that is marred by ecological, political and social unrest - this fictional excerpt is distinctly illustrative of the affective perception of life within the Age of the Anthropocene, where the volatility of the present, caused by the knowledge that changes on a planetary scale are imminent, ensures that a given future can no longer be predicted or visualised. Without the ability to rationally deduce a logical outcome, what we, too, are left with is a sort of *pattern recognition* - a search for other ways of being and knowing that can enable visions of the future to emerge; here, rather than being logically deducible, the future needs to be sought through the uncovering of new patterns.

Just like Gibson's character, we do not know what kind of more-than-human assemblages will inhabit our future states - and it is precisely here that this act of pattern recognition intersects with the core agenda of worlding: how can we envision patterns  of possible futures? Within our own contemporary context, where asymmetrical power structures, surveillance capitalism and the threat of climate change deeply complicate our ability to think of possible outcomes, where can new patterns emerge?

In the wake of the Anthropocene, feminist critical theory has  launched several calls for seeking such patterns with potential to provide a foothold for experiments in imagining future alternatives: from Stenger’s bid to cultivate “connections with new powers of acting, feeling, imagining and thinking” (24), to Haraway’s request for critical  attention to “what worlds world worlds” ("Staying with the trouble" 35) and LeGuin’s plea for a search for the ‘other story’ (6) - 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 demonstrates the urgency of developing patterns for thinking and being otherwise.

To begin an analysis of how worlding as a practice attempts to engage with the envisioning of alternatives, we'll turn to Donna Haraway, who further instrumentalizes the idea of patterning introduced earlier through Gibson: when situating worlding as an active ontological process, she says that "the world is a verb, or at least a gerund; worlding is the dynamics of intra-action [...] and intra-patience, the giving and receiving of patterning, all the way down, with consequences for who lives and who dies and how" ("SF: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far" 8). In her definition, Haraway proposes a transition of both the term 'world' and 'pattern' from stasis to an active ontological concept through the transition from noun to verb, from object to action. Worlds and patterns become active processes of worlding and patterning.

In Haraway's theorising of speculative fabulation, patterning involves an experimental processes of searching for possible "organic, polyglot, polymorphic wiring diagrams" - for a possible fiction, whilst worlding encapsulates the act of conjuring a world on the basis of that pattern ("SF: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far" 2). For Haraway, therefore, worlding becomes a practice of collective relationality, of intra-activity between world-makers and world-dwellers, as well as a networked process of exchange rooted in practices of care. It is important to note that worlding, here, is not only situated within an speculative context: Haraway hints to its relevance by defining it as a practice of life and death, which has the potential to engage in powerful re-formulations of the narratives of the future, acts which might be crucial in establishing the nature of future states. Positioning themselves as counter-mythologies to the crises and anxieties of our current Anthropocentric moment, the speculative futures proposed by practices worlding are inviting collective participation in acts of envisioning possible futures.

Towards and Open-Ended Definition

So.. what comes after the end of the world? Or, better phrased, what can exist outside the scaffolding of reality 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 noted 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. As Palmer puts it, worlding requires "the cessation of habitual temporalities and modes of being" in order to open up spaces of potentiality for thinking speculatively ("Worlding"). To think outside ourselves, towards possible future alternatives, has therefore become a difficult exercise.

Techno-artistic worlding practices attempt to intervene precisely at this point and open up new formats of relational and affective experience through the generative and procedural affordances of software. The world-experiments that emerge from these algorithmic processes constitute hybrid assemblages of simulated spaces, fictive narratives, imagined entities and networked entanglements - collectively, they  speculatively engage with the uneven landscape of the future, its multiplicities and many textures and viscosities.

To situate worlding, I'll draw on Ian Cheng, an artist engaged in complex practices of worlding: Cheng formulates his own definitions - of the 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 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” ("Worlding Raga").

Through these delineations, Cheng acknowledges the inherent complexities of worlding as a praxis that not only posits the challenges of thinking beyond contemporary systems of restraint and working with complex tools, but also carries the transformative potential of generating a believable future. Cheng refuses to ascribe any particular form, medium or technology as an ideal model of worlding - rather, discreetly and implicitly, 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 the generative potential of artificially intelligent systems such as his ‘BOB (Bag of Beliefs)’ project (2018-2019), which constituted an experiment in developing an artificial life-form that had the capacity to self-legislate its feelings of being upset caused by the repeated mismatches between its beliefs and reality. As such, Cheng inscribes the affordances of generative, intelligent and procedural processes within his conceptualisation of worlding.

Further drawing on Cheng's refusal of medium-specificity, I want to provide further contours for the multiplicity of states in which worlding, or a world instance, can be encountered: many worlding experiments initially unfold as immersive game spaces and then becomes machinima, or products of “animated filmmaking within a virtual 3D environment” (Marino 1) when presented in a gallery environment. Beyond the virtual space, satellite artefacts can emerge from a world's algorithmic means of production, often becoming a physical manifestation of that world's entities - taking shape, for example, as physical renditions of born-digital entities, as seen in Rahal's sculptural works as part of his "Mythmachines" exhibition at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Figure 1). In terms of further transgressions of the fictional world into real-space, worlding practices may also feature interactive intelligent systems and agents, such as Ian Cheng’s implementation of AI in ‘BOB (Bag of Beliefs)', or even employ AI as a spiritual medium for the mediation of linguistic fictions, as demonstrated in Sutela’s sonic explorations of alien languages in "nimiia cetii".

https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/10/345111/14430106/BALTIC-Sahej-Rahal-High-Res-5_1000.jpg

Figure 1: Exhibition view of 'Mythmachine' by Sahej Rahal at Baltic Centre for the Contemporary Arts (Permission requested but not yet received - will update upon reply)

Consequently, it becomes apparent that the multifarious facets of worlding have one thing in common: networked software processes. Due to the multiplicity of possible entanglements of tools and algorithms that can operate within scales of worlding, 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 in their software ontology.

I propose, therefore, that the symbolic centre of worlding (and its one unifying characteristic across its many possible ontological assemblages), as understood within the context of contemporary techno-artistic practices, is software, and more precisely, that this 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. In this line of thought, one must wonder what kind of knowledges become encoded in these emergent software worlds?

Envisioning Networks: An Epistemic Shift Towards Relationality

Another vector through which 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. 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 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 software 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 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. 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, through a foregrounding of relational exchanges.

I’ll circle back to Cheng here, who seems to engage in such a process through establishing a practice of conceptual diagramming that attempts to cartograph affective relations scripted into worlding practices. By showing increased tendencies towards engagement with not only the network itself, but also the *networking*, Cheng traverses the crucial space between the perceived and the perceptual:

Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks At Perfection Map, 2015 (Permission requested but not yet received - will update upon reply)

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 a set of ideal spatial relations between elements but to follow visually the contingent deformations and involutions of world events as they arise through conjunctive processes” (5) - in Cheng’s diagram, we see a phenomenological and epistemological topology of the networking processes at play, 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 diagrammed, effectively demonstrating the essence of the network though its flow of relations. Worlding, therefore, cultivates a networked epistemology where relationality can cultivate new ways of knowing - furthermore, the multiplicity of the network embraces the possibility of collective action and inter-action: how might we engage with worlding as a technology of the collective?

IV. Rendering Resistance: The Emergence of Minor Worlds

In an age of anxiety underscored by invasive politics and ubiquitous algorithmic megastructures, to simulate a world volumetrically, epistemologically and relationally becomes an exercise in (counter)utilising the major technologies of the present:  artificial intelligence, game engines, volumetric rendering software and networked interactions -  all usually employed in the service of extractive and opaque practices. But, within the ruins of same reality, crumbling under the weight of late techno-capitalism, it can also become a project of dissent - one that seeks tactics that lead out of the ruins and into a future dominated by new, pluralistic, de-centered and distributed agencies taking shape within “ecological matters of care” (Puig de la Bellacasa, 24).

Within practices of worlding, imagining otherwise takes shape within a more-than-human entanglement with technologies that are capable of procedurally rendering a simulation, a glimpse into an alternative mode of being. As LeGuin proposes, technology can be dislodged from the logic of capitalism and refigured as a cultural carrier bag (8); in this sense, she envisions this refiguration as a catalyst for a new form of science fiction, re-conceptualised as a socially engaged practice concerned with affective intensity and multiplicity. Similarly to LeGuin, Nichols reflects on the tensions between ‘the liberating potential of the cybernetic imagination and the ideological tendency to preserve the existing form of social relations’ (627). Nichols argues that there are inherent contradictions embedded within software systems, emerging from the dual ontology of software as both a mode of control and a force enabling collectivity; he writes of cybernetic systems:

"if there is liberating potential in this, it clearly is not in seeing ourselves as cogs in a machine or elements of a vast simulation, but rather in seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole that is self-regulating and capable of long-term survival. At present this larger whole remains dominated by arts that achieve hegemony. But the very apperception of the cybernetic connection, where system governs parts, where the social collectivity of mind governs the autonomous ego of individualism, may also provide the adaptive concepts needed to decenter control and overturn hierarchy". (640)

Nichols emphasises the ways in which software can be repurposed from a tool of control into a tool for overturning oppression - he draws particular attention to the necessity of pluralism over individualism and highlights the potential of subverting hegemonic artistic languages in favour of cultivating other, more minor, modes of expression. Both LeGuin and Nicholson's perspectives are closely aligned with Deleuze and Guattari's theorising of the minor.

Deleuze and Guattari first outline 'the minor' in relation to literature in their book *Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature* where they analyse the work of Kafka, which they conceptualise as a network: "it's a rhizome, a burrow" (Brinkley et al 2)

In Cinema 2, Deleuze postulates that art 'must take part in this task: not that of addressing a people, which is presupposed as already there, but of contributing to the invention of a people.’ (Deleuze 217).

The concept of a minor literature, therefore, suggests that a re-purposing of majority language into a minor one can be a powerful tool for subversion and resistance against dominant structures of power. Minor literature emerges in relation within marginalised and oppressed communities, offering alternative narratives and modes of expression that challenge dominant discourses. It disrupts established norms and opens up new possibilities for social and political transformation. The use of the word ‘minor’, rather than suggesting a sense of the small, signals ‘the becoming-minor of a major language’ - Deleuze does not base a minority on identity or size (a minority is not envisioned as being smaller, as the naming suggests), but ‘to do with a model – the major – that it refuses, departs from or, more simply, cannot live up to’ (Burrows and O’Sullivan, 19).

In their analysis of Kafka, Deleuze and Guattari highlight the transformative power of literature by way of affective resonance. When applied to practices of worlding, the concept of minor highlights the agency of artists in constructing alternative worlds that challenge dominant narratives and ideologies - minor worlds represent a rupture within the ordinary regime of the present through their undoing and reassembling of the operative logic for reality. Minor practices provide ‘the means for another consciousness and another sensibility’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 17).

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 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, 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,  where the entertainment-focused properties of commodified games are replaced with experimental assemblages and their affect constellations.

When the majority language of the game engine is deployed into the minor territories of experiment and social critique, the connection of the audience with political immediacy is facilitated through the experimental readings that are enabled. Pushing beyond the transformation of given content into the appropriate forms expected of major literature, these worlds take shape within the territory of minor literature, where experimental and non-linear formats that operate in networked and multifaceted ways “speak first and only conceive afterwards”, as McLean infers. This study, therefore, aims to trace the ways in which openings of space, time, and consciousness into alternative imaginaries are made possible on the shores of virtual worlds.

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 storytelling, with a particular focus on the new modes of relational and affective experience rendered into being by the networked data exchanges scripted into interfaces. Driven by speculative fiction, Teodora’s practice explores the immersive, interactive and intelligent more-than-human entanglements that can take 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.