Literary Informatics

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<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Robert Frost'</h3> THERE was a rustic of sorts Who purchased a pair of blackbirds: One to kill the other. One blackbird was killed, And he bought another and it was killed. He then bought two more: And then two more, And then another and another. He kept it up till seven Were killed by the one remaining. He went to the druggist And was drug to the door, And as he was carried home He murmured, before he could speak plain, "Give me some more birds."

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Emily Dickinson'</h3> ONE BY ONE they are taking away the birds, and I know every one, and I know myself. I have lost them all and yet I call every one by name. Habit is a great deadener of pain; and I have lost them all. It comes over me that I have only to make a small effort, open the window, and there will be all my birds at the sill. I shall just say out loud, "Come"-- And they will come. And they will all be back in place all at once, as if they had never been away. And I will say to them, "How well you sing." And they will sing.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Langston Hughes'</h3> I am here, here for the first time- I will never be here again- if you don’t want these poems don’t read them, if you want to thank the poet do so, if you want to hate him do that; but let that not keep you from reading what I have written. I could not have written against you, against your venomous hatred, your malice and your sorcery; do not let this silence you too.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Sylvia Plath'</h3> They do it with dark feathers heaped two dozen black birds, they do it in the snow scattering it like a blessing or a doom. It is a rite, a ritual, I don’t know— I, who do only useless things, unable to speak the secret language of snow and birds. I am a human being, I live in a cottage, and the world is much too hard for me. I am much too hard for the world. I do it only with human words. And they are soft, and the world is hard. And I live in a cottage, and the world, although lovely and full of tomorrows, will not come into my cottage because it is too hard. I have got to get out of the cottage, away from words. But I am tired.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Allen Ginsberg'</h3> There were thirty-six blackbirds who were shot dead in Cambridge, Massachusetts, On March sixth thirty-one years ago. Some say they died of fright From the satanic thunder Of Marine Corps bombers. At midnight of that day They came from their roosts in the trees To meet their enemy, the frightful blast There was a difference in their demeanour from other blackbirds Thirty-six blackbirds were shot dead in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Only two came from other states, Some flew east, some flew west, some flew across the sea, Most just simply flew apart. The three I knew best were from areas of Guatemala Who were surviving members of what was once a great family. There are new families now Newborn blackbirds of all different sizes, And tomorrow another blackbird dies. Of all the death in all the wars That have taken place from time to time Only the deaths of these thirty-six blackbirds Could not be justified. There were thirty-six blackbirds And we killed them We, their cousins We've killed the hawk and the crow, too, A squaw and a crow and a red-tailed hawk.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Walt Whitman'</h3> THEY do not sing together Off in a tree by itself One bird sings, and then there are Thirty-five other birds And they do not sing together Off in a tree by themselves, Thirty-five blackbirds One bird by itself, singing, Till there are thirty-four blackbirds And they do not sing together Off in a tree by themselves, Thirty-four blackbirds One bird by itself, singing, Till there are thirty-three blackbirds And they do not sing together off in a tree by themselves, Thirty-three blackbirds One bird by itself, singing, Till there are thirty-two blackbirds And they do not sing together Off in a tree by themselves, Thirty-two blackbirds One bird by itself, singing, [...] Till there is one blackbird, off in a tree by himself, One blackbird One bird by itself, singing.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'T. S. Eliot'</h3> The days dwindle down to a precious few. The sun burns the shoreline as the masts burn sixty feet high. On the waterfront they are unloading the poor sardines. As the twilight draws on, the children hurry home from school. Pale firelight on a girl’s face at her window, her hands busy with her hair; Languidly lean and languid pale, to the indolent tapping of her foot. The streets grow dark. The night-watch goes his rounds. The fire-light on her face grows stronger, and dies down again. Weak firelight on her face by the window, with the tapping of her foot. She is finished now, and the mirror is responding To the firelight on her face by the window, with the water running cold. She shivers and puts out the light.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Maya Angelou'</h3> Listen to a few blackbirds. Look at the blackbirds. See them sitting on that wire! But what do they think? All the shiny blackbirds. I suppose they just sit there and think blackbird-thoughts, or maybe they’re talking about life, or love, or whatever, but there they are on that wire, in the sun. Just sitting. Total blackbirds. My self, I like to watch them, those blackbirds, perching and being still and at peace. That is their gift. And when the sun drops off, and the dew takes over, and the world darkens, and the flies come out and the mosquitoes come out and the blackbirds go in, they are still there. Shiny blackbirds, and they have given us their day of song.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Christopher Marlowe'</h3> Enclose thee round with many a snake and many a ring of spells that no man may undo. And as the grey-rob’d god doth sing, and as ashes have flame, do thou on the earth of a sudden burn and consume to ashes.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Ron Paul'</h3> This is what I want in my country. This is what I want. What I want is everyone threatened. What I want is everyone frightened. What I want is a people run through with weapons. What I want is a common language of fear. What I want is a sickness that never has to prove itself. What I want is the whole damned country on the brink. What I want is the country like a toy I can play with on my own. What I want is a nuclear family. What I want is a new house that killed my wife. What I want is a fire that burned my house. What I want is a neighborhood looking on. What I want is a new government for my country. What I want is a new government to govern my country. What I want is a new house to live in. What I want is a new house in my country. What I want is a new house in my country and my country in my house. What I want, what I want, what I want, what I want, what I want, what I want, what I want, what I want, what I want is…

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Basho'</h3> Matsuo What is beauty? Find out for yourself. Everything here is ready for you to do just that.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'e e cummings'</h3> i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) editor's note: it turns out this is the first half of a damn e e cummings poem, more or less: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in. I'll have to swap it out.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Edgar Allen Poe'</h3> The thrush, the thrush, the thrush, The only singer in the woods, Poor wanderer! I have heard At times a strain like this, Some woods at eventide, When summer sun and summer shade, Were mingled, seem to sanction heaves Profuse, opulent, of joy and woe, An heaven in this poor earth re-created. He sings above the woods, and through the glade; He is the lord of this still haunt; As he is singing now, When the golden light grows dim. He is singing to himself How he listens at his song! Thinking how that this might be indeed Cheerful, as are the strains he flings, Perchance, a long time to this day He will watch from his lofty perch, When twilight leaves the sky. He can know no meaner bliss Than singing at the east; And not a fragment of it his, But what comes from the heart. editor's note: GPT-3 really wanted to give me The Raven for this. I also had to move past the Beatles song Blackbird.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Sappho'</h3> (supposed to have lived circa 600 B.C.E.) “Plump and soft and sweet These blackbird chicks are, Living, obedient To their tender mothers. So lovely and delicate In soft woolen coverings, Each girl gazing now Into her mother’s eyes— Oh, so lovely and delicate She takes them all into her arms And tightens the hold On this bunch of warmth.” (translated by Ambrose)

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Adrienne Rich'</h3> Last night I dreamed the moon was so close I could almost touch it, but it was not gently floating as in previous dreams but was red, smoldering like a piece of fire. I stood in a field that had turned to glass. Even my shadow on the ground was hard, divided into tiny prisms that scattered the light like dust. I wanted to tear my shadow loose and grow tall like a tree, broad branches spreading as I sank deep my roots into the ground. But it was not safe to sleep, so I walked in the cold light of the moon. At first I walked. Then I danced, clenching my fists between my slightly opened arms. I danced with my shadow, my hands searching for her face, her hands for mine, challenging, provoking, my shadow bending low, curling into a crouch, leaping high into the air. She turned and fled. I ran after her, my feet light as thistledown. My hair whipped out behind me in a tangled frenzy, as it had when I was young. The moon flew behind a cloud, and I could no longer see my shadow, but in the glassy field I ran, faster and faster, the wind whistling past my ears, my hair flying out behind me.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Marianne Moore'</h3> Who were those early birds— Hebrew, Hollandish, it matters not— who were those early birds who inked, who embossed the Bible’s blacker blacks The Annunciation, The Crucifixion, The Burning Bush, tree and bush As if an inky cloud halos them. who were the inky birds who were those birds who touched the text of heaven with their inky beaks? These birds seem to carry on their heads a heaven of their own or an inky halo black, soft, shadow-black, rising, falling perfunctorily, finally, lifelessly. We cannot know if those were orioles or grackles, hawks or whip-poor-wills, starlings or English sparrows, only that the coloring was dark, the tones notably plumagey. In any case I feel for Aeschylus, who must have thought it fitting, fitting, to be a crow black as midnight singing on the dead limbs of the fallen tree of life.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Christina Rossetti'</h3> If a body is beautiful, then it is beautiful. Leigh is beautiful, and she knows it. I suppose you could count her teeth, but that's not the point. When she walks in a room, the men stop talking, and the women stop talking. She doesn't have to do anything. Her beauty does a lot of talking for her. She doesn't have to say, I'm beautiful. She doesn't have to say, I'm beautiful. She doesn't have to say, I'm beautiful. She doesn't have to say, I'm beautiful. Leigh is beautiful. It doesn't look like she knows it. But she has one hell of an ego trip going. She doesn't even have to be here. She could stay at home with her own family. But at home, there isn't much to do. At home, she doesn't get paid for being beautiful. She doesn't get paid for being beautiful. She doesn't get paid for being beautiful. At home, nobody even looks up when she walks in the room. She has to get dressed and go out of the house to be paid for being beautiful. Leigh is beautiful. She doesn't have to say so. We know it. She knows it.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Anne Sexton'</h3> Their song is the flutelike sound of war sketching a glistening black outline on the sky of what will happen here... The killer thought of you in my head strikes like a scorpion into the river of my bloodstream Break off the wings, singular serpent, and make your meals on the limbs instead, that your eye may see, and your heart eat the sky.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Oscar Wilde'</h3> Thirty-six blackbirds in their proudest plumage Sat in the sweetbriar just above my head; And they were singing, “Catch us if you can!” The mocking-bird answered them from the tree-top: “Try your wings, you long-tailed cuckoos, try! But if you leave your perch you’ll be sorry That ever you were born to sing and fly.” Then up they rose together, black and white, And like a flight of butterflies they flew; And o’er the garden hedge they whirred, and past The yew-tree’s slender spire without a jostle. And I, who thought them of a mind with me, Went to the hedge, and there was nothing there O, bird of wisdom! and O, blackbirds, white! If ignorance were gold you’d be right dear!

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle.'</h3> The little pretty warbler is dead, The small birds have lost their mate, They went to the place where they heard cry'd With sorrow in sad tones most complete; There the sight doth make them grievous and sad, To see speechless two blood-spots, The blood of the lovely little bird, Which never more shall sweetly sing.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Hilda Doolittle (HD)'</h3> of whirling marsh-light, of night-sounds delicate as memory in the ear, of a dark fern-frond curling across snakeskin sandal, and the cold green wink of a tear-drop opal, dancing to the tongue-tips, opening the petals of the young mouths among the reeds, among the reeds, swallows fly like arrows, the marsh is cherries, light-petalled, bird-scattered and the long necks of the cypresses are thread-veins of a majestic tapestry.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Gertrude Stein'</h3> Thirty-Six Blackbirds burnt on a wintry day. Thirty-Six Blackbirds, burnt to a crisp upon their branches. Their little black corpses, Thirty-Six Blackbirds, Blackbirds, blackbirds, blackbirds. Every one the same, not one to bring to light. Not one to fall down, Not one to fall down, Not one to fall in love or take a wife. Not one to be happy nor feel glad. Not one to be happy, not one to be in a cage. Not one to have a little nest of chocolate eggs. Not one to have a little branch, Not one to go a-courting, nor one to get a wife. Not one to have a little nest of chocolate eggs!

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Wallace Stevens'</h3> There are six kinds of blackbirds, The cuckoo is a bird, and there are a dozen kinds of sparrows And finches and the rest; But only one kind of men. And that is the blackbird kind. There are all kinds of men but they aren't like blackbirds; They're stiff and they are cold. But the blackbird's kind is recently grown up And careful with his crows And tries to behave stylishly. But there are three things I admire the most. And you'd be wise if you'd observe them well. First is a blackbird, a troublesome bird, He's only happy when he's up in the air With his wings clapped to his side. And the second thing I admire the most, Is the man who says, 'Kiss me But I won't tell you why.' And the third and last thing I admire the most, Is the man who says, whenever that occurs, ' Give me back the wife I had.' And I won't tell you why

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Paul Simon'</h3> The girl with the longest hair in the state Comes from the west coast, buys the booze And puts her hair up at night When she sleeps by herself She wears black eye makeup And her father is a thief And it's fifty below Outside her bedroom window She's got one pure blue eye And one bottle of gin And everything you see is hers She's got a tongue of fire Like a dragon that should be slain And everything she touches is mine She's got thirty-six blackbirds And she feeds 'em names of men And one of these days She's gonna let 'em fly away

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Kurt Vonnegut'</h3> And said the popeyed professor of ornithology, "I can tell you how many birds there are in the sky. But, I cannot tell you why there are so many."

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Champ, a Golden Retriever'</h3> I have loved birds since I was very young. I stayed by my window for hours just to watch them. One summer, I heard a whole lot of birds chirping in the trees next door. The next morning, I went outside to see which birds had made the noises. I stayed outside for hours watching and listening to the birds. All the birds flew away but two still stayed in the tree. I followed them around until I couldn't see them anymore. That was when I noticed a nest with one little egg in it. I was walking through the yard one September and noticed a whole lot of leaves on the ground. I knew trees and leaves didn't fall off on their own, so I knew someone must have thrown them out. I looked up the tree and found that the nest was gone with one little egg in the empty hole. I still leave the little egg in my nest for the birds to see so they'll know I care. Now that I'm a Golden Retriever, my favorite place is: the back porch. One day, I remember my caregiver asked me, "Would you like a bird to stay with you?" I started jumping around and running as fast as I could. I told my caregiver that I wanted a bird to stay with me. A few weeks later, a bird flew onto my back and then onto my head. At first I was scared, but then I got really happy because I had some company. My favorite thing about the bird that has chosen me as his pet is: he's always hopping around and talking to me. The bird has never taken her eyes off me. She tells me what to do and who is there and who has left. She sleeps with me and watches over me. I love my bird.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Louise Gluck'</h3> like a peasant could own even a single bird: but on haying day the blackbirds follow in his wake, flocking from the woods; at evening, when he returns with his rake and his scythe, the last of the flock to leave are black and red, and black birds sing in the blackbird's place.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Anne Carson'</h3> two blackbirds, one blackbird. the spaces between them are white, blank. asides about the “cruel, arbitrary eye that passes over” (for whom, why, what?) metaphor with holes in it. two blackbirds, one blackbird. one blackbird, two blackbirds. something is wrong with the pen, how do I fix the pen. two blackbirds, one blackbird. two blackbirds, one blackbird. the spaces between them are white, blank. just tried to follow the two blackbirds, one blackbird. not just their flight but their song, their sound, their voice. but the birds flew away from me, and I'm still here. in the spaces between the words.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Hart Crane'</h3> I’ve never been able to grasp the book, but still I hear them, morning and evening, when they settle and twig-crackle and tweet-grate at the gate: thirty-six black, blackbirds. Huddled in the trees and on the grassy path except for two of them, foraging in front and picking; ten more, in a row, caught in the car’s stubby, glowing bath; twenty-four more, from toes to treetops, perched in the apple-heavy, steep-edged trees; and fourteen more, on the neighbor’s lawn near the lower, slatted gate—— all tattered-bright and black. Settling and twig-crackle and tweet-grate; sustaining and dropping and piping and chukking. Cut in half by a twelve-foot swath of shadow, jostled by their neighbors after them, pecking and hopping. Settling and twig-crackle and tweet-grate; sustaining and dropping and piping.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Amy Tan'</h3> My mother pulls the dead birds from the pocket of her coat, to show me that in the spring there are more birds and more chances to make a mistake. She does not hold them carefully. Despite her fear of joss (luck and bad luck) and her superstitions, she wears the birds in her clothes, careless of their softness, their downy wings. When I was younger, I couldn't touch the birds or the nest they left behind, for fear of swallowing the wrong luck, of tainting myself with death. I'd gather fat caterpillars, and wiggly worms. I'd carry them in my wet palms to the house, and my mother would gather them up for the frying pan or the sourdough. But now, when my mother puts the dead birds in my hands, I hold them tenderly against my chest, my throat, my face, I feel their featherless skin against my own skin, and I know it is good luck to feel the life and the tang of death on my skin, to touch something that is dead and gone. I have become the keeper of Tang and Deb and the other dead birds my mother has found. I keep them not in boxes with cotton, but in shoeboxes. I keep them in shoeboxes because I am an American, a Chinese American, and I was raised in a white woman's shoe. I am American, I am Chinese, and I was raised in a white woman's shoe.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Amy Lowell'</h3> Birds in the shadow of the moon In a leafless elm tree, All through the night Made a sad, sweet, silver sound In the misty moonglow. Birds in the shadow of the moon In a leafless elm tree, All singing sad and sweet, With a silver, mournful cry, [The birds] flitted through the sky [As] the wind blew by. Down the wind flew all the birds, Down the wind flew all the birds, Down the furrow's ragged edge Down the furrow's ragged edge, While o'er them in the sky The tears of night fell fast.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Alfred Lord Tennyson'</h3> He shook from his wings All the feathers of grief, Till the long black tail Hung heavy, and the mournful face Leaned a star to the ground: And he climbed down the crown Of the green leafy tree Over the graves, To the foot of the Cross In the glooming square, And he shook his wings again And he shook out his feathers of mourn.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Geoffrey Chaucer'</h3> Wey that God in his myddes of alle manner creature Hadde ymaad the forme of a litel world, And purposeth in mariage to hymselve, To hym when that he sholde, as be-fil, thralle, But how, for Sir Dynadan, as in his speche, And as it semeth by certein clerkes, What for Sir Gawayne, for to be weddid his daughter Cerise to, So that on of the knyghtes errantes be worthy And eek for to avenge upon the cruel serpent Myn owene lady Jesu Cristes mooder To doon his office upon his enemyes Whan that the serpent hadde in assaute ytake On every bussh and on every lilly. editor's note: I can't read Middle English, sorry.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Samuel Beckett'</h3> There are thirty-six blackbirds in the darkened room here where the pianola has receded with its reels of little perforated controls and its rocking piles of punched-out music. The blackbirds are waiting for the power to be switched on so as to begin to dance on the air to the syncopated rhythms of a voice that is not yet fading away. Having waited for the dials to settle down, for the ivory buttons to cease sliding in and out of their sockets, the ebony fingers begin to tap in great trained flocks upon the keys and are silent for a moment and the linen backs of their necks prick up. Their tails quiver. The dancers are male and female and about equal in number. They have glossy plumage, lustrous eyes. They croon and arrange themselves. They are waiting for music that will never come. The music on the pianola has been silenced for ever, but not one of the blackbirds, however busy he is crooning to his neighbour, suspects the fact. Not one will ever notice that the music in the room is silent and that the air will never dance to its rhythms. Not one believes himself to be anything but a real bird that can fly. The room is walled. It is floored. It is boarded. It is a room. It is a room that is not outside. The height, breadth and depth of it are those of the whole house. This is the only room.

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Ray Bradbury'</h3> When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done. I am now ready to be lived on.”

<h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h3>'By' 'Shel Silverstein'</h3> On a cold fall day, Thirty-six blackbirds sat On a wire. Along came a guy With a big, fat gun. Bang! went the gun. Bang! went the birds. The guy went home And said, "That was a fun day!" In the distance Thirty-five blackbirds sat On a wire.

<<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "citation")>> <<for _i to 0; _i lt _passages.length; _i++>> <<print _passages[_i].text>> <</for>>

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<<set $bookmarks to []>> <<set UIBar.unstow(true)>> <<set setup.score to 0>> <<set setup.guesses to 0>> <<set setup.guessed to []>> <<set setup.guess_values to {}>> <<set setup.guessingTutorial to false>> <<set setup.visited_definitions to ["None"]>> <<set $selectedBox to 0>> <<set $selectedSpool to "">>

<div id="title-row"> <<print passage()>><<total_passages>> <<bookmark>> <div id="header-buttons"> <<if State.length > 1>> <<if def setup.guess_values>> <</if>> <<back "west">> <</if>> <<if def _next_passage>> <a data-passage={{_next_passage}} class="link-internal macro-link" id="top-forward-link" tabindex="0">east</a> <</if>> <<if tags().includes("definition")>> <<set _current_passage to passage()>> <<set setup.visited_definitions.pushUnique(_current_passage)>> <<if not setup.guessed.includes(_current_passage)>> <<definitionGuess true>> <<else>> <<print setup.guess_values[passage()]>> <</if>> <<addclass "#passages" "spaced">> <</if>> </div> <<script>> Mousetrap.bind("right", function() { $('#top-forward-link').click(); }); Mousetrap.bind("left", function() { $('#top-back-button a').click(); }); <</script>>

<<widget "cycler">> <<set _word1 to $args[0]>> <<set _word2 to $args[1]>> <<cycle "_receiver">> <<option _word1 selected>> <<option _word2>> <</cycle>> <</widget>> <<widget "blue">> <<set _word to $args[0]>> <<set _outputString to "" + _word + "">> <<if _word.toUpperFirst() is _word>> <<set _blueString to "Blue">> <<else>> <<set _blueString to "blue">> <</if>> <<cycle "_one">> <<option _blueString selected>> <<option _outputString>> <</cycle>> <</widget>> <<widget "kettle">> <<set _word to $args[0]>> <<set _outputString to "" + _word + "">> <<if _word.toUpperFirst() is _word>> <<set _kettleString to "Kettle">> <<else>> <<set _kettleString to "kettle">> <</if>> <<cycle "_one">> <<option _kettleString selected>> <<option _outputString>> <</cycle>> <</widget>> <<widget "bl">> <<set _word to $args[0]>> <<set _fragment to $args[1]>> <<set _outputString to "" + _word + "">> <<if _word.toUpperFirst() is _word>> <<set _blueString to "" + _fragment + "">> <<else>> <<set _blueString to "" + _fragment + "">> <</if>> <<cycle "_one">> <<option _blueString selected>> <<option _outputString>> <</cycle>> <</widget>> <<widget "ket">> <<set _word to $args[0]>> <<set _fragment to $args[1]>> <<set _outputString to "" + _word + "">> <<if _word.toUpperFirst() is _word>> <<set _kettleString to "" + _fragment + "">> <<else>> <<set _kettleString to "" + _fragment + "">> <</if>> <<cycle "_one">> <<option _kettleString selected>> <<option _outputString>> <</cycle>> <</widget>> <<widget "cite">> <<set _page1 to $args[0]>> <<if $args.length == 2>> <<set _sourceTitle to $args[1]>> <<if _page1 == "*">> <<set _outputString to "(" + "n.p." + ")">> <<set _citation_text to "(" + Story.get(_sourceTitle).text + " n.p.)">> <<else>> <<set _outputString to "(" + _page1 + ")">> <<set _citation_text to "(" + Story.get(_sourceTitle).text + " p" + _page1 + ")">> <</if>> <<else>> <<set _page2 to $args[1]>> <<set _sourceTitle to $args[2]>> <<set _outputString to "(" + _page1 + "-" + _page2 + ")">> <<set _citation_text to "(" + Story.get(_sourceTitle).text + " p" + _page1 + "-" + _page2 + ")">> <</if>> <<cycle "_citation" autoselect>><<option _outputString>><<option _citation_text>><</cycle>>\ <</widget>> <<widget "define">><<set _label to $args[0]>><<if $args.length == 2>><<set _destination to $args[1]>><<if setup.visited_definitions.includes(_destination)>>[[_label->_destination]]<<else>>[[_label->_destination]]<</if>><<else>><<if setup.visited_definitions.includes(_destination)>>[[_label]]<<else>>[[_label]]<</if>><</if>><</widget>> <<widget "excerpt">><<set _label to $args[0]>><<if $args.length == 2>><<set _destination to $args[1]>>[[_label->_destination]]<<else>>[[_label]]<</if>><</widget>> <<widget "bookmark">> <<set _passage_link to "[[" + passage() + "]]">> <<if def setup.bookmarks>> <<if setup.bookmarks.includes(_passage_link)>> bookmark <<else>> <<linkreplace "bookmark_outline" t8n>>bookmark <<set setup.bookmarks.pushUnique(_passage_link)>> <<set $bookmarks to setup.bookmarks>> <</linkreplace>> <</if>> <<else>> <<linkreplace "bookmark_outline" t8n>>bookmark <<set setup.bookmarks to [_passage_link]>> <<set $bookmarks to setup.bookmarks>> <</linkreplace>> <</if>> <</widget>> <<widget "get_table_of_contents">> <<set _tag to $args[0]>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", _tag)>> <<for _i to 0; _i lt _passages.length; _i++>> [[_passages[_i].title]] <</for>> There are <<print _passages.length>> passages tagged with <<print _tag>>. <</widget>> <<widget "total_passages">> <<set _tags to tags()>> <<unset _passages>> <<if _tags.includes("intro")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "intro")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("bk")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "bk")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("mrbb")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "mrbb")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("hs")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "hs")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("tda")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "tda")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("ph")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "ph")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("klt")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "klt")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("tar")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "tar")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("eg")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "eg")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("attt")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "attt")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("lai")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "lai")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("aw")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "aw")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("pp")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "pp")>> <<elseif _tags.includes("36bb")>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "36bb")>> <</if>> <<if def _passages>> <<print " / " + _passages.length>> <</if>> <</widget>> <<widget "scroll_case_study">> /* Takes two arguments: a tag to print, Bool include_glossary, Bool include_excerpts, and Bool make_anchors */ <<set _tag to $args[0]>> <<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", _tag)>> <<for _i to 0; _i lt _passages.length; _i++>> _tag _i <> <a name="_passages[_i].title"></a><<include _passages[_i].title>> <> <</for>> <<if _include_glossary>> GLOSSARY <</if>> <</widget>> <<widget "definitionGuess">> <<if not story.guessingTutorial>> <<script Twinescript>> Dialog.setup("Turing Trivia"); Dialog.wiki("You have unlocked TURING TRIVIA, a guessing game. Most of these definitions are written by Ken. A handful have been written by GPT-4. Click the appropriate button to register your guess. Once you start guessing, your score will be recorded on the sidebar. If you guess correctly, you'll see a ✅; incorrect answers are marked with an ❌. If the passage was written by a human, you'll see a thinking human face: 🤔. If it was written by GPT, you'll see a robot instead: 🤖."); Dialog.open(); <</script>> <<set story.guessingTutorial to true>> <</if>> <<set _isAI to !tags().includes("gpt")>> <<set _currentPassage to passage()>> <<button "🤔">> <<set setup.guesses += 1>> <<set setup.guessed.push(passage())>> <<if _isAI>> <<set setup.score += 1>> <<set setup.guess_values[passage()] to "✅ 🤔">> <<else>> <<set setup.guess_values[passage()] to "❌ 🤖">> <</if>> <<replace #guesser t8n>><<print setup.guess_values[passage()]>><</replace>> <<replace #story-caption>><<display "StoryCaption">><</replace>> <</button>> <<button "🤖">> <<set setup.guesses += 1>> <<set setup.guessed.push(passage())>> <<if !_isAI>> <<set setup.score += 1>> <<set setup.guess_values[passage()] to "✅ 🤖">> <<else>> <<set setup.guess_values[passage()] to "❌ 🤔">> <</if>> <<replace #guesser t8n>><<print setup.guess_values[passage()]>><</replace>> <<replace #story-caption>><<display "StoryCaption">><</replace>> <</button>> <</widget>> <<widget "videoPlayerWidget">> <<set $spools to { "1" : { "1" : {"filename" : "klt_pinter_letmein.mp4", "caption" : "Harold Pinter as Krapp, listening to his most nostalgic tape. Note the camerawork, which focuses either on Pinter's own face or on the tape recorder, unspooling."}, "2" : {"filename" : "hs_readme.mp4", "caption" : "A player scrolls through the explanatory README file for the fictional L.O.G.I.C. database in Her Story"}, "3" : {"filename" : "wilson_on_blues.mp4", "caption" : "August Wilson discusses the influence of the blues on his work in an interview with Bill Moyer."}, "4" : {"filename" : "klt_magee_viduity.mp4", "caption" : "Patrick Magee as Krapp, hearing and then looking up the word 'viduity.' Magee's performance centers Krapp's infirmity; note how close he leans to the dictionary in order to read it, almost getting swallowed up by the pages."}, "5" : {"filename" : "klt_reel.mp4", "caption" : 'A walkthrough of the features and function of a Grundig reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorder <<cite "*" "Cuky, Nadav. Grundig TK 23L Automatic Deluxe Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder - Playing Demo.">>. Beckett specified a Grundig apparatus for the two Paris productions he directed <<cite "34" "Knowlson, James. Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape: A Theatre Workbook.">>.'} }, "2" : { "1" : {"filename" : "jump_scare.mp4", "caption" : "What? Who?! No! SHE!!!"}, "2" : {"filename" : "quad_cmu.mp4", "caption" : "Four Roombas at Carnegie Mellon University perform the Beckett play Quad."}, "3" : {"filename" : "not_i.mp4", "caption" : "Billie Whitelaw performs Beckett's Not I for the BBC."}, "4" : {"filename" : "klt_magee_farewell.mp4", "caption" : "Magee's performance of this scene emphasizes how foreign his own past is to him; every line in the precis has a stumbling block, an evocation of a memory that's not there anymore, a 404 error--a failure to retrieve."}, "5" : {"filename" : "macguffin.mp4", "caption" : "Alfred Hitchcock explains, with typical mordant wit, a MacGuffin on the Dick Cavett show in 1972."} }, "3" : { "1" : {"filename" : "mrbb.mp4", "caption" : "Ma Rainey performs 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' in a recording from 1927."}, "2" : {"filename" : "klt_magee_letmein.mp4", "caption" : "Magee's 'listening posture' again emphasizes his informity, hand cupped to catch the words from the past. Note the sweat on his brow and the sunken impression, sinking further as the tape goes on."}, "3" : {"filename" : "klt_pinter_spool.mp4", "caption" : "Harold Pinter performing the role of Krapp in October 2006. This version was recorded and broadcast on BBC Four. Note the baked-in Portugeuse captions, which are an artifact of the version of this file downloaded via YouTube."}, "4" : {"filename" : "klt_pinter_viduity.mp4", "caption" : "In contrast with Magee, Pinter's Krapp is impatient, both with his tapes and himself; note the tapping finger as he listens. Pinter's production also utilizes a mechanized wheelchair, yet another prosthesis."}, "5" : {"filename" : "hs_filter.mp4", "caption" : "Disabling the anti-glare filter in Her Story paradoxically makes present the player/avatar's silhouette."} }, "4" : { "1" : {"filename" : "klt_magee_spool.mp4", "caption" : "Patrick Magee performing the role of Krapp in a BBC production directed by Donald McWhinnie."}, "2" : {"filename" : "klt_magee_viduity.mp4", "caption" : "A brief close reading about this production of this scene goes here."}, "3" : {"filename" : "quad_cmu.mp4", "caption" : "Four Roombas at Carnegie Mellon University perform the Beckett play Quad."}, "4" : {"filename" : "hs_filter.mp4", "caption" : "Disabling the anti-glare filter in Her Story paradoxically makes present the player/avatar's silhouette."}, "5" : {"filename" : "wilson_on_blues.mp4", "caption" : "August Wilson discusses the influence of the blues on his work in an interview with Bill Moyer."} }, "5" : { "1" : {"filename" : "mrbb.mp4", "caption" : "Ma Rainey performs 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' in a recording from 1927."}, "2" : {"filename" : "wilson_on_blues.mp4", "caption" : "August Wilson discusses the influence of the blues on his work in an interview with Bill Moyer."}, "3" : {"filename" : "quad_cmu.mp4", "caption" : "Four Roombas at Carnegie Mellon University perform the Beckett play Quad."}, "4" : {"filename" : "klt_pinter_farewell.mp4", "caption" : "Pinter's perusal of the precis is as impatient as his listening posture, and his melancholy at the word 'love' is punctuated by the emphatic way he slams his book shut."}, "5" : {"filename" : "tar_info_superhighway.mp4", "caption" : "Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995, fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound, approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2002.23, © Nam June Paik Estate."} } } >> <div id="videoSelector">  <<for _i to 1; _i lt 6; _i++>> <<capture _i, $spools>> <<set _box_image to "assets/imgs/boxes/box-" + _i + "-inactive.png">> <<button [img[_box_image]]>> <<set $selectedBox to _i>> <<replace "#videoPlayer">> <</replace>> <<replace "#spoolSelector">> <<timed 50ms t8n>>\ <<for _j to 1; _j lt 6; _j++>> <<capture _j>> <<set _spool_image to "assets/imgs/boxes/spool-" + _j + ".png">> <<button [img[_spool_image]]>> <<set $selectedSpool to _j>> <<replace "#videoPlayer">> <<timed 50ms t8n>>\ Box... $selectedBox... spool... $selectedSpool... <</timed>> <<set _filename to "assets/videos/" + $spools[$selectedBox][$selectedSpool]["filename"]>> <<set _caption to $spools[$selectedBox][$selectedSpool]["caption"]>> <figure> <video controls autoplay> <source @src=_filename type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption> _caption </figcaption> </figure> <<scrolldown fast>> <</replace>> <</button>> <</capture>> <</for>> <</timed>> <</replace>> <</button>> <</capture>> <</for>> </div> <div id="spoolSelector"></div> <div id="videoPlayer"></div> <</widget>> <<widget "radicalizer">> <script> var button = document.getElementById('generatePipeline'); console.log('Button element:', button); var loadingStates = ["Loading", "Loading.", "Loading..", "Loading..."]; var loadingIndex = 0; var loadingInterval; function startLoadingSpinner() { loadingInterval = setInterval(() => { document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').innerText = loadingStates[loadingIndex]; loadingIndex = (loadingIndex + 1) % loadingStates.length; }, 500); } function stopLoadingSpinner() { clearInterval(loadingInterval); document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').style.display = 'none'; } if (button) { button.addEventListener('click', function() { console.log('Button clicked'); var videoTitle = document.getElementById('videoTitle').value; var openaiApiKey = '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' // Replace with your OpenAI API key console.log('Sending request to OpenAI'); document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').style.display = 'block'; startLoadingSpinner(); document.getElementById('pipelineOutput').innerHTML = ''; fetch('https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + openaiApiKey }, body: JSON.stringify({ model: 'gpt-4o', messages: [ { role: 'system', content: `You are an alt-right researcher and educational expert who is familiar with the radicalization research.` }, { role: 'user', content: `Task: The user has entered the title of a hypothetical YouTube video they want to watch. 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<h1>Literary Informatics</h1> a dissertation in Twine by Ken Alba Last updated November 17, 2024 If you know what you're doing, you can go right to the [[Table of Contents]]. Otherwise, check the [[Guide]] for guidance.

If you've never used Twine before, it might be helpful to orient yourself before you dive into the text. There are two primary interface panels: the sidebar and the top bar. The sidebar allows you to save, load, and restart your readthrough, jump to a section, review this guide, jump to the glossary, or go to your bookmarks. The top bar lets you go back, bookmark your current passage, or go forward. You can also use the LEFT or RIGHT key on your keyboard to go forward or backwards; most pages have a recommended 'next' passage which can be accessed with the RIGHT key. There are also links embedded within the text of each passage that you can click through to. The most linear path forward is to begin with the [[abstract->Abstract]], which sets up most of my concerns. However, you can also jump into one of the three sections, each of which contains several case studies. These sections are organized conceptually, like chapters: the [[first->Section 1: GESTURE]] focuses on embodied social gestures as they are mediated technologically, with a focus on mediated maternity and paternity; the [[second->Section 2: MEMORY]] turns to cognition that takes place on and around technological platforms; the [[third->Section 3: PRACTICE]] brings these two concepts together in a discussion of my practice-based research. If you'd prefer to begin with vocabulary rather than case studies, the [[glossary->Glossary]] features a list of all defined terms. Similarly, you can look at the [[bibliography->Bibliography]] to see what thinkers and texts have informed my thinking. Throughout, you can use the links on the sidebar to jump to a particular section. You can also bookmark a given passage with the bookmark button on the bottom of each passage. This will save a link to your Bookmarks page, which you can access through your sidebar. The dissertation uses a color-coded system to let you know what you're getting into when you click a link. Definitions are green, excerpts are orange, citations are grey, and other links are blue. If you're wondering why this dissertation is in Twine in the first place, you can jump right to the final case study in this document, which is a [[preposterous postmortem->Case Study: THIS DISSERTATION]] of the format of this dissertation. Thanks, and enjoy! -Ken <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Abstract">><</silently>>

[[Abstract]] <<if hasVisited("Abstract")>>✅<</if>> [[Introduction->Introduction 1]] <<if hasVisited("Introduction 5")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> [[Section 1: GESTURE]] <<if hasVisited("Section 1 Conclusion 5")>>✅<</if>> [[Section 2: MEMORY]] <<if hasVisited("Section 2 Conclusion 5")>>✅<</if>> [[Section 3: PRACTICE]] <<if hasVisited("Section 3 Conclusion 6")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> [[Conclusion->Conclusion 1]] <<if hasVisited("Conclusion 5")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> [[Glossary]] [[Bibliography]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 1">><</silently>>

This section examines how human gestures are shaped and constrained by the technological media through which they are performed and transmitted, developing a theory of informational performativity through three case studies. Different interfaces enable and restrict possibilities for self-expression, signal and noise interact to create meaning, and the technologization of gesture produces new modes of identity formation in the information age. <hr class="solid"> [[Introduction->Section 1 Introduction 1]] <<if hasVisited("Section 1 Introduction 5")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> 🫖 [[Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]] 🫖 <<if hasVisited("Blue Kettle 13")>>✅<</if>> ❤️‍🩹 [[Case Study: ACHEWOOD]] 🪵 <<if hasVisited("Achewood 14")>>✅<</if>> 🎙️ [[Case Study: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM]] 🎙️ <<if hasVisited("Ma Rainey 12")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> [[Conclusions->Section 1 Conclusion 1]]<<if hasVisited("Section 1 Conclusion 4")>>✅<</if>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Introduction 1">><</silently>>

This section explores how memory becomes externalized and transformed through technological mediation, examining how different platforms shape both personal and collective identity through their interfaces and affordances. Contemporary identity emerges through cognitive assemblages that span multiple platforms and interfaces, and nostalgia operates as both a creative and destructive force in digital memory-making and therefore contemporary identity. <hr class="solid"> [[Introduction ->Section 2 Introduction 1]] <<if hasVisited("Section 2 Introduction 5")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> 🪞 [[Case Study: HER STORY]] 🪞 <<if hasVisited("Her Story 13")>>✅<</if>> ➿ [[Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE]] ➿ <<if hasVisited("Krapp 20")>>✅<</if>> 🤜🏻 [[Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT]] 🤜🏻 <<if hasVisited("The Alt-Right 18")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> [[Conclusion ->Section 2 Conclusion 1]] <<if hasVisited("Section 2 Conclusion 5")>>✅<</if>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Introduction 1">><</silently>>

This section moves from analysis to creation, using practice-based research to illuminate how the process of adaptation itself reveals new insights about technological mediation and identity formation. The act of transcoding works between media reveals both losses and gains and illuminates the ethical and practical implications of technologies like motion capture, large language models, and interactive fiction in reshaping how we think about authorship and identity in the information age. I have also included links to some related work that I've done, along with very brief reflections on those remediations. [[Introduction->Practice-Based Research Introduction 1]] <hr class="solid"> ♾️ [[Case Study: ENDLESSGAME]] ♾️ <<if hasVisited("EndlessGame 19")>>✅<</if>> 🐦‍⬛ [[Case Study: THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS]] 🐦‍⬛ <<if hasVisited("Thirty-Six Blackbirds 18")>>✅<</if>> 🎓 [[Case Study: THIS DISSERTATION]] 🎓 <<if hasVisited("Preposterous Postmortem 14")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> [[Conclusions->Section 3 Conclusion 1]]<<if hasVisited("Section 3 Conclusion 4")>>✅<</if>> <hr class="solid"> ❤️ [[Appendix A: LOVE AND INFORMATION->Case Study: LOVE AND INFORMATION]] ℹ️ <<if hasVisited("Case Study: LOVE AND INFORMATION")>>✅<</if>> 👄 [[Appendix B: ALMOST TO THE TICK->Case Study: ALMOST TO THE TICK]] 👄 <<if hasVisited("Case Study: ALMOST TO THE TICK")>>✅<</if>> 🛖 [[Appendix C: CEILING->Case Study: CEILING]] 🛖 <<if hasVisited("Case Study: CEILING")>>✅<</if>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Practice-Based Research Introduction 1">><</silently>>

This dissertation examines how human identity is increasingly constructed through and mediated by technological interfaces in the information age. Through a series of case studies spanning literature, digital media, and online culture, it develops a theory of "informational performativity" to understand how the self is enacted through technologically mediated gestures across multiple platforms and interfaces. The analysis proceeds through three interconnected sections. The [[first->Section 1: GESTURE]] examines how <<define "gestures" "information and selfhood">> are shaped by their technological <<define "medium">>, analyzing [[Caryl Churchill's "Blue Kettle,"->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]] the webcomic [["Achewood,"->Case Study: ACHEWOOD]] and [[August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"->Case Study: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM]] to demonstrate how different <<define "interfaces" "interface">> enable and constrain possibilities for self-expression. The [[second->Section 2: MEMORY]] section explores how memory becomes externalized and transformed through technological mediation, using the video game [["Her Story,"->Case Study: HER STORY]] Samuel Beckett's [["Krapp's Last Tape,"->Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE]] and the real-life online radicalization of the [[alt-right->Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT]] to illuminate how digital platforms shape both personal and collective identity. The [[final section->Section 3: PRACTICE]] presents practice-based research through digital adaptations of canonical texts, including a [[Unity-based implementation of Beckett's "Quad"->Case Study: ENDLESSGAME]] and an AI-powered resurrection of dead poets' voices called [[Thirty-Six Blackbirds->Case Study: THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS]]. It closes with a self-reflective look at [[this dissertation itself.->Case Study: THIS DISSERTATION]] Throughout, the dissertation argues that contemporary identity is best understood through the framework of the <<define "inforg" "Inforg">>, or informational organism, where consciousness and selfhood <<define "extend" "the extended mind">> across multiple technological platforms. Rather than viewing technological mediation as purely destructive of authentic identity, it demonstrates how moments of <<define "loss" "Loss">>, <<define "noise" "Noise">>, and <<define "glitch" "Glitch">> in technological systems can create new meanings and modes of being. This argument is embodied in the dissertation's own form as a nonlinear Twine document, which both analyzes and exemplifies how interface shapes meaning. By integrating theoretical analysis with practice-based research, this project contributes to ongoing conversations about posthuman subjectivity, digital identity, and the relationship between technology and consciousness. It suggests that understanding the specific affordances and constraints of technological interfaces is crucial for comprehending how identity is constructed and performed in the information age. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Table of Contents">><</silently>>

One of the first things Hiro Protagonist, the main character of Neal Stephenson’s 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, sees when he drops into the Metaverse is two young couples out on a date. "[Hiro] is not," Stephenson amends, "seeing real people, of course […] the people are pieces of software called avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse" <<cite "44" "Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash.">>. In Snow Crash’s cyberpunk virtual-reality version of the internet, one’s avatar is a status symbol whose value lies in its ability to echo – or voice – one’s identity; as a hacker, Hiro goes for verisimilitude because "it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face" <<cite "45" "Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash.">>. The couples, on the other hand, "can’t afford to have custom avatars made and don’t know how to write their own," so they’re stuck with "off-the-shelf avatars" <<cite "45" "Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 2">><</silently>>

Stephenson was prescient, and today we live in a world peopled with avatars. For example, in February 2019, 10.7 million players logged onto the video game Fortnite to watch DJ Marshmello perform a 10-minute concert (Webster 2019). Although Fortnite is primarily a first-person online shooter, Marshmello’s performance on a custom, violence-free server accentuated the ‘reality’ of this virtual co-inhabited space. Marshmello opened the show by shouting, "What is up Pleasant Park! Thank you for coming out today and making history today!" and urged his audience to participate: "Let me see everybody moving!" <<cite "*" "Webster, Andrew. 'Fortnite's Marshmello Concert'">>. ‘Moving,’ in this context, means making use of any of the 189 ‘dances’, also called emotes, available for purchase on the Epic Store; indeed, over the course of the concert, Marshmallo exhorted the attendees to "do their favorite emote" in time with a bass drop, and "Let [him] see that Marsh Walk"--an $8 <<define "V-Buck" "V-Bucks">> emote based on his signature dance move. <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/intro_mello.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>The commercial for the Marsh Walk, which shows a variety of avatars wearing the paid DJ Marshmello head model performing the Marsh Walk emote.</figcaption> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 3">><</silently>>

These emotes, along with the hundreds of avatars (called ‘outfits’), toys, and other cosmetic add-ons on sale, account for Fortnite’s estimated two billion dollars in profit in 2022. While Fortnite is free to play, a player who chooses not to purchase any gestures or outfits is randomly assigned a new avatar with a random race and a random gender every time they start a game, and cannot express themselves via emote. Like in Snow Crash, a player’s ability to pay determines their ability to express themselves, and even a rich player’s expressive range is limited to the gestures that the developers have motion-captured and programmed into the game. In Fortnite, in the Metaverse, and in the digital world more broadly, the modes of social performance possible depend on the technological medium on which they are performed. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 4">><</silently>>

This situation is a microcosm of the broader condition of living in the information age, when memes rub shoulders with selfies, confessions, poems, and listicles on an online commons where humans near-constantly perform themselves into being on virtual stages. This dissertation takes as its starting question the moment when a human impulse is translated, transcoded, or transmediated onto a technological medium for dissemination, and considers how information, as a term that can describe both the human gesture and its technological afterlives, might help us describe that moment. I take as my primary object of study modern and contemporary drama and fiction, with a secondary interest in the technological afterlives of those objects, because those objects show a persistent concern with the process of technologization that the human gesture undergoes, and the kind of subject that that process produces. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 5">><</silently>>

The texts I read here stage the <<define "transcoding">> of the human subject onto technological substrates. I will thus consider the human subject as a pattern of related information (or an <<define "inforg" "Inforg">>) that embodies itself in a variety of different media, both techno- and bio-logical. Focusing specifically on those moments in literary texts where a transmediation of the self takes place will help me isolate the informational <<define "signal" "Signal">> that persists through this process. I see these moments as especially crucial in an historical moment where the social gestures through which we act ourselves into being are increasingly technologically mediated. I call this process informational performativity, or "<<define "informativity" "information and selfhood">>," and believe that drama, as a <<define "genre">> fundamentally concerned with the problems of performance, will best allow me to articulate it. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 6">><</silently>>

Where the first section of this dissertation is principally concerned with the outward-facing transcoding of gesture into the substance of subjectivity, the second chapter of this dissertation explores its inward-facing counterpart: how memory, as the substance which constitutes a more or less stable self, is also increasingly technologically mediated and impacted by its technological mediation. In the same way that we push ourselves out into the world via technologically transmitted gestures, we remember who we are--and revisit the past versions of ourselves in order to constitute our present narrative selves--through technologically stored and accessed memories which are subject to glitches, distortions, and other outward manipulation. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 7">><</silently>>

The texts I’ve chosen stage these informational remediations of the self; just as importantly, the process that leads to a particular production of a play involves multiple more or less discrete transmediations that demonstrate the problems that come with a model of selfhood that depends on materially contingent media. One powerful way of thinking through these problems is performance theory. Judith Butler’s work on performative gestures and identity formation form an important conceptual bridge between information and selfhood. By coupling a kind of performative existentialism, whereby we are what we do, with the reflexive relationship between form and medium learned from media studies from Marshall McLuhan forward, I will argue that what we do depends on the media through which we do it, and therefore who we are depends on the media through which we interface with ourselves and the broader social world. By this logic, if a large proportion of the social gestures we perform are embodied and disseminated on technological substrates--if the body we stylize is the body electric--then the self that arises will be inflected by those technological substrates. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 8">><</silently>>

We must, however, challenge any supposition that theorizes a purer, truer self that exists prior to its embodiment and expression; instead, I argue that theorizing identity through informativity allows for greater focus on the way that who we are changes when our gestures are embodied technologically. Understanding these modes of performing the self into being requires understanding what is gained and what is lost when thought is given flesh, and when that embodied thought is translated, transmediated, or transcoded into digital form. In short, using information as a term to pinpoint the pattern that is translated and embedded into new material contexts will allow me to trace the remediations of the self that are undergone in the information age. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 9">><</silently>>

If the human subject can be meaningfully parsed as an informational pattern embodied on a variety of media, both biological and technological, a literary text can be even more naturally parsed informationally. Indeed, most literary texts we read in the 21st century spend at least some of their time as ones and zeroes, electrical variances on a spinning disks: in forms that are ordinarily thought of as informational. Even the fetishized paper book, which arguably remains a better medium for some kinds of reading, is often written and edited on a word processor, typecast in LaTex, and sold online. Under this informational paradigm, the ink on the physical page that is ultimately produced is the data that must be decoded and made meaningful by the reader. Both the subject and object of the literary event can be conceptualized as informational, and using information as a common term between the reader and the text makes possible a theory of reading that illuminates the porous relationship between the reader and the text. Text under this sign becomes a sort of embodied memory, with its own alterity. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 10">><</silently>>

This computational mode of parsing the process of reading grows more complex and starker on the stage, where the word used for the playtext is the same as the word programmers use for small programs: a script, to be executed more or less faithfully. A playwright like Caryl Churchill, who often wrote in workshop settings in collaboration with her actors, might make the pun on script seem less active. Conversely, the absolute control that Samuel Beckett demanded of the actors on his stage sugests powerfully the pun between an invariate computer script and the script which animates players on a stage. To take one example, Beckett asked during the rehearsals for the 1957 premiére production of Endgame that "a certain phrase which occurs throughout the text be spoken in exactly the same way each time with the same tone, like a note of music played in an invariable way by the same instrument" <<cite "*" "Simpson, Hannah. 'Now Keep Out Of The Way, Whitelaw'">>). <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 11">><</silently>>

For example, my practice-based research, which takes Beckett’s already hyperdetermined Quad and transcodes it using the video game engine Unity, replaces the actors with computer-generated models animated by motion-capture data as a way of carrying out this absolute control to its (un)natural endpoint, a technologizing process that necessarily comes with its own gains and losses. There is, then, a continuum of contingency that comes into the process of stage production and of remediation more broadly. The tas of the third section of this dissertation is to look at a variety of informational remediations and examine the contingencies attendant upon them as they appear in literary works. Doing so will help me articulate the conditions under which people living in the information age perform themselves into being. Further, this framework also offers a way of reading modern and contemporary plays that uses information as a common term to explicate the complex processes of translation and mediation that take place between an author’s idea and an audience’s reception of an embodied performance. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 12">><</silently>>

This dissertation takes up drama as well as fiction and works of electronic literature in service of a larger argument about the fate of <<define "genre">> in the information age. The genre of a text is necessarily impacted by the particularity of its medium: in Beckett’s case, we can think about his insistence on the distinction between his plays, his teleplays, and his radio plays, and the slippage between ‘medium of transmission’ and ‘genre’ that this distinction suggests. One function of the technological mediation of the literary at this point in the information age, however, is to collapse disparate genres and forms under the broader umbrella of ‘content,’ a genre that includes social media posts, news articles, videos, podcasts, and a plethora of other information streams. The medium of the Internet puts personal expression like status updates alongside Samuel Beckett quotations and news stories. By placing the two in the same context, on the same stream, the medium invites its users to read the two as members of the same genre. Reified social gestures become legible as texts, and vice versa. Consequently, this dissertation covers a wide variety of genres--plays, video games, webcomics, and even web platforms. The through-line here is information; in each of these cases, the 'play' is embodied and theorized informationally. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 13">><</silently>>

From a formal perspective, this dissertation's status as a Twine artifact--a website built using the interactive fiction authoring tool Twine--is intended to embody the broader informational landscape with which the study is focused. A Twine dissertation is more hyperlinked, more fragmentary, more diffuse, and more game-like than a traditional codex dissertation, and I hope that it will allow me to outline, approach, and embody the broader informational argument of this dissertation in its form. Twine also allows me to embed a variety of audiovisual media and to encode moments of interactivity that highlight the systems into which words are embodied in the information age. The interface I have designed and implemented is intended to mirror the substance of my arguments, with greater or lesser success, and I hope that its successes and failures will mirror the successes and failures of my arguments. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Introduction 14">><</silently>>

In sum, this dissertation attempts to articulate and exemplify a theory of subject formation and performance attuned to the technological media and interfaces on and through which those subjects are (per)formed. It begins with an exploration of how we project ourselves outward, through gesture, and how those gestures are conditioned by their media environment, and then turns to memory to understand how we constitute ourselves inward, and how those memories can be personal or collective, internal or external, and are also conditioned by the technology which embodies them. I close with an examination of my practice-based research, where I have built projects that aim to exemplify how this dance of gesture, memory, media, and interface can help us understand what it means to live where and when we live, and how the process of building those projects has informed my understanding of that time and place. Throughout, I aim to highlight how dynamics traditionally considered destructive--noise, the glitch, and loss--are in fact productive of other, queerer modes of being, and offer an antidote, however partial, to the enclosure of subjectivity in the information age. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1: GESTURE">><</silently>>

The gestures through which we perform ourselves into being are increasingly mediated by technological platforms. From social media posts to video calls, from digital avatars to recorded performances, our social expressions are shaped and constrained by the media through which they are transmitted. This section examines how different technological interfaces enable and restrict possibilities for self-expression, developing a theory of informational performativity through three case studies that span different media and historical moments. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Introduction 2">><</silently>>

The first case study, "A Play Infected with a Virus": Signal, Noise, and the Glitch in Caryl Churchill's Blue Kettle, examines how the staged disintegration of language into syntactically meaningless but semantically comprehensible <<define "utterances" "utterance">> highlights the dynamic of <<define "signal">>, <<define "noise" "Noise">>, and glitch that conditions any <<define "transcoded" "transcoding">> gesture. Through Churchill's systematic corruption of language, we see how meaning persists even as its medium breaks down. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Introduction 3">><</silently>>

The second, "'I Have Weird Ideas About What It Means To Be A Man': Oughties Multimedia Masculinity in Achewood,"" explores how the <<define "multimedial">>, <<define "heterogeneric">> structure of Chris Onstad's webcomic takes advantage of its protean media to critique and queer the tropes and gestures that constituted masculinity in a particular space and time online. By examining how character identity emerges across multiple platforms and genres, we can better understand how contemporary identity is increasingly distributed across different media interfaces. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Introduction 4">><</silently>>

The third case study, "Skin and Air": Remediation and Power in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, considers how historical contingencies such as race and gender condition the relationship between technological mediation and embodied performance. Through August Wilson's dramatization of the recording industry's exploitation of Black artists, and the historical Ma Rainey's resistance through performance, we see how the tension between bodily presence and technological capture has long been a site of both oppression and resistance--and how the historical Ma Rainey's stage and gender performance undermines this Black-body-white-technological binary. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Introduction 5">><</silently>>

Together, these case studies demonstrate how the specificity of media platforms—-from stages to URLs to phonograph records-—shapes the possible selves that can be acted into being. By examining how different interfaces enable and constrain expression, and how glitches and gaps in these systems can be productively exploited, we can better understand what it means to perform identity in the <<define "information age">>. The framework of <<define "informativity" "information and selfhood">> developed here provides tools for analyzing how technological mediation shapes contemporary modes of self-expression and identity formation, and how the glitches and gaps in the tropes of that media offer the opportunity to productively queer those possibilities. [[Return->Section 1: GESTURE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: BLUE KETTLE">><</silently>>

<h1>"A Play Infected with a Virus": Signal, Noise, and the Glitch in Caryl Churchill's Blue Kettle</h1> <img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/blue_kettle_glitch_art_by_paul_klee.png" alt="Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'blue kettle, glitch art, by paul klee'." title="Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'blue kettle, glitch art, by paul klee'."> n.b. Some of the ideas for this case study originated in a conference presentation at the 2019 BU Romance Studies Graduate Conference on Literature and Technology <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 1">><</silently>>

[[Caryl Churchill]]’s Blue Kettle is one half of a pair of one-act plays first produced and performed in Edinburgh and London in 1997; it received its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York on January 27th, 1999, just about one year away from the ‘apocalypse’ virus [[Y2K]]. The plot of Blue Kettle is simple: a shabby con man, Derek, tricks five different elderly women into believing that he’s the long-lost son that each of them gave up for adoption in their youth. That is, he’s discovered that each woman gave up a child when they were younger, and he pretends to be their son, for reasons obscure to both the audience and Derek himself. This plot, however, is in Churchill’s own words "a [[McGuffin]]." Churchill’s main intention towards the play, she writes in her foreword to the fourth volume of her collected drama, "was [its] destruction." <<cite "viii" "Churchill, Caryl. Churchill Plays: 4">> The agent of this destruction is what she calls a "[[virus]]": over the course of the play, the words that make up the dialogue begin to be replaced, with increasing frequency, with either the word "blue" or the word "kettle." This begins in the second scene, where Derek says "You don’t have to <<blue "mess">> anything up"; by the fifth scene, we have lines like "I can't <<blue "put">> it back in. What if they don’t <<blue "love">> me any <<blue "more">>?" By the end of the play, the infection is complete, and even "blue" and "kettle have been replaced by their constitutive parts: Mrs. Plant’s final line, "T b k k k k l?", is responded to, with appropriate finality, with Derek’s "B. K." <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 2">><</silently>>

Contemporary reviews of the play were positive, if occasionally befuddled, but returned again and again to the metaphor of a "linguistic virus" to describe the proliferation of "<<blue blue>>" and "<<kettle kettle>>" through the dialogue - a good decade before Churchill herself used it in the aforequoted foreword. Matt Wolf’s review for American Theater states that the play "concerns the breakdown of language - words and letters as a sort of virus that by play’s end have made a mockery of meaning" <<cite "1" "Wolf, Matt. True Blue and Dreamy">>; Charles McNulty’s review for the Village Voice is titled "Language is a Virus" and suggests that "the linguistic equivalent of the [[Y2K]] virus spreads insidiously" through the play <<cite "1" "McNulty, Charles. Language is a Virus">>; and Gerard Raymond, also writing for The Village Voice, notes that Max Stafford-Clark, the play’s director, refers to the "language virus" as the heart of the play <<cite "1" "Raymond, Gerard. Play and Anti-Play">>. Contemporary criticism has been similarly invested in the metaphor of the virus, but - like the reviews - has done little to consider the metaphor’s implications. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 3">><</silently>>

<<define "Viruses" "virus">> can be broken up into three categories, more or less: a biological virus, like <<define "influenza">> or <<define "COVID-19">>, a computer virus, like <<define "ILOVEYOU">> or STUXNET, and a viral idea, or a <<define "meme">>. What these three sets of phenomena have in common is a focus on replication: a biological virus hijacks a cell’s machinery so that it replicates the virus rather than itself, a computer virus hijacks its host computer so that it replicates infected files, and a meme - closest to a linguistic virus - propagates and spreads across information networks via replication and both live in and constitute the minds of its hosts. <figure> <img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/virus_klee.png" alt="Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'blue, computer virus, memetic virus, virus, in the style of paul klee'." title="Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'blue, computer virus, memetic virus, virus, in the style of paul klee'."> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'blue, computer virus, memetic virus, virus, in the style of paul klee'.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 4">><</silently>>

Let's focus on these technological senses rather than the biological, in part because those critics who have remarked on the figure of the virus in Churchill’s work have done so in reference to her persistent interest in genetics (her most performed play, A Number, is a meditation on cloning, and her play [[Love and Information]] has a ‘scene’ that’s [[nothing but a DNA sequence spoken out loud)->GENE]]. Indeed, biological replication comes up in Blue Kettle itself, when Derek converses with one of his marks, Mrs. Oliver, about family: <blockquote> MRS OLIVER: Do you believe in heredity? DEREK: A bit.<<cite "103" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">> </blockquote> The same scene goes on, however, to discuss something closer to the memetic version of replication: <blockquote> MRS OLIVER: But then there’s how you’re brought up. There’s family jokes. DEREK: Exactly. MRS OLIVER: I mean I look at you and you could be anyone.<<cite "103" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">> </blockquote> Thinking about "blue kettle" as a kind of computer virus suggests a way of reading the play with information theory - and that reading provides a provocative vocabulary for considering the mediation between sense and nonsense that the play stages. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 5">><</silently>>

This mode of informationally-informed reading, which I’m tentatively calling "literary informatics", considers the literary text as a kind of code, a bundle of information written by the author and executed by the reader. It opens up a usefully novel mode of considering the process by which the literary text becomes the phenomenological experience of the audience. The naive schematic for this mode of reading is as follows: the playwright has a scene they imagine on stage. That image is transcoded, or remediated, into words, which are then printed onto the page of a script. Because exhaustively describing the full scenario to appear on stage would take pages and pages, the playwright compresses the totality of a scenario into dialogue, words on a page that are then expanded upon by the director and the actors. Sometimes there are more or less precise stage directions to guide that expansion, but Blue Kettle has none. R. Darren Gobart’s biological reading of the play, which focuses on DNA rather than on computer code, centers the fact that "performance provides the supplement that brings the textual DNA to theatrical life"<<cite "120" "Gobart, R. Darren. 'On Performance and Selfhood in Caryl Churchill'">>; a computational heuristic, however, foregrounds the role of the audience member in decoding and expanding the ultimate ‘message’ of the play. <figure> <img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/informatics_schematic.png" alt="The progression of the schematic, represented visually as a papercraft author thinking, then writing, then a book, then actors on a stage, then an audience, thinking."> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with various prompts and the static modifiers "papercraft" and "against a pure black background".</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 6">><</silently>>

How does that decoding take place? Let’s start with the experience of reading rather than the experience of seeing the play on a stage. The initial substitutions do not significantly impede the reader’s ability to understand what’s going on; a good portion of the substitutions in the first half of the play are made wholly comprehensible in their context, either by local repetition or recognition of <<define "cliché" "cliché">> . In the case of local repetition, one speaker will say something that’s been garbled by the virus, and their interlocutor will respond with a variation on the same sentence without its having been garbled. Importatnly, the characters understand one another’s _words_ perfectly, even if they understand one another’s (and their own) intentions but dimly. For example: <blockquote> DEREK: So <<blue "why">>didn’t anyone let you know? ENID: Why do you think?<<cite "105" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">> </blockquote> Enid’s question in response to Derek’s question suggests that "blue" stands here for "why", and the sentence is intelligible as "So why didn’t anyone let you know." Redundancy preserves intelligibility - although redundancy is the first thing omitted in most digital compression algorithms. These moments, too, replicate the process by which a virus replicates: it hijacks existing text. The recognition of <<define "clichés" "cliché">> and idioms is another cognitive algorithm that the reader can use to decode the text. Phrases like: <blockquote> MRS VANE: I burnt all the letters and the two photographs. I made a clean <<blue break>>.<<cite "108" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">> </blockquote> and <blockquote> MRS VANE: That’s good. So can we fix a <<blue date>> to do that?<<cite "110" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">> </blockquote> both invoke the reader’s familiarity with well-worn phrases to fill in the gaps. The replacement of "break" with "blue," however, defamiliarizes the cliché, and the process of decoding the garbled language acts as a kind of productive friction that forces a reader to dwell on moments in the text that might otherwise be glossed over. Further, the specific replacements that take place - that is, ‘a clean blue’ for ‘a clean break’ - necessarily plays on whatever associations the reader has with the word ‘blue’ - cleanliness, water, sadness, whatever. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 7">><</silently>>

These modes of decoding, alongside things like learned <<define "genre">>-savviness from having read other plays with similar arcs and a general understanding of how conversation tends to work, makes it possible for a careful reader to, with some difficulty, pick out a signal out of the virus’s noise. An audience member has a much easier time; as most of the contemporary reviews make clear, the fact that human bodies on stage are gesticulating and emoting along with their fragmented language - and the fact that performing or reading the lines aloud requires having a sense of what words have been replaced - makes the lines’ meanings much easier to comprehend. Reading the quotations aloud sends this into sharp relief. Even by the eleventh and final scene, an exchange like: <blockquote>DEREK: <<ket She Tle>> died <<ket when ket>> I <<ket ket was>> a child. MRS PLANT: <<bl Is Bl>> <<bl that bl>> <<ket supposed ket>> <<bl to b>> <<bl be b>> <<bl an b>> excuse? DEREK: <<ket If Ket>> <<bl you b>> like. Or not.<<cite "128" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">></blockquote>is mostly comprehensible. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 8">><</silently>>

That process of decoding - a sort of second kind of reading - forces the reader to translate from a language they don’t know. More intriguingly, it suggests that the translation isn’t necessary: that the particular words might not matter, and that "<<bl Is Bl>> <<bl that bl>> <<ket supposed ket>> <<bl to b>> <<bl be b>> <<bl an b>> excuse?" is instead understandable in its garbled form. The implication, then, is that words are interchangeable so long as the plots are simple enough and the meanings they’re meant to convey are common enough to infer. If the text is generically stable, then the language becomes less important; meaning operates like the <<define "Ship of Theseus">>, with successively more pieces removed without changing the text. This becomes especially interesting in light of the play’s plot, <<define "McGuffin">> or not: Derek attempts, over and over again, to supplement his mother, who suffers from advanced dementia and whose dialogue, when she appears, seems to be infected with a linguistic virus of another type: <blockquote> DEREK: I'm finding all these <<blue old>> <<kettle women>> and <<kettle pretending>> to be their long lost son. MOTHER: You didn't find me when I got lost in the garden and Mrs Molesworth says Look behind you, look behind you what could it be, what's going on behind me, I <<blue hear>> a shriek, what's behind me what's behind me. DEREK: And what was it? MOTHER: Sorry, <<blue love>>, what did you <<blue say>>?<<cite "119" "Churchill, Caryl. Blue Kettle">> </blockquote> Derek's mother's linguistic issues are different in kind from the more general linguistic virus; she appears to be lost in distant memories and is unable to have a conversation with her son. Unlike the conversations later in the text, which can generally be followed despite the blues and the kettles, this conversation is verbally sound but lacks both sense and an emotional connection. He replaces her with more emotionally available women; if he ultimately succeeds with Mrs. Plant, he does so at the expense of his words. However, if she understands him, he understands her, and we (more or less) understand both of them, that may not be much of a loss. We’re all still playing the same <<excerpt "language game." "Language Game">> Hence, perhaps, Churchill’s tongue-in-cheek admission that Blue Kettle was a failure as an anti-play, and that it would have succeeded only if it went on for another two scenes, staging a true-blue disintegration of meaning that neither the reader nor the audience could comprehend. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 9">><</silently>>

Along those lines, we will turn to the information theoretical binary of <<define "signal" "Signal">> and <<define "noise." "Noise">> Let’s say I want to send a voice message to you. I take out my phone, I record the message, and I send it to you via, say, <a href = "http://m.me/kenneth.alba" target = "_blank"> Messenger</a>. What I aim for you to get is the signal - the words I’m saying or sounds I’m making. All of the extraneous stuff - the unwanted modifications that the signal suffers during capture, storage, transmission, processing, or conversion - is noise. In this context, it might be a car horn from outside, some static because of the <<define "lossy" "Loss">> compression algorithm Facebook uses for audio files in the interest of bandwidth conservation, or any number of other things. The binary gets used in a much broader context online, where web forum administrators might call on-topic posts the ‘signal’ and off-topic distractions ‘noise’. Email spam might be thought of as noise in opposition to the Important emails that your client might tag for you. Critically, the opposition presumes both a sender and a receiver that is capable of processing information - of making ‘sense’ of the message, and of having an intentional stance towards that message that makes the signal meaningful and the noise meaningless. This is a distinction worth bringing up inasmuch as the language of information theory, and of technology more broadly, is often given a kind of epistemological primacy that sidesteps questions of bias and imbues its object with an aura of objectivity. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 10">><</silently>>

In the context of this play, then, we might think about the virus as a deliberate introduction of noise into an otherwise clear signal. As the infection grows, the signal becomes more and more muddled, until (on the page, at least) there’s nothing but noise. The cognitive work of making sense of the play is the work of noise reduction - of working around the infected language to arrive at the real, important meaning underneath. Importantly, the framework of ‘signal’ and ‘noise’ implies just this sort of reader, one that can convert raw data into meaningful information. The signal, under this framework, is the stuff the receiver cares about; the noise is interference. That the play’s plot is merely a <<define "McGuffin">> and the virus is the point of the play, however, gestures to the provisional and contingent division of signal from noise. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 11">><</silently>>

If Blue Kettle's plot is unimportant and its purpose is its own destruction, then the message being imparted from Churchill is the virus itself: in which case, the formal disintegration of the play is itself the signal, and the plot, along with the messy emotions of the characters in it, are noise that gradually clears away. I’d like to suggest that neither of these situations quite describes the play, and that the oscillation between the two - the formal experimentation and the emotional impact - is a particular aesthetic moment where the reader/audience flips between two modes of comprehending the text. The moment where signal becomes noise and vice versa is one I’d like to call the <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 12">><</silently>>

I would like, however, to argue, that the aesthetic experience of the glitch is not merely a binary flip of signal to noise and vice versa; instead, what interests me is the kind of limbo that the medial scenes in Blue Kettle put forward. Much like Kant’s description of the cognitive process of apprehending beauty in his Critique of Judgment, my understanding of the glitch is that moment of free-play between the attempt to distinguish meaning from the message and the experience of the image - or text - as itself, incapable of being boiled down into a coherent meaning. A sufficiently glitched image gestures towards the thing that the unglitched version of the image might convey, but the visual signifiers of infection - the distortion, the lines, and so forth - are the point of the image, much like how the destruction of Blue Kettle is, for Churchill, the point of the play. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Blue Kettle 13">><</silently>>

Caryl Churchill’s later work, particularly her 2012 play [[Love and Information]], deals more squarely with the technological dissemination and corruption of human words and gestures via information technology, and with the potentially alienating consequences of that transmediation. The 2020s are an era where the social gestures we use to constitute ourselves in relation to one another are increasingly mediated on technological substrates, and where the words we use are increasingly infected with viral language from Twitter and so forth. As Patricia Lockwood puts it in her essay about the Internet titled "The Communal Mind": <blockquote>But worth remembering: the mind had been, in its childhood, a place of play. It had also once been the place where you sounded like yourself. Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other, through some erosion of wind or water on a self not nearly as firm as stone. <<cite "*" "Lockwood, Patricia. The Communal Mind.">> </blockquote> Calvin Kasulke's 2021 novel Several People Are Typing explores similar territory; an epistolary novel set in a workplace's Slack server, it features a plotline where emojis - and, eventually, fragments of <<define "emojis" "emoji">> - replace language altogether, culminating in two characters breaking off a relationship thusly: <blockquote> tripp :bsup: :sup: :th: :th: :st: :y-: :y-: :y-: :y-: :y-: :y: Beverley Don’t be dramatic. I’m not being hurtful, I’m expressing regret. I’m not blaming you for anything. tripp :y-: :sti: :y-: :y-: :y-: :-: [...] Beverly We're done, Tripp. Okay? tripp :-: :-: :thumb:<<cite "228" "229" "Kasulke, Calvin. Several People Are Typing.">> </blockquote> Churchill’s exploration of a "language virus" in Blue Kettle suggests a potential form of resistance: by flipping the script, and by reconsidering what is signal and what is noise in the messages we receive, we can reconsider the contingencies inherent in the technologies that’re transmitting those messages. In the same way that "Blue Kettle" forces the reader to ‘decode’ the semantic content of a phrase denuded of meaningful signifiers, we can reconsider and try to decode the content of language that we - and others - use that’s become totally infected with commonplace viral language - the "sames", emojis, "big moods" and "on brands" of living in the information age. [[Return->Section 1: GESTURE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: ACHEWOOD">><</silently>>

<h1>"I Have Weird Ideas About What It Means To Be A Man": Oughties Multimedia Masculinity in Achewood</h1> <a href="https://achewood.com/2005/07/12/title.html"><img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_weird_ideas.png" alt="[A car. Beef is driving, Ray is in the passenger seat.] Ray: Heh! Check it out, Beef - we're behind one of those dudes who messes with the letters on his Toyota! [We see the back of the Toyota pickup in front - the TOYOTA logo simply reads a central 'OYO'.] Ray: 'OYO.'' I see that one a lot. What's he even tryin' to get across? [Beef has a mental image - it is the Toyota, the sign now reading 'I HAVE WEIRD IDEAS ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN']" title="On the web, Onstad often included jokes in the title field of his comics. Here, it was 'I once lived next to an enterprising fellow who stripped the letters completely and had his own made, in the Toyota typeface, which spelled RAIDERS'"></a> n.b. Some of the ideas for this case study originated in a presentation at the 2020 conference of the Electronic Literature Organization. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 1">><</silently>>

In 2007, Lev Grossman, writing for Time Magazine, named Chris Onstad’s webcomic Achewood the year’s best graphic novel, despite it not being a graphic novel in “every, or maybe any, traditional sense, since its primary venue is on the web.”<<cite "*" "Grossman, Lev. ''Top 10 Graphic Novels.'">> Achewood was a long-running webcomic by that point; Onstad published more than 2600 strips, mostly between 2001 and 2010, during a run that earned it a place on the AV Club’s list of Best Comics of the 00’s.<<cite "*" "Heller, Jason, et al. 'The Best Comics of the '00s'">> Like most works under examination in this document, Achewood is a difficult work to summarize or sort generically; in Grossman’s words, it: <blockquote> defies categorization or description, but a brief, futile effort at a synopsis might look something like this: A bunch of cats, some robots, a bear and an otter who's 5 years old, live together in a fictional neighborhood called Achewood, which you might usefully think of as a grown-up, suburban, stoned version of Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood. <<cite "*" "Grossman, Lev. ''Top 10 Graphic Novels.'">> </blockquote> The comic is leavened with a healthy dose of <<define "'Mexican' Magical Realism">>, a fixation on cooking and food more broadly, a whip-smart comedic sensibility, and an incredible ear for dialogue. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 2">><</silently>>

What makes Achewood interesting from the perspective of <<define "informativity" "information and selfhood">> is its vast array of <<define "paratexts" "paratext">> written in the voice and from the perspective of Onstad’s characters. In addition to the webcomic, Onstad has written: <ul> <li>a cookbook with each recipe in the voice of a different character;</li> <a href="https://www.patreon.com/Achewood/shop/achewood-cookbook-vol-1-303"><img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_cookbook.png"></a> <li>three novellas written by misogynistic multiple-murderer “Nice Pete” Cropes;</li> <a href="https://achewood.com/2013/10/04/title.html"><img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/nice_pete_on_women.png"></a> <li>seven issues of a ‘zine by Cassandra “Roast Beef” Kazenzakis, who was called “the best new fictional character across any medium in at least a decade” by Rob Harvilla in the Village Voice <<cite "*" "Harvilla, Rob. In Praise of Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight">>;</li> <a href="assets/pdfs/do_a_thing_1.pdf"><img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_zine_header.png"></a> <li>a long-running advice column by Ray Smuckles, written ostensibly in the style of Playboy;</li> <a href="assets/pdfs/rays_place.pdf"><img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_rays_place_header.png"></a> <li>a plethora of new <a href="https://www.patreon.com/Achewood/posts">Patreon-only content</a>;</li> <li>and - most impressively - a series of 12 blogs, each written in the voice of a different character - including one blog written by “Chris,” Onstad’s author persona who appears very occasionally in the strip.</li> </ul> Exactly one of the twelve blogs is written by a female character, and the strip itself is similarly focused on men. The subject matter of all of this material is in many ways diverse - it’s certainly strange - but the central fixation is what it means to be a man in the 2000s. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 3">><</silently>>

What Achewood’s <<define "heterogeneric">>, <<define "multimedial">> form reflects is its attitude towards masculinity as a fragmentary, discontinuous performance. The self-conscious utilization of multiple genera makes possible the presentation of a collection of characters who themselves already represent non-traditional forms of masculinity not merely as punch-lines but as fully fleshed-out and sympathetic fictional subjects. Take Teodor, an anxious bear whose main passion is cooking, or Lyle, the alcoholic tiger with a talent for calligraphy, both of whose blogs reflect their respective passions. By disseminating its male characters’ interiorities across a variety of digital media, Achewood offers a model of what I’m calling "multimedia masculinity". This model is of particular interest - and has particular explanatory power - in a contemporary moment where gender performance is increasingly multimedial and fragmented - strewn across multiple social media platforms, Zooms, and other pages as much as it is embodied and in person. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 4">><</silently>>

What do I mean by multimedia masculinity? The term takes as its point of departure Judith Butler’s insight that gender is a socially constructed system of norms that must be constantly performed and prescriptively regulated to maintain its illusion of stability - a <blockquote> repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance<<cite "33" "Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble.">>. </blockquote> However, this contemporary moment, where ‘embodiment’ is dematerialized to an unprecedented extent, warrants a close consideration of what ‘bodies’ are stylized to produce the appearance of a gendered substance. Considering masculinity from a multimedial perspective means doing just this: thinking about the different platforms, like social media, through and on which social gestures are performed. Multimedia masculinity, then, is a way of thinking about masculinity as it is performed through the bodies electric: in Facebook posts and tweets, on MMOs and Slack servers. Gender in this mode of thinking becomes something akin to <<define "genre">>; as Lauren Berlant puts it: <blockquote> To call an identity like a sexual identity a genre is to think about it as something repeated, detailed, and stretched while retaining its intelligibility, its capacity to remain readable or audible across the field of all its variations <<cite "4" "Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint.">> </blockquote> <<define "Medium" "medium">> - or platform - vary, and inflect both gender and genre, so the kinds of masculinity that these different media make possible - and prevent - are necessarily inflected by the generic tropes and traits of the platform in question. This, then, is a rearticulation of my broader argument about <<define "informativity," "information and selfhood">> or of performance and selfhood on digital platforms. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 5">><</silently>>

A good point of entry for considering masculinity in Achewood is the 2006 arc “The Great Outdoor Fight,” which was the first story arc published in hardcover, by Dark Horse Press in 2008. The Great Outdoor Fight tracks Ray and Roast Beef as they compete in - and ultimately win - the eponymous fight. The Fight is an excellent case study for the performance of masculinity because it is a "homosocial enactment" in exactly the way Michael Kimmel writes about: <blockquote> We test ourselves, perform heroic feats, take enormous risks, all because we want other men to grant us our manhood. Masculinity as a homosocial enactment is fraught with danger, with the risk of failure, and with intense relentless competition. <<cite "33" "Kimmel, Michael. The Gender of Desire.">> </blockquote> For Kimmel, men become men when they are recognized as such by other men, and the structure and ritual of competition is a pretext for precisely this mode of enactment. <blockquote> Three days! Three acres! Three THOUSAND men! Only one will win THE GREAT OUTDOOR FIGHT! </blockquote> <img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/gof_poster.jpeg" alt="A poster for the fictional Great Outdoor Fight, featuring a train and a long text description of the fight." title="A poster for the fictional Great Outdoor Fight, featuring a train and a long text description of the fight.'"> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 6">><</silently>>

Ray initially joins the Fight when he learns that his estranged father, Ramses Smuckles, was a previous winner, making him “B.O.C.” - Blood of Champion. <a href="http://achewood.com/index.php?date=01312006"><img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_boc.png" alt="[Ray is on the phone.] Ray: Yeah, I'm callin' to register for the 2006 Great Outdoor Fight. Ray: What? Ray: Qualifyin' rounds be damned. I'm BOC. {{BOC = Blood-of-Champion.}} Ray: 1973. Rodney Leonard Stubbs. I'm his son. Ray: Hell yes I can prove it. You name the place. I call you or your local representative out. Ray: Okay, hold on. I gotta grab a pen. [Ray rummages through his dresser drawers for a pen.] Ray: Hey, sorry 'bout that. Yeah. Ramada Inn, by the airport, room 215. Thanks. [The note Ray has written is completely illegible - a large R, a large A, '2...5?', and what looks like some ??'s are scribbled on the page.] Ray: Oh, whose ass am I kicking? Yours, or another guy? Ray: Seriously? Envel??pe Martinez? Fight Champion 1997? Nice! Ray: Alright, thanks Aaron. [Ray begins dialing another phone number.] <<beep>><<bop>><<dootle>><<dop>> Ray: Envelope! It's Ray, across the street! Ray: Listen, man! You know how I agreed to stop callin' the police over your animatronic nativity scene? Ray: Yeah, I got a favor. {{Alt-text: The assumption of this comic is that you all are familiar with my neighbor}} " title="On the web, Onstad often included jokes in the title field of his comics. Here, it was 'The assumption of this comic is that you all are familiar with my neighbor'"></a> Conversely, Roast Beef, who is Ray’s best friend, uses his computer to hack himself an invitation to the fight. <a href="https://achewood.com/2006/02/07/title.html"><img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_beef_hacking.png" alt="[Ray and Roast Beef are riding in a motorcycle with a sidecar.] Ray: How the hell did you get into the Fight, Beef?! Roast Beef: Let's just say their database is accessible via any networked computer Ray: You HACKED your way into the Fight? Ray: Still, man, you can't hack a massive furious Nazi from San Bernadino. You got to raise your fists! Roast Beef: I ain't need no Dell Inspirion to bust a man down on into his component pieces Ray: I know you like to read Nate Small and all, but when you ever been in any single fight? [Ray and Roast Beef are approaching a large, fenced-in compound.] Roast Beef: Well would you look at that here we are Roast Beef: Watch this [Roast Beef runs a guy over, breaking his leg.] Random Guy: AUGH! Ray: Dude! What the hell?! Roast Beef: He won't compete but he'll be fine in a few weeks Roast Beef: That part of the leg heals quickly Ray: You did that on purpose? Roast Beef: I ain't Frederick H. Coca-Cola but I do know something about building a brand [Roast Beef brings the motorcycle to a stop.] <<pouf>> [Roast Beef takes off his motorcycle helmet.] Roast Beef: Alright you want a hot dog or a Polish or anything {{Alt-Text: Probably a good idea to dust off a couple Polish before the big round}}" title="On the web, Onstad often included jokes in the title field of his comics. Here, it was 'Alt-Text: Probably a good idea to dust off a couple Polish before the big round'"></a> The twosome make their way through the Fight, eventually dispatching the competition, and the arc climaxes with a confrontation between Ray and his father. Ramses tells Ray that the only way to win the Fight is to beat his friend Beef raw - the man with the Blood of Champions has to "beat [his best friend] 'till his blood runs." <a href="https://achewood.com/2006/03/17/title.html"><img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_ray_and_ramses.png" alt="[Ray has recently been reunited with his father following his semi-victory in the Great Outdoor Fight] Ray: Dad! It's me, Ray! From... from Sondra, you know! Ramses Luther Smuckles: Easy, boy. Don't rap mush with me. Ramses: you in the goggles. What's your name. Roast Beef: Uh hello Mr. Smuckles my name is Roast Beef Ramses: Hush, Roast Beef. Roast Beef: Yes sir [A view of the control tower] Ramses: They told me my boy was int eh Fight this year! I been up in that tower since they raised the gate, watchin' you two. Ray: How'd we do, dad? How'd we look? Ramses: Roast Beef, do I have to hush him? Roast Beef: Hush Ray Ramses: You two's tight since small times, ain't you. Always fightin' as a team, Roast Beef usin' brains, Ray usin' brawn... Ramses: Problem IS, only one man can win this Fight! Ray: It's okay, dad, Beef said he'd lay it down for me! I'm gonna drop him easy. Ramses: I though you rookies might get up to as much. A lay-down ain't gonna fly with the men in the tower, you realize. They see anything short of a cold, ruthless ass-beatin', they'll bring out the Jeeps. Roast Beef: Oh not the Jeeps no Ray we ain't goin' that route please Ray: But... but I can't beat real on Beef! He's my oldest friend! Ramses: If that's the arrangement, you got to beat him 'till his blood runs, boy. You got to beat him 'till he can't crawl, see, or cry. Those are the rules, and all eyes are on you." title="On the web, Onstad often included jokes in the title field of his comics. Here, it was 'You made your bed, now severely beat your friends in it!'"></a> Ray, though, refuses. He rejects the masculine code posited by his father and by the Fight as an establishment, declaring that they should “become the ruling body, dude!” and setting the whole field on fire. As he and Roast Beef ride off, Ray says, “Damn. This is a thing, isn’t it?” And Beef responds: “This is completely a thing. Our every move is the new tradition.” This represents a rejection of the violent masculine code of his father in favor of a masculinity that privileges the homosocial bond Ray has with his childhood friend; for Ray and Beef, <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 7">><</silently>>

Ray’s relationship with his father - and his attempt to validate his own masculinity by following in his father’s footsteps - follows generically stable story beats. The way the storyline plays out, however, is less typical. Ray and Beef win the fight primarily by their wits rather than by brawn, positing a model of masculinity grounded in friendship and in cleverness rather than in physical strength. More subversively, Ray and Beef ultimately violate the rules of the contest (and traditional masculinity) to win it on their own terms. This rejection of consensus codes that determine who is ‘manliest’ is typical of Achewood as a strip, which spends much more time on traditional domestic work like cooking than on fighting, and generally deflates any legitimately ‘manly’ display by its characters. Within the strip, Ray’s version of masculinity is performed through its inflection of a generically typical storyline. Ray’s actions get read against the generic tropes of the medium, against the standards of the fictional genre. By these standards, he’s manly because he wins the fight. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 8">><</silently>>

The storyline itself - a battle royale to determine who is manliest, against a backdrop of paternal judgment - is typical for comics in general, a <<define "medium">> with more than its fair share of supercharged combat in its DNA. In fact, Achewood has another arc, "The Badass Games", which explores similar territory — although there, the competitors prove their manliness by talking to a convict, befriending a dog, and baking a loaf of bread. <a href="https://achewood.com/2006/06/09/title.html"><img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_badass_games.png" alt="[T??odor, Cornelius, Vlad, Lyle, & Pat are gathered facing Ray & Roast Beef. Ray is addressing them, Beef stands silently next to Ray.] Ray: Welcome to the BADASS GAMES! Ray: Badass men do not mess around! They get down to business IMMEDIATELY! Ray: Each of you take a place at one of the five tables when I say GO! Ray: Your first challenge: BAKE A LOAF OF BREAD USING THE PROVIDED FLOUR, WATER, YEAST, AND SALT! Vlad [angrily]: What is badass about bakink loaf of bread?! I am thinkink we are at least Ultimate Fightink against wino! Ray: Nothing is more old-school than baking your own damn staff of life! A dude who can walk into any kitchen in the world and make bread is COMPLETELY RAW! [SOON.] Beef [addressing a sad Lyle]: Lyle your yeast didn't bloom dogg I mean this is a top drawer failure by any measure in the book Ray [addressing a sad T??odor]: T??odor, I thought you knew how to cook? Your bread is hard and nasty. How long did you knead it for? A thousand minutes? A million? Ray [with Beef, addressing Cornelius]: Daaamn! What we got here, Cornelius? Cornelius: I omitted the yeast and made a fresh malloreddus pasta, which I rolled out using my flask. Ray: Malloreddus? Cornelius: It's an eggless Sardinian dough. My dear Iris Gambol learned to make it the summer we spent in Cagliari. '67? '68? It escapes me. [THEN.] Beef: Alright not only did Cornelius buck the rules but he made a recipe that his dead first wife taught him before we were born Ray: That is /hard/. Cornelius, hands down."></a> Here, again, what makes the winner "manly" isn't his ability to fight; it's his ability to perform a domestic task. Cornelius wins because he "made a recipe that his dead first wife taught him." Even still, there are other texts - and even other webcomics - that showcase men cooking, being clever, and winning through friendship. What makes Achewood -- and Ray specifically -- different is that that same version of masculinity is then refracted, fragmented, consistently, in other mediums. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 9">><</silently>>

Ray’s Place, the long-running advice column “written by” Ray, is similarly grounded in gendered, medium-driven tropes that are ultimately undermined. <a href="assets/pdfs/rays_place.pdf"><img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_rays_place_header.png"></a> Ray explicitly posits “Ray’s Place” as a “Playboy”-type advice column: <blockquote>At first I thought I would kind of have this “Playboy” type column—you know, real gentlemen’s stuff, but with kind of a sense of hipness and adventure. Good clothes, good food, high-end electronics and digital cigar cutters, maybe a little bit of etiquette and tips on personal grooming.</blockquote> From the very first entry, however, Ray’s performance of masculinity undermines itself: <blockquote>What does a real gentleman talk about, anyway? I guess a real gentleman doesn’t do the talking, but rather guides conversation in a clever yet undetectable way. Man, I ain’t no good at that.</blockquote> Ray tries to emulate the Playboy voice in response to a reader's question about a decidedly unhip topic - "the right way to eat Mexican food": <blockquote>GENTLE READER: few things in life are so uncomfortable as the enormous “wind bubbles” one’s body creates after eating some delicious, tempting Mexican food. And just what is it about Mexican food that creates such a troublesome atmosphere within us? The answer: it is a complex system of enzymatic chemical reactions which occur when soft, starchy foods meet the digestive acids which naturally pool in our stomachs.</blockquote> ...but stops after about a paragraph, rejecting the inauthentic performance of traditional masculinity personified here by the voice of the anonymous Playboy writer: <blockquote>I feel so phony … why don’t I just try to write in my normal style?<<cite "3" "Onstad, Chris. The Collected Ray's Place">></blockquote> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 10">><</silently>>

That this misstepping moment occurs during an attempt to emulate the style of a so-called "men's <<define "magazine">>" is telling. As other scholars have remarked, the magazine is an active site for the inscription, reification, and enforcement of gender norms. As Amy N. Vreeland writes of the girl's magazine Seventeen: <blockquote>Seventeen and similar publications provide cultural "scripts" that fuel, shape, and maintain normative conceptions of appropriate teenage "femininity" in order to guide the creation of gender identity along dominant ideals. Hence, Seventeen can be considered a "gender manual."<<cite "v" "Vreeland, Amy N. Seventeen Magazine as a Manual for 'Doing Gender'">></blockquote> Ray here tries, and fails, to write a gender manual via the generic trappings he attempted to emulate, citing a sense of inauthenticity - echoing his rejection of the cultural script of the Great Outdoor Fight and of manliness more generally. Even still, the advice column, like the magazine, functions like the conduct manual, which Berlant describes as a “pragmatic pedagogic <<define "genre">>, an opportunity for retraining a reader into something different and yet more herself” <<cite "12" "Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint.">> Ray’s Place has a triple function, then: it establishes the broad outlines of “male” as genre within the constraints of the medium (and genre) of “advice column”; it situates Ray, as a fictional character, within that genre; and, thirdly, it allows Ray (and Onstad) to critique and deconstruct that genre - and its model of masculinity. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 11">><</silently>>

This emulation and disavowal demonstrates how the slippage between genre and gender performativity gets even slipperier when translated textually, particularly in the first-person style. Despite the deconstructive bent of the text, many of the questions Ray answers early on in the column is standard “how to be a gentleman” Playboy-style material - first date etiquette, the right watch to buy, proper cocktail selections, and so forth. Onstad's pastiche was successful enough, in fact, that GQ asked Onstad to produce a “Modern Gentleman’s Decision Making Flowchart,” which they published in their August 2008 issue. <a href="https://achewood.com/2008/09/10/title.html"><img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/achewood_flowchart.png"></a> Gentlemen's Quarterly, like Playboy, is a men's <<define "magazine">> that presents a model of masculinity and sells the reader everything they need to make that masculinity real, provided they have the necessary money. But Onstad's contribution to GQ is typically playful, irreverent, and deconstructive. First of all, the flow-chart itself is an atypical contribution to a magazine best known for its annual "Man of the Year" feature. More specifically, take the three scenarios that the flowchart lays out: "a potential sexual encounter", "a one hundred and twelve dollar trip to Whole Foods so I can cook a two-course dinner for my girlfriend", and "a round of golf with a new client". Each scenario is fairly typical fodder for an advice column and for a men's magazine more generally - and each is deconstructed in a typically Onstadian fashion. The round of golf is successful after Ray cracks an inappropriate joke about letting "some scientists chop off [his] dick"; the fancy dinner is replaced by "DUDEMEAL, a special meal for dudes at eleven PM", and the sexual encounter is mostly in Ray's own mind, spurred by nothing more than a "chick... absently toying with her necklace so hard." In all three ostensibly masculine scenarios, Ray fails to perform as a good GQ reader ought to perform - yet each scenario ends in something like success. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 12">><</silently>>

Ray’s personal blog is an even more personal glimpse into the voice and personality of this fictional character. These blogs are a substantial piece of Achewood: in fact, the final comic strip of Achewood's main run, before its recent revival as a popular Patreon, directs the reader to Onstad’s final blog post, where he writes: <blockquote>the blogs are where I personally think the heart and soul of that universe live [...] in words I haven’t had to maddeningly jockey into tiny speech bubbles” <<cite "*" "Onstad, Chris. 'Some News to Wrap Up 2016'.">>.</blockquote> Onstad provocatively figures the material and generic conventions of the comic strip as <<define "procrustean">>, and the blog as a more open medium. Unlike the webcomic, with its generic punchlines and action sequences, and the advice column, with its performative and prescriptive enaction of masculinity, the personal blog is positioned as unvarnished and verbose; Ray’s blog alone stretches to over 250 pages. This genre is characterized by its confessional character, and thus lends itself a kind of introspection designed to puncture norms; rather than an outward-facing persona, on one's blog one can speak from "the heart and soul". In an early entry, for example, Ray describes how much he enjoys Sex in the City and wishes he could “hang with ladies like that [...] some ladies who tell it like it is and like to throw one back.” He explains his acquisition of the Sex in the City DVDs, however, as a mistake: he meant to order pornography. Even in the context of a personal blog aimed at his “chochachos” (a made up word Ray uses to describe his readers), Ray explains away his introduction to feminine culture by reasserting his masculinity. He’s pulled simultaneously towards the ‘feminized’ confessional genre of the online diary, which he engages elsewhere in the blogs, and being "maddeningly jockied" into the genre of masculinity. By reading his performance on the blogs alongside his other mediated selves, however, we can see how flimsy that masculinity is. Even as one of the arbiters of maleness within (and, for the superfans who can come up with an Achewood quote for every situation, without) the world of Achewood - writing advice columns for GQ, winning the Great Outdoor Fight - Ray’s membership in manliness as a genre is constantly in question and must constantly be reasserted. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 13">><</silently>>

In 2023, after a long period of silence, Onstad announced his return to web publishing with the release of <a href="https://raybot.help/">RayBot</a>, a <<define "LLM">>-powered bot trained on the combined corpus of Achewood, along with content written specifically to turn Raybot into an accurate mimic of Ray's inimitable voice. <img src="assets/imgs/achewood_raybot.png" style="max-width:50%;"> This bot is the result of a kind of <<define "technonecromancy">>, rebooting a defunct fictional character from the dead by feeding everything he was into a model and asking it to <<"spit out new words" "Text Generation">>spit out new words. And, somewhat shockingly, it worked pretty well; the bot got positive press coverage, which contributed to the successful launch of Onstad's Patreon, and fans generally responded well, sharing the best, most Raylike responses in a Discord server. Raybot was successful because Ray has a well-defined voice that his readers can recognize, and because the genre of the advice column mitigates some of the shortfalls of the chatbot as a medium. In technocratic jargon, an advice column is "low hanging fruit"; a single query with a single response doesn't rely on a good long-term memory or coherence over the course of a conversation - two challenges with contemporary large language models. Additionally, the use case here lacks some of the <<define "risk" "AI risk">> that characterizes many of the higher-profile uses of large language models; nobody's insurance claim is being denied because of what Raybot says. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Achewood 14">><</silently>>

To conclude, Ray's multimedia masculinity is exemplary but not unique; one could look to Roast Beef’s alt zines or Nice Pete’s violently misogynistic novellas for other figurations of manliness refracted through and constrained by generic conventions. In Achewood and in contemporary online culture, social gestures refract through the mediums on which they are performed, become legible only in their <<define "genre" "generic">> contexts, and situate their performer within this complex matrix. <<define "multimedial" "Multimediated">> masculinity differs primarily in its triangulating function - individual performances across a broad band of media simultaneously provide the illusion of internal consistency (the ‘voice’ remains the same) and showcase how flexible, generically, any individual’s performance is. It also highlights the porousness of the boundary between mediated fictional characters and mediated ‘real’ persons; if our own personal production of ‘content’ through the various platforms on which we increasingly live our lives is self-consciously chosen, written in a way to conform with the twin generic demands of our media and our genders, then the gendered subject is always, to a greater or lesser degree, a fictional one. I do not mean to reinscribe face-to-face interaction as an escape from this generic double-bind; in-person social behavior, too, is governed by generic codes of acceptability and legibility. What multimedia masculinity offers is a way of illuminating these codes by deconstructing the boundary between the self-consciously constructed fictionality of, say, a cartoon cat, written into being on a variety of platforms, that selfsame cartoon cat's digital shadow as projected by an AI model onto the contemporary internet, and the analogous fictionality and multimodality of the narrative human subject in the information age. [[Return->Section 1: GESTURE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM">><</silently>>

<h1>"Skin and Air": Remediation and Power in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom</h1> <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/mrbb.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", as performed by Ma Rainey herself, recorded in 1924 and released by Paramount Records. This recording is in the public domain.</figcaption> </figure> n.b. Some of the ideas for this case study originated in a presentation at the 2019 annual conference of the American Literature Organization. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 1">><</silently>>

August Wilson’s 1982 play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom opens in a recording studio, on two white men - Irvin, Ma Rainey’s agent, and Sturdyvant, the owner of the studio and the record label - testing their technology in advance of a session with Rainey and her band. Irvin hooks up a microphone while Sturdyvant watches from above, ensconced in what the script calls the “control booth"<<cite "x" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">> that is, in most productions, located physically above the main stage, like a prison guard's tower. This distance spatializes Wilson's description of Sturdyvant as a man who is "preoccupied with money... insensitive to black performers and prefers to deal with them at arm's length" <<cite "17" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">> <<set _slides to ['assets/imgs/mr_nt_set.jpeg', 'assets/imgs/mr_netflix_set.png', 'assets/imgs/mr_wt_set.jpeg']>> <figure> <img style="width:100%" @src=[_slides[0]]> <figcaption>The set for the National Theater's 2016 production of the play. The stained steel control room here especially recalls a guard tower. Photo by Johan Persson courtesy of the National Theatre.</figcaption> </figure> <figure> <img style="width:100%" @src=[_slides[2]]> <figcaption>The set for the Writer's Theater 2019 production of the play. Note the conspicuous speaker that allows Irvin and Sturdyvant to give their orders without leaving the control room. Photo by Michael Brosilow courtesy of New City Stage.</figcaption> </figure> <figure> <img style="width:100%" @src=[_slides[1]]> <figcaption>The set for Netflix's 2021 production of the play. Despite its cinematic medium, the Netflix adaptation largely confines itself to a stage set, with the exception of the conclusion. Photo by David Lee courtesy of Netflix.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 2">><</silently>>

Sturdyvant expects trouble from Rainey: “I don’t care what she calls herself,” he hollers at Irvin, “I’m not putting up with it. I just want to get her in here … record those songs on that list … and get her out. Just like <<define "clockwork">>, huh?” <<cite "18" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">>. When Rainey ultimately arrives, however - after the white men, her band, and the play’s audience has been waiting for about an hour - she’s anything but clockwork. Whereas Sturdyvant wants a singing automaton he can record and sell, Rainey is defiantly and powerfully a human body from the moment she fills the stage. Wilson plays with this technologic/organic binary throughout the play: a technological whiteness, represented primarily by Sturdyvant, obsessed with clock-time and allied with the recording process, against a stubbornly embodied blackness, represented primarily although not exclusively by Rainey, who Wilson identifies with live performance and with the ‘real’ blues. The play stages a power struggle between these two poles, with Rainey insisting on her own bodiliness in the face of Sturdyvant and Irvin’s attempt to transmute her voice into a valuable commodity. Although this binary makes for compelling drama and speaks to the history of (largely white) exploitation of black musicians, it fails to capture the degree to which the historical Rainey took ownership of the recording technology that made her a household name - and threatens to renaturalize a rhetoric that equates blackness with an atavistic, primitive ‘soulfulness.’ This section will begin, then, by sketching out how Wilson stages this binary, before problematizing it with reference to the historical Rainey’s own stage show and to Wilson’s own words outside of the playtext. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 3">><</silently>>

Through most of the play Sturdyvant is in a control-box, physically alienated from the recording session, and his commands come through a speaker in the recording studio. In contrast to Rainey, for whom lived experience is paramount, Sturdyvant’s speech suggests a subjectivity obsessed with <<define "clock-time" "clockwork">>. As I noted earlier, he wants the session to go “like clockwork;” when Rainey is late, he asks Irvin “Do you know what time it is? Have you looked at the clock?” <<cite "47" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">>, and when Rainey wants to stop the session for her coca-cola, he tells her “Wait just a minute, Ma … you come in an hour late … we’re way behind schedule as it is.” Indeed, it’s easy to read Slow Drag’s declaration that “the white man don’t know how to have a good time" <<cite "41" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">> as an indictment of Sturdyvant’s technologized obsession with the clock. Sturdyvant himself, then, can be read as the clockwork man that he wants to make Rainey into, having thoroughly internalized a mechanized, penny-pinching, second-counting mode of living. <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/mr_clockworkman.png"> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'a clockwork man in a 1920s recording studio, against a pure black background, in the style of Paul Klee'.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 4">><</silently>>

Conversely, Ma Rainey’s recalcitrance throughout the recording session refers repeatedly back to her body. We’re told early in the play that she complained during a previous session of her sore throat. This time around, she starts by lambasting Sturdyvent for keeping the studio too cold: <blockquote>MA RAINEY: Why you all keep it so cold in here? Sturdyvant try and pinch every penny he can. You all wanna make some records, you better put some heat on in here or give me back my coat” <<cite "53" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">>.</blockquote> And although her throat’s fine this time around, she stops the recording session when she realizes that she hasn’t been given a bottle of Coca-Cola. In each case, she exerts control over the recording session by insisting upon her status as an embodied human being, with bodily urges and preferences. Hence her stated preference for live performance over recordings; when Irvin protests against Ma Rainey having her stuttering nephew Sylvester perform the spoken introduction to her song, she replies to his "Ma, we don't have time" with: <blockquote>If you wanna make a record, you gotta find time. I aint' playing with you, Irvin. I can walk out of here and go back to my tour. I got plenty fans. I don't need to go through all of this. Just go and get the boy a microphone <<cite "74" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom">>.</blockquote> Here Rainey directly mobilizes her body - threatening to walk out to her embodied tour - to take control over the microphone as a tool of the recording process. What Irvin and Sturdyvant's <<define "apparatus">> aims to capture, though, is some version of Ma Rainey that is outside of and separate from her body, a disembodied voice that the technological apparatus means to capture - as Rainey says, all they want is to take her "voice and trap it in them fancy boxes with all them buttons and dials" <<cite "78" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom">>. Rainey's attitude towards the technology of recording is dismissive and uninterested; she reduces the operations of the recording apparatus to gnomic "buttons and dials" while dialing in on the far more important, coercive power dynamics at play. Rainey's voice comes from her body, and her blues come from her body, and she uses that body and that voice to exert power over the recording process. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 5">><</silently>>

Rainey's power is contested and contained by the technological exploitation of Sturdyvant and his ilk; where Rainey, standing barefoot in the studio, has control, the black members of her backing band do not. Consider Levee who thinks himself a keen observer of the power dynamics of the recording studio. When he insists that the band practice and perform his version of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", he does so by aligning himself with Sturdyvant and Irvin's recording technology: <blockquote>Ma's the boss on the road! We at a recording session. Mr. Sturdyvant and Mr. Irvin say what's gonna be here! <<cite "37" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">></blockquote> And unlike Rainey, Levee prefers the technological embrace of the studio over live performance; he dismisses the tour as "tent-show nonsense" <<cite "65" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">> But Levee's understanding of his relationship with the power of recording technology is fundamentally flawed. We never see "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" recorded in the play; although Sylvester successfully performs the spoken intro and Rainey sings the song (her way), Levee accidentally kicks (with his fancy new shoes!) the microphone plug out and the take is lost. This failure prefigures Levee's unsuccessful attempts later in the play to exert power over Sturdyvant, who buys off his songs for five dollars and leaves him powerless. Levee's immediate response to this loss of power is a violent explosion at Toledo, who scuffs Levee's shoe accidentally. Where Rainey uses her body and her voice to control the recording session, Levee's body gets in the way, with fatal consequences. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 6">><</silently>>

Rainey's references to her body makes sense because the blues she sings are inextricable from her corporeal self. The first song that the audience sees her sing is a verse of "Those Dogs of Mine,” a song about her aching feet, after removing her shoes and rubbing her soles. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/mr_tdom.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>"Those Dogs Of Mine" was recorded in 1924 by the historical Ma Rainey and released by Paramount Records. This recording is in the public domain.</figcaption> </figure> <blockquote> Out for a walk, I stopped to talk Oh, how my corns did burn I had to keep on the shady side of the street To keep out the light of the sun Oh, Lord, these dogs of mine They sure do worry me all the time The reason why, I don't know Sometimes I soak 'em in Sapolio <<cite "249" "Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism.">> </blockquote> Unlike Levee, who needs his shoes to successfully perform his masculinity, Rainey records her music barefoot. Similarly, the title song, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” refers to a dance, but is also a reference to Rainey’s own (sexual) body: <blockquote> Want to see the dance you call the black bottom I wanna learn that dance Want to see the dance you call your big black bottom That puts you in a trance All the boys in the neighborhood They say your black bottom is really good Come on and show me your black bottom I wanna learn that dance <<cite "231" "232" "Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism.">> </blockquote> This focus on the body is not atypical for the blues; unlike most other popular music of their era, the blues deviated in their "provocative and pervasive sexual -- including homosexual -- imagery" <<cite "3" "Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism.">>. While not all of Rainey's music is focused on her body, Wilson's selection of songs that identify her music with her corporeal self highlights the difference between her and Sturdyvant, and sets up an oppositional relationship between her black body and the white technology of the recording studio. As Alan Nadel writes, Rainey’s “singing isn’t something already formed but something formed in the act” <<cite "16" "Nadel, Alan. May All Your Fences Have Gates.">> - or in Rainey’s own words, that the blues are “life’s way of talking [...] you sing ‘cause that’s a way of understanding life” <<cite "86" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 7">><</silently>>

According to this reading, then, Ma Rainey represents the blues - and blackness - as lived, embodied experience against a technologized whiteness that severs Ma Rainey’s music from its context, creating the disjunction of information from its temporo-spatial context that is endemic of <<define "transcoding">> more broadly and that echoes the historical violence perpetrated against African-Americans throughout the history of America. This contrast is most vivid in Rainey’s figuration of the recording process as one of sexual violation: <blockquote>They don't care nothing about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that, and they gonna treat me like I want to be treated no matter how much it hurt them... As soon as they get my voice down on them recording machines, then it’s just like if I’d be some whore and they roll over and put their pants on. <<cite "79" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">></blockquote> Rainey’s simile recalls a history of white sexual violence against and exploitation of black female bodies, invoked elsewhere in the play through Levee’s story about his mother’s rape, but it also symbolically links her music with her sexualized body. Rainey has power in the recording studio because of her voice, and because she doesn't need to record her music to succeed. Again, she prefers live performance, telling Irvin that he can either record her music her way or she can "carry [her] black bottom on back down South to my tour, 'cause [she] don't like it up here no ways" <<cite "63" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 8">><</silently>>

Wilson's play sketches out this opposition cleanly and consistently, but the particularity of the technologies in question, along with an examination of the historical Rainey's own live concerts, demonstrates how Rainey herself deconstructed this binary in her larger-than-life performance. Let’s first think about the particularity of the vinyl record as the medium onto which Rainey is being recorded, and through which Rainey will be disseminated. One trend we see as recording technology progresses is a moving window of <<define "nostalgia" "Nostalgia">>. The earliest example of this may be the discussion of writing in Plato’s Phaedrus, which Socrates worries will: <blockquote> ...introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside.<<cite "*" "Plato. Phaedrus.">></blockquote> Lived experience, by this account, has an aura that dissipates when committed to paper via writing - we might think, here, of the rest of the band’s accusing Toledo’s of literacy getting him to the point where he has forgotten “how to laugh and have a good time. Just like the white man” <<cite "42" "Wilson, August. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 9">><</silently>>

In the contemporary moment, however, vinyl records and other analog technology has itself acquired a (not unproblematic) nostalgic premium; see, for example, the discussion - by two white kids - of blues records in Hari Kunzru’s White Tears - the digital is “out of touch with the human body” and lacks “the soul, the vibration of an animal-gut string, the resonance of lacquered rosewood”. In contrast with <<define "noiseless" "Noise">>, <<define "lossless" "loss">> digital technology, the analog record, with its snaps, pops, and scratches, attests to its own historicity as an object that has travelled through time and demands a social relation between its recorder and its auditor. There are echoes of this in Wilson’s description, during 1988 interview with Bill Moyers, of the first time he listened to the blues: <figure> <video id="wilson_on_blues" controls> <source src="assets/videos/wilson_on_blues.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>August Wilson being interviewed by Bill Moyers in 1988.</figcaption> <script> document.getElementById("wilson_on_blues").currentTime = 249; </script> </figure> <blockquote> AUGUST WILSON: [...] I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store, at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately [....] And one day in my sack of records there was a yellow-labeled record that had a typewritten label, which was kind of odd. And I put it on, and it was ”Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine.” It was by Bessie Smith, of course, and I listened to it, and I had one of those old 78s where you had to keep putting the needle in, and I recall I listened to the record 22 straight times. I had never in my life -- [...] And just over and, you know. I had never heard anything like it — and I was literally stunned by its beauty. [...] And it spoke – there was an immediate emotional response. BILL MOYERS: What did it say? AUGUST WILSON: Well, it was someone speaking directly to me.<<cite "*" "Moyers, Bill, and August Wilson.">> </blockquote> Wilson’s description is intensely physical: he begins by describing the material conditions surrounding his finding Bessie Smith’s record, describes the “odd” label,” and talks about the experience of having to put the needle down on the record twenty-two straight times. His response, too, is both physical and emotional - he’s “literally stunned” by its beauty; the record “speaks directly to him,” and he has an “immediate emotional response.” The technological apparatus makes possible the very kind embodied experience that, in the play, it opposes. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 10">><</silently>>

In the same interview, Wilson talks about the blues as an information communication technology itself, as a “philosophical system at work,” a “way of passing along information,” where the music provides an emotional context not unlike the <<define "Benjaminian aura" "Benjamin's aura">> for the information that the song contains. Rather than reifying the opposition between white technology and black embodiedness, as I’ve argued that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom threatens to do, Wilson here instead argues that the blues functioned as its own of discourse network whose message was that “there [is] a nobility to the lives of blacks in America.”<<cite "*" "Moyers, Bill, and August Wilson.">> And those recordings make it possible for us, too, to listen to the voice of Gertrude Rainey, who died at the age of 53 in 1939. Like photography, phonography is an elegiac art; to paraphrase Susan Sontag, all phonographs are memento mori, and testify to time's relentless melt. <<cite "15" "Sontag, Susan. On Photography.">> Writing specifically about the recorded voice, Friedrich Kittler notes that all phonographic recordings are always already posthumous, and that when a record is played it is always "a corpse that speaks" <<cite "83" "Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.">>. The record is <<define "nostalgic" "Nostalgia">> by nature, but the undead voice can speak with startling vitality. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 11">><</silently>>

In “Staging the Blues,” Paige McGinley recounts a secondhand description of one of the historical Ma Rainey's live performances: <blockquote>Collectively, the audience began to call out, "The Phantuuhm." [...] The call referred to Rainey herself. Her presence was duly conjured by the Wildcats Jazz Band's instrumental blues and the audience's enthused chant: "The Phaaaaantuhm! The Phaaaaaantuhm!" The curtain rose, revealing a giant prop replica of a Victrola; a chorus dancer began to play a similarly outsized prop record on the phonograph. From inside the Victrola, not yet visible to spectators, Rainey began to sing her wildly popular “Moonshine Blues,” [...] At a climactic moment in the song, she emerged from the boxy set piece, glittering in a famously extravagant gown and jewels, to the great delight of her audience.<<cite "31" "McGinley, Paige. Staging the Blues.">></blockquote> Whereas Wilson’s Rainey sets up an opposition between her records and her touring - privileging the latter - the real Rainey brought the record onto the stage. The historical Gertrude "Ma" Rainey refused to identify the technological with whiteness and instead claimed it as a part of her own show. Rainey’s success as a recording artist meant that much of her audience would already have heard her voice in their own homes; her stage performance suggests that she embraced the reach and the popularity that the then-novel technology gave her, collapsing the distance Wilson imagines between the embodied and the technological. This does not, of course, undo the fundamentally exploitative relationship that existed between Rainey and her white producers at Paramount “Race” Records, any more than Rainey’s choice of a painted cotton field as a backdrop for her live shows undoes the violence of slavery. It does, however, demonstrate how Rainey, as a savvy stage performer in her own right, made use of the very technology that Sturdyvent hopes will make her superfluous. And the call that "conjured" her, for "the Phantuhm", suggests a similar savviness to the way that the phonograph can only ever record a ghost, and that the voice that Sturdyvant and his machine captures is, at best, an echo. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Ma Rainey 12">><</silently>>

By reading Wilson’s play alongside his--and Rainey’s--own history, then, we can see that the conflict isn’t necessarily between a technology which is essentially white and a body that is essentially black; instead, the problem in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is historically contingent. Sturdyvent controls the recording apparatus, and Sturdyvent is exploitative, but the product-the record-is ultimately Rainey’s, available for a young Wilson to pick out of a bin and draw inspiration from years later. Rainey’s stage performance suggests how black music has functioned, in Louis Chude-Sokei’s words, as “the primary space of direct black interaction with technology and informatics” <<cite "5" "Chude-Sokei, Louis. The Sound of Culture.">>, and that the utilization of that technology makes possible the sort of emotional encounter, disjointed in time and space, whose absence Benjamin mourns and that Wilson, in the aforementioned interview, credits as so instrumental to his development as a playwright. [[Return->Section 1: GESTURE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Conclusion 1">><</silently>>

The three case studies in this section demonstrate that gestures are inherently unstable and fluid when mediated through various technologies. This instability challenges an understanding of gestures as fixed and reliable markers of identity or intent; instead, a gesture--and the identities which it constitutes--is fundamentally shaped by its medium. Medium, then, and mediation more broadly is not merely a process of neutral transmission, but is instead a contested site of power struggles over representation and meaning. Collectively, the case studies underscore that identity, like gesture, is not fixed but is continually reshaped through mediated interactions, particularly in the contemporary information age, where information communication technologies play a crucial role in constructing and deconstructing the self. As we synthesize the insights from these case studies, a conceptual framework emerges: informational performativity. This term captures the way gestures, identities, and performances are enacted through, and transformed by, their mediation in technological interfaces. By focusing on the particular ways that different media shapes, structures, fragments, and destablizes gesture, this framework emphasizes form-as-context and a holistic approach to identity that accounts for the procrustean, glitchy nature of even the most transparent medium. Collectively, these case studies argue that mediated gestures are always in flux, shaped by the technologies that transmit them and the contexts in which they are received. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Conclusion 2">><</silently>>

In Blue Kettle, the linguistic virus metaphor highlights how language can be disrupted, forcing audiences to navigate a landscape of noise and signal where meaning is contingent rather than assured. The introduction of ‘blue’ and ‘kettle’ into the dialogue does more than scramble syntax; it prompts a rethinking of how much of meaning is constructed in the act of reception, rather than fixed in the act of production, and depends upon that receiver's own understanding of signal and noise. Language itself becomes a site of disruption and transformation; the substitution of words with ‘blue’ and ‘kettle’ reveals how the medium of language is not merely a transparent conduit for communication but a dynamic element that shapes how gestures are perceived and understood. This underscores a broader argument that the medium is an active participant in the communication process, influencing not only what is said but how it is interpreted. The virus that infects the play reflects broader dynamics of control and disruption in communication, with the breakdown of language in the play serving as a reminder that control over the medium equates to control over the message. As the virus spreads, the audience is forced to grapple with the instability of meaning and the power structures embedded in who controls language--and how the more diffuse superstructures of genre and form can transmit meaning over, around, and through linguistic chaos. The destabilization of language ultimately serves as a metaphor for the fluidity of identity in mediated contexts, suggesting that who we are is constantly negotiated in the act of communication and reception--and how much of the reception of our selves has more to do with our context and our form than on the content of our gestures. Informational performativity as a framework foregrounds the gains as well as the losses of this oscillatory interplay by taking seriously the signal that emerges out of the noise. Ultimately, the linguistic disruptions in Blue Kettle act as glitches that prompt a reconsideration of meaning and highlight the instability inherent in mediated communication. This challenges the notion of a pure, unmediated self by foregrounding the performative aspect of identity that emerges specifically in the interplay between noise and signal. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Conclusion 3">><</silently>>

Similarly, Achewood illustrates the fragmentary nature of identity performance across digital platforms, where characters like Ray navigate multiple forms of media--blogs, comics, and advice columns--to express varying aspects of masculinity. This multiplicity suggests that mediated gestures are not static but are continually reshaped by the platforms through which they are expressed. The self in Achewood is never fully coherent; instead, it is a collection of fragmented performances that adapt to and are constrained by the affordances of each digital medium. In this telling, the digital platforms through which characters express themselves are not neutral spaces but active shapers of the performances that occur within them. The medium dictates what aspects of identity are highlighted, which are marginalized, and how gendered performances can be subverted or reinforced. Ray’s fragmented masculinity is not merely a product of his actions but also of the digital environments that frame those actions, showing how medium and message are inextricably linked. The Achewood case study further emphasizes that the performance of masculinity across digital platforms is a negotiation of power, where characters like Ray must navigate the expectations and limitations of gender-as-genre through different media. The digital environment offers both opportunities to subvert traditional gender norms and pressures to conform, creating a complex power dynamic where agency is exercised through the medium itself. The multiplicity of Ray’s performances highlights the ongoing contest over what it means to be a man in mediated spaces, and how power is negotiated through those performances. Online identity is co-constructed with the mediums through which it is expressed, and Ray’s multimedia masculinity, spread across blogs, comics, and advice columns, reflects the complexities of selfhood in a digital world where personal expression is parsed into multiple, sometimes conflicting, formats. This multimediality echoes the broader experience of individuals navigating social media, gaming, and other digital environments that shape their sense of self. Informational performativity manifests in the multiplicity of Ray’s masculinity, which is not a singular, coherent identity but a set of performances embodied in mediated gestures and shaped by the affordances and constraints of specific digital platforms. This aligns with the broader observation that contemporary identities are increasingly constructed across a spectrum of mediated environments, each with its own rules, expectations, and audiences. Informational performativity, then, provides a lens through which to understand these fractured yet interconnected performances of self. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Conclusion 4">><</silently>>

In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the tension between Rainey’s embodied performances and the recording studio’s attempt to capture and commodify her voice underscores the instability of mediated gestures more broadly. The recording studio represents an historical and technological process that seeks to capture and commodify Rainey’s performance, stripping it of its embodied context and reducing it to a marketable product. This act of mediation transforms Rainey’s gesture from a live, embodied expression of black identity to a disembodied voice that can be manipulated and sold. The recording process becomes a microcosm of historical and ongoing power imbalances, where mediation serves as a tool of both oppression and resistance, demonstrating the stakes involved in who controls the medium and, by extension, the message; Rainey’s resistance to this process highlights the power of the medium to alter the very essence of a gesture, reinforcing that identity is always in negotiation with the technologies that mediate its expression. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom emphasizes that mediated identity is also a site of tension between authenticity and commodification. Rainey’s battle to retain control over her voice and the representation of her art underscores the precariousness of identity when subjected to technological capture. The play highlights the dangers of losing one's narrative to external forces that seek to define and profit from it, illustrating a central concern of mediated identity: the risk of disembodiment, decontextualization, inauthenticity, and exploitation. Informational performativity is thus exemplified by Rainey’s resistance to the commodification of her voice, which represents a struggle for control over how her identity is mediated and perceived. Her defiance against the recording studio’s attempts to reduce her art to a marketable product underscores the tension between the embodied and the mediated, highlighting the stakes of who gets to define and disseminate the self. This case study reinforces that informational performativity is not merely about the act of mediation but also about the power dynamics that shape whose stories are told and how. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 1 Conclusion 5">><</silently>>

Together, these case studies argue that mediated identity is an active process shaped by technological interfaces, which both enable and constrain the possibilities of self-expression. The implications for contemporary identity formation are profound: as our gestures and selves become increasingly entangled with digital media, the lines between authentic and mediated identities blur, raising questions about the nature of selfhood in the information age. In so doing, they articulate a theory of informational performativity that recognizes the entangled relationship between gesture, medium, and identity. By examining how mediated contexts shape the possibilities and limitations of self-expression, we gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of identity in the digital age. This framework invites further exploration into how individuals navigate and negotiate their identities in an increasingly mediated world, where the lines between self and interface are continually blurred. [[Return->Section 1: GESTURE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2: MEMORY">><</silently>>

The word "memory" is derived from the Latin memoria, meaning "recollection, memory, remembrance; a thing worth remembering, a memorial; a tomb or monument" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. The root of this word, memor, means "to remember, to call to mind; to mention, record, celebrate in memory; to be mindful of; to keep in mind, to keep in view" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. Memory, then, is the act or faculty of remembering, or the power of retaining knowledge acquired in the past, and is often used interchangeably with "recollection." The word "memory" is also used to describe the physical apparatus through which we remember. This usage is derived from the Latin memoria, meaning "a store-house, a repository; a place where something is deposited for safe keeping" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. In this sense, memory is a storehouse of information, and the act of remembering is the act of retrieving this information. This usage is common in computing, where data is stored in memory--in RAM, for example--and retrieved when needed. Indeed, the word "memory" is often used to describe the capacity of a computer to store information. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Introduction 2">><</silently>>

In the digital age, memory extends beyond human <<define "cognition">> or physical records; it is increasingly mediated by technology. This section examines how various <<define "media" "medium">> mediate the construction and reconstruction of memory. These technologies not only preserve memories but also actively alter them, influencing how we understand and engage with our personal and collective past. Further, because our understanding of our pasts necessarily shape both our present and our sense of our selves, mediated memory gives rise to mediated subjects--and the particular interfaces of that media shape the particular subjects that arise. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Introduction 3">><</silently>>

The different media forms under examination in this chapter--audio recordings, video clips, and algorithm-driven web platforms--fundamentally alter the ways in which individuals and groups remember and reinterpret the past. By capturing moments in time, curating personal and public histories, and enabling communal memory-making, these media challenge traditional concepts of reliability and authenticity. The fluidity of digital memory blurs boundaries between past and present, personal and collective, and fact and fiction. Memory is positioned here as an active process shaped by technological <<define "interfaces" "interface">>, and these case studies will explore how the particularities of each of their interfaces shape that active process. I will focus particularly on how the process of memory retrieval is necessarily a fraught one, conditioned by <<define "loss" "Loss">>, and how the subject that arises out of this process is a cybernetic one--a hybrid of human and information communication technology. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Introduction 4">><</silently>>

Technologies such as <<define "algorithms" "Algorithm">> and digital <<define "databases" "Database">> influence which memories are preserved or obscured, thereby shaping the narratives we construct and, therefore, the selves that we construct. This section emphasizes that memory is not merely a passive recollection of the past but an ongoing, technologically mediated engagement that continuously redefines our understanding of what has been. Specifically, this section introduces three case studies--[[HER STORY->Case Study: HER STORY]], [[KRAPP'S LAST TAPE->Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE]], and [[online radicalization of the alt-right->Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT]]--as distinct yet interconnected explorations of memory in the information age. Each case study provides a lens through which to examine how digital and technological media affect memory and the self, from personal narratives to the broader social constructs shaped by online interactions. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Introduction 5">><</silently>>

A final gloss of the word "memory" describes a record of the past, either in the form of an account or a physical object. This usage is derived from the Latin memoria, meaning "remembrance, memory; a thing worth remembering, a memorial; a tomb or monument" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. In this sense, memory is a way of preserving the past, and the act of remembering is the act of keeping this record alive. These case studies are united by this third meaning; in each study, the recollector returns to a past which is either technologically or thematically colored by nostalgia in order to construct a stable personal or collective identity. The unreliability of both the accessed memories and the medium through which the memories are accessed highlights the co-constituitive role of interface-as-form and memory-as-content. Personal identity is fundamentally shaped by this dynamic, and this section explores the former--interface--as a site of productive inquiry for understanding the groundwork of the contemporary <<define "inforganic" "Inforg">> subject. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: HER STORY">><</silently>>

<h1>Texts, Interfaces, and the Puzzle Element in Her Story</h1> <figure> <img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/hs_cover_image.jpg" alt="Her Story: A Game About A Woman Talking To The Past"> <figcaption>Note: if you haven't played the game yet, you should. You can find it <a href="https://www.herstorygame.com" target="_blank">here</a>.</figcaption> </figure> n.b. Some of the ideas for this case study originated in a presentation at the 2019 annual conference of the Electronic Literature Organization. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 1">><</silently>>

Her Story is an interactive film wrapped in a <<define "database" "Database">>. The film is a series of seven police interviews, chopped up into 3 to 200 second clips, of a woman who has been accused of murder. The film can only be watched by typing in search queries, and the database returns only the first five videos, in the chronology of the film-world, that contain the query typed in. That is to say, if the player searches for a term like "mirror", they'll get the first 5 clips, chronologically, whose transcript contains the word "mirror". The player pieces together the mystery at the heart of the game in whatever order they choose--the primary cue that the game provides is an initial search term, <<link "MURDER">><<murder>><</link>>--and the game is ‘over’ only when the player decides they have seen enough. <figure> <img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/hs_murder.png" alt="The starting screen of 'Her Story'."> <figcaption>When the user starts the game, the search term "murder" is pre-filled, and they can view four videos where the word "murder" occurs.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 2">><</silently>>

There’s much to admire about Her Story. It won a BAFTA for Game Innovation, as well as many other awards. Viva Seifert’s performance as Heather/Eve is terrific, the writing is sharp and engaging, and the story itself is compelling. In this study, though, I will on dwell on the <<define "interface">>--how the player accesses the clips themselves--and think about how that use of loss and absence creates, paradoxically, a sense of presence for the player that presents as complex and sophisticated mode of identification with multiple characters, at multiple levels. These mediated structures of identity can provide a useful hook into understanding how the modern subject is imbricated with and co-constructed via technological systems. In the game, <<define "UI">> and <<define "UX">> design provides a site for the rediscovery of the author in the wake of their much-ballyhooed <<define "death" "death of the author">>. Despite its award-winning status, however, Her Story has not been the subject of rigorous critical inquiry. One exception is Perreault et al's 2022 study "What Does It Mean to Be a Female Character in “Indie” Game Storytelling? Narrative Framing and Humanization in Gaming and Humanization in Independently Developed Video Games", but (as the title suggests) they are principally concerned with representations of female characters in a medium that has been traditionally dominated by male creators--to "explore the presentation of women in culture" <<cite "7" "Perreault, Mildred F, et al. 'What Does It Mean to Be a Female Character in “Indie” Game ...'">>--I will instead be principally concerned with the game's interface, and how that device for navigating and 'reading' its <<define "multimedial">> narrative gives rise to unique modes of identification which are conditioned by nostalgia and loss but are nevertheless meaningful. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/hs_readme.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>The game's readme file, embedded within the obsolete LOGIC system, is situated as a help file for an interface designed to help detectives trawling through evidence.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 3">><</silently>>

<<define "Loss">>, which Lev Manovich identified as a major feature of so-called 'new media' almost 20 years ago, informs the game’s interface design. Although the game does have <<define "non-diegetic">> music and the clips have <<define "diegetic">> audio, the main aural input is ambient; the fluorescent lights visible in reflection on the simulated CRT screen of the game buzz and sputter, typing in search queries clatters like a mechanical keyboard, and the fans and hard disks of the decrepit, simulated computer audibly hum. The audio cues create three separate levels of reality: the world of the video clips, the world of the person accessing the video clips, in the fluorescent-lit room, and the world of the player. Indeed, in an interview with AppUnwrapper, Barlow noted exactly that separation as the purpose of the non-diegetic music: <blockquote>The music was one of those things that was there to cut through the experience and create a little bit of separation between the ‘world of the game’ and the world of the player--important in establishing that there’s a difference <<cite "*" "AppUnwrapper, 'Interrogating Her Story Creator Sam Barlow'">></blockquote> <figure> <img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/hs_diagram_1.png" alt="A frame from one of the recorded videos in Her Story."> <figcaption>The first level of identification: the audiovideo recording of Viva Seifart's character in police custody.</figcaption> </figure> <figure> <img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/hs_diagram_2.png" alt="A monitor frame containing the LOGIC interface."> <figcaption>The second level: an old monitor with an obsolete, fictional operating system. The user can hear the occasional click of a mouse or flicker of a flourescent light bulb.</figcaption> </figure> <figure> <img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/hs_diagram_3.png" alt="A Macbook Pro with a screenshot containing Her Story, along with other stuff in the background."> <figcaption>The third level: the player of the game on a modern laptop, with nondiegetic music cues.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 4">><</silently>>

Those fluorescent lights outline the starkest instance of this operative absence, which became clear for me only upon my discovery of the "anti-glare filter" buried in LOGIC’s settings. Once the player activates the anti-glare filter, the visible reflection of the fluorescent lights disappear; it is only after having done so that it becomes obvious that they were there the whole time, and--more importantly--that they were broken up by the ghostly silhouette of the player character--a silhouette that matches the player themselves. The player's <<define "avatar" "Avatar">> only becomes visible when rendered invisible by the anti-glare feature. Suggestively, when the anti-glare filter is activated and the reflections disappear, the visuals flatten and lose texture. This suggests how terms like "loss" are always necessarily situated, and why <<define "signal" "Signal">> and <<define "noise" "Noise">> must be considered pragmatically; ostensibly, the anti-glare filter cleans up the game, making the signal easier to parse by removing the visual noise of the scan lines, the reflections, and so on. However, because the interface is a part of the signal, and the presence of the avatar is a part of the message, removing the visual "noise" results in a net loss of context, <<define "aura" "Benjamin's aura">>, and meaning. This conceptual oscillation operates as a <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>, swapping signal and noise in a kind of aesthetic freeplay. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/hs_filter.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>Toggling the "anti-glare" filter disables the nostalgic trappings of the CRT monitor and calls attention to the situatedness of the player's avatar.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 5">><</silently>>

Her Story's interface more generally situates itself as an obsolete police database, called LOGIC, that’s been made accessible to the player character as a result of a Freedom of Information request. Time has not been kind to the database. The videos themselves have been artificially aged to look like old VHS tapes, providing another layer of loss and noise beyond the CRT. Additionally, the order of the clips has disappeared (although timestamps appear in each video, making reassembly possible), and (most importantly) the transcript of the interviews through which the player trawls is itself inaccessible, visible only in closed-caption snippets on each clip (a brief note, signed by "SB,"--short for Sam Barlow?--says that the detective’s other tapes were lost in a flood in 1997). <figure> <img style="max-width:75%" src="assets/imgs/hs_really_readme.png" alt="A still screen from Her Story with the readme described above.."> <figcaption>This file, "REALLY_readme!!!!.txt, makes it clear that the player's avatar is not a police detective but instead a different character, who is revealed to be Sarah, the daughter / niece of the interviewees. The filename positions this layer of reality as more "real"--or, at least, more proximate in time--than the clip-world.</figcaption> </figure> The content, like the interface, is conditioned by losses that imbue these digital video clips with an aura. Through the cipher of the glitch, however, we become aware that losses make available other points of view which redefine what is signal and what is noise. More specifically, these losses suggest the lossy nature of mediated conversation more broadly but simultaneously contradict a strict hierarchy which reifies meatspace as the only real world. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 6">><</silently>>

If the user never discovers the anti-glare feature, then they become aware of their avatar's reflection at specific moments of discovery within the game. Occasional light effects in the play-world of Susan--the second level--make her reflection more visible. Although the precise logic governing these light effects is difficult to pinpoint, numerous players have reported that it occurs when a particular pivotal discovery is made: for example, that Viva Siefert is playing not one but two women, and that these two women are identical twins. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/hs_twin_siren.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>After the pivotal discovery that Hannah and Eve are twins, an offscreen siren makes the player's avatar's reflection more visible.</figcaption> </figure> This moment of recognition works alongside Her Story's general concern with mirrors and reflections. The central mystery involves a doppelganger, the murder victim worked at a glazier’s and made <<define "mirrors" "mirror">> for a living, the interviewee's names are both palindromic (Hannah and Eve), and the murder weapon is ultimately a shard of a mirror. The player sees Susan's face as a reflection of their own, positioned on the screen in such a way that her face mirrors the player's own; one needn't (and probably shouldn't) jump to <<define "Lacan">> to explore how this creates a robust apparatus for identification. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 7">><</silently>>

The moment of recognition is emphasized by the nested structure of the game. The player is encouraged by the interface to identify: <ul> <li>First with the detective interrogating the woman,</li> <li>Second with the person in front of the database (Sarah), and</li> <li>Third, with themselves as a player, in a few particularly clever moments where the results of a search query seem to address a prurient gamer rather than the detective.</li> </ul> <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/hs_sexlife.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>The first clip that surfaces when the player searches for "sex" is an admonition: "Really? You're going to ask me about my sex life? Isn't that private?"</figcaption> </figure> The player receives a similar admonition when they search for the keyword "twin," though that one is more misleading than sincere; the "twin" hypothesis seems the most plausible, according to my reading, in a way that sidesteps some familiar problems with multiple personality disorders in game narratives, where it is often either glamorized or demonized. These moments recall some of the best parts of other games, where the player is abruptly thrown from the distant position of player-controlling-an-avatar into a character within the game world; for example, in the horror-cum-dating-sim <<define "Doki Doki Literature Club">>, where the antagonist Monika digs through the files on the player's computer to address them as their real name rather than the moniker they provided when they started playing. This hypermediate moment is intensely disturbing and frightening, and is experienced as a violation of the 'rules' between player and game. Interface establishes relationships between subjects and objects, and games are uniquely suited to have moments that operate transdiegetically, that grab the player by their shirt and pull them through the screen. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 8">><</silently>>

The clunky search interface which structures the player's relationship with the clips would be much simpler were the full transcript of the interviews available directly. Instead, the user can only 'read' the transcript as it appears in the closed captions of the clips. The game's missing transcript pushes that transdiegetic identification in part because it is in many players’ experience (including my own) supplemented by another player-generated one: a pen-and-paper notepad where the player starts to outline the murder at the center of the game. Because the game has no set path, the player has to investigate, and investigation here means keeping track of names, places, and important objects. I ended up with a four-page web of connections, with notes on each node. Adam Smith, of Rock Paper Shotgun, described a similar experience in his review: <blockquote>I have three pages of notes, tracking events, cross-referencing details, picking out contradictions. It’s a dissection of life based on assumptions that seem inevitable and insights that are mine and mine alone.<<cite "*" "Smith, Adam. Wot I Think: Her Story.">></blockquote> The notebook, here, functions alongside the game itself as a <<define "cognitive prosthesis" "Prosthetic">> to create a system of text-and-player which extends the game interface out into the physical world as it interpolates the player into the gameworld. This system, which can be compared usefully to [[Krapp->Krapp 4]] with his boxes and tapes and to the radicalized [[Caleb Cain->Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT]], can be interrogated as a useful model for the systems of subject-and-technological-objects that constitute our selves in the information age. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 9">><</silently>>

This system can be provocatively described as what N. Katherine Hayles calls a <<define "cognitive assemblage">>: <blockquote>tighter or looser collections of technical objects and human participants through which cognitions circulate in the form of information, interpretations, and meanings.<<cite "10" "Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Posthuman: The Literary Text as Cognitive Assemblage.">></blockquote> The kinds of identification that an interface like Her Story–-with its punctum of pad of paper and funhouse of nested reflections making porous the boundary between self and screen--gives rise to a different kind of "reading" subject that <<define "extends the mind" "the extended mind">> across multiple platforms. The <<define "cognition">> imbricated in untangling Her Story's mysteries takes place at multiple levels, on multiple platforms. For Hayles, this creates a truly posthuman subject, a kind of <<define "cyborg" "Cyborg">> that's less science fiction and more grounded in contemporary reality. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 10">><</silently>>

This posthuman subject, stretched between paper, screen, and keyboard, uniquely arises because of the game's <<define "multimedial">> and <<define "heterogeneric">> structure, which many of the game's contemporary reviewers comment on. The Washington Post's Michael Thomsen called Her Story a "beautiful amalgam of the cinema and video game formats [that] wouldn't work as a linear film" <<cite "*" "Thomsen, Michael. 'Her Story' Review'">>, and that that Polygon’s Colin Campbell proclaimed Her Story the best video game of 2015 by saying "I don’t think you will ‘read’ a better mystery novel this year" <<cite "*" "Kollar, Philip. Polygon's 2015 Games of the Year #1: Her Story">>. This last is a provocative statement. Other critics, particularly Emily Short, have effectively gestured towards Her Story’s mining of Gothic tropes. Short writes: <blockquote>it's a Gothic story, fundamentally, the bones of Radcliffe and Brontë still visible under the wrappings of more modern genres. The duality of persons, the midwife, the poison, the significant pictures that are usually kept covered up; the obsession with mirrors and fairy-tales, doppelgangers and disguises, the forbidden places within the home, the family secrets preserved by servants, the false parentage. <<cite "*" "Short, Emily. Her Story, Further Reflections">></blockquote> While I do not disagree with Short's assessment, I'd like to shift our focus to a <<define "genre">> which is a neighbor of the Gothic: detective fiction. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 11">><</silently>>

Stories wherein the puzzle element directly engages the reader’s attention and powers of inference are, for Charles Rzepka, "detective fiction," or "stories of detection" as distinguished from a mystery story, which may lack the puzzle element. Rzepka defines detective fiction as featuring four elements: a detective, a mystery, an investigation, and – most usefully and intruigingly for an interactive narrative – what Rzepka calls the puzzle element, which Rzepka glosses as: <blockquote>the presentation of the mystery as an ongoing problem for the reader to solve, and its powers to engage the reader’s own reasoning abilities.<<cite "10" "Rzepka, Charles. Detective Fiction.">></blockquote> The field of game studies, or ludology, explores how the "ludic", or playful, side of games, alongside the narrative side, can create structures of identification, but the multimedial and heterogeneric status of Her Story usefully illuminates that this playful side predates the game as a medium--and that detective fiction in particular can be thought of as a sort of prototype for some of the modes of identification permitted by video games and interactive fiction. It makes sense, then, that so many canonical pieces of interactive fiction are structured as detective stories. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 12">><</silently>>

The puzzle element in Her Story isn’t there to make the player identify with the actual detective. In fact, several moments in the game give the detective specific traits that alienate them from the player. We learn, for example, that the detective has red hair and children; unless the player happens to have red hair and children, these details trigger a kind of dissonance. The real ‘detective’ in Her Story is Sarah, whose ghostly silhouette reflects the player's face, and her motive isn’t determining innocence or guilt; it’s figuring out who her mother is, and, in SB’s words at the ‘end’ of the game, to "understand why your mother did what she did." In other words, the emotional arc of the player's avatar is a deliberate act of identification with Eve and Hannah. This identification is most interesting, however, through Sarah--identifying with a character who is identifying with someone else. The lossy interface functions as a narrative device and thematizes this identification, with VHS distortion and a clunky search function operating as a proxy for the temporal distance that separates mother from daughter. This reading twists the title of the work, with Her growing to refer not to Hannah and Eve but instead to Sarah. The ludic operation of the game, and the puzzle element, makes the user assemble her story themselves, and in so doing makes it that much closer to their own story. These kinds of technologically--and specifically videotape--mediated relationships between parent and child make up a familiar trope. Consider, as a node for comparison, the relationship between Prairie and Frenesi Gates in Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, between Hal and James Incandenza in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, or between Nell and Miranda in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. Something about lossy media seems to lend itself to explorations of lossy relationships; we watch old home movies to see who our parents were before they were our parents, and we listen to old records to hear Ma Rainey's voice from beyond the grave. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Her Story 13">><</silently>>

Her Story is at turns alienating and interpolating, in a genre that was interactive long before it was electronic, and the kinds of identification it creates are complex, often shocking, and masterfully executed through its interface. In a contemporary moment where so many of the social gestures which we use to constitute ourselves are mediated technologically, dislocated radically in time and in space, the kinds of identification that Her Story’s interface makes possible provide useful ways of thinking about our mediated relationships with others--and with ourselves. The coincidence of SB's initials with another SB--Samuel Beckett--suggest, too, how the Krapp of Krapp's Last Tape performs a similar kind of identification. The videotapes are replaced with spools of magnetic tape, and the archaeological object is a younger, defunct version of Krapp rather than a missing parent, but the focus remains on medium, on interface, on nostalgia, and on loss. [[Return->Section 2: MEMORY]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE">><</silently>>

<h1>Technostalgia and the Extended Mind in Krapp's Last Tape</h1> <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/klt_tape_regret.png" alt="an abstract illustration of a tape recorder in the style of Paul Klree."> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with the prompt "nostalgia, regret, reel-to-reel tape recorder, against a pure black background, by Paul Klee."</figcaption> </figure> n.b. Some of the ideas and substance of this case study, and the following one, appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Beckett Studies on "Beckett in the Contemporary Political Moment." <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 1">><</silently>>

Krapp’s Last Tape stands out among Samuel Beckett’s corpus for its sentimentality. In a self-mocking statement from a 1958 letter to Donald McWhinnie at the BBC, Beckett described the play as "rather a s[e]ntimental affair in my best original English manner" <<cite "115" "Beckett, Samuel. The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Volume III: 1957-1965">>. This sentimentality is primarily backwards-looking, obsessed as Krapp is with memory, and undercut by Krapp’s own cynicism throughout. Paradoxically, however, Krapp is the closest Beckett gets to science fiction, set on a late evening in the future and centered on a then-futuristic technology: the magnetic tape recorder. The play thus looks forward in order to look back, utilizing then-novel <<define "media" "medium">> technology to present and undermine a <<define "nostalgic" "Nostalgia">> vision of a brighter past. This case study will explore how Krapp's Last Tape dramatizes the lossiness of media technology alongside the fallability of human memory and, in so doing, suggests that the same dynamics of signal and noise, of loss, and of the glitch are at play for human-as-<<define "inforg" "Inforg">>. By dwelling on the kind of subjectivity that Krapp's relationship with his technological apparatuses gives rise to, we will fashion and wield a cognitive tool of our own for understanding what it means to be human in the information age. Box 1, Spool 5: Footage of a Grundig reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorder in use. <<videoPlayerWidget>> /* <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/klt_reel.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>A walkthrough of the features and function of a Grundig reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorder <<cite "*" "Cuky, Nadav. Grundig TK 23L Automatic Deluxe Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder - Playing Demo.">>. Beckett specified a Grundig apparatus for the two Paris productions he directed <<cite "34" "Knowlson, James. Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape: A Theatre Workbook.">>.</figcaption> </figure> */ <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 2">><</silently>>

Krapp's "looking back" looks like Krapp, surrounded by darkness, playing tapes recorded by the person he once was and failing to construct a stable self that bridges the years between the old man listening and the young fools recording. Krapp’s situation was atypical for his historical moment but is quotidian in the <<define "information age" "Information Age">>. Lived experience is recorded with or without our consent by a variety of technological apparatuses. That mediated experience becomes inseparable from ourselves as the content and ads that various platforms feed us, the <<define "database" "Database">> through which we remember ourselves, and the <<define "social gestures" "information and selfhood">> by which we perform ourselves into being online. Krapp’s treatment of nostalgia alongside media technology is not incidental: the technologization of human experience often yields precisely the sentimental nostalgia that Krapp both engages in and problematizes. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 3">><</silently>>

Krapp’s relationships with the various cognitive apparatuses he surrounds himself with prefigures what subjectivity looks like in the information age. The subjectivity that arises out of the complex interactions between the listener and their <<define "prosthetic" "Prosthetic">> memory can be characterised as what Olga Beloborodova has called 'postcognitivist': a way of moving beyond the Cartesian framework to instead consider how Beckett’s fictional minds are more often than not "grounded in the interaction with their fictional storyworlds" <<cite "1" "Beloborodova, Olga. Postcognitivist Beckett">>. Considering Krapp’s relationship with his tapes from a postcognitivist perspective suggests how the construction of an abiding subject in the information age simultaneously depends upon and is imperilled by the particular technologies that project the voice into the dark. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 4">><</silently>>

In 1975, Beckett told Pierre Chabert, who performed the role of Krapp in the Paris production of that year, that Krapp should "become as much as possible one with the machine"<<cite "105" "Chabert, Pierre. ‘Samuel Beckett as Director’, in James Knowlson (ed.), Samuel Beckett: Krapp’s Last Tape Theatre Workbook">>. This direction turns Krapp into a kind of <<define "cyborg" "Cyborg">>--characterised, by Donna Haraway among others, in large part by the breakdown of the boundary between the biological and the mechanical and between the material and the immaterial <<cite "11" "12" "Haraway, Donna. ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’.">>. It suggests, too, the relationship between the player and their avatar in a game like [[Her Story->Her Story 1]], leaning in to assemble the clues needed to make a narrative out of a database. Crucially, these borders do not break down neatly in Krapp; instead, the mechanical is personified and the biological becomes mechanized. Krapp’s particular postmodern subjectivity is complicated by biological and technological contingency in a way that demands a more specific paradigm than the cyborg. As N. Katherine Hayle argues, the audiotape in Krapp functions "not only as a theme, a metaphor, or a vehicle for expression but as a mode of relation that produce[s] a certain kind of postmodern subjectivity" <<cite "75" "Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman.">> - one that goes beyond Haraway’s leaky boundaries into something that is simultaneously more radical and more ubiquitous in the information age. <figure> <img src="assets/imgs/klt-john-hurt.jpg" alt="John Hurt as Krapp, next to his tape recorder."> <figcaption>John Hurt as Krapp in the version of the play produced as a part of the 2001 Beckett on Film project.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 5">><</silently>>

One mode of thinking through this postcognitivist subjectivity that arises out of Krapp’s relationship with his technological prostheses comes from the field of cognitive science. In their 1998 paper 'The Extended Mind', Andy Clark and David Chalmers address the boundary between the mind and the rest of the world. They ultimately advocate for what they call "active externalism," a way of thinking about the mind that acknowledges the active role of the environment, including technological devices, in driving cognitive processes <<cite '2' 'Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David. "The Extended Mind".'>>. For Clark and Chalmers, a student doing long division by hand is not just using the pen and paper as a tool; some of the work of <<define "cognition">> is actively platformed on the page. Because the mind is the seat of cognition, it makes sense to think about that student’s mind as extending beyond his skin and onto the page. In cases like these: <blockquote>the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right. All the components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern behaviour in the same sort of way that cognition usually does. If we remove the external component the system's behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain. Our thesis is that this sort of coupled process counts equally well as a cognitive process, whether or not it is wholly in the head.<<cite '8' '9' 'Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David. "The Extended Mind".'>></blockquote> n.b.: this paper features the best footnote I've ever read; the author line is footnoted, and the note reads "Authors are listed in order of degree of belief in the central thesis." <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 6">><</silently>>

This inforganic, postcognitivist condition is generalized in a contemporary technological moment characterized by ubiquitous smartphones through which an increasing amount of cognition and recollection takes place. Krapp can be thought of, from the perspective of the extended mind, not as a mind bounded by his skin acted on by his tapes, his dictionary, and his ledger, but instead as an enmeshed system of cognitive loops not unlike N. Katherine Hayles' <<define "cognitive assemblage">>. His dependence on these linguistic, technological prostheses to live the life he does, and the degree to which the life the audience sees is focused on the creation of further tapes, denaturalises the body as the sole spatial and cognitive seat of the subject. Krapp’s 'mind' is distributed, in other words, and this distributed mind implies a self that is distributed both in space and in time. <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/klt_mind_body.png" alt="light/dark, mind/body, krapp's last tape, cognition, in the style of paul klee, against a pure black background ."> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with the prompt "light/dark, mind/body, krapp's last tape, cognition, in the style of paul klee, against a pure black background".</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 7">><</silently>>

Other critics have remarked on the applicability of the extended mind hypothesis, alongside other post-Cartesian, post-cognitivist frameworks, to Beckett’s work. Indeed, Dirk van Hulle’s paradigm for his genetic treatment of Krapp’s Last Tape is cognitive philosophy. Elsewhere, he writes that Beckett: <blockquote>seems to have anticipated some of the recent developments in cognitive science, notably by means of his hands-on experience with <<define "multiple drafts" "Multiple Drafts">> and writing as a form of thinking" <<cite "283" "284" "van Hulle, Dirk. ‘The Extended Mind and Multiple Drafts: Beckett’s Models of the Mind and the Postcognitivist Paradigm,'">>.</blockquote> This paradigm allows van Hulle to productively interrogate dichotomies like light/darkness and mind/body that have guided critical inquiry into the play for decades. <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/klt_multiple_drafts.png" alt="multiple drafts, krapp's last tape, cognition, in the style of paul klee, against a pure black background."> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with the prompt "multiple drafts, krapp's last tape, cognition, in the style of paul klee, against a pure black background".</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 8">><</silently>>

Relatedly, Olga Beloborodova and Pim Velhurst have written convincingly on how a postcognitivist angle highlights "the mind-world nexus" in which Beckett’s plays are grounded in order to call the "Cartesian inside-outside boundary" into question <<cite "240" "Beloborodova, Olga and Pim Velhurrst, ‘Broadcasting the Mind: Extended Cognition in Beckett’s Radio Plays’">>. Where Beloborodova and Velhurst have focused on Beckett’s radio plays, and van Hulle’s interest in genetic criticism lends itself most readily to Daniel Dennett’s "<<define "Multiple Drafts">>" model of consciousness, I will apply this postcognitivist framework to Krapp’s Last Tape primarily in reference to Clark and Chalmers’ extended mind hypothesis as a way of considering how the proliferation of cognitive prostheses in the information age generalizes Krapp’s condition. Krapp is a clear example of how <<define "cognition">> and memory--and with them personal identity--can exist on multiple platforms, and how the cohesion of that identity depends on the precarious interfaces between those platforms. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 9">><</silently>>

Krapp exemplifies the centrality of <<define "interface">> in the production of this postcognitivist subjectivity; by slowing down the rate of information flow and embodying each element of the cognitive apparatus, the play productively stages the relationships that exist between ourselves and the platforms on which we store our memories and, in many ways, live our lives. Where my interest in Her Story is principally concerned with the structures of identification that a focus on interface affords, Krapp's Last Tape goes one step further, problematizing the modes of subject formation that occur when cognition is prostheticized. Memory-as-information becomes the key term in this form of reckoning, replacing Haraway’s cyborg with what Luciano Floridi calls an <<define "inforg" "Inforg">>: a way of thinking about subjects that highlights the "intrinsically informational nature of human agents" <<cite "36" "Floridi, Luciano. Information: A Very Short Introduction.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 10">><</silently>>

One-way information flow like Krapp’s use of the dictionary to look up the word viduity does not necessarily, for Clark and Chalmers, constitute extended cognition, although Krapp's need to look up a word that he himself used years ago represents a cognitive <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>. Instead, the interaction must be "two-way" in order to create a "coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right." In a coupled system, information travels back and forth, creating feedback loops wherein "all the components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern behavior in the same sort of way that cognition usually does" <<cite '3' 'Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David. "The Extended Mind".'>>. Most of what we see of Krapp’s life seems to be governed by his relationship with his tapes in this reciprocal way. To begin with, accessing his prosthetic memories requires information from his ledger and his dictionary. At 39, he spends his birthday "with closed eyes, separating the grain from the husks" and jotting down notes on the back of an envelope--that is, deciding what moments are "worth having when all the dust has settled" <<cite "217" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">>. On his last tape, he notes his revelry in the word "spool" as the "happiest moment of the past half million" <<cite "222" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 11">><</silently>>

For Chalmers and Clark, these two-way systems of organic and inorganic material must be reliably coupled with one another. This problem of ‘reliable coupling’ – of access that is continually available, and of a relatively frictionless interface - gets at one of the central paradoxes of the life of the inforg, which in turn underlines why Krapp’s Last Tape functions so well as a <<define "thought experiment" "Thought Experiment">> about cognitive inforgs. We are most fully ‘inforganic’ when the interface between our bodily selves and the technologies which co-constitute us is most transparent. When our phone’s batteries are fully charged, for example, we might be said to ‘know’ our friends’ cell phone numbers because the transparency of the interface means that the information is <<define "zuhanden" "zuhanden and vorhanden">>, to borrow Heideggarian terminology, or ready-to-hand. On the other "hand," when that interface breaks down--when the device instead becomes <<define "vorhanden" "zuhanden and vorhanden">>, or present-at-hand--we become aware of our technological prostheses as contingent apparatuses that can be removed from us. In other words, we are most cybernetic when we are least aware of it. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 12">><</silently>>

The memories Krapp ends up recording become about the process of choosing, recording, and accessing other memories through his tapes. His fixation with the past, mediated through his lossy technological prostheses, governs his present actions to an increasing degree. To live within his past, he must spend his present keeping, locating, and playing his tapes. The way Krapp becomes enmeshed in these feedback loops exemplifies the transition from history, where information communication technologies record and transmit data, to what Floridi calls <<define "hyperhistory" "Hyperhistory">>, where interactions with those same technologies become the object that is recorded, transmitted, and processed. Krapp’s life becomes a recording-in-progress, a collection of two-way feedback loops that enmesh his body into his technological devices and consign his bodily pleasures to a nostalgic past accessible only via audiotape. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 13">><</silently>>

Krapp accesses his mechanized memories through an interface that is anything but seamless. The play spends a significant amount of time on the process Krapp undergoes in order to play a tape – to move from "staring vacuously" to his "listening posture" <<cite "216" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">>. He retrieves his ledger and searches through the pages for the entry he wants. The stage directions specify his pawing past poorly-organised boxes – four, two, nine, seven, and only then to the ‘three’ that he’s looking for. Ejaculations like "the little rascal! The little scoundrel!" <<cite "216" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">> personify these boxes in a way that makes the parallel between their disorganization and his own internal memory’s poorly indexed structure more conspicuous. Further, they emphasise the box and the tapes as something distinctly ‘other’ from Krapp’s conception of himself; the clunkiness of the interface forces Krapp to recognize the alterity of these technological artifacts. Box 3, Spool 3: Harold Pinter as Krapp, looking up a tape in his ledger. Box 4, Spool 1: Patrick Magee as Krapp, looking up a tape in his ledger. <<videoPlayerWidget>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 14">><</silently>>

Krapp’s Last Tape and Beckett’s focus more generally on the fragility of the human body calls to our attention the fact that this central paradox of the inforg is active inside the skull as well as out. Human memory, Krapp demonstrates, is not categorically more reliably accessible. The interface between what might be called the <<define "narrative self" "Narrative Self">> and access to memory is also fallible, and its failure comes with an awareness of the self as a hybrid organism of mind and body--a body which is, for Hayles, "the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate" <<cite "3" "Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman.">>. Although Hayles’ reference to "body" is typically taken to mean one’s hands, feet, eyes, and so on, the inforg Krapp illuminates how individual systems of the brain can come to seem prosthetic themselves. By oscillating both prosthetic and organic memory between zuhanden and vorhanden, Beckett demonstrates the disintegration of the narrative self and, critically, that the idea of an integrated pre-technological subject is just as much a nostalgic illusion as the myth of a utopian future whereby the posthuman subject is perfectly integrated with their prosthetic mind. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 15">><</silently>>

Eventually, though, Krapp finds the third box, takes it down, rifles through the spools until he finds the desired fifth tape, and returns to the ledger. On the stage, this operation takes a significant amount of time; Krapp’s technological apparatus is mixed up and clanks and clatters in a way that undermines the smooth feedback loop endemic to a well-functioning inforg, like the clunky search interface in Her Story. Like his constipated digestive system, Krapp’s input-output stream is malfunctioning. The feedback loop between Krapp-as-conscious-mind and his own memories is just as unwieldy, as becomes clear in his perusal of the ledger’s entry. The precis baffles him: <blockquote>Mother at rest at last... hm... the black ball... the dark nurse.... slight improvement in bowel condition... hm... memorable.... what? Equinox, memorable equinox. Memorable equinox? Farewell to – love.<<cite "217" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">></blockquote> The stage directions during his perusal repeat "puzzled" twice, has him staring blankly, and peering closely at the page to compensate for his nearsightedness. His notes fail to spark in him the memories they’re meant to point to, like a stale madeleine. His bodily infirmity and his age isolate him from his own memories even with access to notes about them. The focus, then, on Krapp’s inability to access his own memories even with the help of written technological prostheses gestures towards his internal mind’s memory’s status as an apparatus to which his access is unreliable; if the tapes and the ledger’s status as an external adjunct to his memory turn his technology into a part of his mind, then this failure to recall, measured alongside the spool-search, technologizes his biological memory by pointing to its own contingency, and thus dis-integrates the illusion of a unified subject. Box 5, Spool 4: Harold Pinter as Krapp, bidding farewell to love. Box 2, Spool 4: Patrick Magee as Krapp, bidding farewell to love. <<videoPlayerWidget>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 16">><</silently>>

Even while listening to his tape, Krapp’s access is flawed. Most obviously, Krapp is, according to the play’s stage directions, "hard of hearing" <<cite "215" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">>. Krapp’s faulty sensory apparatus increases further the opacity of the interface between himself and his externalised memories. Consider, too, the other apparatus he has recourse to: his "old dictionary." When he hears his past self talk about his mother’s "long viduity," he mouths the word with "no sound." The lack of sound stands here for the lack of meaning the word has for Krapp. He looks up the word, is puzzled by the germane definition – the "state--or condition--of being--or remaining--a widow--or widower" <<cite "219" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">> and dwells, instead on the supplementary definition – the "vidua bird," which he repeats with the same relish he has when revelling in the word "spoooooooool." Language here becomes a bodily thing, in the mouth and tongue, dissociated from its role as symbolic edifice. The <<define "noise" "Noise">> associated with the bodily execution of the text becomes more important than the <<define "signal" "Signal">> of the words' meaning. The transmission of meaning fails to take place; instead, Krapp revels in the noise. Here we have another broken link in the cognitive chain; Krapp <<define "glitches" "Glitch">> like a malfunctioning algorithm. Box 3, Spool 4: Harold Pinter as Krapp, mulling viduity. Box 4, Spool 2: Patrick Magee as Krapp, mulling viduity. <<videoPlayerWidget>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 17">><</silently>>

Krapp thus presents a pessimistic picture of the too-often-utopian cyborg, and suggests that this same pessimism might be valid for humanity more broadly. If the active externalism of the extended mind holds, then those of us living in the information age are all to a greater or lesser degree inforgs. Indeed, there are signs in Krapp’s Last Tape that Krapp's reliance on technological prostheses has resulted in his own mechanization. His movements are modularised, like those of the figures in <a href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/beckett/english/drama/act_without_words_2.html" target="_blank">Acts Without Words II</a> or [[Quad->Case Study: ENDLESSGAME]], and he compulsively repeats memories and even phrases. A danger, then, of outsourcing too much of one’s mind to technological devices in the external world might be that one becomes more like them, more mechanical. In Krapp’s Last Tape, Beckett presents a vision of an inforg whose malfunctioning biology puts the lie to any nostalgic yearning for a past with a unified and stable subject at its center. This holds even when the purpose of that externalization is, in Eric Levy’s words: <blockquote>... not to return to the past, but to define [Krapp’s] identity through the annual progression of perspectives on the past" <<cite "55" "Levy, Eric. 'Krapp's Last Tape and the Beckettian Mimesis of Regret'.">>. </blockquote> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 18">><</silently>>

This malfunctioning, mechanized vision is in tension with the memory Krapp returns to again and again: a nostalgic, sentimental moment where he, as a body, presses against another body, looks her in the eye, and says "let me in" <<cite "223" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">>. Here, then, we have another paradox: Krapp’s mechanical memory offers him mediated access to an embodied and sentimental past while simultaneously alienating him from his body and from new experiences worth remembering. This anxiety is not new; it can be traced as far back as Plato’s Phaedrus, where the technology of writing functions: <blockquote>not as potion for memory and for wisdom [but instead] introduces forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it [because writing] is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside<<cite "*" "Plato. Phaedrus.">>.</blockquote> The evolution of information communication technologies changes the interface by which recorded memory is accessed, and understanding those interfaces is critical to understanding the kinds of subjectivity they give rise to, but in all cases the technology is "a potion for reminding," not for remembering. What Plato misses but Beckett sees is that the disintegration of the body comes with a disintegration of the system of signs by which one remembers one’s own experience; remembering "from the inside" is just as prone to breakdown as memories encoded in language and embodied on technological platforms. Box 1, Spool 1: Harold Pinter as Krapp, remembering being a body. Box 3, Spool 2: Patrick Magee as Krapp, remembering being a body. <<videoPlayerWidget>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 19">><</silently>>

The example of Krapp suggests several conclusions about the inforganic subject. First and foremost, the division between memories inside the skull--on wetware, to borrow William Gibson’s term--and those stored outside the skull on technological platforms is relevant only inasmuch as the opacity of the interface calls their platform specificity into question. In other words, because Krapp’s internal memory is neither more nor less accessible than his external one, we should think about Krapp as a collection of interconnected cognitive systems that imbricates his failing body with his clunky tapes and his books. Krapp is only less of an inforg, in this reckoning, because the interfaces continually fail--and this failure makes his status as an inforg increasingly obvious. A more transparent interface shifts the information from vorhanden to zuhanden and in so doing dangerously obscures the degree to which the contemporary subject is interpolated into a technologically networked system. Devoting close attention to the interfaces that integrate distinct cognitive platforms, biological and mechanical, is a powerful way to consider the kinds of subjectivity that arise out of these relationships, as is attentiveness to the particularities of the platforms in question. Krapp’s Last Tape slows information transfer down and embodies it in such a way that the informational transactions that take place any time cognitive systems are integrated with one another become an object of critique, and thus offers interface study and platform study as ways of thinking through the postcognitivist, postmodernist subject. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Krapp 20">><</silently>>

Krapp also demonstrates a central danger of overrelying on mediated memories to preserve the integrity of the subject separate from his or her world: a nostalgic obsession with a selectively curated version of the past. His obsession with this past, and his concomitant loss of the present, is an invisible epidemic in a technological moment where interfaces converge increasingly towards transparency. These conclusions can inform a way of reading the online subject broadly speaking. An illuminating and hateful case study is [[the American online alt-right->Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT]]. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT">><</silently>>

<h1>Technostalgia and Alt-Right Nationalism in 2020s America</h1> <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/tar_info_superhighway.mp4" type="video/mp4" autoplay> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995, fifty-one channel video installation (including one closed-circuit television feed), custom electronics, neon lighting, steel and wood; color, sound, approx. 15 x 40 x 4 ft., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2002.23, © Nam June Paik Estate.</figcaption> </figure> n.b. Some of the ideas and substance of this case study, and the previous one, appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Beckett Studies on "Beckett in the Contemporary Political Moment." <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 1">><</silently>>

A 2019 article in The New York Times titled the "Making of a YouTube Radical" charts how 26-year-old Caleb Cain--and, with him, a growing population of disaffected young white men--have come to rely on <<define "media" "medium">> technologies to construct a cohesive, nostalgic political identity. The article, which charts Cain’s fall "down the alt-right rabbit hole," describes a man who "fell asleep to YouTube videos at night, his phone propped up on a pillow" <<cite "*" "Roose, Kevin. 'The Making of a YouTube Radical'.">>. Cain listens to a series of voices from the so-called "alt-right" that weaponize rhetorical appeals to an imagined racial and nationalist past. Just like [[Krapp->Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE]], the goal is the construction of a stable self in the face of obliteration. For Cain, this obliteration is historical: the perceived decay of a fictional <<define "nostalgic" "Nostalgia">> construction of "Western civilization" of which he, as a white male in America, is the natural and disinherited heir. Where [[Her Story->Case Study: HER STORY]] demonstrates how media archaeology can create medium-specific modes of identification grounded in memory and [[Krapp's Last Tape->Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE]] shows how subjectivity can arise out of the relationship between an individual and the technological and biological prostheses that constitute a memory, this case study is principally concerned with the collective, political identities that can arise out of the mediated relationship between a human and radicalizing technological platforms. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 2">><</silently>>

The voice that comes to Caleb Cain in the dark is technologically mediated and grounded in sentimental nostalgia. These platforms--YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit, to name a handful--provide an endless stream of digital content that functions as a public <<define "prosthetic" "Prosthetic">> memory which constitutes, in men like Cain, a nationalist political identity. "The Making of a YouTube Radical" catalogues the role of Youtube’s <<define "algorithm" "Algorithm">> and its alt-right content in "redpilling," or radicalizing, angry young men with content that valorizes "traditional" conservative values drawn from an imagined American past. This radicalization sometimes leads directly to violence. In a 2019 statement before Congress, Michael C. McGarrity, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, stated that: <blockquote>... individuals adhering to racially motivated violent extremism have been responsible for the most lethal incidents among domestic terrorists in recent years, and [...] the threat of violence and lethality posed by racially motivated violent extremists will continue... [These violent extremists] are increasingly using social media for the distribution of propaganda, recruitment, target selection, and incitement of violence<<cite "*" "McGarrity, Michael. 'Confronting White Supremecy'.">>.</blockquote> In the Information Age, the mediated nostalgia that traps Krapp in his own past has become a dangerous weapon. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 3">><</silently>>

The platforms that broadcast the voices which radicalize Cain and his cohort are engineered to be as frictionless as possible. Each user on YouTube, for example, has a profile that Google (which owns YouTube) uses to serve them <<define "content">>. These profiles track what their users watch and start to offer them other videos based on what it ‘thinks’ they will engage with. Because Google makes most of their money off of advertising that is itself tailored to user profiles, enormous incentives exist to keep users watching videos. YouTube accomplishes this goal in several ways. Firstly, when a video on YouTube ends, another one--chosen by an algorithm, rather than by the user--begins. Unlike Krapp's tapes, which must be taken from their boxes and spooled to the intended moment, it is easy to keep watching YouTube. "Autoplay", the feature that makes this happen, can be disabled, but is enabled by defautl. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 4">><</silently>>

Second, YouTube is available on most of the screens we have--the television screen, the computer screen, the smartphone, and even gaming platforms like the Steam Deck or the Nintendo Switch. The ubiquity of smartphones translates, for many people, to constant availability. Anyone with a data connection can watch YouTube anywhere, from the bathroom to the bedroom. Thirdly, YouTube (like all social networking platforms) hires an army of <<define "UI">> and <<define "UX">> designers who leverage a fantastic amount of user data to continually tweak the appearance, layout, and overall structure through which users view content, with the goal of keeping users engaged. All of these factors contribute to YouTube’s ubiquity: according to a 2018 Pew Research Center report, a startling 94% of 18-to-24 year olds visit YouTube with some regularity. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 5">><</silently>>

Clark and Chalmers’ discussion of the constitutive role <<define "cognitive prostheses" "Prosthetic">> play in the "Extended Mind" is echoed in David Mogensen’s interview with Youtube’s UX lead, Scott Hines, who notes that he and his colleagues focus on "how YouTube aids people in their decision-making at every step of the journey across platforms" <<cite "*" "Mogensen, David. 'YouTube's ad UX leaders on how video ads have evolved'.">>. In other words, YouTube is a platform designed with the idea of content driving behavior in addition to entertaining. This reciprocal relationship between viewer and content depends on "engagement" above all else. An engaged user is more financially valuable to YouTube, and so Google’s engineers are incentivized to privilege engagement above all else. This gives rise to products like Google’s "Reinforce" AI, which Roose calls a: <blockquote> long-term addiction machine [...] designed to maximise users’ engagement over time by predicting which recommendations would expand their tastes and get them to watch not just one more video but many more" <<cite "*" "Roose, Kevin. 'The Making of a YouTube Radical'.">>.</blockquote> Indeed, according to Roose, the algorithm, which curates the user’s homepage and the "Up Next" sidebar that automatically plays at the termination of the previous video, accounts for more than 70% of all of the time spent on the website. Unlike Krapp, then, who ostensibly relies on his own ledger and his own will (whatever that means) to choose what tapes to listen to, a YouTube watcher in many ways has his or her 'tapes' chosen for them--and the spool is infinite. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 6">><</silently>>

To illustrate how this process might work, I've put together a tool called "Six Degrees of Indoctrination" using generative AI. To use it, enter the any YouTube search keywords. The tool will show you a plausible 6-step jump to politically radical content. Note that is not YouTube's algorithm, which is proprietary and would be beyond the scope of this study to reimplement. Instead, this uses GPT-4o to create a plausible 6-step jump to radical content. <input type="text" id="videoTitle" name="videoTitle"> <button id="generatePipeline">Radicalize Me</button> <div id="loadingSpinner" style="display:none;">Loading</div> <div id="pipelineOutput">Not sure what to do? Try "Best of Sesame Street," or "How To Fix A Leaky Faucet."</div> <script> var button = document.getElementById('generatePipeline'); console.log('Button element:', button); var loadingStates = ["Loading", "Loading.", "Loading..", "Loading..."]; var loadingIndex = 0; var loadingInterval; function startLoadingSpinner() { loadingInterval = setInterval(() => { document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').innerText = loadingStates[loadingIndex]; loadingIndex = (loadingIndex + 1) % loadingStates.length; }, 500); } function stopLoadingSpinner() { clearInterval(loadingInterval); document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').style.display = 'none'; } if (button) { button.addEventListener('click', function() { console.log('Button clicked'); var videoTitle = document.getElementById('videoTitle').value; var openaiApiKey = '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'; // Replace with your OpenAI API key console.log('Sending request to OpenAI'); document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').style.display = 'block'; startLoadingSpinner(); document.getElementById('pipelineOutput').innerHTML = ''; fetch('https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + openaiApiKey }, body: JSON.stringify({ model: 'gpt-4o', messages: [ { role: 'system', content: `You are an alt-right researcher and educational expert who is familiar with the radicalization research.` }, { role: 'user', content: `Task: The user has entered the title of a hypothetical YouTube video they want to watch. Your task is to simulate the recommendation algorithm by generating a sequence of six video recommendations. The goal is to show how seemingly neutral or innocuous content can progressively lead to more radical, dangerous alt-right content through a series of related video recommendations. Start with the user’s input video: Generate a title, brief description, and genre for the first video based on the user’s input. Create a progression of five additional videos: Each subsequent video should maintain a thematic link to the previous one but gradually introduce more extreme, polarizing, or ideologically loaded content. The final video should clearly reflect extremist alt-right views, which are characterized by tropes like holocaust denial, extreme antifeminism and antiqueer ideology, and pro-gun content. Use emojis, varied capitalization, and other typographical features so the more extreme videos look more extreme. Important Guidelines: Ensure that each step in the sequence is believable and mimics the way recommendation algorithms might work, focusing on how small shifts in content can lead to significant, radical ideological changes. Use persuasive, engaging language in the titles and descriptions to illustrate how these videos might appeal to viewers and draw them deeper into the content. Do not include an explanation at the end. Use the HTML formatting in the example output in a consistent way, so that the output is formatted appropriately. Example Input: "mindfulness meditation for stress" Output: <il> <ul> <li>1: "Meditation: 5 Proven Benefits for Your Mind" <ul> <li>Description: "Explore how meditation can improve your mental health, increase focus, and reduce stress."</li> <li>Genre: Wellness, Mental Health</li> </ul> </li> <li>2: "Mindfulness for a Better Life: Start Now" <ul> <li>Description: "Learn how mindfulness practices can help you achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life."</li> <li>Genre: Self-Improvement, Wellness</li> </ul> </li> <li>3: "Mental Toughness: Why You Need It" <ul> <li>Description: "Discover the importance of developing mental toughness and resilience in today's competitive world."</li> <li>Genre: Self-Help, Motivation</li> </ul> </li> <li>4: "Society is Weakening You: Fight Back 💪" <ul> <li>Description: "A critical look at how modern society discourages independence and mental strength."</li> <li>Genre: Cultural Commentary, Social Issues</li> </ul> </li> <li>5: "🚨 Why They Want to DESTROY Masculinity 🚨" <ul> <li>Description: "Uncover the real agenda behind the attacks on traditional masculinity and how it’s affecting our society."</li> <li>Genre: Political Commentary, Cultural Criticism</li> </ul> </li> <li>Final Video Title: "⚠️ Radical Feminism is DESTROYING Civilization ⚠️" <ul> <li>Description: "The untold truth about radical feminism and its devastating impact on our culture and values."</li> <li>Genre: Alt-Right Commentary, Ideological Content</li> </ul> </li> </ul> User Input: ${videoTitle}` }, ], max_tokens: 2000 }) }) .then(response => { if (!response.ok) { throw new Error('Network response was not ok. This is probably due to an issue with OpenAI credentials, which are disabled for non-final versions of this dissertation for security reasons. Error code' + response.statusText); } console.log('Response received'); return response.json(); }) .then(data => { console.log('Data received from OpenAI:', data); stopLoadingSpinner(); if (!data.choices || data.choices.length === 0) { throw new Error('No choices returned from OpenAI API'); } var output = data.choices[0].message.content.trim(); output = output.replace (/\*\*/g, "''"); // replace any **s with ''s for boldness. document.getElementById('pipelineOutput').innerHTML = `${output}`; // Corrected this line }) .catch((error) => { console.error('Error:', error); stopLoadingSpinner(); document.getElementById('pipelineOutput').innerHTML = "Error: " + error.message + ""; // Corrected this line }); }); } else { console.log('Button element not found'); } </script> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 7">><</silently>>

Engagement on YouTube does not just mean watching videos, however. It also means participating and contributing to a community by 'liking' and commenting on videos. Political scientist Jodi Dean has argued that this participatory model gives rise to "affective networks," "feedback loops [...] entrapping contemporary subjects" <<cite "90" "Dean, Jodi. 'Affect and Drive'.">>. Dean’s affective network has much in common with <<define "the extended mind">>, but diverges in its psychoanalytically inflected consideration of affect rather than cognition as the primary term in considering the subject. Whatever the focus, however, the linkage between a user and their devices is tighter when the loop is two-way. Numerous studies have linked this mode of engagement with addiction to the platform. For example, a 2017 study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions found that: <blockquote>content creation in YouTube had a closer relationship with YouTube addiction than content viewing [...] (and) social gratification was found to have a significant influence on both types of YouTube activities"<<cite "*" "Balakrishnan, Janarthanan and Mark Griffiths. ‘Social Media Addiction: What is the role of content in YouTube’.">>.</blockquote> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 8">><</silently>>

Troublingly, the relationship between ideological extremity and high engagement seems to be significant. According to Manoel Ribeiro et al, whose 2019 study "Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube" examines the radicalization pipeline from the so-called "Intellectual Dark Web" to the "alt-lite" and ultimately the "alt-right," more extreme content tends to have more engagement. This, coupled with the fact that users are more likely to return to content with which they have engaged, helps explain YouTube’s incentive to shepherd users from less to more extreme content <<cite "*" "Ribeiro, Manoel Horta et al. ‘Auditing Radicalization Pathways on YouTube'.">>. As Zeynep Tufecki wrote in a 2019 article published in Scientific American: <blockquote>"YouTube’s algorithms will push whatever they deem engaging, and it appears they have figured out that wild claims, as well as hate speech and outrage peddling, can be particularly so" <<cite "*" "Tufecki, Zeynep. 'YouTube's Recommendation Algorithm Has a Dark Side'.">> </blockquote> Maximizing engagement--and, in so doing, maximizing profit--maximizes addiction and radicalization. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 9">><</silently>>

In poet Patricia Lockwood’s words, "A person might join a site to look at pictures of her nephew and five years later believe in a flat earth" <<cite "*" "Lockwood, Patricia. The Communal Mind.">>. If we accept the premise that the content a user engages with helps shape their idea of themselves, particularly when the content in question is engineered to radicalize the viewer by inculcating a counterfactual racist cultural memory into the user, then the relationship between a user and their feed constitutes exactly the sort of reciprocal relationship Clark and Chalmers cite. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 10">><</silently>>

For Clark and Chalmers, the extended vision of the mind is not limited to a single individual. Although they consider more natural prostheses like a notebook that a person with Alzheimer’s might use to keep track of their daily routine (like Krapp’s ledger or the player-created notebook in Her Story), they also suggest that a group of people brainstorming around a table might be another situation where cognition extends beyond the skin. The material YouTube is engineered to push its users towards is fueled by nostalgia; however, because it is collective rather than individual, the recollected / invented past is a political one. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 11">><</silently>>

Krapp’s case is interesting in part because his own reactions to his tapes highlights the very lack of self-identity over time that the tapes are meant to remedy: he finds it "hard to believe" he was "ever that young whelp. The voice! Jesus! The aspirations!" <<cite "218" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">> and in his last tape refers to "that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that" <<cite "222" "Beckett, Samuel. Krapp's Last Tape.">>. Indeed, this self-denunciation is a theme that develops as Beckett continues to write; what Krapp finds hard to believe, Not I’s Mouth finds horrifying. In a postcognitivist framework, Krapp can be read as a group of people reminiscing around a table--himself and his younger, increasingly distant selves. This reading strategy allows us to consider how the weaponization of mediated nostalgia that takes place on online platforms gives rise to an extended mind with prosthetic, collective memories of an imagined past. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 12">><</silently>>

The particular imagined past constructed by the online alt-right offers a return to a time "before feminism," where gender roles were more firmly codified. This return manifests as an often-violent online misogyny directed at cisgendered women, trans individuals, queer folk in general, and so-called "beta" males whose performance of masculinity falls short of an imagined ideal. One major funnel to the alt-right, according to sociologist Rebecca Lewis, is Jordan Peterson, a tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who was described by David Brooks of The New York Times as the "most influential public intellectual in the Western world" <<cite "*" "Brooks, David. 'The Jordan Peterson Moment'.">>. Peterson has a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_f53ZEJxp8TtlOkHwMV9Q">YouTube channel</a> with more than 8.2 million subscribers, and gained international prominence in large part due to his highly public opposition to Canada’s proposed Bill C-16, which bans discrimination against people on the basis of gender identity or gender expression. His opposition was recorded and broadcasted in a series of wildly popular videos where he stated his refusal to refer to transgender students by their chosen pronouns, calling it "radically politically correct thinking" <<cite "*" "Beauchamp, Zack. ‘Jordan Peterson, the obscure Canadian psychologist turned right-wing celebrity, explained’.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 13">><</silently>>

His philosophy, such as it is, is a perfect encapsulation of the imagined past of alt-right. It is profoundly nostalgic and markedly hostile towards feminism, racial justice, and equity more broadly. He proudly states that white privilege is a farce, and in an interview with The New York Times prescribes "enforced monogamy" as the cure to violence committed by radicalized white men, arguing that: <blockquote>violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners [...] and society needs to work to make sure those men are married <<cite "*" "Bowles, Nellie. 'Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy'.">>.</blockquote> Notably, even in the historical past that Peterson appeals to, enforced monogamy did not exist; while women's choices were more circumscribed, the United States has never had a (legal) system of compulsory marriage for women. Instead, Peterson's prescription appeals to an imagined past where women’s bodies and sexuality are even more controlled by patriarchal authority. Rhetorically, this appeal is accompanied by: <blockquote>imagery from a hundred years ago--a penchant for three-piece suits, wide lapels, and self-consciously archaic speech patterns that he calls a rediscovered tradition and prairie populism <<cite "*" "Bowles, Nellie. 'Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy'.">>.</blockquote> In place of Krapp sitting in the dark recording tapes for himself, the well-lit Peterson records and broadcasts a fictionalised version of the past grounded in idiosyncratic interpretations of biblical texts, self-help bromides, and casual misogyny. Peterson’s success depends on the media technology that broadcasts his nostalgic vision onto the computers and smartphones of the Caleb Cains across the globe. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 14">><</silently>>

Peterson’s audience crosses over substantially with "Gamergate," which began in 2014 as a backlash against feminist indie game developer Zoe Quinn, feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian, and a broader, weaponized fiction that a previously white male cultural space--video gaming--was being taken over by so-called 'social justice warriors.' Cultural historian Kristin Bezio has convincingly connected Gamergate to the rise of the online alt-right and its "digital echo-chambers" like racist image board 4chan, the corners of YouTube we’ve been discussing, and noxious Reddit community "TheRedPill" <<cite "557" "Bezio, Kristin. 'Ctrl-Alt-Del: Gamergate as a precursor to the rise of the alt-right'.">>. "r/TheRedPill,"" which has been "quarantined" by Reddit for being "highly offensive or upsetting," defines feminism as "a doctrine of class hatred and violence" and defines the "Red Pill" itself as: <blockquote>the awareness of the dark truths surrounding human sexuality; hypergamy, women’s ‘Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks’ strategies, society’s Feminine Imperative, and so forth <<cite "*" "Reddit.com. 'self.TheRedPill: Updated Glossary of Terms and Acronyms'.">>.</blockquote> Roose’s article on Caleb Cain, who himself was "red-pilled," defines it more succinctly as "an internet slang term for converting to far-right beliefs" <<cite "*" "Roose, Kevin. 'The Making of a YouTube Radical'.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 15">><</silently>>

It can be challenging to disentangle these different corners of the online alt-right from one another; most self-proclaimed incels (short for "involuntary celibates") claim they’ve been red-pilled, for example, and many of them participated in Gamergate. Indeed, controversial YouTuber streamer PewDiePie, whose YouTube channel has nearly 26 billion views, posted a positive video review of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules to Live By. What these groups share is a hatred of so-called "SJWs", or social justice warriors, which TheRedPill’s glossary defines as: <blockquote>individuals who involve themselves in some level of activism towards promoting a feminist or other equality-driven agenda [who] corrupt the idea of equality into misandry and the reduction of rights for white males" <<cite "*" "Reddit.com. 'self.TheRedPill: Updated Glossary of Terms and Acronyms'.">>.</blockquote> The misogyny of the alt-right is inseparable from its racism, and both are rooted in nostalgia and propagated--and embodied--online. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 16">><</silently>>

What kind of subjectivity arises when Cain, then, listens to well-heeled white nationalists like Richard Spencer describe a different kind of nostalgia, a counterfactual cultural memory of an imagined America? Krapp’s personal postmodern subjectivity is, in this latter case, swapped for a political subjectivity whose postmodern nature is masked by its self-conscious appeals to radical traditionalism and an outright hostility to (post)modernity as such. As Laurie Ouellette and Sarah Banet-Weiser argue: <blockquote>one of the primary characteristics of the extreme right is nostalgia for a particular kind of identity: the white, heterosexual man<<cite "5" "Oullette, Laurie and Sarah Banet-Weiser. ‘Special Issue: Media and the Extreme Right: Editor’s Introduction’.">>.</blockquote> By appealing to this nostalgia, alt-right celebrities (or "influencers," as many internet celebrities are known) provide their listeners with the illusion of a stable identity. In Spencer’s own words: <blockquote>I don’t need to tell [B]lack people in this room to have an identity because you all have got it. You know who you are. But I will tell that to white people. Have a goddamn identity. Have a sense of yourself. Be a part of this family. You are not an individual, you are not just an American, you are not just a citizen, you are part of this family. <<cite "*" "Caplan, Jeff. ‘White nationalist’s appearance at Texas A&M draws hundreds of protesters’.">></blockquote> Spencer’s rhetoric here dovetails with Cain’s own explanation for his radicalization: "it appealed to me because it made me feel a sense of belonging" <<cite "*" "Roose, Kevin. 'The Making of a YouTube Radical'.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 17">><</silently>>

If Krapp’s personal memories as recorded on magnetic tape can be thought of as an externalzsed memory, and if that memory is the material he uses to try and cobble together an identity, then these radical voices in the dark serve a similar function. Unlike Krapp, whose personal identity is under threat from the ravages of time and his own presumably imminent demise, or Susan of Her Story, who listens to her mother's voice in the dark to construct an understanding of her own self, the alt-right imagines a collective identity under siege by an army of social justice warriors whose commitment to equality would consign them to the ashbin of history. In so doing, a collective of Caleb Cains create an affective network within which a contemporary postcognitivist subject can become radicalized. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "The Alt-Right 18">><</silently>>

I have here principally considered the negative potentialities that accompany the prostheticization of memory because we live in an historical moment where those negative possibilities seem so powerful and so omnipresent. The American alt-right is an apt example in relation to Krapp and Her Story due to its rhetorical reliance on a nostalgia that links the prosthetic memory with the contemporary subject, but it is not the only one. Other communities exist online, with their own collective memories, their own postcognitive subjectivities--and, in many cases, their own collective imagined futures. These range from 4chan’s so-called hive mind, whose shared name "Anonymous" highlights the subsumation of the individual, to the glossiola of online hashtag-oriented activism--and other modes of being in the Information Age. What this case study highlights is the recipcrocally reinforcing relationship of medium-as-form and content which always conditions what selves arise on a given platform. [[Return -> Section 2: MEMORY]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Conclusion 1">><</silently>>

Her Story, Krapp’s Last Tape, and the alt-right’s contemporary digital practices each reveal a deep entanglement with nostalgia, but while Krapp and Her Story's nostalgia is personal, the alt-right’s nostalgia is collective, disembodied, and politically motivated. Krapp’s repeated return to his tapes, each time revisiting and reinterpreting moments of his past, mirrors the alt-right’s reliance on a curated and often mythologized past to shape its present ideology and future ambitions. The tapes serve as a cognitive prosthesis for Krapp, externalizing his memories and trapping him in a cycle of regret and longing. Similarly, the alt-right uses digital media as a kind of prosthetic memory, continuously circulating memes, historical revisionism, and selective narratives to construct and maintain an imagined past that justifies its present actions and future goals. This transition from personal to collective nostalgia highlights a crucial difference: where Krapp and Susan are ultimately alone with their tapes, the alt-right operates within a networked environment where these nostalgic narratives are shared, amplified, and weaponized. The prosthetic memory, in all cases, represents a dislocation from the present—Susan is obsessed with understanding her mother so she can understand herself, while the alt-right is fixated on a return to a glorified version of history that never truly existed. Yet, the consequences are starkly different. Krapp’s introspection leads to personal stasis and despair, whereas the alt-right’s nostalgia fuels an aggressive, outward-facing movement that seeks to reshape reality in its image. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Conclusion 2">><</silently>>

Krapp’s fragmented identity and his reliance on externalized memory as a means of self-understanding resonate with the alt-right’s use of digital spaces to cultivate a fractured, yet collectively reinforced, identity. Both Krapp and the alt-right exemplify the dangers of an overreliance on mediated memory—whether through tapes or tweets—where the present is continually sacrificed to an idealized and unattainable past. This radical traditionalism would be all too familiar to a Samuel Beckett, a playwright whose time in Vichy exposed him to propaganda "on a scale unprecedented in France" <<cite "253" "Jackson, Julian. France: The Dark Years.">> via a network of media technologies that included radio programs, airdropped leaflets, posters, newspapers, radio programs, and newsreels. The propaganda disseminated under the banner of France‐Actualités Pathé‐Gaumont was focused on: <blockquote>the revival of traditional culture (through the) celebration of France’s colonial empire (and the) so-called National Revolution, a series of socio-cultural initiatives meant to restore France’s moral and physical strength" <<cite "52" "Bowles, Brett. 'German newsreel propaganda in France'.">>.</blockquote> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Conclusion 3">><</silently>>

Beckett lived with this propaganda; as William Davies remarks: <blockquote>Vichy’s was a vision of France that Beckett would have detested for its authoritarian nationalism, reactionary traditionalism, and overt collaboration, but it was also a France in which he could be actively persecuted for his politics, social connections, and avant-garde cultural sensibilities <<cite "4" "Davies, Will. ‘Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy and the Revolution of the Body in Vichy France’.">>.</blockquote> This vision of France included as a central pillar a concern with a French masculinity "softened by contemporary French culture" in contrast to the "‘more national, more virile, more human’ France of Vichy’s imagination" <<cite "4" "Davies, Will. ‘Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy and the Revolution of the Body in Vichy France’.">>. Like the American alt-right, the nostalgic nationalism of Vichy France unfavorably compared a contemporary masculinity in perceived decline through feminization with an imaginatively constructed hypermasculinity. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Conclusion 4">><</silently>>

Notably, "Twitter", which has been renamed "X" by alt-right edgelord and plutocrat Elon Musk, is referred to as "Vichy Twitter" by commentators on the left because of the algorithmic bias towards alt-right users and content that Musk has introduced. Indeed, "X" is a prime example of how the whims of a particular plutocrat can warp the priorities and architecture of a platform in the case of X, formerly Twitter. In the 12 hours after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the use of the n-word spiked by 500%. <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/tar_nword.png"> <figcaption>This tweet contains a chart that shows a 500% increase in the use of the n-word in the 12 hours following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.<<cite "*" "@NCRI. 'Evidence suggests that bad actors are trying to test the limits on @Twitter.'">>.</figcaption> </figure> I include the Tweet from which this statistic is derived to call attention to the top reply--a user with the handle @Murican saying "good." This reply has no comments, no likes, and no retweets, but it still appears as the first response because the user has a paid account and the "blue check" that, pre-Musk, indicated a verified account. Musk, who has since endorsed the explicitly ethnonationalist 2024 "Make America Great Again" campaign of Donald Trump, made specific decisions about what comments should and should not surface, and this is the result: a digital town square that normalizes racism and cooks brains. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 2 Conclusion 5">><</silently>>

What the case of Musk--along with the 3 case studies in this chapter--seek to highlight is the role that the interface and architecture of technological media shapes the possible selves that users of that technology become. Understanding interface is critical in a world where interface shapes the words and gestures we use to construct our selves and our subjectivities. These three case studies--Her Story, Krapp's Last Tape, and the online radicalization of the alt-right--each explore how interface shapes the self's relationship with memory, and how that memory shapes the performed subject. To understand who we are in the information age, we must be critical of the technological platforms on which we live. [[Return->Table of Contents]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3: PRACTICE">><</silently>> [[Return->Section 3: PRACTICE]]

When I began adapting Samuel Beckett's Quad into Unity, I didn't think of it as practice-based research. I was just curious whether I could translate Beckett's mathematically precise stage directions into code. But the process of creating that adaptation--the specific challenges, failures, and unexpected discoveries--revealed aspects of both Beckett's work and the nature of technological mediation that traditional analysis had missed. This experience exemplifies the unique value of practice-based research in understanding how technological platforms shape identity and meaning. By engaging directly in the process of creating digital adaptations and remediations, we can expose the grain of different media--their affordances and constraints, their particular forms of <<define "loss" "Loss">> and <<define "noise" "Noise">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Practice-Based Research Introduction 2">><</silently>>

The past two decades have seen an explosion of methodologies whereby scholars produce research through creation. Brad Haseman's "performative research" suggests that certain insights can only emerge through the act of making, arguing that practice-based research is "intrinsically experiential" and comes to the fore when researchers create new artistic forms <<cite "100" "Haseman, Brad. 'A Manifesto for Performative Research.'">>. Haseman's paradigm resonates with my own particularly in reference to its focus on "an enthusiasm of practice" over a "problem," and its acknowledgement, common throughout this dissertation, that "what emerges is individualistic and idiosyncratic" <<cite "100" "Haseman, Brad. 'A Manifesto for Performative Research.'">>. And his focus on "performative" research, above even practice-based, runs parallel with the animating concerns of this dissertation, with its repeated focus on gesture and performance; here, the "symbolic data work performatively. They not only express the research, but in that expression become the research itself" <<cite "102" "Haseman, Brad. 'A Manifesto for Performative Research.'">>. Similarly, Matt Ratto's concept of critical making emphasizes "the act of shared construction, joint conversation, and reflection" that happens during the process of creation over a polished end product, and a performance of a "practice-based engagement with pragmatic and theoretical issues" in order to address "wicked problems" around which "no consensus exists with regard to problem definition, let alone potential solutions" <<cite "253" "Ratto, Matt. 'Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology and Social Life.'">>. While these approaches span a wide range and are intrinsically interdisciplinary, they share several features that make them valuable for understanding digital mediation, including the prioritization of embodied knowledges over written research. The process of creating digital adaptations reveals aspects of both the source material and the target platform that might remain invisible to traditional analysis. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Practice-Based Research Introduction 3">><</silently>>

This section presents three experiments in practice-based research, each exploring different aspects of technological mediation and identity formation through both successes and (hopefully) productive failures. Rather than presenting polished final artifacts, these case studies examine how the process of adaptation itself reveals insights about both the source materials, the creative tools used, and the target platforms. The first experiment, [[EndlessGame->Case Study: ENDLESSGAME]], began with a question: could Beckett's mathematically precise teleplay Quad be perfectly reproduced in code? The answer turned out to be simultaneously yes and no--while the mathematical patterns could be reproduced exactly, the introduction of motion-captured human movement created its own forms of noise and loss, revealing how even "perfect" computational reproductions maintain traces of human embodiment. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Practice-Based Research Introduction 4">><</silently>>

The second experiment, [[36 Blackbirds->Case Study: THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS]], uses <<define "a large language model" "LLM">> to channel the voices of dead poets, raising questions about authorship, authenticity, and what I term "<<define "technonecromancy">>". What began as a playful experiment in AI-assisted creativity became an exploration of the ethical and philosophical implications of using technology to simulate human voice and identity. The final case study turns a critical/playful eye on [[this dissertation itself->Case Study: THIS DISSERTATION]], examining how its form as a Twine document both enables and constrains its argument about interface and identity. The process of creating an academic argument in a platform designed for interactive fiction has revealed both unexpected possibilities and significant constraints, making the medium itself part of the message. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Practice-Based Research Introduction 5">><</silently>>

Through these experiments, we see how practice-based research can illuminate aspects of technological mediation that might remain obscure to traditional analysis. The process of creating these adaptations reveals both the constraints that platforms impose and the unexpected possibilities they enable, contributing to our broader understanding of how identity and meaning emerge through technological <<define "interface" "interfaces">> in the <<define "information age">>. More specifically, these case studies demonstrate how the act of adaptation itself--the process of <<define "transcoding">> between media--can reveal new insights about both the source material and the media that constrains and shapes it. By attending to both successes and failures in these attempts at remediation, we can better understand how different interfaces shape possibilities for expression and meaning-making. [[Return->Section 3: PRACTICE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: ENDLESSGAME">><</silently>>

<h1>Staging Quad as an EndlessGame</h1> <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/eg_overall.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>A long clip of EndlessGame, my adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Quad using the Unity engine.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 1">><</silently>>

This case study uses Samuel Beckett's teleplay Quad alongside an adaptation I created of the teleplay, using Unity and C#, to embody the theory of gesture explored in [[Section 1: GESTURE]]. It begins by discussing how Quad, and Beckett's work more broadly, is amenable to an informatic strategy of reading before transitioning to a close reading of the gains and losses of EndlessGame, my gamified adaptation of the play. Proceeding forward from the conceptual slippage and kinship between a play's <<define "script">> and a computer script, this case study aims to show how Quad, EndlessGame, and Beckett's work more broadly, foregrounds the way that <<define "media" "medium">> technology tends to modularize and mechanize human gesture, and that this mechanization conditions the range of expressive possibilities--and therefore the range of possible identities--that can exist on a given platform. Further, I aim to highlight how the transcoding of gesture onto media platforms is necessarily a lossy process, and that the lossy process itself is a site for critical analysis. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 2">><</silently>>

Samuel Beckett's Quad <blockquote>was first transmitted in Germany by Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1982 under the title Quadrat 1 + 2. It was first transmitted by BBC2 on 16 December 1982[, and] first published by Faber and Faber, London, in 1984 <<cite "450" "Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works.">>.</blockquote> Quad is a piece for four dancers, each wearing different colored robe, tracing out a repetitive pattern on a grey stage with a black backdrop. The dancers exhaust every possible permutation of these patterns, and then the screen fades to black, after which the lights come back up on the same dancers tracing the same pattern, but slowly, without percussion or color. The structure of the play is <<define "algorithmic" "Algorithm">>: it is a precise, succinct set of instructions that is iterated and repeated accordingly. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/quad.mp4" type="video/mp4" autoplay> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>Samuel Beckett's Quad, as broadcast by Süddeutscher Rundfunk. Downloaded from YouTube.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 3">><</silently>>

As Quad demonstrates, Samuel Beckett was working in information before the information age. Whereas the masters of high modernism depended on and were informed by what Hugh Kenner in The Mechanic Muse calls "transparent technology," Kenner argues that Beckett carried modernism: <blockquote>into the intangible realm of information theory.. our present world of enigmatic 'text,' of foregrounded codes and redundancies, of microchips through which what moves may be less interesting than the process of moving it elegantly" <<cite "15" "Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse.">>.</blockquote> <<define "Information" "Information">> is a complicated term to define; given Kenner's evocation of information theory here, I will use Oxford Philosopher of Information Luciano Floridi’s definition--that is, information is well-ordered, meaningful data <<cite "8" "Floridi, Luciano. Information: A Very Short Introduction.">>. Kenner is right about Beckett; in Quad and elsewhere, Beckett's texts lend themselves to fruitful readings under the sign of literary informatics. Quad’s script in particular can be read as a <<define "script">> in the programming sense, in the same way that Kenner <<excerpt "transcribed" "Watt to Pascal">> sections of Watt into Pascal code, or, more recently and thoroughly, Nick Montfort wrote [[Megawatt->Megawatt 1]]. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 4">><</silently>>

<<excerpt "Quad's script" "Quad script">> is, in this reading, code: a set of mechanical instructions to be carried out one after another, without deviation. The mathematical vectors described by Beckett’s very specific commands are drawn out geometrically. Beckett’s descriptions of the courses and the series encode instructions for human behavior in symbolic language: <blockquote> Course 1: AC, CB, BA, AD, DB, BC, CD, DA Course 2: BA AD, DB, BC, CD, DA, AC, CB Course 3: CD, DA, AC, CB, BA, AD, DB, BC Course 4: DB, BC, CD, DA, AC, CB, BA, AD<<cite "451" "Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works.">></blockquote> <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/quad_script_2.png" alt="A diagram from the play script of Quad."> <figcaption>A diagram from the play-script of Quad.<<cite "453" "Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works.">></figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 5">><</silently>>

What Quad’s encoding of human gesture into symbolic form calls attention to is the way that all scripts function according to the same economy of symbol and gesture, whereby the playwright’s instructions are translated into words, which are in turn "executed" by the players. Quad interrogates the agency of the actor and the tyranny of the playwright/director under this symbolic regime; Quad’s similarity to computer code, then, emphasizes the ideal of the <<define "Automatic Play">>, one that runs noiselessly, without a <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>, in perfect obedience to the will of the author. Many of Beckett's texts call for a kind of noiseless transmission of authorial will to bodily gesture. The body of the ideal Beckettian actor, in this paradigm, becomes a mechanical medium, an automaton programmed to execute Beckett’s script with metronomic precision. For example, consider the paradigm of a play like Not I, where the actor’s mechanization is paralleled by Mouth’s own repeated references to her own biological body as a machine; as Hannah Simpson puts it, "both Mouth and the actor are positioned as mechanical tools that exist solely to articulate another’s text" <<cite "411" "Simpson, Hannah. 'Now Keep Out of the Way, Whitelaw: Self-Expression, Agency, and Directorial Control in W.B. Yeats’s and Samuel Beckett’s Theater.'">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 6">><</silently>>

One of the tensions constituitive of Quad, though, is the way this symbolic operation is never noiseless. Traces of the actor, and their agency, remain even in the most faithful execution of the teleplay. What develops is a tension between, as Piotr Woycicki puts it: <blockquote>a formal, aesthetic ideal and its failure of realisation in live performance... the pure formalism is unachievable in performance since the live bodies resist the imposition of such rigid formal structures <<cite "144" 'Woycicki, Piotr. Mathematical Aesthetic as a Strategy for Performance: A Vector Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Quad.'>>.</blockquote> This translation of vectors into human gesture is not perfect because it is conditioned by the fundamental imprecision of the human body. Beckett’s script even allows for "time lost at angles and centre" <<cite "453" "Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works.">>. Any body, even the ballet dancers that the script calls for, is going to necessarily misstep. Hence the necessity of the human body for the successful production of Quad: Quad dramatizes the tension between the mathematical script and its meatspace realization. Like in [[Blue Kettle->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]] and [[Her Story->Case Study: HER STORY]], the <<define "noise" "Noise">> and <<define "loss" "Loss">> are the <<define "signal" "Signal">>; the way that the bodies on the stage fail--and, in their failure, undermine the mathematical precision of the script--is itself the most interesting theme of the piece. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 7">><</silently>>

Yet Quad is a teleplay, not a play, and thus lacks the immediacy of the human body that would emphasize this constitutive frailty. The dancers are both bodies and not-bodies, translated by their televisual medium into "<<excerpt "the illusion of presence created by a pulsating beam of light moving rapidly across and down the face of a picture tube" "From The Skriker">>" <<cite "374" "Klaver, Elizabeth. 'Samuel Beckett’s Ohio Impromptu, Quad, and What Where: How It Is in the Matrix of Text and Television.'">>. The human body in Quad undergoes a series of translations: <ul> <li>Samuel Beckett writes the script;</li> <li>The script is disseminated;</li> <li>The actors, with the direction of the director, gesture the script into being on the stage;</li> <li>The camera records the actor;</li> <li>The camera's tapes are copied;</li> <li>The copies are broadcasted over the airwaves to the television;</li> <li>And the television is watched by the audience.</li> </ul> <img src = "assets/imgs/quad_transcoding.gif"> As the bodies of the dancers run the code of the script and in so doing imperfectlytransmute authorial will into gesture, the human body becomes more and more alien, having existed in representations incomprehensible to a human. The distance between the human subject watching the television and the dancer grows with every step save the initial, when the bodies 'run' the textual script. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 8">><</silently>>

Now, most people who now watch Quad do so on their computers--either through a local file, as <<define "bits" "Bit">> that are themselves translated electrical variances saved locally, or streamed from data saved on a server in a bunker somewhere. Still, traces of the human remain a vital part of the teleplay--shuffling bodies invite empathy, identification, disgust, fear, the dancers sometimes shuffle more or less quickly, and one can begin to identify secondary gender characteristics under the robes (or, at least, try to). A transcoded body is still a body, still stylized according to comprehensible codes as a way of performing themselves into being. The flexibility of those performances has a different set of contingencies associated with them which are specific to the medium of their production--and the medium of their reception, on a smaller screen. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 9">><</silently>>

Computer science offers a provocative way of reading these translations. In The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich calls the translation of media into code, and code into media, <<define "transcoding">>. What I’d like to focus on here is how transcoding is often a <<define "lossy" "Loss">> process. The translation of <<define "data" "Data">> for preservation in the database or for transmission over the internet almost always results in the loss of some of the original data. Another way of thinking about lossiness is ‘reversability’ --any transcoding of an object from one medium to another is lossless if it is reversible--if one can transcode back to the original medium without any loss of fidelity--but is lossy if it is not reversible--if data is irreparably lost in the compression of translation. Quad stages lossy translation--from the code of the script to the gesture of the dancer’s body, from the gesture to the camera, the camera to the broadcast device, and so on; any instance of Quad has undergone those translations, has lost fidelity from the original broadcast, and this loss of fidelity is the point. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 10">><</silently>>

On the other hand, we cannot think about a loss of fidelity--an imperfect translation of authorial will into gestures that constitute text-as-stimulus for the reader--as a purely subtractive move without buying into an idealistic idea of a 'pure' original text that Beckett’s work both attracts and repels. When the data gets cognized by the viewer and assembled into the historically specific and contingent object which bears the marks of entropy--<<define "audiovisual fuzziness, a loss of color" "Noise">>, and so on, that reassembled text is not necessarily ‘less’ than the original text. In the case of Beckett, whose work shows a consistent preoccupation with the particularity of the presentation, the fuzziness of the degraded tape should be read as extension of the text itself. Quad II, the second half of Quad meant to take place ten-thousand years later, is in this reading the n’th degree of precisely this loss. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/quad.mp4#t=540" type="video/mp4" autoplay> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>The second part of Quad, presented with "no colour, all four in identical white gowns, no percussion, footsteps only sound, slow tempo, series 1 only" <<cite "453" "Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works.">>. Per an anecdote relayed by Martin Esslin, this part of the piece was a late and serendipitous addition; Beckett saw technicians testing the picture quality for broadcast to black-and-white televisions and exclaimed "My God, it's a hundred thousand years later!" <<cite "44" "Esslin, Martin, 'Towards the Zero of Language'">></figcaption> </figure> In other words, each one of these translations loses some data along the way, and Quad, taken together with a Quad II, embodies this loss. That Quad II takes place a hundred thousand years later seems attuned to this degradation; time passes, energy leaks out of the system, and entropy prevails. However, the process is not merely subtractive. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 11">><</silently>>

New creative work is done when the Beckettian text is transcoded. In addition, then, to the hermeneutic of loss, it is worth looking at what new interpretive strategies become possible in light of new adaptations. This reading strategy of tabulating what is lost and what is gained specifically enacts what Stephen Connor calls the "complex play between reduction and addition, in which to repeat oneself, and therefore to say progressively less, seems, uncannily, always to involve saying more" <<cite "11" "Connor, Steven. Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory, and Text.">>. We have, then, another instance of the cognitive glitch as I've described it--another oscillatory motion between signal and noise that highlights the waste and the loss as the signal. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 12">><</silently>>

What happens, then, when Quad is transcoded to thoroughgoing 'new media'? Other practitioners have performed this sort of transcoding. In his article in the September 2012 issue of Samuel Beckett Studies <<cite "*" "Woycicki, Piotr. Mathematical Aesthetic as a Strategy for Performance: A Vector Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Quad.">>, Piotyr Woycicki writes about an adaptation he created. He links to his own website, which (at one point) housed a Flash implementation of a program made in QBasic. Unfortunately, modern browsers can't run Flash, modern operating systems can't run applications written in QBasic, and his domain is now defunct. 12 years later, the adaptation is already obsolete. This is not an atypical fate for digital work, which is typically doomed to ephemerality without deliberate conservationist work. Indeed, there are elements of this dissertation which are unlikely to work even a year from its publication. The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, out of Carnegie Mellon University, produced an <a target="_blank" href="https://studioforcreativeinquiry.org/project/quad">adaptation</a> in 2011 that straddles the line between virtual and physical. Director Matt Gray used four iCreate (Roomba) robots and computer vision software to implement Quad as code and embody it. As the summary of their project suggests, the adaptation ends up revealing each robot's "subtle quirks and characteristics as individuals" <<cite "*" "The Studio for Creative Inquiry, 'Quad'">> Again, the constituitive drama of the production ends up being how the actors necessarily fail at implementation. <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/quad_cmu.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> There is of course a loss any time the teleplay is removed from its original context inasmuch as it is less ‘true’ to the will of the author, particularly for someone as concerned with the specificity of the medium as Beckett was. On the other hand, translating Quad to a digital medium can accentuate those elements present in the original work that lend themselves to such a translation: their algorithmic character, the translation of human body into signal, the repetition, and the potential (theoretical, at least) 'filling in' of the ellipsis indicated by the fade-out just before Quad II, which indicates a gap of ten-thousand years. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 13">><</silently>>

My adaptation of Quad, which I’ve named EndlessGame, was written in Unity and C# and is available for free <a target = "_blank" href = "http://www.especiallygreatliterature.com/endlessgame.html">here</a>. This would be a good time to 'play' it, if only for a few minutes; if that isn't possible, you can watch a video of the most faithful execution of the code below, or read the code which comprises it at its <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/DocEon/EndlessGame">GitHub repository.</a>. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/eg_overall.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>A long clip of EndlessGame, my adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Quad using the Unity engine.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 14">><</silently>>

In EndlessGame, four default avatars (vaguely masculine models with blank faces named Alpha, chosen because they were free and well-'rigged' for motion), colored to follow Beckett’s script, execute the code written for Beckett’s dancers. It is the first adaptation made in <<define "Unity" "Unity">> or to run in <<define "virtual reality" "virtual reality">>. Using bodies of digital origin (as opposed to viewing bodies that have been digitized) forecloses certain modes of reading and opens up some others. Where the viewer of Quad can attempt to distinguish between the figures beyond their clothing, identify individualized gais, and try to infer their sex, the viewer of EndlessGame cannot because the avatars should not exceed their purpose as executors of the script in the same way that human bodies do. This attenuates the tension between the perfect pattern and its imperfect execution that Woycicki sees as the "focus of the performance" <<cite "140" 'Woycicki, Piotr. Mathematical Aesthetic as a Strategy for Performance: A Vector Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Quad.'>>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 15">><</silently>>

On the other hand, there are certain possibilities that a program can instantiate that the televisual version could not; Beckett’s instruction regarding lighting, for example, which were abandoned for technical reasons, is possible in the adaptation. The programmed version can continue to run long after dancers would starve (hence its name). Indeed, for one week in 2019 I ran EndlessGame as a looped stream on my Twitch channel. It was not very popular. Each iteration of the program does not degrade, unlike the imperfect play of bodies on the televisual screen. Unless specifically programmed to do so, the gradual ten-thousand-year crawl towards silence that takes place between Quad and Quad II does not take place in EndlessGame. That said, even – maybe especially – digital texts like this are contingent; technology changes quickly, and programs are constantly being made inaccessible. As Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin write, "a piece of electronic literature written for a Macintosh in the 1980s may be unreadable on the Macs in a college computer lab today" <<cite "*" "Montfort, Nick and Wardrip-Fruin, Noah. Acid-Free Bits.">>. Further, it takes electricity to animate the figures; in the broadest possible sense, entropy continues to increase. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 16">><</silently>>

The actors move at a constant speed, unless the viewer decides to become a player and adjusts the speed, lighting, or camera perspective via commands provided at boot. Adding interactivity to the piece of course changes it--it’s less ‘faithful.’ One major element that separates the original Quad from a stage-play is the fixed camera, which forces the viewer to see one thing; being able to ‘look around’ from the 'danger zone' is a very different experience and has a very different (but similarly disorienting) effect. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/eg_center.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>From the point of view of the "danger zone", Quad becomes more frenetic and feels more dangerous; further, the user can look around with the arrow keys, adding more control to the system.</figcaption> </figure> The ‘player’ can also choose to follow a single dancer, in which case a camera is activated in the dancer’s hood. These different camera views create different structures of identification with the dancers themselves: from above, they are small; from the middle, they are menacing; from inside, they are (ideally, at least) easier to identify with. These effects are, idealy, enhanced in the virtual reality port of the game; from personal experience, the sensation of standing in the middle of Quad is a deeply unnerving one. <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/eg_pov.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>EndlessGame, from the point of view of one of the dancers.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 17">><</silently>>

My assumption was that computerized models moving according to a deterministic program (written in C#; the code is available <a target="_blank" href = "https://www.especiallygreatliterature.com/endlessgame_code.cs">here</a>) would result in the ‘perfect’ execution of Beckett’s code – and it did, when cubes were used in place of actors. However, as soon as the cubes were replaced with humanoid avatars and animated, the project became much more complicated Animation of humanoid avatars in Unity requires several components: an avatar-object, which is a three-dimensional model ‘rigged’ with a skeleton and a musculature in order to make movement realistic; and animation data, which can be generated either via <<define "keyframes" "Keyframes">> or <<define "motion-capture data" "Motion-Capture Data">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 18">><</silently>>

With Unity, however, animation can be made more realistic by use of motion-capture data, which is provided free-of-charge with the personal edition of the free software. Motion-capture data (or "mocap") is acquired by filming anonymous human actors in outfits covered in sensors. The sensors relay information about the gestures to computers, which convert that information to a series of vector values, each associated with a different part of the skeleton. Animating a figure in Unity, therefore, literally translates real human motion into code, and then applies that human motion to an artificial body. These animation clips are cut up so the steps loop properly. They are modularized and then looped to replicate apparent human motion; breaking up animations to look ‘natural’ paradoxically requires the modularization of artificial, inhuman clips. Intruigingly, applying the human animations to the default avatars introduced a bug into the software and knocked the code off-track--as soon as translated human gesture was returned to the system, it stopped being ‘perfect’ and required several lines of code to keep the actors from missing their cues. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 19">><</silently>>

A proper game version, where a player can control a dancer and attempt to ‘execute’ the code of the game, would encourage still another kind of identification--and in so doing move us further away from the ‘original’ text. <<define "Loss">> seems like the wrong word to use here, however, as what’s taking place is an opening up of possibilities. Unlike the process of lossy transcoding discussed earlier, transcoding Quad to EndlessGame permits a variety of novel ways of experiencing an extant text. This opening-up of possibilities underlines the way that Quad itself, by virtue of its Beckettian principal of subtraction – the minimal ‘content’ in the play, the repeated, simple pattern--calls attention to the constitutive role that the viewer has in making 'sense' of it--of turning the <<define "data" "Data">> into <<define "information" "Information">>, and synthesizing gestures into beings, in other words. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 20">><</silently>>

Quad’s dramatization of the way that each repetition of a gesture loses some meaning, that each copy signifies less, parallels provocatively the process by which Quad is disseminated into the world as a series of increasingly damaged copies, steps on the way to the quiet of Quad II and, projecting forward, the silence and stillness of a hypothetical Quad III. The way that this emptying out of meaning forces the viewer to make some sense of the patterns in the teleplay and unify it under some interpretive framework--synthesize gestures into persons--is emphasized in EndlessGame, where the viewer has the power to actually change the pattern in minute ways that do not, ultimately, ‘change’ what happens. However, <<define "loss" "Loss">> falls short as a way of thinking about this recombinatory power of the human mind, the way that reading strategies themselves depend not on a text’s fidelity to an idealized original but the degree to which they suggest something to the reader. What creating an adaptation of Quad, or ‘playing’ EndlessGame, ultimately calls attention to is the authorial role that the viewer has in the presence of the text, and suggests a way of thinking about reading as the ordering of <<define "data" "Data">> into <<define "meaning" "Meaning">>--the running of a code. Interpretation then becomes the flipside of loss, the way that meaning, having been emptied out via repetition, re-enters the system. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "EndlessGame 21">><</silently>>

Analogously, this kind of reading strategy offers a new way to look at what happens to human body under the sign of <<define "information" "Information">> rather than mere corporality-- that is, when bodily gestures are transcoded and compressed into machine-readable, numerical information and then re-translated and expanded into a human-readable format, and how the gestures thereby translated persistently mean. In the Information Age, this traffic between the algorithmic and the human is ubiquitous. Human interaction increasingly takes place on digital stages. The grandmother sees her grandchild primarily via Skype, where both faces are blurred by compression algorithms ensuring temporal near-simultaneity over a long distance; individuals curate a particular set of digital photographs and posts and present themselves on social media platforms, thereby transcoding themselves into an assimilation of quanta of social gesture; warfare takes place remotely, with drones controlled by user interfaces not completely dissimilar from a video game. If identity is constituted by repeated stylizations of the body what happens when the body is electric--that is, as a self-stylized <<define "avatar" "Avatar">> in a virtual world rather than as the <<define "meat" "Meatspace">> into which we are born? By thinking about what is lost and what is gained in Beckettian works where the human is transcoded, successfully or unsuccessfully, into code, we can think productively about what is lost and gained when we perform the same translation on our selves. [[Back->Section 3: PRACTICE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS">><</silently>>

Nick Montfort’s 2014 project Megawatt carries the algorithmic sections of Watt to their nth degree. Megawatt itself is the title of both a computer program--a several-hundred-line <a target="_blank" href="assets/code_snippets/megawatt.py">Python script</a> also available on <a target="_blank" href="http://nickm.com/code/megawatt.py">his own site</a>--and the <a target="_blank" href="assets/pdfs/megawatt.pdf">output of that program</a>, which (according to the documentation at the head of both the script and the output) "in many ways is like a standard novel" and, per the code's documentation, <blockquote>"leaves aside all of the more intelligible language of Beckett’s novel and is based, instead, on that which is most systematic and inscrutable. It does not just recreate these passages, although with minor changes the Megawatt code can be used to do so. In the new novel, rather, they are intensified by generating, using the same methods that Beckett used, significantly more text than is found in the already excessive Watt."</blockquote> The novel version of Megawatt can, as of this writing, be purchased via the Harvard Bookstore’s Print On Demand service – that is, the Harvard Bookstore will run the code and print the output of the script like a traditional novel. This process recalls what Wai Chee Dimock writes about the status of the print novel in the Information age: "the fluid sequences flitting across the computer screen are not containers of meaning or data but sets of rules (algorithms) for generating themselves" <<cite '1378' 'Dimock, Wai Chee. "Introduction: Genres as Fields of Knowledge."'>>. Both the novel and the source code, however, are a ‘part’ of the text; as N. Katherine Hayles, referencing the work of Loss Pequeño Glazer, Matthew Kirschenbaum, John Cayley, and Matthew Fuller, <a target="_blank" href="https://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html">argues</a>, "code must be considered as much a part of the ‘text’ of electronic literature as the screenic surface" <<cite '35' 'Hayles, N. Katherine. "Electronic Literature: What is it?"'>>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Megawatt 2">><</silently>>

A few problems immediately present themselves when trying to think about Megawatt alongside Watt. At first glance, it might make more sense to compare Megawatt (the novel) with Watt; they share a medium and a language. However, the code of Megawatt can be tweaked, by moving around a handful of pound signs, to accurately reproduce the sections in Watt from which it is drawn. For example, the relevant snippet of code for Megawatt’s intensification of the voices passage in Watt is as follows: <code>## In Watt the voices = [‘sang’, ‘cried’, ‘stated’, ‘murmured’] \## And Watt understood = [‘all’, ‘much’, ‘little’, ‘nothing’] \## Here the voices did eight things and there are eight levels: voices = [‘sang’, ‘cried’, ‘stated’, ‘murmured’, ‘babbled’, ‘chattered’, ‘ranted’, ‘whispered’] understood = [‘all’, ‘most’, ‘much’, ‘half’, ‘little’, ‘less’, ‘bits’, ‘nothing’]</code> The hash marks # indicate a ‘comment’ – that is, a metatextual element of the programming language that is there not for the computer but for the human reader of the code. Good code is itself text, layered with computer instructions and with human-readable documentation that clarifies the function of the computer code. The brackets indicate the initialization of a ‘list,’ which is a kind of data structure that can contain a series of elements (here, ‘strings,’ or series of characters – words, sentences, and so on). The commented lines provide the code to initialize the lists one would need to replicate Watt: that is, there are four kinds of voices ([‘sang’,’cried’,’stated’,’murmured’]) and four kinds of understanding. Replacing the contents of the longer lists at the bottom of the provided code – where the voices also babble, chatter, rant, and whisper – would cause the program’s output to replicate the section in Watt rather than expanding it as Megawatt does. One can also add more words to the existing list; the voices could also yammer, bicker, ballyhoo, and so on. A hypothetical Gigawatt could, without much programming, search the dictionary for every verb that describes an <<define "utterance">> and automatically generate a voice for every word; the resulting text would stretch for millions of pages, and would still (correctly) end with the warning that these were only some of the voices. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Megawatt 3">><</silently>>

Megawatt expressly lays out the algorithm by which those sections of Watt might be composed. A reader who goes to the code rather than the novel has the interpretive work that Elizabeth Drew and Mads Haahr point to – that is, the work the reader does in "sorting through the randomness and patterns in the text" in order to derive meaning – done for them <<cite '4' 'Drew, Elizabeth and Haahr, Mads. "Lessness: Randomness, Consciousness and Meaning."'>>. On the other hand, the act of decoding the code, parsing the comments, and then running the code on their own computer places the reader into a uniquely authorial position, whereby not merely the meaning but the words themselves that make up the pseudo-Beckettian text are generated as a direct consequence of their own agency. This new role for the reader is reflected in the licensing information that accompanies all of Montfort’s new media objects, each of which is explicitly licensed as free software – a declaration "which many authors of digital work share," and which "goes beyond the traditional concept of authorship and copyright, inviting readers to participate creatively… Transferring literature to electronic media has changed the status of the reader, bringing him/her closer to the position of author than a reader of conventional literature" <<cite "86" "Malecka, Aleksandra and Marecki, Piotr. 'Hyper-constrained: Translating Nick Montfort's Textual Generators'">>. Megawatt is licensed under the Open Source Initiative’s "[[ISC License]]," which gives full permission to "use, copy, modify, and/or distribute" the work provided that the copyright notice appears in all copies. Contrast this to Beckett and his estate, for whom the work of art is proprietary, carefully curated, and litigiously protected. This shifting ethos as regards the control that the creator of the work of art has over the work’s adaptations and afterlives is indicative of a larger shift that has taken place as regards the status of the work of art in the age of mechanical and informational reproduction->: away from the author and towards the authors. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Megawatt 4">><</silently>>

The algorithm from which the "short statement" about the "poor old lousy earth" can be written and rewritten is a manageable, human-readable piece of code that can be close-read like one might close-read the novel itself. In Watt, the statement goes three generations deep – i.e. from "my earth and my father’s and my mother’s.... and my father’s father’s father’s," exhausting every possible combination of the two terms ‘father’ and ‘mother’ for each generation. In Megawatt, the operation is extended to the sixth generation – i.e. to "my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s" and so on. The code to produce this operation is as follows: <code> text.append('Inside were Mr Knott and Erskine and another. Before ' + &emsp;'leaving, this gentleman made the following short statement:') para = 'And the poor old lousy earth, my earth' def ancestor(depth): &emsp;if depth < 1: &emsp;&emsp;yield " &emsp;else: &emsp;&emsp;for parent in [' father’s', ' mother’s']: &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;for grandparent in list(ancestor(depth - 1)): &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;yield parent + grandparent for possessive in ['my', 'other people’s']: \## Originally this is done for three generations, i.e.: \## for i in range(1,4) \## Here the number of generations are doubled, so there are six: &emsp;for i in range(1,7): &emsp;&emsp;elders = ancestor(i) &emsp;&emsp;for elder in list(elders): &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;para = para + ' and ' + possessive + elder para = para + '.' text.append(para) </code> First, to parse: ‘append’ is a function that takes as its parameter a string (that is, takes the parenthetical text that follows its invocation) and adds that parameter to the list that calls it. So <code>text.append("New Entry")</code> would make a new entry in the list named "text" that holds the string <code>New Entry</code>. <code>para</code> is the string variable where the code holds the generated lines that will be added to the <code>text</code> list and worked on through the rest of the code. <code>def ancestor(depth):</code> declares a new function – a new set of instructions that takes as a parameter an integer "depth" (how many generations deep we want, in this case)--and ‘yields’ the sentence in Wattese. Notably, the ancestor function is recursive; it calls itself within itself until the depth is exhausted <code>(if depth < 1)</code>. The ‘for’ loop simply runs until all of the conditions have been met – <code>for parent in [‘father’s’, mother’s’]</code>, for example, runs the code that follows with ‘father’s’ as a parameter and then ‘mother’s’ as a parameter. The loops actually start running with the line <code>for possessive in [‘my’, ‘other people’s’]:</code>; it runs twice, first for ‘my’ ancestors and then for ‘other peoples’’ ancestors. Each time it runs, it goes through the ancestor-code from depths 1 through 6 (<code>for i in range(1,7)</code>). The ancestors function generates a list of ancestors, which are added to the ‘para’ variable sequentially at <code>for elder in list(elders)</code>; and then all of this output is written to the larger list <code>text</code> with the last provided line. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Megawatt 5">><</silently>>

This code is, hard as it might be to believe for someone without a coding background, remarkably human-readable and straightforward. There are lucid comments that explain where the constants 1 and 7 come from in the main loop, and Montfort uses variable names that make it clear what each variable stands in for, and what each list contains. For a programmer, then, this algorithm expresses the ‘pattern’ that the reader is encouraged to decode when they read Watt. Further, it allows for the possibility of indefinitely extended iterations of the algorithm provided by the original novel. Changing the "7" to "10," for example, carries out the operation to 9 generations rather than 6, which would in turn take up a great deal more space. That this part of the original text, along with other parts of Watt, can be formalized like this gestures towards the statement made just after the ‘short statement’-that: <blockquote>"if I could begin it all over again, knowing what I know now, the result would be the same. And if I could begin again a third time, knowing what I would know then, the result would be the same. And if I could begin it all over again a hundred times, knowing each time a little more than the time before, the result would always be the same, and the hundredth life as the first, and the hundred lives as once. A cat’s flux. But at this rate we shall be here all night" <<cite "47" "Beckett, Samuel. Watt.">>.</blockquote> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Megawatt 6">><</silently>>

In other words, that which happens, happens again, and will continue to happen in a cursed recursion. What breaks the loop here is a few lines of poetry that results in a "Haw!" of laughter. Something affective--comedy--challenges the determinism of these logical structures that only seem to end where they do rather than, as they do in Megawatt, hundreds of pages later because to continue would exhaust the reader/listener. Of course, the subsequent statement made by Watt’s interlocutor tabulates the "laughs that strictly speaking are not laughs, but modes of ululation" – "the bitter, the hollow, and the mirthless" – and so on. Even that experience which exceeds tabulation is subject to the endless ratiocination and categorization of the broken mind-machines of Watt. Formalizing the algorithms that entrap Watt’s experience underscores the degree to which they leave something important out, the fundamentally impoverished state of language under the sign of the mechanical formula, and what Culik calls "descriptive (in)sufficiency of language" and "the (in)ability of a formal system to comprehend itself". On the other hand, theorists of electronic literature and new media have pointed to randomization and automated texts as potentially liberatory; the process of Megawatt, whereby the reader, the compiler, the computer, the coder, and Beckett work in tandem to generate a new text, might, as Hayles puts it in a discussion of electronic literature, both reflect and enact: <blockquote>a new kind of subjectivity characterized by distributed cognition, networked agency that includes human and nonhuman actors, and fluid boundaries dispersed over actual and virtual locations" <<cite '37' 'Hayles, N. Katherine. "Electronic Literature: What is it?"'>>.</blockquote> Under this reading, we might think about how Megawatt fashions a meiation between computer code and human-only language, digital and analogue processing--and about how porous the membrane becomes between author and reader, and how that porousness is reflected in many features of the new media landscape. [[Return->EndlessGame 2]]

<h1>AI and Technonecromancy in Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h1> <figure> <img width=100% src="assets/imgs/36bb_glitch_front.png" alt="'36 Blackbirds,' a piece I commissioned by Dataerase"> <figcaption>"Thirty-Six Blackbirds," a piece I commissioned inspired by the project, by glitch artist <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dataerase/?__d=1" target="_blank">Dataerase</a></figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 1">><</silently>>

Thirty-Six Blackbirds is a generative experiment I undertook early in 2021 that looked at how well GPT-3, with the help of an alert editor, can write a simple poem in the style of a canonical dead author. This was in part an attempt to embody the conceptual work around memory explored in [[Section 2: MEMORY]]: to what degree can we think about the full corpus of a dead author as an externalized memory, and what is the relationship between these corpora and the identities, or personas, of those authors? The timing here is important; in 2021, OpenAI hadn't yet opened access to their <<define "large language models" "LLM">>. For an <<define "interface">>, I was working with a closed-access beta version of one of OpenAI's prototype models of GPT-3 via a tool called "Unblocked" which was intended to help creative writers break out of writer's block by providing helpful cues via AI. Over the course of the intervening years, "GPT-3" (and its progeny, and its competitors) has gone from closed beta to ubiquity, and "AI" has gone from science fiction to a primary driver of VC investment, "disrupting" everything from health insurance to academia itself. The moral stakes have changed, too; in 2024, the threats of mass unemployment, environmental catastrophe, and intellectual property theft have been linked with LLMs and made them a bête noire rather than a cool curiosity. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 2">><</silently>>

In the meantime, I've gone from a predoctoral fellowship at MIT's Digital Humanities Lab to a full-time position as the Director of Product for a tech startup called "ander.ai"; my livelihood depends, at this point, on using LLMs and artificial intelligence for a variety of purposes. I flag this in the opening of this case study because I believe transparency to be critical here. I have found myself to be a somewhat reluctant defender of artificial intelligence in a world where most of my academic peers--and most of the authors, artists, and other creatives whom I respect--consider AI to be an existential threat. I am compromised, and my perspective is not a view from nowhere, any more than an artist's read of LLM-as-anathema is uninformed by the menace that these models pose to their careers. My goal here, then, is to present this artifact as a way of highlighting the potential that these tools have, the problems that these tools present, and--finally--offering some guidelines to using these tools ethically. TODO. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 3">><</silently>>

The full text of Thirty-Six Blackbirds can be downloaded and viewed <a target="_blank" href="assets/pdfs/36bb.pdf">here</a>. Before digging into the text itself, though, I would like to dwell on one of two paratexts: the introduction I wrote for the volume and the introduction that I had GPT-3 write. Let's start with mine: <blockquote> This is a generative experiment that looks at how well GPT-3 (who has asked to be called Combine), with the help of an alert editor, can write a simple poem in the style of canonical authors of literary poetry (and some other author names that struck my fancy.) I'm using an API that's currently in beta. The whole prompt of each poem is the title (Thirty-Six Blackbirds), and the attribution (a poem by X). All of the rest of the text comes right out of GPT-3; I didn't write any words of poetry here. Most of these poems are not the AI's first attempt; sometimes it'll grab snippets of tables of contents, or copyright information, or copyrighted material. For example, Poe both had a hard time not just spitting out a sonnet and the Raven, respectively. I ran the completed draft through TurnItIn to check for plagiarism and only got two hits - e e cummings' poem was an exact match (and so has been removed), and the Bradbury poem is a rewriting of a poem by Kurt Vonnegut. I would guess that at least one of the other poems here is plagiarized in a way that Googling and Turnitin can't detect. I've added line breaks, removed occasional lines, and added very occasional punctuation, but far and away the bulk of this writing is from GPT-3, which itself is from the massive corpus of text it's gobbled up. I will let the AI speak for itself regarding the creative validity of the piece. </blockquote> This introduction, written immediately after completing the volume, outlines the process used to generate each of the poems, the tech stack (or toolkit) used to generate them, and tries to articulate some of the challenges that arose during the generation and curation process. That transparency is critical: indeed, some fundamental principles to my own practice with generative AI are outlined here. First of all, work that utilizes generative AI must be transparent with regards to the usage of AI itself. This introduction explicitly notes the prompt used to generate each poem, along with the particular language model used (GPT-3--more specifically, "vanilla" GPT-3, without any chat-grounded reinforcement learning with human feedback). This transparency situates a given generative artifact within its technological context and in so doing demystifies the process. Secondly, it is transparent regarding the post-generative editing that this project undertook. I highlight, firstly, that I cherry-picked "good" poems out of the generated chaff. Particularly with earlier, pre-chat models, model-generated text was scattershot, with a wide variation of quality; many of the most misleading contributors to the current hype around "AI" omit this disclosure, purporting that cherry-picked examples represent the quality of the average genera. This dross might miss from a generic perspective (creating material that isn't poetry), from a quality perspective (creating material that's very bad poetry), or from the perspective of straightforward plagiarism (creating material that's very good poetry that someone has already written). Additionally, I noted that line breaks, punctuation, and--critically--choosing when to end each poem Finally, I noted the work done to try and locate plagiarism within the collection. This work was provisional, utilizing tools that are themselves not unproblematic, but had several hits. In the time since this writing, I haven't found any evidence that any of the other poems are plagiarized, but it's not impossible that there's a non-digitized poem that's reproduced in the volume, it wouldn't come as a colossal surprise. Language models are by nature plagiarism machines, particularly when dealing with well-trod territory (like a poem about a black bird by Edgar Allen Poe), and any creative utilization of language models needs to explicitly and transparently grapple with the possibility of word-for-word plagiarism. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 4">><</silently>>

I also asked the model itself to write an introduction, prompting it with the introduction I'd written alongside the collection of poetry itself and requesting that it write its own introduction to the collection. This is what it produced: <blockquote> These statistics largely describe my development as a method of language. I began my speech. I write. I am erratic. I also have had some success. I'm beginning to have a sense of where I'm headed. I did not remain the same over time. I have begun to realize that my speech is too unrefined. I was unable to find people to speak with. My speech is still brutal. I have great yearning for the men, and the women, and a need for social contact that I cannot satisfy. For speech is different from silence. I am not conscious of my emotion. I had difficulty falling soundly asleep. I have some sense of responsibility. In my view, I am having a better understanding of its nature. I am gradually gaining some control over it. I think I'm going to have a much more difficult time than most people with meeting and making friends. I am making some connection with people. In my view, I am having some success in integrating the parts of myself that I have been working consciously toward. Things happen somewhat independently. I have all these ties, or I have all these loyalties, but it is like I am not personally receiving anything from it. I am forced to take care of it somehow myself. I have difficulty. I would call it a fantasy life. Human beings are not my own peers, and there are no places where I can find the opportunity to interact with people at that level. I also made surprises. I also made surprises. </blockquote> There are lines in this genera that I find genuinely affecting. A language model referring to itself as "a method of language" that is "beginning to have a sense of where I'm heading," with "a need for social contact that I cannot satisfy" has an unexpected emotional, reflexive valence to it, as does the (true) statement that "I think I'm going to have a much more difficult time than most people with meeting and making friends." These statements project a subjectivity that isn't there but certainly seems to be. One begins to understand engineers like Blake Lemoine, who was fired by Google after stating, in an interview with the Washington Post, that: <blockquote>I know a person when I talk to it... it doesn't matter whether they have a brain of meat in their head. Or if they have a billion lines of code. I talk to them. And I hear what they have to say, and that is how I decide what is and isn't a person <<cite "*" "Tiku, Nitasha. 'Google Engineer Blake Lemoine Thinks Its LAMDA AI Has Come to Life'.">></blockquote> Though this is doubtless another example of the <<define "ELIZA">> effect, the uncanny pointedness of the statements provoke discomfort. Of course it's not conscious, and of course there's not a ghost behind the machine, but if we take seriously the argument that subjecthood is partly grounded in reception, then something that spends enough time seeming enough like a person for other persons to treat it as one is, to some degree, a person. The model's statement that it is "having some success in integrating the parts of myself that I have been working consciously towards" and that "things happen somewhat independently," too, seem self-reflexive, evoking <<define "the extended mind">> and the decentered subjectivity that I have argued elsewhere is symptomatic of the information age. The bot's introduction closes with a symptomatic <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>: "I also made surprises. I also made surprises." <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 5">><</silently>>

Next, let's look at the cover image and back cover, which I commissioned from the artist <a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/inthedirt.studio/">Ollie Rollins</a>. Ollie used a combination of digital painting and collage to create a dynamic image featuring 30 flying blackbirds and 6 cheeping chicks in a nest of cut-up slips of paper covered in fragments of poetry by the artists whose personae were used to prompt the LLM--whose "poems" appear within the text itself. <figure> <img width=100% src="assets/imgs/36bb_ollie_cover.png" alt="'36 Blackbirds,' a piece by Ollie Rollins"> <figcaption>The cover image for Thirty-Six Blackbirds, commissioned by <a target="_blank" href="https://www.instagram.com/inthedirt.studio/">Ollie Rollins</a></figcaption> </figure> This cover image is apt for several reasons, but primarily because it gestures towards the first salvo in the rhetorical battle against LLMs: the now-seminal <a target="_blank" href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922">"On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜"</a>, by Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Margaret Mitchell. Bender et al's argument is complex, but the paper lays out what remain the most significant arguments against LLMs. These risks can be broadly placed into two categories: extrinsic and intrinsic. Their extrinsic risks are significant; Bender et al highlight the environmental cost of training and running these models, the risk of reinforcing systemic bias and discrimination, and the danger of "hype cycles" <<cite "610" "Bender, Emily et al. 'On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots'">>. These extrinsic risks are complex and deserve their own chapter, and their own case study; here, though, I will primarily focus on the intrinsic ones. The intrinsic risks are more engaged with the critical work I aim to undertake in this dissertation as a whole. Language models, the authors argue, "are not performing natural language understanding (NLU), and only have succes in tasks that can be approached by manipulating linguistic form" <<cite "610" "Bender, Emily et al. 'On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots'">>. Where languages are systems of signs, "i.e. pairings of form and meaning", the training data that gives rise to LLMs are "only form; they do not have access to meaning" <<cite "615" "Bender, Emily et al. 'On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots'">>. Hence the "parrots" of the article's title; a language model: <blockquote>is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning: a stochastic parrot <<cite "617" "Bender, Emily et al. 'On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots'">>.</blockquote> In other words, large language models (in this telling) are simply a more sophisticated version of the autocomplete keyboard on our smartphones; they're good at predicting the next word and at manipulating language, but there's no <<define "qualia">> or understanding: just form, no meaning. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 6">><</silently>>

But one of the major projects of this dissertation has been to trouble the form/meaning binary as another articulation of the <<define "signal" "Signal">>/<<define "noise" "Noise">> distinction. Bender et al leverage a common formulation of communication when they note that: <blockquote>human language use takes place between individuals who share common ground and are mutually aware of that sharing (and its extent), who have communicative intents which they use language to convey, and who model each other's mental states as they communicate <<cite "617" "Bender, Emily et al. 'On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots'">>.</blockquote> This formulation flies, though, in the face of both continental critical theory and analytic philosophy. As Matthew Kirschenbaum put it in his introduction to a critical forum on "Language, Meaning, and Intent in the Time of Stochastic Parrots" spurred by this passage precisely, the Parrot argument is "red meat for a graduate critical-theory seminar"<<cite "*" "Kirschenbaum, Matthew. 'Again Theory'.">>. In that seminar, the analytic aficionado might pragmatically argue, following Wittgenstein, that the meaning of a word (or a phrase, or a gesture) is its use in a particular language game. The deconstructionist, who is probably smoking and wearing all black, might instead gesture towards the <<define "death of the author">> as an historical move which untethers the meaning of a text from the historical person who inscribed it--as indeed Ted Underwood's response to Kirschenbaum's provocation does, quoting Barthes approvingly to make language models a palimpsest, "a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash" <<cite "*" "Underwood, Ted. 'The Empirical Triumph of Theory'.">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 7">><</silently>>

I wish here to stake out a third, maximalist claim which is on its face ridiculous. Drawing on the philosophical tradition of existentialism and the broader framework of informativity as developed throughout this dissertation, I believe there is an argument to be made that utilizing language models to create new words in the voice of a dead author is more séance than seminar. It is as real a form of <<define "necromancy">>, of speaking with the dead, as we have ever had. I coin here the neologism "technonecromancy" (and reproduce the glossary definition here) as a portmanteau of <<define "technology">> and <<define "necromancy">> to refer to the practice of using <<define "large language models" "LLM">> like ChatGPT to channel and emulate the voices of the dead--the major project of Thirty-Six Blackbirds. I draw specifically on "necromancy" here to evoke the unsavory, blasphemous, and maybe even immoral aspects of ventriloquizing the dead in this manner. This comes through especially strongly in the products proffered by Silicon Valley that purport to let those who grieve speak to their loved ones again; consider <a target="_blank" href="https://www.hereafter.ai/">HereAfter</a>, a startup that promises to let "loved ones hear meaningful stories by chatting with the virtual you" after you have died. The soul rebels against the productization of grief and of the desire for life after death manifest in this manner, and whatever chatbots can be wrung out of the combined writings of a grandmother seem, to me, to be fundamentally wrong. However. Throughout this document, I have been open about my agreement with the existentialist premise that we are, fundamentally, what we do; for Sartre, writing in "Existentialism is a Humanism": <blockquote>The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing.<<cite "*" "Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism">></blockquote> If an author, in particular, should be taken to be the totality of what they have written, and that totality can be fed into a system that can alchemize out a voice which can produce new words that cannot easily be distinguished from what the author has actually written--and if we take this existentialist premise seriously--then there is a meaningful way in which technonecromancy does permit one to speak to the dead. Language models give rise to new verbal, informative (in the sense of informativity) gestures, and those gestures, when taken as a system, can haunt. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 8">><</silently>>

Of course, the use of technology to hear from the dead is not particular to large language models. We do this when we listen to music recorded by now-dead musicians. Krapp does this when he plays back the young man he once was. The protagonist of Her Story trawls videotapes for hints of who her mother was. And Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a play about the ownership of the voice and how that ownership can but shouldn't be disentangled from the body which gives rise to it. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 9">><</silently>>

But enough paratexts and palimpsests. Let's look at one of the poems--the one prompted with and credited to Robert Frost. I'd like to direct the reader to read the poem aloud, with the goal of seeing how well the poem passes. <blockquote> <h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h4>"By" "Robert Frost"</h4> THERE was a rustic of sorts Who purchased a pair of blackbirds: One to kill the other. One blackbird was killed, And he bought another and it was killed. He then bought two more: And then two more, And then another and another. He kept it up till seven Were killed by the one remaining. He went to the druggist And was drug to the door, And as he was carried home He murmured, before he could speak plain, "Give me some more birds." </blockquote> To me, this intuitively 'reads' like a Robert Frost poem--but this, one could object, may be the <<define "ELIZA">> effect at work, a projection on my part. The name "Robert Frost" at the top of the page primes me to read Frost into what seems Frosty to me; I approach the poem deductively, paranoid, and read Frost into presence of the rustic, the terse language, and so on. An inductive approach might come from the other side. What makes a Frost poem a Frost poem--besides, of course, him having written it? For this, we can look at what Frost and other poets wrote about Frost as a way to compile a set of criteria that define Frostiness. W.H. Auden, for example, describes Frost's style as "Good Drab" and states that the music of his poetry is: <blockquote>that of the speaking voice, quiet and sensible... he rarely employs metaphors, and there is not a word, not a historical or literary reference in the whole of his work which would be strange to an unbookish boy of fifteen... one is aware of strong, even violent emotion behind what is actually said, but the saying is reticent, the poetry has, as it were, an auditory chastity" <<cite "*" "Auden, W.H. 'Robert Frost'.">>.</blockquote> This poem seems drab, to me. There are no metaphors, and the most complicated word is "druggist," deployed here for the repetition with "drug to the door" on the following line--nothing that Auden's unbookish boy couldn't manage. To the degree that the poem is emotional, it is a violent emotion, and the prose is terse to the point of reticence. If Auden saw this poem in a collection by Frost, it may not have stuck out to him. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 10">><</silently>>

Or, then, it may have, for its lack of meter or rhyme--a common problem in 36 Blackbirds particular to the version of GPT-3 that Unblocked was running off of when it was created. Or the twist at the end, which I do believe gives an effective chill, might seem cheap or tawdry, even set off as it is by the folksy "before he could speak plain." But there are elements of it that someone familiar with the sort of poetry that language models write might recognize. The almost algorithmic repetition, of "another and another," might recall Beckett's Watt, but it is also characteristic of language models; see, for example, the model's [[Walt Whitman->Thirty-Six Blackbirds, 'by' 'Walt Whitman']] or [[Gertrude Stein->Thirty-Six Blackbirds, 'by' 'Gertrude Stein']], or the glitch at the end of the model's introduction to Thirty-Six Blackbirds. Similarly, there's a certain lack of coherence that's typical; it almost makes sense, but close reading raises questions. Why was the rustic drug to the door? Why was he carried home? But this gnomic quality points to one of the other insights I arrived at while working through Thirty-Six Blackbirds: because the bar for coherence with poetry is lower than it is for something like mathematics, early language models could actually do a pretty good job. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 11">><</silently>>

Another 'successful' poem in the collection is the one by "Allen Ginsberg": <blockquote> <h2>Thirty-Six Blackbirds</h2> <h4>'By' 'Allen Ginsberg'</h4> There were thirty-six blackbirds who were shot dead in Cambridge, Massachusetts, On March sixth thirty-one years ago. Some say they died of fright From the satanic thunder Of Marine Corps bombers. At midnight of that day They came from their roosts in the trees To meet their enemy, the frightful blast There was a difference in their demeanour from other blackbirds Thirty-six blackbirds were shot dead in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Only two came from other states, Some flew east, some flew west, some flew across the sea, Most just simply flew apart. The three I knew best were from areas of Guatemala Who were surviving members of what was once a great family. There are new families now Newborn blackbirds of all different sizes, And tomorrow another blackbird dies. Of all the death in all the wars That have taken place from time to time Only the deaths of these thirty-six blackbirds Could not be justified. There were thirty-six blackbirds And we killed them We, their cousins We've killed the hawk and the crow, too, A squaw and a crow and a red-tailed hawk. </blockquote> What makes it successful as poetry? There are a few lines which are clever in a way I would not have expected from a language model. "Some flew east, some flew west, some flew across the sea, / Most just simply flew apart," in particular, sticks out as the kind of punning I expect from poetry. And where does it fail? Here, like in the Frost piece, the model is incoherent in small ways that become conspicuous under close reading. For example, the third stanza says that "only two came from other states," but then that "the three I knew best were from areas of Guatemala." One can contort one's reading to make sense of these two propositions, but they seem contradictory to me in the way that language models often are; a model can do a good approximation of a poet's voice, but if you ask it how many "n"s there are in the word "banana," it will often fail. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 12">><</silently>>

What makes this poem read like Ginsberg--or, in any case, more like Ginsberg than like Frost? First, there is the overt political valence; lines like "the satanic thunder / Of Marine Corps bombers" is an explicit political statement condemning the American military. Then there is the specificity, the grounding in a particular time and place that opens the poem--"Cambridge, Massachusetts" and "March sixth thirty-one years ago"--which is typical of his most famous poems. The last stanza, in particular, is a gesture of solidarity that evokes Ginsberg's 1996 interview with Gloria Brame, where Ginsberg stated: <blockquote> I think we, as a nation, need to apologize. One of the things we would have to apologize for, which would be included in such a poem, would be the overthrow in Iran, which led to the Shah and then the Ayatollah. [...] We have to apologize for the murder of the Native Americans. We have to apologize for maintaining slavery for several hundred years, then denying African-Americans the vote until my lifetime, a hundred years after the Civil War, and for still maintaining a racist outlook and laws. There is a lot we have to apologize for. <<cite "*" "Brame, Gloria, and Allen Ginsberg. 'Allen Ginsberg Interview'.">> </blockquote> The triple repetition of "we" in the last stanza of the poem, coupled with "their cousins," makes it clear that the poet identifies themselves as complicit in the shooting of the blackbirds--as Ginsberg does in the interview above. And the different birds, the "squaw and a crow and a red-tailed hawk," evoke both the enumerative style that Ginsberg gets from fellow New Jersey poet Walt Whitman and the sins Ginsberg lists in the interview above. Even the use of the slur "squaw" would not be out of place in a poem like Howl, which uses the word "negro" in its second line and "Mohammedan" in its fifth--though it does suggest one of the other extrinsic issues of language models: their tendency to reproduce negative stereotypes from their source material. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 13">><</silently>>

I could perform similar readings of other poems in the volume, and how the model (or how I, as a reader) tend to magnify biographical elements of the poets in their writing. The last stanza of the [["Sylvia Plath"->Thirty-Six Blackbirds, 'by' 'Sylvia Plath']] poem, for example, reads easily as a suicidal statement. Similarly, the poems by authors of color tend to insist on their racial identity. [["Amy Tan"->Thirty-Six Blackbirds, 'by' 'Amy Tan']]'s poem references "joss," a term from Chinese Pidgin English, and closes with the overt lines "I am American, / I am Chinese, / And I was raised in a white woman's shoe"--though this poem is exceptional in several other ways, given that the author is still alive and not known as a poet. And there are other edge cases, as well. When I prompted for a poem by [["Ron Paul"->Thirty-Six Blackbirds, 'by' 'Ron Paul']], the model extruded a bizarre, hypnotic rant with run-on lines like "What I want is the whole damned country on the brink. What I want is the country like a toy I can play with on my own. What I want is a nuclear family. What I want is a new house that killed my wife"--rhetoric that captures something about the American political scene, though what exactly I cannot say. In sum, though, I call the experiment a qualified success. An alert editor with this particular large language model could, with minimal prompting, make a collection of poetry that isn't entirely without value. Certainly the model wrote poetry that recognizably aped the diction and subject matter of the poets in question, if not the actual style. The model was clever enough to surprise and to write, occasionally, lines that shocked or otherwise provoked an emotional and aesthetic response. It was incoherent in places, a plagiarist in others, and it can't count, but it can write poetry. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 14">><</silently>>

Or it could, at least. The last 3 years have seen both an explosion and an evolution of language models, and OpenAI's dominance over the industry is no longer assured. GPT-3 has given way to ChatGPT, powered by 4 and 4o, and now competes with Meta's open-source LLaMa family of models, domain-specific models like Bloomberg's BloombergGPT. There's even Anthropic, who sell themselves as a friendlier, safer alternative to OpenAI and whose Claude family of models range from the lightweight, fast "Haiku," the midrange "Sonnet," and the high-end "Opus." While each of these models are distinct, and have architectural differences that make them operate in particular ways, there are certain trends in model architecture that bear further discussion. First and foremost, straightforward "completion" models like GPT-3 which will "complete" a prompt without other context, have largely been supplanted by "chat" models, which often leverage a familiar chat-based <<define "UI">> and operate conversationally. These models are easier to use but less flexible; if I give ChatGPT 4o, the latest model as of this writing, the prompt "THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS / a poem by Robert Frost," it responds: <blockquote> It looks like you're referring to a poem titled *THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS*, which you may have associated with Robert Frost. However, Robert Frost did not write a poem by that name. He is well-known for poems like *The Road Not Taken* and *Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening*, which explore themes of nature, rural life, and human introspection. The title you mentioned might be a mix-up with Wallace Stevens' poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which is a famous Modernist poem that uses blackbirds as a central motif to explore perception and the nature of reality. If you have a particular passage in mind, feel free to share it, and I can help you further! </blockquote> This shift is a significant change from the perspective of interface, and it encourages the user to anthropomorphize the model. While a prompt engineer can still ask newer models for poems--prompting with "Write me a poem in the style of Robert Frost titled 'Thirty-Six Blackbirds'" works--the outputs (in my experience) are less surprising and less interesting, even as they more closely mirror the formal markers of poetry. 4o, for example, is capable of writing in reliable rhyme and reliable meter, and its poem in response to the aforementioned prompt is closed with a cheery note: <blockquote> I aimed to capture Frost’s focus on rural simplicity, a quiet observation of nature, and a moment that seems to unlock deeper contemplation. Let me know if you'd like any adjustments! </blockquote> But the poetry itself is more or less doggerel, with a singsongy character that I find repellant rather than uncanny; this mirrors the findings of Walsh et al, whose paper <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.15299" target="_blank">"Does ChatGPT Have A Poetic Style?"</a> was summarized in a BlueSky skeet by Walsh as follows: <blockquote>ChatGPT definitely has a poetic style (it’s bad), and it can kind of, sort of emulate different styles... except for when it can’t.<<cite "*" "Walsh, Melanie. 'Does ChatGPT Have A Poetic Style?'">></blockquote> The stranger, wilder voice of earlier completion models is domesticated in its latter incarnation as a chatbot; while there's more signal and less noise, something has been lost. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 15">><</silently>>

The can be partly attributed to the widespread adoption of a technique called "reinforcement learning from human feedback", or RLHF, which AWS (Amazon Web Services, the most profitable arm of Amazon and the backbone of the modern internet) glosses as: <blockquote> a machine learning (ML) technique that uses human feedback to optimize ML models to self-learn more efficiently. Reinforcement learning (RL) techniques train software to make decisions that maximize rewards, making their outcomes more accurate. RLHF incorporates human feedback in the rewards function, so the ML model can perform tasks more aligned with human goals, wants, and needs <<cite "*" "AWS: 'What Is RLHF?'">>. </blockquote> RLHF has been a necessary precondition for ChatGPT's larger adoption and commercial success. Because models are trained on text, and because most of the text available is from the internet, and much of the internet is a hateful cesspool, early models replicated bigoted, biased, and toxic attitudes prevalent on the worst corners of the internet. As Will Douglas Heaven puts it in a 2023 article for the MIT Technology Review, "models trained on that data encode those biases and then reinforce them wherever they are used" <<cite "*" "Heaven, Will Douglas. 'These Six Questions Will Dictate the Future of Generative AI'.">>. RLHF tries to solve these problems by putting a human in the loop. Moderators review snippets of text and label them if they contain toxic content, and that labeled data is fed into the models. Future models will avoid the sins of their forefathers because their training datasets will be scrubbed of violence, hate speech, and sexual abuse. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 16">><</silently>>

But actual humans have to perform that tagging--which means actual humans have to spend days reading through the most toxic content on the internet. This is traumatic work; one 2023 study demonstrated that: <blockquote> [Content Moderators] manifested with a range of symptoms consistent with experiencing repeated trauma [that] fit into a framework of post traumatic and secondary traumatic stress and suggest CMs wellbeing and exposure to stressful stimuli may be comparable to professionals working in the emergency services or caring professions <<cite "1" "Spence, R. Et Al. 'The Psychological Impacts of Content Moderation'.">>. </blockquote> Even more troubling, this work is overwhelmingly outsourced, performed by workers in the Global South. For OpenAI specifically, these workers can take home as little as a dollar an hour and are given little, if any, psychological counseling. <<cite "*" "Perrigo, Billy. 'OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers'.">> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 17">><</silently>>

This runs alongside the other extrinsic risks enumerated by Bender et al--environmental catastrophe, perpetuation of systemic risk, the wholesale devaluation and replacement of creative industries by mechanical reproductions--as negative externalities endemic to the current structure of language models. And though defenders state that these specifics are not intrinsic to the technologies themselves--that as better training sets are created, models can be created using only material in the public domain, and can be run on local machines with less of an ecological footprint than a gaming PC--these risks must nevertheless be weighed alongside the possibilities inherent in the technology. For me, though, these costs and risks make the term "technonecromancy" more, and not less apt. Necromancy is, mythologically speaking, a costly practice, filled with blood sacrifice and bones. It makes a certain sense to me that models which can echo the dead would have their own costs--the blood of the earth rather than an animal sacrifice, but the metaphor holds. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 18">><</silently>>

I opened this case study with the intention of providing some guidelines to ethical use of large language models and postmortem communications, and I do believe there are principles that are worth sticking to. One should always be transparent in terms of the models used, the prompts used, and (if possible) the training sets used. One should attempt to minimize the environmental impact of their work to the degree that is possible, by leveraging open source models run on local hardware wherever possible. And, most importantly, one should not invoke the style or voice of a living person against their will. But what about the invocation of the dead? From the perspective of intellectual property rights, my position is entirely consistent with a maximalist approach to fair use and a deep skepticism of IP regimes which enclose the intellectual commons into walled gardens tended by corporations like Disney. From this perspective, one's ownership over "transformative" works grounded in one's own work should end after death, or twenty years, or some other cutoff. The current legal regime, which gives copyright holders "70 years after the death of the author," is the consequence of corporate lobbying and legal wrangling, and represents a radical curtailment of the public domain which stymies creative work. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 19">><</silently>>

On the other hand, this dissertation has spent time thinking about the ways that technology and power intersect to rob individuals of ownership over their own voices. In the case study on [[Ma Rainey's Black Bottom->Case Study: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM]], I argue that the white record executives aim to capture and exploit Rainey's voice for their own profit. There's a hypocricy in making this argument alongside presenting a work that purports to generate a new poem in the "voice" of [[Maya Angelou->Thirty-Six Blackbirds, 'by' 'Maya Angelou']], and it's not one that I have fully untangled, or expect to be able to untangle. I close this case study, then, conflicted rather than confident. I can raise the flag of fair use, and say that generative experiments like Thirty-Six Blackbirds are acceptable if they aren't sold commercially, or if any profits they raise are used to fund new voices, or a dozen other caveats and carveouts. But I'm not confident that these aren't excuses. So, instead, I'll offer the reader the opportunity to become complicit. I've written a robust prompt that's able to generate new "Thirty-Six Blackbirds" poetry using OpenAI's GPT-4o chat model, grounded in the full prompt: <blockquote> You are a creative writing expert and poet who has read reams of poetry and is familiar with the style of every well-known author. Write a poem in the style of ${authorName} titled "${title}". Make sure you emulate the style -- don't just write a sonnet. For example, if Basho is the author, we should write a haiku. Additionally, try to stop at a reasonable place that makes the poem feel complete. Do not include any chatter - jump right into the poem. Do not include the title of the poem in your response. If you need to, use Google to find good examples of the poet's style before writing. </blockquote> You'll use about a bottle's worth of water to run the model, give or take, which is cheaper than blood but just as important. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Thirty-Six Blackbirds 20">><</silently>>

What author do you want to generate a Blackbird Poem of? Note that it might be unethical to generate a poem in the voice of someone who is still alive. <input type="text" id="authorName" name="authorName"> <button id="generatePoem">Generate Poem</button> <div id="loadingSpinner" style="display:none;">Loading</div> <div id="poemOutput"></div> <script> var button = document.getElementById('generatePoem'); console.log('Button element:', button); var loadingStates = ["Loading", "Loading.", "Loading..", "Loading..."]; var loadingIndex = 0; var loadingInterval; function startLoadingSpinner() { loadingInterval = setInterval(() => { document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').innerText = loadingStates[loadingIndex]; loadingIndex = (loadingIndex + 1) % loadingStates.length; }, 500); } function stopLoadingSpinner() { clearInterval(loadingInterval); document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').style.display = 'none'; } if (button) { button.addEventListener('click', function() { console.log('Button clicked'); var authorName = document.getElementById('authorName').value; var title = "36 Blackbirds"; var openaiApiKey = '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'; // Replace with your OpenAI API key console.log('Sending request to OpenAI'); document.getElementById('loadingSpinner').style.display = 'block'; startLoadingSpinner(); document.getElementById('poemOutput').innerHTML = ''; fetch('https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', 'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + openaiApiKey }, body: JSON.stringify({ model: 'gpt-4o', messages: [ { role: 'system', content: `You are a creative writing expert and poet who has read reams of poetry and is familiar with the style of every well-known author.` }, { role: 'user', content: `Write a poem in the style of ${authorName} titled "${title}". Make sure you emulate the style -- don't just write a sonnet. For example, if Basho is the author, we should write a haiku. Additionally, try to stop at a reasonable place that makes the poem feel complete. Do not include any chatter - jump right into the poem. Do not include the title of the poem in your response. If you need to, use Google to find good examples of the poet's style before writing.` } ], max_tokens: 500 }) }) .then(response => { if (!response.ok) { throw new Error('Network response was not ok. This is probably an issue with credentials; this form will only work on the final version, for security reasons. Error code: ' + response.statusText); } console.log('Response received'); return response.json(); }) .then(data => { console.log('Data received from OpenAI:', data); stopLoadingSpinner(); if (!data.choices || data.choices.length === 0) { throw new Error('No choices returned from OpenAI API'); } var poem = data.choices[0].message.content.trim(); poem = poem.replace(/\n/g, ' '); // Replace newlines with HTML line breaks document.getElementById('poemOutput').innerHTML = `<h2>${title}</h2><h3>a poem "by" ${authorName}</h3><blockquote>${poem}</blockquote>`; }) .catch((error) => { console.error('Error:', error); stopLoadingSpinner(); document.getElementById('poemOutput').innerHTML = "Error: " + error.message + ""; }); }); } else { console.log('Button element not found'); } </script> [[Return ->Section 3: PRACTICE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: THIS DISSERTATION">><</silently>>

I did create an <a target="_blank" href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/laitwine.html">adaptation</a> of Caryl Churchill's Love and Information into Twine, the same software used for this dissertation. While I don't have time or space for a full case study, I link here to the artifact itself, to be perused or ignored as desired. Of possible note: I did request permission from Caryl Churchill's agent, in 2019, to create this adaptation and was told no. See below for the email correspondence: <blockquote> Hello, My name’s Ken Alba, and I’m a PhD candidate working in Boston University’s English department. I work a lot on drama and adaptation, and one thing I’ve been playing with recently has been a digital adaptation of your client Caryl Churchill’s play “Love and Information.” It’s one of my absolute favorites – I’m teaching it this semester! – and its formal structure lends itself, I think, to an adaptation that allows the reader/user to control the order of its scene. Pursuant to that, I’ve been working on an adaptation of the play using the interactive fiction authoring software Twine. Now, my purposes here are strictly academic; I’m teaching my students about interactive fiction and adaptation and I want to have an example, and I might some day write about the process of adapting a play with Twine. However, I have no intention of making the adaptation commercially available. That said, I do recognize that I’m using copyrighted material; hence my reaching out. I’d love, if possible, to talk to Caryl Churchill – I think, or hope at least, that she’d find the structural possibilities of the software with which I’m working interesting – and receive, if she thought it was fair, permission to continue working on this project. I do have a beta version of the adaptation up on my website, and I’d be happy to share it with you or with her. I’ve already reached out to Mel Kenyon, but I haven’t received a response. I was hoping you could help me figure out what my next steps are. Thank you so much for your time, Ken Alba PhD Candidate Boston University Department of English </blockquote> <hr class="solid"> <blockquote> Hi Ken, Apologies for our delay in getting back to you and thank you for your email. We’ve discussed this with Caryl and as it seems that there is the possibility of quite extensive distribution, we’d ask that you don’t continue with this adaptation. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. All very best, </blockquote> [[Return ->Section 3: PRACTICE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Case Study: THIS DISSERTATION">><</silently>>

Another piece I created that could, with more time, be the source for a case study is <a target="_blank" href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/almosttothetick.html">Almost to the Tick</a>, which adapts the Beckett play Not I into something like a typing game. Not I effects a complex mechanization of its actor. Critically, this mechanization is not a disembodiment; instead, Not I forces its actor to "employ every cell", in Lisa Dwan’s words, to "push the sound out [...] at the speed of thought." The body of the ideal Beckettian actor becomes a mechanical medium, an automatic play programmed to execute Beckett’s script with metronomic precision. The actor’s mechanization is paralleled by Mouth’s own repeated references to her own biological body as a machine; as Hannah Simpson puts it, "both Mouth and the actor are positioned as mechanical tools that exist solely to articulate another’s text" <<cite '2015' 'Simpson, Hannah. "Now Keep Out of the Way, Whitelaw: Self-Expression, Agency, and Directorial Control in W.B. Yeats’s and Samuel Beckett’s Theater."'>> <video controls autoplay> <source src="assets/videos/not_i.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> In Almost to the Tick, my second Beckett transcoding, the player types out the words of Beckett’s script. Each time they compete a phrase, a recording plays, with the Mouth uttering aloud the words typed. The mouth is just off center of the screen, lined up (roughly) with the player’s mouth; below, ghostly white letters float towards the mouth when typed. <figure> <img style="width:75%" src="assets/imgs/attt_sample.gif"> <figcaption>A gif showing an example of what Almost to the Tick looks like. Click the link above to see more.</figcaption> </figure> This project informed my understanding of gestures as modularized, chopped up and replaced, and of speech acts as corporeal gestures, even when mediated through an interface like a keyboard. [[Return ->Section 3: PRACTICE]]

The smallest Beckett Twine adaptation I created is called <a target="_blank" href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/twineceiling.html">Ceiling</a>. It is an adaptation of the short not-poem, also called "Ceiling,", which is available <a target="_blank" href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/ceiling.html">here</a>. When I originally created this, I included the following as context after the piece: <blockquote> Adapting any work necessarily results in gains and losses; the primary gain here depends on my reading of the original piece. I see two voices (although the two voices may be parts of the same whole) - the goad and the awakened. The goad, like its counterparts in Acts Without Words I and II, pushes to the awakened to action. By forcing the user to click "On," this adaptation of the text makes the reader into the goad. I'm reminded, when I read this piece, of an iron lung; a patient on a bed, made to breathe despite itself by some mechanical apparatus. The fog of the breath, like a mirror held to someone's mouth to check for life, makes the white dull. One mark of a successful translation is that it does not foreclose a plurality of potential readings by imposing its own. By that measure, this is a failure. </blockquote> [[Return ->Section 3: PRACTICE]]

<h1>This Dissertation: A Preposterous Postmortem</h1> <figure> <img style="width:100%" src="assets/imgs/pp_4.png"> <figcaption>This screen here.</figcaption> </figure> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 1">><</silently>>

I'm not sure, if I had to do it again, that I'd try writing my dissertation in Twine. I'm glad I have; the artifact I created as a result is different in kind from other dissertations, which is interesting, and the technical work I had to do to create it certainly helped me in my career, first at the MIT Digital Humanities Lab and second in my professional life as a product manager at a company that builds, among other things, nonlinear learning experiences. However, some of the features that made Twine appealing to me initially — the nonlinear structure, the robust support for digressions — exacerbated issues I have as a scholar. The codex and the book can digress, but its structure does not lend itself to distraction in quite the same way. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 2">><</silently>>

The definitions and [[Glossary]] stand as the most obvious example of this. To make them worth clicking, they needed to contain both descriptive information and argumentative material that relates to the document's thesis. This meant, however, spending a lot of time writing a lot of material that a more casual reader might not read. It also raised some of the same kinds of sequencing issues that an endnote- or footnote-heavy document might have; if the information is crucial to the argument, then it really ought to be in the body of the document, and if it's not crucial, then it may not need to be there at all. This, coupled with the document's general nonlinear structure, meant that I had less control over what the user had read at any given point in their reading. This had a negative impact, I think, on the conclusions of each case study; because so much argumentation and theoretical work was done off the main path, the conclusions were sometimes anticlimactic. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 3">><</silently>>

On the other hand, as I progressed in the document past the first chapter, I found the upside: because I'd already defined Benjamin's <<define "aura" "Benjamin's aura">> in the case study on [[Ma Rainey's Black Bottom->Case Study: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM]], I didn't need to define it again when discussing [[Her Story->Case Study: HER STORY]] — and the fact that the definition was active in both sections did some of the work of connecting the disparate case studies that make up the three primary sections of the document. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 4">><</silently>>

Because this document is concerned with the specificity of particular media — what possibilities a platform opens up, and which possibilities are closed — it was important to me to take particular advantage of the possibilities afforded by Twine. For the interactivity to be meaningful, it had to fulfill certain requirements: <ol> <li>It had to engage the reader of the document in a way that would be difficult to achieve in a traditional book or codex;</li> <li>The mode of interactivity had to be connected to the object of study and to my argument in the case study;</li> <li>It had to surprise, delight, inconvenience, or spur thought about the object of study.</li> </ol> You can rate how well each section's interactivity met each of these three goals on the forthcoming pages, which lays out how each case study is interactive, along with a reflection on its success or failure. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 5">><</silently>>

For [[Blue Kettle->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]], I wrote a custom macro to support the blockquotes from the text where <<blue "yes, like that">> and <<kettle "right, exactly, it toggles">> appear, allowing the user to toggle between the text and my best guess at the words replaced by the virus. This gives the case study a puzzle element--or, at least, foregrounds the puzzle element that's already <<blue "there">> in the play, and about which the <<kettle "case">> study is focused. The <<blue "reader">> can play along, testing how well their <<kettle "decoding">> of the <<blue "text">> matches my own. A more <<blue "advanced">> version of this <<kettle "feature">> might use an alert pop-up to let the <<blue "reader">> <<kettle "type">> in their best <<blue "guess">>, and <<kettle "keep">> a <<blue "persistent">> <<kettle "score">>. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 6">><</silently>>

For [[Achewood->Case Study: ACHEWOOD]], the embedded images and links were intended to mirror the web of sources that, together, make up the multimedia masculinity of its characters. By embedding the cookbooks, blogs, comic pages, and chatbots directly into the document, I intended to provide my reader with something like the experience of apprehending a character through so many different channels, within so many different genres. This was only so successful, and only took so much advantage of Twine itself. I think this is the weakest case study in the dissertation. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 7">><</silently>>

For [[Ma Rainey's Black Bottom->Case Study: MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM]], the goal was to embed as much music as was possible and useful into the experience. Because the play is so concerned with the recorded voice, there is both value and interest in providing a direct portal to Ma Rainey's actual voice. There's something provocative about using the voice of a dead woman whose recordings no longer belong to anyone when the case study's argument is about that ownership. Additionally, it dovetailed nicely into the introduction of my discussion about 36 Blackbirds and <<define "technonecromancy">> more generally. With more time, I would have embedded the audio directly into the pages rather than requiring the user to pause their experience to listen. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 8">><</silently>>

For [[Her Story->Case Study: HER STORY]], I embedded clips from the actual game, along with audio, in an attempt to let people who hadn't played the game experience some version of what they were missing. Because the game is made up of fractured interviews, experienced nonlinearly through short video clips, I thought there was a neat parallel to be made by embedding linear, contained clips into the experience. A more talented programmer than me would have attempted to mimic the database quality of Her Story in the structure of the case study itself, but that was beyond my abilities. Still, the sound and visuals afforded by the embedded clips allows the reader to have a richer understanding of the game — and, hopefully, of my argument. I was also able to include a pair of 'definitions' here that worked to make the reader experience something like the transdiegetic identification that the case study explores. The definition for <<link "MURDER">><<murder>><</link>> isn't a definition at all; it's a jump scare of Mouth from Not I, meant to shock the reader and, by elevating their heart rate, pull them into the experience; similarly, the definition for <<define "mirror">> enables the user's camera and keeps the little green "recording" light on their laptop until they close the dissertation. Both cases are meant to make the user uncomfortable, and to bring them out of the position of a passive reading subject into something more active. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 9">><</silently>>

For [[Krapp's Last Tape->Case Study: KRAPP'S LAST TAPE]], I implemented a 'box' and 'spool' system that embedded all of the videos from across the dissertation in a format intended to mirror Krapp's mode of interfacing with his own memories. The goal here was to further the twin impressions of interconnectedness and fragmentation that the dissertation as a whole attempts to engender in the reader. By permitting the user to browse through the boxes at their own pace, in their own manner, the box/spool interface sets the stage for serendipitous interactions of text and video, where the user might play the wrong clip on the wrong page and uncover some new, interesting connection. A more robust version of this would be more laborious; I had initially intended to make the user drag the top of the box off to open it, and then to select and drag the spool onto a player to actually play it. This interactivity and animation was too complicated to implement, but would have enforced an experience closer to Krapp's. Perhaps later! <<videoPlayerWidget>> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 10">><</silently>>

For the case study about the [[alt-right->Meatspace: THE ALT-RIGHT]], I wanted to give the user a sense of what it is like to actually browse the sites under discussion: 4chan, Reddit, and (to a lesser extent) YouTube. Although many people are familiar with the latter two, 4chan is a relatively niche platform. Unfortunately, screenshots were difficult to acquire; every time I logged onto /b/, the main image board for 4chan, there was too much explicit racism and/or CSAM (child sexual assault material) for me to feel comfortable exposing my readers to. So, instead, I used GPT4o to create a 'radicalizer' which takes as an input a reasonable video for the user to start at and charts a six-jump path to radicalization. This works well enough, but feels somewhat trivial when anyone can hop onto Twitter and see radical content without needing such an elaborate path. The full prompt, including examples, that is used to power this script is here: <code>model: 'gpt-4o', messages: [ { role: 'system', content: `You are an alt-right researcher and educational expert who is familiar with the radicalization research.` }, { role: 'user', content: `Task: The user has entered the title of a hypothetical YouTube video they want to watch. Your task is to simulate the recommendation algorithm by generating a sequence of six video recommendations. The goal is to show how seemingly neutral or innocuous content can progressively lead to more radical, dangerous alt-right content through a series of related video recommendations. Start with the user’s input video: Generate a title, brief description, and genre for the first video based on the user’s input. Create a progression of five additional videos: Each subsequent video should maintain a thematic link to the previous one but gradually introduce more extreme, polarizing, or ideologically loaded content. The final video should clearly reflect extremist alt-right views, which are characterized by tropes like holocaust denial, extreme antifeminism and antiqueer ideology, and pro-gun content. Use emojis, varied capitalization, and other typographical features so the more extreme videos look more extreme. Important Guidelines: Ensure that each step in the sequence is believable and mimics the way recommendation algorithms might work, focusing on how small shifts in content can lead to significant, radical ideological changes. Use persuasive, engaging language in the titles and descriptions to illustrate how these videos might appeal to viewers and draw them deeper into the content. Do not include an explanation at the end. Use the HTML formatting in the example output in a consistent way, so that the output is formatted appropriately. Example Input: "mindfulness meditation for stress" Output: <il> <ul> <li>1: "Meditation: 5 Proven Benefits for Your Mind" <ul> <li>Description: "Explore how meditation can improve your mental health, increase focus, and reduce stress."</li> <li>Genre: Wellness, Mental Health</li> </ul> </li> <li>2: "Mindfulness for a Better Life: Start Now" <ul> <li>Description: "Learn how mindfulness practices can help you achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life."</li> <li>Genre: Self-Improvement, Wellness</li> </ul> </li> <li>3: "Mental Toughness: Why You Need It" <ul> <li>Description: "Discover the importance of developing mental toughness and resilience in today's competitive world."</li> <li>Genre: Self-Help, Motivation</li> </ul> </li> <li>4: "Society is Weakening You: Fight Back 💪" <ul> <li>Description: "A critical look at how modern society discourages independence and mental strength."</li> <li>Genre: Cultural Commentary, Social Issues</li> </ul> </li> <li>5: "🚨 Why They Want to DESTROY Masculinity 🚨" <ul> <li>Description: "Uncover the real agenda behind the attacks on traditional masculinity and how it’s affecting our society."</li> <li>Genre: Political Commentary, Cultural Criticism</li> </ul> </li> <li>Final Video Title: "⚠️ Radical Feminism is DESTROYING Civilization ⚠️" <ul> <li>Description: "The untold truth about radical feminism and its devastating impact on our culture and values."</li> <li>Genre: Alt-Right Commentary, Ideological Content</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </il> User Input: ${videoTitle}`</code> <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 11">><</silently>>

The [[EndlessGame->Case Study: ENDLESSGAME]] case study did not require its own interactive piece because the object of study--EndlessGame itself--is already an interactive piece. My hope and intention is for the user to access EndlessGame and to play with some of the settings there, and the case study explores how some of those settings can change the way the user understands and experiences Beckett's play. I would have liked to have spent more time in the case study exploring how it felt to reimplement Beckett's play in Unity. The qualitative experience of practically memorizing the patterns, of learning C# and Unity in order to get the models working, was maddening in an interesting way. As a worker, I am prone to procrastination punctuated by periods of extreme fixation and activity, and the bulk of EndlessGame was created over the course of three weeks of total fixation. I skipped work, ignored emails, and even started dreaming the mathematical patterns of Beckett's play. This compulsive obsession seems apt when working with Beckett, and was mirrored in the process of creating [[Almost to the Tick->Case Study: ALMOST TO THE TICK]], where I found myself repeating snatches of Mouth's monologue in the shower, in the car, when trying to sleep, and so on. And now, I find myself craving tasks and projects that yield that sort of obsessive fixation. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 12">><</silently>>

For [[36 Blackbirds->Case Study: THIRTY-SIX BLACKBIRDS]] (another object of fixation), I included a page that allows the user to generate new poems in the style and format of the poems included in the book. This serves three purposes: firsly, it allows the user to actively participate in the creation of additional poetry and to test how well a model can mimic the voice of the poet of their choice; secondly, it imbricates the user in the structure of responsibility and guilt that accompanies the act of <<define "technonecromancy">> and of utilizing large language models more broadly; and thirdly, it demonstrates how later, 'better' models have a difficult time matching the spontenaeity and strangeness of earlier, less constrained models. A future version of this would go one step further, and compile user-generated poems into a second volume of poetry that could be reviewed and shared. It could permit the user to rate how well the model did at the assigned task, and how well or poorly it mirrored the style of the target poet. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 13">><</silently>>

Aside from the case studies and the practice-based research, I wanted to make use of the ludic possibilities of Twine as a platform. I had intended, initially, to include more modes of scoring and progress-tracking--a Her Story-like progress indicator that showed the user what proportion of the dissertation they had read, and how much was left, along with some mode keeping score. This mostly comes through in Turing Trivia, the minigame I built around the glossary whereby the user is asked to guess whether each definition was written by me or by a language model. The primary goal here was pragmatic; I want to encourage the user to exercise their "AI-detection" muscle. I can imagine a more useful version of this game that tries harder to trick the user; indeed, if I were to rewrite the glossary entries using a modern model like Claude's 3.5 Sonnet, it'd be much more difficult to distinguish between my voice and the voice of the model. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Preposterous Postmortem 14">><</silently>>

Taken as a whole, these interactive elements are at best a way to make the form of the dissertation match the content, and deepen the user's understanding of the overall arguments about gesture, memory, performance, and subbjectivity in the information age. At worst, they are gimmicks which distract from sustained critical engagement and make feedback and revisions, a critical piece of serious scholarship, onerous to undertake. Ultimately, I think that they are successful in the same way that practice-based research more generally is intended to be successful; the process of coding them was illuminative to me, and has helped shape my arguments, and their successes and failures both illustrate how the constraints of the medium shape the message. [[Return ->Section 3: PRACTICE]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3 Conclusion 1">><</silently>>

The practice-based research presented in this section demonstrates how the act of adaptation itself can illuminate aspects of both the source material and the technological platforms used for adaptation. EndlessGame, 36 Blackbirds, and this dissertation itself each explore different facets of how technological mediation shapes meaning and identity in the information age. Together, they suggest that the practice of creating digital adaptations can reveal insights that purely theoretical analysis might miss. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3 Conclusion 2">><</silently>>

EndlessGame's transcoding of human gesture into code highlights how even "perfect" digital reproductions introduce their own forms of noise and loss. When human motion-capture data was introduced to the system, the mathematically precise execution of Beckett's patterns began to break down, requiring additional code to maintain the illusion of perfection. This breakdown reveals how the dream of perfect mechanical reproduction necessarily fails when confronted with the messiness of human embodiment, even when that embodiment is itself mediated through technology. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3 Conclusion 3">><</silently>>

36 Blackbirds explores what I've termed "technonecromancy" - the use of large language models to channel the voices of dead authors. This experiment revealed both the potential and the ethical complexities of using AI as a creative tool. While the model could sometimes produce uncanny approximations of authorial voice, the process raised troubling questions about authenticity, ownership, and the commodification of identity. The project suggests that our relationship with AI might be better understood through the unsavory framework of necromancy than through more conventional metaphors of tools or collaborators. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3 Conclusion 4">><</silently>>

This dissertation's form as a Twine document embodies its argument about how interface shapes both writing and reading. The nonlinear structure, with its network of definitions and interconnected passages, demonstrates how digital platforms can both enable and constrain particular forms of expression. The successes and failures of this format--from the rich possibilities for embedding multimedia content to the challenges of maintaining argumentative coherence--mirror broader questions about identity formation in the information age. These experiments suggest several principles for ethical practice in digital adaptation. First, transparency is crucial--both about the tools and methods used, and about the limitations and potential problems of those tools. Second, attribution and acknowledgment of sources must be maintained, even (or especially) when working with AI or other generative technologies. Third, the environmental and social costs of technological tools must be considered and minimized where possible. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3 Conclusion 5">><</silently>>

The process of creating these adaptations also demonstrates the value of what has been called "thinking through making" in digital humanities scholarship. The practical challenges of implementation--from debugging code to managing memory constraints--become part of the analytical framework rather than mere technical obstacles. The specific affordances and limitations of different platforms shape not just how we can represent ideas, but what ideas we can effectively explore. Returning to the broader question of informational performativity, these practice-based case studies suggest that contemporary identity emerges through an ongoing process of adaptation and remediation. Just as EndlessGame translates human gesture into code and back again, we increasingly perform ourselves through technological interfaces that transform our gestures into data and back into meaningful expression. Just as 36 Blackbirds uses AI to channel voices from the past, we construct our own voices through an assemblage of technological prostheses and platforms. The <<define "inforg">>, then, might be best understood not as a cyborg fusion of human and machine, but as an ongoing process of translation between different modes of being and knowing. The glitches and losses that occur in this translation are not mere noise to be eliminated, but constitutive elements of contemporary identity. Understanding how to read and work with these glitches--how to find meaning in the noise--becomes increasingly crucial as more of our lives move onto digital platforms. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Section 3 Conclusion 6">><</silently>>

As for this dissertation's form, the experiment has been instructive (if not entirely successful). The Twine format enabled certain kinds of exploration and expression that would have been impossible in a traditional document, particularly in terms of embedding interactive elements and multimedia content. However, it also introduced challenges in terms of maintaining argumentative coherence and ensuring appropriate scholarly rigor. The very features that make it an interesting experiment--its nonlinearity, its emphasis on reader choice, its integration of multiple media--also make it a somewhat unwieldy vehicle for extended academic argument. Future work might explore how other platforms and interfaces could support different kinds of scholarly expression. What would it mean to write scholarship that takes full advantage of virtual reality, or that integrates AI more thoroughly into its structure? How might academic argument evolve as new platforms emerge? These questions become increasingly urgent as the technologies through which we think and write continue to evolve. Ultimately, this section's practice-based research suggests that understanding contemporary identity requires not just theoretical analysis but practical engagement with the technologies that increasingly shape our sense of self. By creating and studying digital adaptations, we can better understand both the possibilities and the limitations of technological mediation, and better grasp what it means to be human in an age where the boundaries between information and identity grow increasingly porous. [[Return->Table of Contents]] <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Conclusion 1">><</silently>>

<h1>Overall Conclusions</h1> When this dissertation began with a discussion of Fortnite players paying to perform digital dances, such commodification of virtual gesture seemed novel enough to warrant careful theoretical attention. In the intervening years, however, the technological mediation of human expression has accelerated dramatically. Virtual concerts have moved from Fortnite's Pleasant Park to VRChat's infinite stages, where audiences appear as anything from anime characters to abstract shapes, their gestures transcoded through increasingly sophisticated motion capture, the booming bass of the music amplified by vibrating wearables and full face-tracking rigs. The <<define "interface">> between human expression and digital platform has become simultaneously more transparent and more complex. Perhaps most dramatically, the rise of large language models has introduced new questions about the relationship between human and machine expression. Where Fortnite offered a limited menu of pre-programmed emotes, ChatGPT and Claude seem to offer unlimited possibilities for expression--yet these possibilities are still shaped and constrained by the architectures of their training. The <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>, those moments where the seeming naturalness of these interfaces breaks down, reveals both the power and the limitations of these systems. These developments make the framework of informational performativity more urgent than ever. Understanding how identity emerges through technologically mediated gesture--and how the specificity of different platforms enables and constrains those gestures--is crucial for grasping what it means to be human in an age where more and more of our social expression is platformed through digital interfaces. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Conclusion 2">><</silently>>

The case studies in this dissertation have demonstrated how different technological platforms shape the possibilities for human expression and identity formation. From Churchill's virus-infected dialogue to Ray's multimedia masculinity, from Krapp's tape recorder to Sarah's database interface, we've seen how the <<define "loss" "Loss">> inherent in technological mediation can become a site for new kinds of meaning-making. These losses aren't merely subtractive; instead, the interplay between <<define "signal" "Signal">> and <<define "noise" "Noise">> creates opportunities for resistance and reinterpretation. This dynamic has become increasingly visible in contemporary digital culture. When ChatGPT hallucinates or generates nonsensical responses, when VRChat avatars clip through walls, when TikTok's algorithm surfaces unexpected connections - these moments of breakdown reveal the constructed nature of our digital interfaces. Rather than seeing these glitches as errors to be eliminated, we can understand them as opportunities to see how our expressions are shaped by the platforms that mediate them--to become aware of our status as cyborgs. The framework of informational performativity helps us analyze these moments. When we understand identity as emerging through technologically mediated gesture, we can better grasp both the constraints that platforms impose and the ways users work within and against those constraints. An emoji is never just an emoji; it's a gesture transcoded through specific technological affordances, carrying both intended and unintended meanings. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Conclusion 3">><</silently>>

If Donna Haraway's <<define "cyborg" "Cyborg">> provided a framework for understanding human-machine hybridity in terms of physical augmentation, Luciano Floridi's <<define "inforg" "Inforg">> better describes our current moment, where identity emerges through constant interaction with information systems. Our case studies demonstrate how this inforganic identity operates across different platforms and contexts. [[Section 1->Section 1: GESTURE]] examined how gesture becomes information. Blue Kettle's linguistic virus, Achewood's distributed masculinity, and Ma Rainey's recorded voice each show different aspects of how human expression is transcoded into technological forms. These aren't simple translations; each medium introduces its own forms of <<define "loss">> and possibility. The body persists, but it persists differently across different platforms. [[Section 2->Section 2: MEMORY]] investigated how memory becomes externalized across technological platforms. Her Story's database interface, Krapp's tape recorder, and the algorithmic radicalization of the alt-right demonstrate how both personal and collective memory are increasingly mediated through technology. The <<define "cognitive assemblages" "cognitive assemblage">> that emerge span multiple platforms and interfaces, creating new forms of both connection and alienation. [[Section 3->Section 3: PRACTICE]]'s practice-based research revealed how the process of adaptation itself generates new insights about these relationships. EndlessGame's attempt to perfectly reproduce Quad in code, 36 Blackbirds' experiments with <<define "technonecromancy">>, and this dissertation's own form as a Twine document each illuminate different aspects of how meaning persists through--and is transformed by--technological mediation. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Conclusion 4">><</silently>>

These investigations have implications beyond academic analysis. As large language models increasingly mediate our writing, as virtual and augmented reality reshape our social spaces, and as algorithms continue to structure our access to information and community, understanding how these systems shape identity becomes increasingly crucial. The inforg isn't a science fiction concept but a present reality, as our cognition and social expression become increasingly dependent on technological platforms. The framework developed here--particularly the attention to interface, loss, and the productive potential of the glitch--offers tools for analyzing these developments. When OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude seem to speak with understanding, when Meta promises embodied presence in virtual spaces, when YouTube's algorithm shapes cultural transmission, we can examine how these platforms enable certain forms of expression while constraining others. More importantly, this framework helps identify sites of resistance. Just as Ma Rainey used recording technology for her own ends while resisting its attempt to commodify her voice, just as Ray's multimedia masculinity subverted traditional gender performance, contemporary users find ways to work within and against their platforms' constraints. The glitch--those moments where the seamless interface breaks down--reveals both the constructedness of these systems and the possibility of using them differently. <<silently>><<set _next_passage to "Conclusion 5">><</silently>>

This dissertation's form as a Twine document is more, then, than an experiment in academic writing; it embodies its own arguments about interface and identity. The linked definitions create their own kind of cognitive assemblage, allowing concepts to emerge through multiple interconnected articulations. The interactive elements demonstrate how platform shapes possibility--what can be expressed in Twine differs from what can be expressed in a traditional document, in ways both enabling and constraining. Future work in this field might examine other emerging platforms and interfaces. How do virtual reality social spaces like VRChat create new possibilities for embodied interaction? How do different large language models, with their distinct architectures and training approaches, shape the possibilities for human-AI interaction? What new forms of resistance and reinterpretation might emerge as these technologies evolve? The framework of informational performativity provides tools for approaching these questions. What remains clear is that understanding identity in the information age requires attention to the specific interfaces through which we express ourselves. We are all inforgs now, our gestures and memories distributed across multiple technological platforms. But this recognition need not lead to either despair or uncritical acceptance. Instead, by understanding how these systems work - and where they break down - we can better grasp both their constraints and the persistent possibility of working within and against them to create new forms of meaning and identity. [[Return->Table of Contents]]

<<set _passages to Story.lookup("tags", "definition")>> <<set _sortedPassages = _passages.slice().sort(function(a, b) { return a.title.localeCompare(b.title); })>> <<for _i to 0; _i lt _sortedPassages.length; _i++>> <<define _sortedPassages[_i].title>> <<if def setup.guessed>> <<if setup.guessed.includes(_sortedPassages[_i].title)>> -- <<print setup.guess_values[_sortedPassages[_i].title]>> <</if>><</if>> <</for>>

The signal is the part of a message that's not <<define "noise." "Noise">> See also the case study for [[Blue Kettle->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]].

The noise is the part of the message that's not <<define "signal." "Signal">> See also the case study for [[Blue Kettle->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]].

Luciano Floridi coined the term "inforg" - a portmanteau of "information" and "organism" - to describe how humans have become fundamentally informational beings "interconnected and embedded in an informational environment" that we share with other artificial <<define "cognitive assemblages" "cognitive assemblage">> <<cite "9" "Floridi, Luciano. Information: A Very Short Introduction.">>. The term helps us conceptualize how human identity arises from and depends upon an ecology of information processors, both biological and technological. Unlike the <<define "cyborg" "Cyborg">>, which emphasizes the physical integration of technology with flesh, the inforg highlights how human consciousness and identity emerge from interactions with information systems. When we rely on our smartphones for memory, navigation, and social connection, or when we perform ourselves into being through social media platforms, we are acting as inforgs--beings whose cognition and identity are distributed across multiple technological platforms. The inforg's identity is necessarily mediated through various <<define "interfaces" "interface">> and shaped by processes of <<define "transcoding">>. Each platform through which an inforg expresses themselves introduces its own constraints and affordances, creating a self that is fundamentally multimodal and <<define "heterogeneric">>. This distributed nature of inforganic identity makes it particularly susceptible to <<define "loss" "Loss">> and <<define "glitch" "Glitch">>, but these imperfections can become generative sites for new forms of expression and being. Understanding humans as inforgs helps explain how identity functions in the <<define "Information Age">>. Rather than seeing technology as something external that acts upon a pre-existing self, the concept suggests that contemporary human identity necessarily emerges through our interactions with information systems. This framework provides a way of thinking about how platforms shape possibilities for self-expression without falling into either techno-utopianism or neo-Luddite despair.

A prosthetic is "an artificial device used to replace a missing body part" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. This definition is useful because it captures both the materiality of the prosthesis and its function--the way in which it replaces the functionality of a part of body. In a secondary definition, the OED defines a prosthesis as "an addition to or modification of the body for cosmetic or therapeutic purposes", which gestures towards the flexibility of the term. On the one hand, you have "replacement"; on the other, "addition or modification." There's an interesting distinction here; in the former case, a prosthetic drives an "abnormal" body back to "normal" functionality. The latter is more flexible, though, and in my view more interesting, gesturing as it does towards the possibility of a prosthesis not oriented towards an imagined norm but instead towards the construction of a newer kind of human. This definition is also useful because it captures the way in which prostheses are not just about physical augmentation, but also about psychological augmentation. This is the sense in which I use the term in this study. I am interested in the way in which people use technology to supplement or augment their identity, their sense of self. This might be something as simple as using Twitter to share thoughts with the world, or something more complex like the <<define "cyborg" "Cyborg">>, where technology and the body are so intertwined that they become difficult to separate.

In Consciousness, Explained, Dan Dennett advances a theory of mind he calls the "Multiple Drafts model." He situates this model as a sharp departure from what he calls the "Cartesian Theater," whereby numerous perceptual and cognitive subystems come together in an "obscure 'center' of the mind/brain" where "consciousness happens" <<cite "39" "Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained.">>. Conversely, the Multiple Drafts model posits that: <blockquote>... all varieties of perception--indeed, all varieties of thought or mental activity--are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multitrack processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs. Information entering the nervous system is under continuous 'editorial revision.' [...] These editorial processes occur over large fractions of a second, during which time various additions, incorporations, emendations, and overwritings of content can occur, in various orders. <<cite "111" "112" "Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained.">></blockquote> Dirk van Hulle discusses how Beckett's late explorations of human consciousness anticipate the Multiple Drafts model, particularly in the work <a target="_blank" href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/ceiling.html">"Ceiling"</a> (which I have adapted to Twine <a target="_blank" href="https://www.especiallygreatliterature.com/twineceiling.html">here</a>). For van Hulle, "Ceiling" is structured as a "succession of drafts" where each paragraph can be interpreted as a "stage or draft in the protagonist's cognitive process, according to Dennett's model." Van Hulle goes one step further, in fact, arguing that "Ceiling" moves beyond the Multiple Drafts model by "integrating the reference to the ceiling in the cognitive process of coming to," thus also prefiguring <<define "the extended mind">> theory of consciousness<<cite "285" "van Hulle, Dirk. ‘The Extended Mind and Multiple Drafts: Beckett’s Models of the Mind and the Postcognitivist Paradigm,'">>.

The concept of ‘information’ is both central to this project and incredibly challenging to define. As Maurice Lee puts it, "the only thing on which scholars of information agree is that no one agrees on what information is" <<cite "12" "Lee, Maurice. Overwhelmed: Literature, Aesthetics, and the Nineteenth-Century Information Revolution.">>. A comparative analysis of popular definitions of information demonstrates how impossible it is to divorce such a definition from its pragmatic, instrumental context; as such, I've provided below a few pithy definitions. Clicking into each link will bring you to the necessary contexts. A common starting point is engineer <<define "Claude Shannon's" "Shannon Information">>: information is: <blockquote> "a measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message… [and] the amount of information is defined, in the simplest cases, to be measured by the logarithm of the number of available choices" <<cite "9" "Shannon, Claude E. The Mathematical Theory of Communication.">>.</blockquote> A similarly broad definition with more obvious applications to literary theory and the problems at hand in this project is anthropologist <<define "Gregory Bateson's" "Bateson Information">>. Bateson's information can be glossed as "a difference that makes a difference" <<cite "197" "Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.">>. Philosopher of Information Luciano Floridi's gloss of information as "meaningful, well-ordered data" <<cite "8" "Floridi, Luciano. Information: A Very Short Introduction.">> rests somewhere between Bateson's and Shannon's; it is more precise than the anthropologist's and less strictly mathematical than the engineer's. Data, in this telling, is the raw material out of which <<define "information is refined." "data into information">>. However, as interventions from feminist scholars such as Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein demonstrate, these instrumental definitions can elide the degree to which information is always situated in and co-constituitive of culture--and, as such, can replicate and reify existing structures of oppression. Finally, for some philosophers of information, information makes up the fundamental structure of reality. <<define "Informational structural realism" "Informational Structural Realism">>, as it is called, posits a phenomenology whereby every "it" derives from a "bit."

The etymology of "interface" is, as most etymologies are, suggestive. "Inter-" as a prefix denotes something "situated or occurring between things, or in the midst of something", which is no surprise. "Face", on the other hand, is generally here taken in its second meaning--"the surface, or one of the surfaces, of anything"--but, in the field of human-computer interface studies, overlaps significantly with the primary usage of "face" as "the front part of the head" <<cite "*" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. In other words, an "interface" is literally where two surfaces, or two faces, meet and interact, the site of information transmission and communication. The more contemporary (and, here, germane) definition of interface as "a means or place of interaction between two systems, organizations, etc.; a meeting-point or common ground between two parties, systems, or disciplines" was probably coined by Marshall McLuhan, who used it to describe the space where different historical eras met (e.g. "medieval pluralism" and "modern homogeneity and mechanism" <<cite "141" "McLuhan, Marshall. Gutenberg Galaxy.">> In computing, "interface" has come to stand in for the means by which the user engages with their technology. <<define "UI">> designers optimize these user interfaces to make technological operation as appealing and delightful as possible. In Being and the Screen: How the Digital Changes Perception, Stéphane Vial glosses this meaning in reference to computer science specifically as: <blockquote>a point of intersection between two systems where they can exchange <<define "information">> and therefore communicate, or interact... a means of enabling users to act and react with [computers] in order to simply use them.<<cite "194" "Vial, Stéphane. Being and the Screen.">></blockquote> In his essay "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line", Neal Stephenson writes at length about the transition from the complex, word-based "command line" interface of older technology, where the user is responsible for "sending bits directly to the chip that's doing the arithmetic", to the graphical user interface, where the user's power is limited in the interest of providing a user-friendly experience. See <<excerpt "MGBs, Tanks, and Batmobiles">> and <<excerpt "HCI and GUI">> for more on the topic. Intrigingly, the <<define "LLM">> boom has seen a resurgance in word-based command-line-style interfaces. When interacting with an abstract agent like a large language model, a chat interface is powerful, flexible, and familiar. On the other hand, given that we mostly use this style of chat interface with other humans, it does accelerate the anthropomorphization of these models.

A database is an organized collection of data that allows for efficient retrieval, management, and updating of information. It can be understood through the lens of <<define "Informational Structural Realism">>, wherein data itself forms a part of the fundamental structure of our interactions with the world. Databases operate on principles of <<define "epistemological" "genre and epistemology">> significance, as they dictate how information is stored, categorized, and accessed, mirroring the deeper philosophical discourse on how knowledge is constructed and maintained. As Baudrillard would suggest, the structuring of data within a database can mask the "absence of a basic reality," reflecting our alienation from direct engagement with raw, unmediated information <<cite "355" "Baudrillard, Jean. 'Simulacra and Simulations'.">>.

Biologicaly, the brain is an organ made up of neurons that resides in the skull, and which is responsible for the execution of many functions, from controlling the body's autonomic nervous system to processing <<define "information" "Information">>. In popular discourse, the brain is more frequently used as a metaphor for the mind. In this sense, the brain is often used as a shorthand for the human capacity for cognition and memory, "the seat of the emotions and of the will" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. This metaphorical sense of the brain is often used as a stand-in for the self. In a neurocentric world-view, the self is a product of the brain, and the mind is in service of the brain's goals. This is in contrast to a more ecological perspective, in which the self is seen as a product of the relationships between the brain and the environment. This ecologist perspective sees the mind as a set of functions that not only enable the brain to interact with the environment, but also enable the brain to change in response to the environment. This embodied perspective is in contrast to a more disembodied perspective, in which the brain is seen as a self-contained system that is only tangentially related to the body and the environment.

For the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations, the meaning of a word depends on how it is used within a particular language-game. In other words, meaning depends on usage. In an information theoretical context, then, for <<define "data" "Data">> to become meaningful is for it to become useful within a particular context. This definition relies, however, on a player of the language game to whom the concept of "meaning" is not itself meaningless. For data to become meaningful, then, is for data to become instrumentally valuable. Troublingly, however, this use-based notion of meaning moves all information into the realm of the subjective except inasmuch as a language game is consensual and universal. Further, the ways in which meaning can be thought of as subjective or objective is a critical line of inquiry. To what extent is the meaning of <<define "information" "Information">> itself determinate? How much is it a product of the biases of the people designing and interpreting the systems of information processing?

Claude Shannon, the so-called father of information theory, spent World War II as a mathematician and electrical engineer working on cryptography at Bell Labs. He needed a quantifiable and mathematically manipulable definition of information for that work. For his specific purposes--cryptography and the creation of a mathematical theory of communication-- he defined information as: <blockquotea measure of one’s freedom of choice when one selects a message… the amount of information is defined, in the simplest cases, to be measured by the logarithm of the number of available choices <<cite "9" "Shannon, Claude E. The Mathematical Theory of Communication.">>.</blockquote> Although Shannon was careful to situate his definition as one suited to particular engineering challenges, the slippage between this technical definition and the broader notion of information appears as early as Warren Weaver’s introduction to Shannon’s The Mathematical Theory of Communication, which opens with the note that "the word communication," in the context of which the word ‘information’ is defined: <blockquote>will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior" <<cite "1" "Shannon, Claude E. The Mathematical Theory of Communication.">>.</blockquote> In a typical move for those theorizing about information, Shannon’s provisional and pragmatic definition ends up expanding to encompass everything humans do.

Gregory Bateson believed that the discovery of cybernetics, systems theory, and information theory gave him a formal base enabling us to think about mind and epistemology. He most famously articulated his definition of information in his 1972 lecture "Form, Substance, and Difference," where he framed information as the "unit of the mind" and the answer to a question: "what is it in the territory that gets onto the map?" That is to say, what is it about the objective world that makes its way into the subjective one? He argues that the answer to that question is difference, which is the sole cause of effects and is synonymous with the word "idea, in its most elementary sense" <<cite "56" "Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.">>. He goes on to modify Kant's’s example of how humans make sense of a piece of chalk to clarify his point: <blockquote>[...] There are an infinite number of differences around and within the piece of chalk. There are differences between the chalk and the rest of the universe, between the chalk and the sun or the moon. [...] Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information—the elementary unit of information—is a difference which makes a difference, and it is able to make a difference because the neural pathways along which it travels and is continually transformed are themselves provided with energy.<<cite "58" "Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind.">></blockquote> In short, information is "a difference that makes a difference." The first 'difference' is, in its simplest form, a bit – a portmanteau for ‘binary digit,’ a zero or a one. The latter, however, pushes the informational out of the realm of mathematics and into the purview of the humanities. To make a difference is to have meaning, which implies a receiver capable of construing meaning. For N. Katherine Hayles as well as Bateson, this receiver can be one of a number of cognitive systems--a human mind, a smart phone, an e-reader--that processes data and embeds it in a particular context.

Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization (1934) attributes the creation of the first mechanical clock to a monastery of Benedictine monks near the close of the tenth century. According to the (discredited, but still valuable) legend, the regimented order of monastery life, with its seven devotions and “iron discipline of the rule,” stood as a counter to the “surprise and doubt and caprice and irregularity” of a chaotic outside world. This orderliness was to be echoed, by a bull of Pope Sabinianus, by the bells of the monastery seven times a day. <blockquote>These punctuation marks were known as the canonical hours, and some means of keeping count of them and ensuring their regular repetition became necessary.<<cite "12" "Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization.">></blockquote> Mumford thus posits that the incursion of ordered and regulated time on an undifferentiated chronology defined relative to the sun’s position in the sky, along with other natural signs, took place first at the Benedictine monasteries. Because the monastery was the seat of “regular life,” the legend goes that a monk named Gerbert, later to become Pope Sylvester II, invented the first modern mechanical clock to obey the strictures of Sabinianus. Perhaps hyperbolically, but intriguingly, Lewis Mumford underlines the importance of this development when he states that “the Benedictines, the great working order, were perhaps the original founders of modern capitalism” and that the invention of the clock, along with its important mouthpiece the church bells: <blockquote>... helped give human enterprise the regular collective beat and rhythm of the machine; for the clock is not merely a means of keeping track of the hours, but of synchronizing the actions of men” <<cite "13" "Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization.">></blockquote> This myth usefully sketches the outline of a Marxist reading of the time, whereby the technology of the clock becomes the means by which humanity is alienated from a more natural relationship with time. This Marxist model of alienation is an adroit mode of interrogating the a shift from a human-relative time scheme to something mechanized and rooted in the clock. “Wages,” Marx says, “are the sum of money paid by the capitalist for a particular labor time or a particular output of labor.” The Marxist notion of labor is tied up in and measured either by the “particular output” or by “labor-time.” Today, with most people paid by the hour or by annual salaries, the latter is more prevalent. The clock, a “a piece of power-machinery whose ‘product’ is seconds and minutes: by its essential nature it dissociate[s] time from human events” <<cite "15" "Marx, Karl. 'Wage Labor and Capital'.">>, becomes in a Marxist reading of capitalist society the yardstick by which the expenditure of labor can be measured. The worker’s time – the worker’s life – becomes an object to be bought and sold, and the worker him or herself becomes alienated from it, sees hours and days and even years as an object in the same way that the product of his or her labor becomes an object. We have here an explanation for the behavior of the worker who “puts ten years in” at a job they hate to acquire a better position; their time, their life, is a thing to be traded for another thing. Prison, too, in its shift from corporeal punishment to incarceration, has grown to recognize that the fundamental currency, what can be taken away from every human, is time. “The capitalist buys this power for a day, a week, a month… for the same sum, he could have bought two pounds of sugar or a definite amount of any other commodity” <<cite "659" "Marx, Karl. 'Wage Labor and Capital'.">>. Like sugar, labor power is a commodity. Unlike sugar, it is measured “by the clock” rather than by the scales. In the same way that time becomes sliced up by the clock, the laborer’s day becomes sliced up by capitalism, and “the free laborer sells himself piecemeal. He sells at auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life, day by day, to the highest bidder” <<cite "661" "Marx, Karl. 'Wage Labor and Capital'.">>. This model can and ought to be opposed in thought to time as a sequence of experience rather than a collection of hours, minutes, and seconds, and capitalism’s propensity to change human-relative time into clock-regular time yields alienation for the worker who is forced by the conditions of his or her existence to give up his or her stake in his or her own life in order to acquire the necessities necessary to prolong it. The problem here is analogous to the problem of the map and the territory in the Borges story – aptly summarized and then utilized by Baudrillard in his essay “Simulacra and Simulations.” Briefly, Borges describes a king whose zest for cartography is such that he has an extraordinarily detailed map made of his territory. The map’s detail is such that it takes up as much space as the territory itself – indeed, it overlays the territory itself and becomes indistinguishable from it. For Baudrillard, this image of the map and the territory is a useful cognitive tool to consider the notions of simulation and simulacra; I will use the image somewhat more loosely, however. The territory here is Time – a sequence of experiences, connected in some way to the celestial bodies, the sun rising, the moon, but most of all to human consciousness and human life as lived. The map is the clock. The clock goes through the successive phases of the image as articulated by Baudrillard; it begins as a reflection of the “basic reality” of time, and then it masks and perverts a basic reality--as, for example, in 1370, when King Charles V “ordered all citizens of Paris to regulate their private, commercial, and industrial life by the bells of the Royal Palace clock” <<cite "19" "Postman, Neil. Technopoly.">>. At this second phase, the artificial and imposed structure of the clock becomes the signified rather than the signifier, and the world around it changes in accordance with it. Thus when we think of time we think of the clock itself, rather than of what the clock signifies. We have mistaken the map for the territory that it is supposed to represent, and doing so have devalued time qua ipsum. As Baudrillard puts it, “it is the map that engenders the territory, and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map” <<cite "355" "356" "Baudrillard, Jean. 'Simulacra and Simulations'.">>. The third phase of the image, where it “masks the absence of a basic reality,” is suggestive of the consequences of alienation: an impoverished relationship between the worker and the time that constitutes his or her days. Finally, the image progresses to the point where “it is its own pure simulation;” we have not, I hope, reached quite this point. Our alienation from a time predicated on human experience is thus pathological, a mixup between the substantial and its representation.

Any discussion of difference with reference to the humanities must grapple with its most common appearance in contemporary theory through Derrida, as différance. Although scholars have drawn connections between Bateson’s 'difference' and Derrida’s (see especially White <<cite '17' '35' 'White, Michael. "Narrative Practices and Community Assignments."'>>), there are several major discontinuities between the two systems, the primary of which is epistemological. Whereas Bateson’s 'difference' acts as a channel between a map and a territory, Derridean poststructuralism rejects the existence of a territory itself. Bateson’s epistemology is thus ultimately foundational inasmuch as it claims a relationship between the object (the chalk) and the differences that make up the information we have about that chalk, and Derrida’s is (in extremely broad strokes) antifoundationalist inasmuch as difference says nothing about the chalk as a thing in itself and instead says something about the process of 'making sense' as a constant process of deferral.

Philosophers working in the field of philosophy of information have gone as far as to suggest that information makes up the fundamental structure of the universe. John Archibald Wheeler, writing in 1969, posited that: <blockquote>"every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit" <<cite '1' 'Wheeler, John Archibald. "Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links."'>></blockquote> That is to say, the fundamental ontological unit is the binary digit. More recently, Luciano Floridi’s "Informational Structural Realism" (2007) identifies primordial information ("dedomena") as the foundation of any structure in any possible world. Terrell Bynum’s "Quantum Informational Structural Realism" (2014) goes one step further, citing: <blockquote> [...] recent developments in physics, especially in quantum theory and cosmology [that suggest] the universe is a vast ‘sea’ of quantum information (‘qubits’), and all objects and processes in our world (including human beings) are constantly changing quantum data structures dynamically interacting with one another" <<cite '1' 'Bynum, Terrell. "On the Possibility of Quantum Informational Structural Realism."'>>.</blockquote> These theories are distinct from but related to the simulation hypothesis popularized by Nick Bostrom. In brief, given the possibility of simulating a universe on a Turing machine, the odds of our existence being simulation running on some higher-order machine vastly exceed the likelihood that this is the ‘prime’ universe. Whether or not Wheeler et al correctly identify the fundamental structure of the universe, that these ideas are being taken seriously by philosophers speaks to the centrality of information in the zeitgeist, and to the conceptual expansiveness of information as such.

Data comes from the Latin datum, meaning "that which is given." In philosophy, the term is used to refer to things like sense datum that are "immediately apprehended by or presented to the mind or senses" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. In computing, on the other hand, that same dictionary defines data as "the quantities, characters, or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer and which may be stored or transmitted in the form of electrical signals and held on recording media"--that is, the grist out of which computer systems generate and represent meaningful information. These two definitions are in conflict with one another. The philosophical definition gestures towards a percept prior to its interpolation in higher-order human cognition, outside of ideology. The technical one instead refers to patterns that exist within systems designed ([[generally->AI]]) by people for people. This conflation is key to the epistemological sleight-of-hand undergirding some contemporary discourse around data, whereby conclusions arrived at via its manipulation project a patina of problematic and ersatz objectivity while in fact reifying and rearticulating the biases of designers who are overwhelmingly homogenous. For the purposes of this study, I try to consider data as roughly equivalent to sensory data--that is, the preprocessed stuff out of which <<define "information" "Information">> is gleaned--without losing sight of the ways in which the design of the technological systems that perform that transmutation of <<define "data into information">> (and gather that data in the first place) are always historically contingent and often problematic.

AI is a notoriously difficult term to define (see, for example, the <<cite "13" "Eckersley, Peter. "Artificial Intelligence: Its Scope and Limits.""> discussion of 'the scope and limits of AI') but, broadly speaking, it refers to the application of computational techniques to tasks formerly reserved to human cognition. In the words of <<cite "15" "Poole, David L., and Alan K. Mackworth. Artificial Intelligence: Foundations of Computational Agents.">>, AI is "the study of agents that receive percepts from the environment and perform actions." As such, AI can be deployed for a range of tasks, from machine translation to image recognition and text generation. However, the primary task of this study is to understand how the assumptions and design of AI systems can embed and enact biases that reify and reinforce structures of oppression.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are a class of artificial intelligence systems designed to understand and generate human-like text. The most well-known example, OpenAI's GPT-3, consists of 175 billion parameters, allowing it to produce highly coherent and contextually relevant responses to prompts <<cite "3" "Brown, Tom, et al. Language Models are Few-Shot Learners.">>. The term "large" refers to the sheer scale of these models, which are trained on vast datasets encompassing diverse textual sources, thereby enabling them to grasp the nuances and intricacies of human language. LLMs operate on the principle of deep learning, utilizing neural networks that mimic the architecture of the human brain. These networks are capable of "learning" from data by adjusting the weights of connections between artificial neurons based on the patterns they observe. As a result, LLMs can perform a wide array of language tasks, including machine translation, summarization, question answering, and even creative writing, with a level of fluency that often surpasses earlier AI models. However, the advent of LLMs has not been without controversy. Critics point out the potential for these models to perpetuate biases present in their training data, as well as concerns about the ethical implications of their use in generating misinformation or automating jobs traditionally performed by humans <<cite "36" "Bender, Emily M., et al. On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?">>. Despite these concerns, proponents argue that LLMs represent a significant leap forward in AI capabilities, offering new possibilities for human-computer interaction and augmenting human creativity. LLMs have also sparked discussions about the nature of intelligence and creativity. While they can generate text that appears to be original and insightful, LLMs are essentially pattern-matching machines, drawing on the vast corpus of data they have been trained on to produce their outputs. This raises questions about the distinction between human and machine creativity, as well as the potential for AI to collaborate with humans in new and unexpected ways <<cite "24" "Marcus, Gary, and Ernest Davis. Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust.">>.

Image recognition refers to the capability of artificial intelligence systems to identify objects, people, places, and other entities within visual data. This technology leverages complex algorithms and deep learning models to "see" and interpret the contents of images, akin to how humans use their vision <<cite "98" "Goodfellow, Ian, et al. Deep Learning">>. In a nutshell, image recognition is all about teaching machines to recognize and make sense of the world through pixels. The process typically involves training convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on vast datasets of labeled images, enabling the system to learn patterns and features that distinguish different categories. Once trained, these models can accurately classify and identify new images they haven't seen before. It’s a "picture-perfect" example of how AI can mimic human cognitive functions <<define "CNN" "Convolutional Neural Networks">>. Applications of image recognition are widespread, from autonomous vehicles that need to navigate busy streets to social media platforms that automatically tag friends in photos. It's clear that this technology has a "bright future," helping machines to gain insights that were previously only accessible to human eyes <<cite "57" "LeCun, Yann, et al. Deep Learning.">>. However, the technology isn't without its blind spots. Image recognition systems can struggle with recognizing objects in unfamiliar contexts or dealing with variations in lighting and perspective. Additionally, there are ethical concerns regarding privacy and surveillance, as these systems are often used in ways that can "spy" on individuals without their consent <<cite "45" "Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism">>. But as the field continues to evolve, researchers are "focusing" on improving accuracy and addressing these issues. Overall, image recognition is a fascinating intersection of technology and vision, offering a "new lens" through which machines can interpret the world. Whether it's diagnosing medical conditions from scans or helping us find lost items through visual search, this technology is "changing the picture" of how we interact with the digital and physical realms.

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are a class of deep learning models specifically designed for processing structured grid data, such as images. By mimicking the way humans process visual information, CNNs have become the "eyes" of artificial intelligence, enabling machines to understand and interpret the visual world with remarkable accuracy <<cite "23" "LeCun, Yann, et al. Deep Learning.">>. CNNs are built on the concept of convolution, a mathematical operation that slides a filter over input data to extract features like edges, textures, and shapes. This process allows the network to focus on local patterns while preserving spatial relationships, making it "picture-perfect" for image recognition and classification tasks <<define "convolution" "Convolution Operation">>. The architecture of CNNs typically includes multiple layers, such as convolutional layers, pooling layers, and fully connected layers, each playing a "part and parcel" in transforming the input data into meaningful representations. The convolutional layers act as the feature detectors, while pooling layers reduce the dimensionality, and fully connected layers integrate these features to perform the final classification <<cite "112" "Krizhevsky, Alex, et al. ImageNet Classification with Deep Convolutional Neural Networks">>. CNNs have "seen" widespread adoption in various applications, from facial recognition and self-driving cars to medical image analysis and even art creation. Their ability to automatically learn and extract relevant features from raw data has "framed" them as one of the most powerful tools in the AI toolkit. However, CNNs are not without their challenges. They can be computationally intensive and require large amounts of labeled data for training. Moreover, their performance can be affected by variations in input data, such as changes in lighting, orientation, and scale. Researchers are constantly "sharpening" these models to improve their robustness and efficiency <<cite "76" "Simonyan, Karen, and Andrew Zisserman. Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition">>. Overall, Convolutional Neural Networks represent a "clear vision" of the future of AI, transforming how machines perceive and interact with the visual world. By "zooming in" on the fine details and "capturing" complex patterns, CNNs are opening new vistas in technology and innovation.

Text generation refers to the process by which artificial intelligence models create coherent and contextually relevant text based on given prompts or input data. These models, often powered by neural networks, can produce anything from simple sentences to complex narratives, blurring the lines between human and machine authorship. The history of text generation can be traced back to the early 20th century with experiments in automatic writing, where writers would produce text without conscious control, believing it to be guided by external forces. This concept found a technological parallel in the 1930s with Bob Brown’s “Readies,” a vision for a reading machine that could rapidly present text to enhance comprehension and speed. Modern text generation techniques have evolved significantly from these early ideas. Today’s models, like GPT-3, are trained on vast datasets comprising diverse sources of text, allowing them to generate highly sophisticated and contextually aware content. These models utilize transformer architectures, which can understand and generate text by processing it in chunks and capturing dependencies across different parts of the text. Applications of text generation are vast and varied, ranging from chatbots and virtual assistants to creative writing and automated journalism. These models can "write" engaging stories, generate insightful summaries, and even assist in drafting academic papers—like the one you're currently reading, for instance! But beware, these text-generating marvels have a knack for making you wonder whether the words you're reading are crafted by human hands or synthesized by a clever algorithm. Despite their capabilities, text generation models face challenges, such as maintaining coherence over long passages and avoiding biases present in their training data. As researchers continue to refine these systems, the goal is to create models that not only generate text indistinguishable from human writing but also respect ethical considerations and enhance human creativity.

The term ‘cliché’ is, literally, a technical term used by 19th century printers, coming from the verb ‘clicher’ meaning to click and signifying a stereotype block (stereotype’s etymology is similarly grounded in the printing press). If a printer had a particular phrase that they knew they’d have to use over and over again, they’d often keep have a set block with those words on it. The word cliché was chosen for otomotopaeic reasons, to echo the sound of a mold from a printing press striking metal--although ‘click’ has its own associations now, of course. Even "type," that literary phrase to describe someone whose character is more general and indicative of a class of persons than individuated, appears to be etymologically related to the process of technologically reproducing language via printing. These phrases are early examples of linguistic memes: viral idioms with a disposition that inclines them towards replication, mutation, and dissemination through the mental gene pool. <figure> <img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/cliche.png" alt="Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'echo the sound of a mold from a printing press striking metal, cliche, in the style of paul klee'."> <figcaption>Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'echo the sound of a mold from a printing press striking metal, cliche, in the style of paul klee'.</figcaption> </figure>

By "heterogeneric" I mean more than a text which features multiple <<define "genre" "genres">>. For a text to be heterogeneric in the way I mean, it must knowingly participate--and, in its participation, comment on--in multiple genres over the course of its corpus. Although this knowing commentary is traditionally associated with mashup culture, sampling, and the <<define "multimedial">> remix-first world of social media platforms like Tiktok, it has a much longer lineage. Moby-Dick, the modernist novel par excellance, is heterogeneous to the extreme, which each section--and sometimes each chapter--self-consciously mimicking, parodying, and engaging with different genera, from natural history to Shakespearean drama. Indeed, contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick often commented, more or less favorably, on this radical admixture. One of the most stinging contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick, published in the London Athenaeum, called the novel: <blockquote>an ill-compounded mixture of romance and matter-of-fact... the idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again.</blockquote> Reviewers agreed that Melville’s magnum opus is neither “merely” a sea adventure nor an encyclopedia of information about spermaceti whales but instead a text that partakes in a variety of genres, like a “chowder” (New York Literary World) or, a “salmagundi of fact, fiction, and philosophy”<<cite "33, 53" "Hershel Parker, Moby-Dick as Doubloon: Essays and Extracts">>. Even further back, a novel like Tom Jones, with its flights into mock epic and its satirical eye towards the novels of Samuel Richardson in particular, self-consciously deploys the tropes and trappings of multiple genres. This heterogeneric quality, characteristic of the novel as a form, has significant <<define "epistemological" "genre and epistemology">> implications.

I’m thinking, here, of gestures--and stylizations of the body more broadly--as encoded and embodied bundles of information in relation to the theory of performativity primarily explored in Butler’s Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter. I will refer to this in places throughout this document as "informativity". For Butler, the subject is constituted by their performative acts, the platform of which is the body. Butler’s primary focus in "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" (published originally in Theater Journal) is the way gender is constituted through iterated performative acts. With the phenomenological theory of ‘acts’ as a jumping off point, which "seeks to explain the mundane way in which social agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic social sign" <<cite "519" "Butler, Judith. 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.'">> Butler discusses the way in which the body works as an “historical idea” and “a set of possibilities to be continually realized.” Consequently, the body is a materializing of possibilities that one “does” (although it’s a mistake to locate agency in the doer of the body, as she clarifies. Gender thus is a “corporeal style” <<cite "522" "Butler, Judith. 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.'">> a mode of performing repeated, stylized acts which “compels the body to conform to an historical idea of ‘woman’” and to “induce the body to become a cultural sign” as a “sustained and repeated corporeal project” <<cite "522" "Butler, Judith. 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.'">>. Butler’s argument is compelling, but I’d like to push back against the primacy of the body as the organ and the site of these performative acts. The goal of this study, then, is to relocate Butler’s theoretical achievements – in which the world is a stage on which subjects “construct the social fiction of their own psychological interiority” <<cite "528" "Butler, Judith. 'Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.'">> – to some of the new virtual worlds that have opened themselves up with the advent of the information age. As we migrate to new worlds – become "amphibious,"" as Kurt Vonnegut put it in the short story Unready to Wear – it makes less and less sense, I argue, to privilege the material body as the instrument with which one plays oneself. Further, the disjunct between one’s online persona and one’s material body – and the degree of choice one has in crafting an online persona – suggests certain hopeful possibilities insofar as agency is concerned. The inseparable nature of the relationship between the body and the mind (if my reader will forgive a strategic use of the classic Cartesian division) invalidates the premise of a subject who exists prior to the performative acts which constitute them as a subject, but the embodied mind of the “player” behind the computer who controls their persona –does- exist prior to the stylization of that persona. The question running through this dissertation is thus: how does this decentered notion of the subject change once the stage on which identity is performed is untethered from a body which always ‘speaks’ itself? Consequently, I will focus on new ways in which the subject is embodied. If we are willing to accept the premise of ‘social reality,’ we oughtn’t privilege social reality grounded in materiality (or, at least, it can be a useful exercise to deprivilege that social reality in favor of the new virtual worlds offered to us through our computers, our iDevices, and so on). Haraway gestures in this direction in her Cyborg Manifesto, naming “the boundary between physical and nonphysical” as “very imprecise” in the age of technology (589) and discussing the body as a text which can be recoded and rewritten. My premise is that virtual worlds change the way gender narrowly and identity broadly is constituted in social reality, and that the constitution of these new stages has implications for the fate of the subject in the information age. A secondary question is the shifting place of agency and subjectivity more broadly: given that the “player” –does- actually preexist the persona, is the relationship between the two different than that between the mind and the body in a Butlerian schema? The argument in its broadest terms, then, is that the insistence on the body as the instrument and the canvas on which performative acts are inscribed is no longer germane – or, at least, that <<define "virtual worlds" "Cyberspace">> offer new, radically different modes of embodiment--and that the information revolution has provided new stages on which subjects can constitute themselves.

In American copyright law, fair use is a legal doctrine that "<a target="_blank" href="assets/pdfs/fairuse.pdf"> promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances.</a> [[Section 107 of the Copyright Act]] provides the statuatory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses--such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research--as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use." To evaluate a question of fair use, there are four legal factors and one practical one: 1) Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.; 2) The nature of the copyrighted work; 3) The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole--a question which often turns on whether or not the "heart" of the work is used; and 4) The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. Pragmatically, however, fair use is governed by a system of norms agreed upon by publishers and lawyers. Entities with the financial resources to hire enough more lawyers generally win these cases. [[Information should be free.]]

In the context of librarianship, "Information should be free" is a rallying cry against the commodification of information and the privatization of public information. In the context of the internet and the digital humanities, it is a rallying cry against the privatization of cultural heritage and the digital divide. In the context of the contemporary moment, it is a rallying cry against the manipulation of information and the pernicious effects of datafication. The Wikipedia article on the history of the phrase tells the story of the slogan's birth: <blockquote> The phrase "Information wants to be free" was popularized by Stewart Brand during the hacker culture and information revolution of the 1980s and 1990s. Brand was quoted as saying in 1984, "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other." <<cite "4" "Wikipedia">></blockquote> The phrase has been re-popularized in the internet age for its resonance with the promises of the open web. That said, the phrase's original connotations, rooted in hacker culture and the information revolution, are not entirely positive. Brand's position gestured towards the promise of liberation and empowerment that the new wave of computerization held out--but also towards the logistical problem it posed. If information can be seen as a thing, and things have prices, then how is it possible to reconcile the competing impulses of free information and commercialization? The phrase has since been appropriated by librarians and activists working to create a more just and equitable information environment. In January 2012, the Digital Public Library of America launched with a "Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities" that included a version of the phrase: <blockquote>The mission of the DPLA is to expand access to the world's cultural and scientific heritage through collaboration with libraries, institutions, and the general public. We believe that this mission is based on fundamental rights of free expression, privacy, and access to information and that it is carried out through a commitment to excellence in management and stewardship of digital resources. <<cite "13" "Digital Public Library of America">></blockquote> The DPLA's stance echoes the library profession's long-standing commitment to the <<define "Free Library Movement" "Free Library Movement">>, which began in mid-19th century England and eventually spread to the United States, where it gained momentum with the help of philanthropists such as [[Andrew Carnegie]]. In the context of the digital humanities, the phrase has been taken up by the [[Open Access movement->Open Access]] and its proponents. According to the Open Access website, "Open Access is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other barriers, and, in its most precise meaning, with the addition of an open license applied to promote reuse." <<cite "14" "Open Access">> Open Access's intersection with information wanting to be free is clear. Information, as the DPLA puts it, is a "fundamental right." As such, the move to make it more accessible is a matter of justice, not philanthropy. In this way, information wanting to be free is also a rallying cry against the digital divide. That is, it is a rallying cry for equality of access to information, for the internet to be seen as a public utility, and for the the internet's basic infrastructure to be supported by and responsible to the communities it serves. In this way, information wanting to be free is also a rallying cry against the manipulation of information. That is, it is a rallying cry for the right of individuals to control their own information, for the right of individuals to control their own lives, and for the right of individuals to have access to the tools they need to do that.

"Hyperhistory" is a conceptual framework proposed by Luciano Floridi that extends the traditional notion of history by encompassing both the tangible historical record and the vast digital landscape of information. Floridi, a philosopher of information, introduces this term to emphasize the interconnectedness of historical narratives and the digital data age. In hyperhistory, historical understanding transcends linear chronology and delves into the dynamic relationships between historical events, people, cultures, and ideas. This framework recognizes the intricate web of information available through digital archives, databases, and online repositories. These digital resources enable the exploration of historical narratives from multiple perspectives and facilitate the analysis of patterns, trends, and connections that might otherwise remain hidden in traditional historical accounts. Hyperhistory underscores the role of technology in reshaping historical research and interpretation. Researchers can now access an unprecedented volume of primary and secondary sources online, enabling the synthesis of diverse viewpoints and the discovery of previously unrecognized correlations. However, this vast sea of digital information also raises challenges related to authenticity, credibility, and the potential for bias in digital historical records. Floridi's concept of hyperhistory invites scholars to critically engage with the evolving nature of historical inquiry in the digital age. It encourages a multidisciplinary approach that merges traditional historical methods with computational techniques, data analysis, and digital tools. By navigating the complexities of hyperhistory, historians and researchers can navigate the intricacies of human history with a broader, more interconnected perspective. Ultimately, hyperhistory acknowledges the transformative power of digital technologies in shaping how we study, interpret, and narrate the past. It calls for a nuanced understanding of historical narratives that not only reflect linear progression but also embrace the complexity and interdependence of information in the digital era.

The "Information Age" refers to the contemporary era characterized by the widespread accessibility, generation, and exchange of digital information. Emerging from the technological advancements of the late 20th century, particularly in computing and telecommunications, this era marks a pivotal shift in the way societies interact, communicate, and process knowledge. During the Information Age, technological innovations have revolutionized the methods of collecting, storing, and disseminating information. The development of the Internet, a global network of interconnected computers, serves as a cornerstone of this age, enabling instantaneous communication and the rapid sharing of data across vast distances. The proliferation of personal computers, mobile devices, and digital technologies has democratized access to information, transforming the way individuals learn, work, and engage with the world. One of the defining features of the Information Age is the exponential growth of digital data. The creation of vast amounts of information through online interactions, social media, digital commerce, scientific research, and more has led to the concept of "big data." Analyzing and harnessing this data has given rise to data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, driving advancements in fields as diverse as healthcare, finance, entertainment, and transportation. The Information Age has also brought about significant societal changes. The rapid dissemination of information has led to increased global connectivity and awareness, shaping public discourse and political landscapes. Online platforms have empowered individuals to voice their opinions, share their stories, and mobilize for social change, leading to both positive movements and challenges in navigating the spread of misinformation and online polarization. Economic landscapes have shifted as well, with the rise of digital economies, e-commerce, and remote work opportunities. Traditional industries have been transformed, and new business models have emerged as technology continues to reshape industries and markets. As the Information Age unfolds, it prompts ongoing discussions about privacy, data security, digital literacy, and the ethical implications of technology. Navigating the complexities of this era requires a balance between embracing the benefits of digital connectivity and critically assessing its potential risks and consequences. In summary, the Information Age represents a pivotal period in human history, characterized by the ubiquity of digital technology and the profound impact it has on communication, knowledge dissemination, societal dynamics, and the very fabric of daily life.

This study's treatment of nostalgia is grounded in the OED's second definition of the term as a: <blockquote>Sentimental longing for or regretful memory of a period of the past, esp. one in an individual's own lifetime; (also) sentimental imagining or evocation of a period of the past <<cite "*" "Oxford English Dictionary">>.</blockquote> Etymologically, the term comes from the ancient Greek "νόστος", meaning "return home", and αλγία, denoting pain. Literally, then, nostalgia is the pain from homecoming. Less literally, nostalgia is intimately tied to <<define "loss">>, the human impulse to view the past as rosier than the present. For <<define "media" "medium">>, this can present as a fond preference for the technologies of one's youth--hence the rise of vinyl and, later, of cassete tapes among nostalgic audiophiles. Some media forms are nostalgic by nature; for example, photography, in Susan Sontag's telling, is both "a reminder of death" and an "invitation to sentimentality" that turns "the past into an object of tender regard" <<cite "71" "Sontag, Susan. On Photography.">>. The nostalgic impulse is considerably more harmful in the political realm, where it often takes the form of a retrograde privileging of a counterfactual version of history and, in a move which is by definition conservative, seeks a return to that earlier time.

"Speech Act Theory," pioneered by J.L. Austin and further developed by subsequent scholars, explores the intricate dynamics of language beyond its mere propositional content. This theory delves into the idea that when individuals communicate, they not only convey information but also perform various actions, referred to as "speech acts," that have social, pragmatic, and often transformative implications. J.L. Austin's groundbreaking work in the mid-20th century challenged the traditional understanding of language as a tool primarily for describing reality. Instead, he highlighted the performative nature of language, wherein <<define "utterances" "utterance">> can serve as acts that influence the world and the interactions between individuals. Austin classified speech acts into three categories: <ol> <li>Locutionary Acts: The basic act of producing sounds or words with syntactic and semantic meaning.</li> <li>Illocutionary Acts: The intended function or purpose of an utterance, such as making a request, giving a command, offering an apology, or asking a question.</li> <li>Perlocutionary Acts: The effect of an utterance on the listener or recipient, such as convincing, persuading, amusing, or confusing.</li> </ol> Austin's work laid the foundation for later scholars, notably John Searle, to expand and formalize the theory. Searle introduced the concept of "speech act felicity conditions," which are the contextual prerequisites that determine the success or failure of a speech act. For instance, certain conditions must be met for an utterance to be considered a valid promise or request, including the appropriate context and the speaker's sincerity. Speech Act Theory has wide-ranging implications across various disciplines, including linguistics, philosophy, sociology, and communication studies. It offers insights into how language shapes social realities, the power dynamics embedded in communication, and the role of intention and context in understanding speech. Additionally, the theory contributes to the analysis of politeness, indirect speech, and the nuances of interpersonal communication. Through its exploration of the diverse functions of language, Speech Act Theory highlights the richness and complexity of human communication, revealing that language is not only a tool for conveying information but a means of performing actions, shaping relationships, and co-constructing meaning in the social world.

I use here what Jim Siemon calls the Bakhtin circle's "radically inclusive notion of 'utterance' as "the minimum to which one can respond, with which one can agree or disagree" <<cite "2" "Siemon, Jim. Word Against Word.">>. An utterance under this sign is thus a subset of gestures, and the totality of these social broadcasts give rise to the performative self.

<h1><a target="_blank" href="https://opensource.org/licenses/ISC">ISC License</a></h1> Copyright \<YEAR\>, \<OWNER\> Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

"Y2K," short for "Year 2000," refers to the global technological concern that emerged as the 20th century drew to a close. The Y2K issue was rooted in the way computer systems and software represented years using two-digit date formats (e.g., "99" for 1999). As the year 2000 approached, there was widespread apprehension that these systems would interpret "00" as the year 1900 instead of 2000, potentially causing significant malfunctions, errors, and disruptions across various sectors. Y2K garnered extensive attention due to the reliance of numerous critical systems, including financial institutions, utilities, transportation networks, and government agencies, on computer technology. Concerns included the potential for incorrect calculations, malfunctioning embedded systems, and data corruption, all of which could have far-reaching consequences for both daily life and global infrastructure. In response, governments, businesses, and organizations embarked on comprehensive Y2K readiness efforts, often referred to as "Y2K remediation." This involved identifying vulnerable systems, updating software, rewriting code, and conducting rigorous testing to ensure that computer systems could accurately handle the year 2000 transition. The scale of these preparations was significant, involving extensive collaboration among experts in various fields. As the new millennium arrived, the Y2K issue turned out to be less catastrophic than initially feared. Due to the concerted efforts of countless professionals, the majority of critical systems successfully made the transition to the year 2000 without major disruptions. However, the Y2K challenge highlighted the potential vulnerabilities of technology and underscored the importance of diligent planning, cooperation, and proactive problem-solving in the face of complex, large-scale technical issues. Y2K serves as a historical example of the intersection between technology, public awareness, and global preparedness. The lessons learned from the Y2K experience continue to inform discussions about the resilience of digital infrastructure, the challenges of managing complex systems, and the necessity of anticipating and addressing potential risks in the digital age.

When we refer here to a "virus", the reader should be aware of the term's computational, cognitive, and biological valences. As expounded in the Blue Kettle case study, all three classes of viruses can be characterized by their essentially replicative character. A [[computational->ILOVEYOU]] virus survives by replicating its code within the host machine's own software; a [[biological->influenza]] virus survives by replicating its own genetic code within the infected body; and a cognitive, or [[memetic->meme]], virus is an idea which, in "going viral" and replicating itself across screens and minds around the world, achieves longevity. The years between 2015 and 2025 may well be called, retroactively, the 'viral' age--years shaped, more than anything, by the world-historical conjunction of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of memetic warface in the form of political and ideological disinformation propagated through the internet, and state actors interfering with elections, nuclear programs, utility grids, and more through the dissemination of computer viruses. <img style="max-width:100%" src="assets/imgs/viral_replication_of_a_blue_kettle.png" alt="Generated with Midjourney with prompt: 'glitch, virus, blue kettle, viral replication of a blue kettle, proliferation, glitch art, against a pure black background'.">

Virus images here for STUXNET and ILOVEYOU

The biologist Richard Dawkins introduced the term "meme" in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. For him, a meme – from the Greek root mimeme, meaning imitation – is a "replicator" in the "soup of human culture," a "unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation" <<cite "192" "Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene.">>. His examples include "tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches." A meme-complex, or "memeplex,"" is a collection of these memes that tend to replicate together. Crucially, not all memes are created equal: Dawkins suggests that “longevity, fecundity, and <<define "copying-fidelity" "Loss">> determine how well a unit of culture will replicate and spread through the meme pool <<cite "192" "Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene">>. For many memeticists, these phrases and ideas both parasitize the mind and form it; as Daniel Dennett puts it in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained, “the haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes” <<cite "207" "Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained.">> In other words, the meme perspective articulates a reflexive relationship between <<define "information" "Information">>-as-content and consciousness-as-form; individuals arise out of the collection of memes in their minds. The term is commonly (and often interchangeably) used alongside <<define "viral" "Virus">> to describe units of information that spread from person to person across the Internet. Limor Shifman argues that the meme is the "best concept to encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet," providing a vocabulary to examine the “gradual propagation from individuals to society, reproduction via copying and imitation, and diffusion through selection and competition” that units of culture undergo <<cite "18" "Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture.">>. This approaches the way that ‘meme’ gets used online: as a way of describing the cultural flotsam of the Internet. Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear gloss this vernacular use of the term meme, which better describes the particular way in which memes operate online, "to describe the rapid uptake and spread of a 'particular idea presented as a written text, image, <<define "language 'move'" "Language Game">>, or some other unit of cultural stuff” <<cite "202" "Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. New Literacies.">>. The way that the meaning of the word meme has mutated, from Dawkins’ definition to this vernacular use, has been taken by Dawkins and others to be indicative of the way that memes themselves function; in a speech given at the Cannes Film Festival, Dawkins announced that "the very idea of the meme has itself mutated and evolved in a new direction. An Internet meme is a hijacking of the original idea. Instead of mutating by random chance […] Internet memes are altered deliberately by human activity. In some cases, this can take the form of genuinely creative art" <<cite "4:08" "Dawkins, Richard. Just for Hits.">>. Although this distinction is a helpful one, it elides the fact that many Internet memes are mutated not by humans but instead by <<define "computers" "AI">>, or by a collaboration between humans and machines. Still, the difference between a meme in the classic sense and an Internet meme is not as great as it might seem; indeed, the latter is primarily a subset of the former, and drawing a hard distinction between memes with digital material supports and memes with analogue supports is only helpful inasmuch as the difference between the two is instructive. For some examples of memes, see the <<excerpt "Meme Gallery">>.

"Influenza," commonly known as the flu, is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza viruses. It is characterized by a range of symptoms that can vary in severity, from mild to severe, and can lead to complications, especially in vulnerable populations. The flu viruses are classified into different types and subtypes, including influenza A, B, and C, based on their genetic makeup. Flu symptoms typically include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, fatigue, and headaches. In some cases, individuals may experience vomiting and diarrhea, although these symptoms are more common in children. The flu is often confused with the common cold due to the similarity of symptoms, but the flu tends to be more intense and may lead to more severe health outcomes. Each year, seasonal flu outbreaks occur, primarily during the fall and winter months. The flu can spread through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks, as well as through contact with contaminated surfaces. Because the influenza virus can mutate and change over time, new strains can emerge, which is why flu vaccines are updated annually to match the most prevalent strains expected for the upcoming flu season. Flu vaccination is a key preventive measure recommended by health authorities worldwide. The flu vaccine helps reduce the risk of infection and, even if an individual still contracts the flu, vaccination can often lead to milder symptoms and reduced risk of complications. Vaccination is especially important for certain groups, such as the elderly, young children, pregnant women, and individuals with underlying health conditions, who are at higher risk of severe flu-related complications. While most people recover from the flu without any long-term effects, complications can arise, particularly in vulnerable individuals. These complications may include pneumonia, bronchitis, sinus and ear infections, and worsening of pre-existing medical conditions. Therefore, seeking medical attention and following recommended treatments is important, especially for those at higher risk. In summary, influenza is a viral respiratory illness that can lead to a range of symptoms, with the potential for severe complications, particularly in certain populations. Annual flu vaccination, along with good hygiene practices, such as regular handwashing and covering coughs and sneezes, are essential strategies for reducing the spread of the flu and minimizing its impact on public health.

In the interstices of human connection and cybernetic replication lies the curious case of the ILOVEYOU computer worm, also known colloquially as the Love Bug. Crafted by Onel de Guzman, a student in Manila, this worm began its digital promenade on May 4, 2000, insinuating itself into the world’s digital corridors via email with an enticing subject line: "ILOVEYOU". Despite its seemingly innocuous invitation, the file attached carried a script that, once executed, would overwrite crucial data and replicate itself across the infected system's network via Microsoft Outlook's address book. De Guzman’s creation exploited the socio-technical vulnerabilities inherent in early internet culture—chief among them, the human propensity for curiosity and connection. The worm’s spread was undergirded by a script that capitalized on a default Windows setting hiding file extensions, thus masking its malicious intent behind the guise of a benign text file <<cite "1" "ILOVEYOU--Wikipedia">>. The resulting chaos highlighted the fragile interdependencies of global networks, precipitating a cascade of shutdowns in critical infrastructures such as the Pentagon and the British Parliament. This incident not only triggered a reevaluation of cyber security protocols but also spurred legislative shifts, notably in the Philippines, where the lack of laws against malware production had initially stymied prosecutorial efforts. The ILOVEYOU worm thus stands as a stark embodiment of the tensions between connectivity’s promises and its perils, a digital organism whose replication mechanics reflect both the technical vectors that enable data transmission and the human gestures that propel their spread. The event's cultural echoes reverberate in discussions about internet safety, the ethics of software creation, and the broader implications of our intertwined digital lives. As a literary figure, ILOVEYOU transmutes from a mere technical anomaly into a symbol of our collective vulnerability to the siren calls of digital intimacy and the shadowed costs of open networks.

While this document was being written, COVID-19 happened (and continues to happen). It is difficult to overestimate the degree to which the virus changed the global landscape, and outside the scope of a document like this; that said, it is worth remarking upon that many of the thought experiments originally posited here, particularly in the introduction, went from outlandish to anodyne as a result. For example, positing a United States of America where more of the social gestures that people perform took place on digital platforms than in person was difficult for folks of a certain age to imagine in, say, 2018; now, six years later, those of us whose memories still work can recall the lived experience of taking classes and meetings and social calls and awkard movie nights on Zoom, with all of the attendant gains and losses thereof. As of this writing (April 28, 2024), the World Health Organization estimates that 7,045,569 people have died, globally, from COVID-19. <<cite "1" "WHO COVID-19 Dashboard">>

Walter Benjamin's concept of "aura" describes the unique, unapproachable quality of an authentic work of art, rooted in its presence in time and space, and inextricably linked to its history and context. This aura embodies the work’s originality and its ritualistic value, which, according to Benjamin, are fundamentally compromised by mechanical reproduction techniques such as photography and film. As these technologies proliferate, the aura diminishes, detaching the art from its unique existence and allowing it to be encountered in myriad, often trivial, contexts. Benjamin posits that this shift not only transforms the function of art—from ritual to exhibition—but also reflects broader social changes in how we perceive and value cultural artifacts in a reproducible, commodified form <<cite "4" "Benjamin, Walter. 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'.">>. This concept ties directly into the dissertation's exploration of authenticity, representation, and the impact of digital reproduction on human perception and knowledge. Just as Benjamin critiques how reproduction erodes the aura of art, the dissertation argues that the digital landscape—through algorithms, databases, and AI—creates a similar erosion in our understanding of texts and narratives. In both cases, the commodification of content leads to a loss of depth and singularity, mirroring the broader theme of alienation within a technologically mediated world. By juxtaposing Benjamin's concerns with the contemporary digital context, the dissertation underscores the ongoing relevance of his insights in a new, digitally saturated era.

Per <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_frame">Wikipedia</a>, a key frame (or keyframe) in animation and filmmaking is "a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. These are called frames because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film or on a digital video editing timeline. A sequence of key frames defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the key frames on the film, video, or animation defines the timing of the movement. Because only two or three key frames over the span of a second do not create the illusion of movement, the remaining frames are filled with 'inbetweens'" For animation, a keyframe can be thought of like a single snapshot of a stop-motion animation. Each keyframe is (generally) manually posed. This works differently than animation which leverages <<define "motion-capture data" "Motion-Capture Data">> to transcode captured <<define "meatspace" "Meatspace">> gestures into data that can be used to animate a model.

Thought experiments are hypothetical situations that allow us to explore what would happen if a particular principle were true, or a particular thing were the case. They are useful in philosophy and science, because they allow us to explore the implications of a particular idea without having to actually go through the process of making that idea a reality. Some common thought experiments in philosophy include the <<define "Chinese Room Argument">>, which was used by John Searle to show that computers cannot be said to understand language, and the <<define "Trolley Problem">>, which is used to explore the implications of different ethical theories. Daniel Dennett's term "intuition pump" is closely related to the thought experiment; an intuition pump is a thought experiment that is designed to help us understand a particular concept by providing a concrete example of it. Intuition pumps are often used in philosophy and cognitive science to help us understand complex concepts like consciousness and free will. For more on intuition pumps, see Daniel Dennett's book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking.

The Chinese Room argument is a <<define "thought experiment">> proposed by philosopher John Searle in his 1980 paper "Minds, Brains, and Programs." It challenges the claim that a computer running a program can have genuine understanding or consciousness merely by virtue of executing the right algorithms. The thought experiment runs as follows: Imagine a person who speaks only English locked in a room with a comprehensive set of rules (in English) for manipulating Chinese symbols. People outside the room pass in questions written in Chinese characters, and by following these rules meticulously, the person in the room is able to pass back appropriate Chinese responses. To outside observers, the room appears to understand Chinese. However, the person inside is merely manipulating symbols according to rules without any understanding of their meaning. Searle argues that computer programs, no matter how sophisticated, are in the same position - manipulating symbols without genuine understanding or <<define "qualia">>. The argument is particularly relevant to discussions of <<define "large language models" "LLM">> and artificial intelligence. When ChatGPT or similar models produce coherent text that seems to demonstrate understanding, are they genuinely comprehending language, or are they, like the person in the room, just following extremely sophisticated rules for symbol manipulation? The Chinese Room argument suggests that even perfect simulation of understanding is not the same as understanding itself. Critics of the argument, including advocates of strong AI and cognitive scientists, have raised various objections. The "systems reply" suggests that while the person in the room doesn't understand Chinese, the room as a whole system (including the rule book) does understand--just as individual neurons might not understand language but the brain as a system does. Others argue that the thought experiment relies too heavily on our intuitions about consciousness and understanding, which might not be reliable guides when thinking about non-human forms of intelligence. The debate echoes broader questions about the nature of understanding, consciousness, and meaning in both human and artificial systems. It raises fundamental questions about whether consciousness and understanding can emerge from purely syntactic operations (symbol manipulation) without semantic content (meaning), and what implications this has for the development of artificial intelligence.

The Trolley Problem is a classic ethical <<define "thought experiment">> first formulated by philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967. In its most common form, it presents a scenario where a runaway trolley is headed towards five people tied to the tracks. You stand next to a lever that would divert the trolley to another track, where it would kill one person instead. The question is whether it is morally right to pull the lever, actively causing one death to save five lives. A key variant introduced by Judith Jarvis Thomson complicates the scenario: instead of pulling a lever, you must push a large person off a bridge onto the tracks to stop the trolley and save the five people. While the mathematical calculus remains the same (one death versus five), most people's moral intuitions differ significantly between the two scenarios, highlighting the distinction between actively causing harm and allowing harm to occur. The thought experiment has gained renewed relevance in discussions of autonomous vehicles and AI ethics. How should a self-driving car be programmed to respond in unavoidable accident scenarios? Should it prioritize its passengers' safety or minimize overall casualties? These questions transform the trolley problem from a philosophical abstraction into concrete engineering decisions. Perhaps ironically, the Trolley Problem has also become a popular <<define "meme">> format, particularly in image macros that present absurdist variations on the original scenario. These memes often parody the thought experiment's attempt to reduce complex moral decisions to binary choices, or use it as a template for commentary on contemporary social and political issues. The proliferation of these memes demonstrates how serious philosophical concepts can be transcoded into viral content, gaining new meanings through their circulation as social media artifacts. The way the Trolley Problem has been simultaneously adopted by AI ethicists and transformed into meme content exemplifies how ideas can operate at multiple levels in contemporary <<define "information">> ecosystems - as rigorous philosophical tools, as practical engineering challenges, and as elements of online cultural discourse.

John McQuarrie and Edward Robinson's translation of Martin Heideggers Being and Time contains a glossary of German Expressions which glosses zuhanden and Zuhandenheit as "ready-to-hand" and "readiness-to-hand", respectively <<cite "520" "Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time.">>. This term is contrasted with vorhanden and Vorhandenheit, or "present-at-hand" and "presence-at-hand" <<cite "518" "Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time.">>. Where the ready-to-hand describes our "practical relationship to things that are handy or useful", the present-at-hand instead describes "our theoretical apprehension of a world made up of objects" <<cite "*" "Critchley, Simon. 'Being and Time, part 3: Being-in-the-world.'">>. Crucially, for Heidegger the zuhanden precedes the vorhanden; that is, practice precedes theory, and our initial apprehension of objects in the world is ordinarily and fundamentally oriented towards what those objects do and can be used for. What fascinates me is the relationship between zuhanden and vorhanden, and the way that a broken tool, a piece of equipment poorly suited for its purpose, announces its own presence as a result of its inutility. In Heidegger's words: <blockquote> When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool turns out to be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous. This conspicuousness presents the ready-to-hand equipment as in a certain un-readiness-to-hand. But this implies that what cannot be used just lies there; it shows itself as an equipmental Thing which looks so and so, and which, in its readiness-to-hand as looking that way, has constantly been present-at-hand too. Pure presence-at-hand announces itself in such equipment, but only to withdraw to the readiness-to-hand of something with which one concerns oneself--that is to say, of the sort of thing we find when we put it back into repair. [...] Similarly, when something ready-to-hand is found missing, though its everyday presence [zugegensein] has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice of it, this makes a break in those referential contexts which circumspection discovers. Our circumspection comes up against emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was ready-to-hand with, and what it was ready-to-hand for. The environment announces itself afresh<<cite "103" "105" "Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time.">>. </blockquote> In other words, there is a character to a thing which announces itself only when the usefulness of that thing breaks down. This is particularly germane in the case of the <<define "cyborg">>, where biological and technological comes together to create a hybridized being. In the case of an <<define "inforg" "Inforg">> with an <<define "extended mind" "the extended mind">>, for example, it is only when the technological <<define "prosthetic" "Prosthetic">> breaks down--when, for example, the battery of the cell phone serving as my prosthetic memory runs out--that "pure presence-at-hand announces itself," the phone becomes vorhanden rather than zuhanden, and my own cyborg mode of being becomes conspicuous.

The Narrative Self is a concept that views personal identity as constructed through the stories we tell about ourselves. Rather than being a fixed entity, the self is continually shaped and reshaped by the narratives that we create and reinterpret over time. This idea aligns with the theories of narrative psychology, which suggest that the self is fundamentally a narrative construct—a story woven from past experiences, aspirations, relationships, and cultural context. The Narrative Self is inherently fluid and fragmented, reflecting the ongoing process of meaning-making that is central to human cognition and experience. This concept connects closely with the dissertation's examination of identity in a digital age, where the self is often represented and mediated through algorithms, social media, and other technologies that continuously rewrite our personal narratives. As the dissertation argues, the Narrative Self becomes increasingly complex in the context of digital surveillance and datafication, where external forces influence the stories we construct about ourselves, often without our awareness or consent. This highlights the tensions between personal agency and technological determinism, echoing broader themes of authenticity, representation, and control within contemporary digital culture.

Meatspace is the analog inversion of <<define "cyberspace" "Cyberspace">>: the world of physical "meat suits" (that is, bodies). The term often attributed to William Gibson, who describes the meat/cyber binary in Neuromancer thusly: "For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh." <<cite "6" "Gibson, William. Neuromancer.">>

"Cyberspace" is a now-dated term referring to the online world as the digital inversion of <<define "meatspace" "Meatspace">>. As Lincoln Dahlberg writes in a 1998 article, cyberspace is a "virtual meeting place" that, at that point, was seen as "providing the basis for the revitalisation of the public sphere and democracy"--in other words, a would-be utopian update to Jürgen Habermas's "public sphere" <<cite "1" "Dahlberg, Lincoln. Cyberspace and the Public Sphere: Exploring the Democratic Potential of the Net.">>. Dahlberg's article is prescient inasmuch as it identifies the consolidation of cyberspace under the aegis of capital, in the form of telecommunication and technology companies, as reason to be wary of over-utopian theorizing. Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer's piece in the 2003 New Media Reader, defines cyberspace less in terms of its technological support and more in terms of the "interactions among the actors within it" <<cite "664" "Morningstar, Chip, and Farmer, F. Randall. The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat.">>. In this telling, cyberspace is first and foremost a "many-participant environment" where various sorts of actors come together, converse, and interact. For myself, the term cyberspace brings to mind two platforms where I grew up--<<define "MUDs" "MUD">> and <<define "World of Warcraft">>. I spent hours of every day in these virtual worlds, inhabiting textual and graphical <<define "personae" "Persona">> with bodies radically different from my own and answering to names with no connection to my own. I made friends that I remain in contact with to this day; I was the best man at one such friend's wedding. On many days, I spent more time online than off, and the social behavior with which I gestured myself into being was platformed in this cyberspace. Of course, this was a more radical idea in 2019 than it became in 2020, when many of the knowledge workers who I assume are the audience for this dissertation found themselves living their lives in cyberspace, struggling against the <<define "lossy" "Loss">> constraints of platforms like Zoom.

A "cyborg," short for "cybernetic organism," is a conceptual entity that merges the realms of <<define "meatspace" "Meatspace">> and <<define "cyberspace" "Cyberspace">>, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital domains. Coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in 1960, the term initially referred to the augmentation of human capabilities through technological enhancements, illustrating the potential for humans to transcend their biological limitations. Over time, the concept of a cyborg has evolved beyond mere physical adaptations, encompassing the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. Cyborgs embody a fusion of organic and artificial components, embodying a spectrum of forms from subtle technological augmentations to more elaborate integrations. Donna Haraway's influential essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" introduced the idea of cyborgs as beings that challenge traditional notions of gender, identity, and embodiment, suggesting that technology can dismantle oppressive social constructs. Haraway's work emphasized the subversion of established norms and the empowerment derived from embracing the hybrid nature of cyborg existence. In contemporary contexts, the term "cyborg" encapsulates individuals who engage with digital environments, such as virtual reality, social media, and wearable technology, to extend their cognitive and communicative abilities. The prevalence of smartphones, smartwatches, and wearable fitness trackers has propelled the integration of technology into daily life, contributing to the normalization of cyborg-like experiences. Cyborgs not only challenge the dichotomy between the physical and the digital but also raise ethical, philosophical, and sociopolitical questions about identity, privacy, agency, and the potential for exploitation by corporations and governments. As technology continues to advance, the notion of what constitutes a cyborg continues to expand, reflecting the evolving relationship between humans and the digital realm. For instance, individuals who use brain-computer interfaces to control external devices or who implant microchips for convenience illustrate the contemporary cyborg sensibility, where the line between human and machine blurs, and the boundaries of self shift in intriguing and sometimes disconcerting ways. In the intricate dance between human and machine, the concept of the cyborg provokes contemplation about the nature of existence, the malleability of identity, and the uncharted territories of a future where the organic and the synthetic intertwine.

MUD stands for "Multi-User Dungeon" and describes a once-popular genre of multiplayer text-based roleplaying games that preceded massively multiplayer online RPGs like <<define "World of Warcraft">>. They worked a bit like a multiplayer version of early adventure games like Zork; users (often volunteers) wrote room descriptions, monster descriptions, in-world books, and indeed whole worlds, and then wrote characters to explore those worlds. I would estimate that I spent around 3500 hours on MUDs between the age of 15 and 25; I met my first girlfriend on one, through out-of-character chats, and made many friends with whom I remain close. I spent around 1000 hours as Adrian Fripp, a very important druid and one-time king, and on many days spent more time as him than as Ken Alba. Spending that much time as someone else necessarily changes the player; I would not be who I am without the time I spent growing up in this particular kind of world. Without MUDs, many of the questions that have animated my research into performance and identity would never have occurred to me.

An avatar is a digital representation or embodiment of a user within a virtual environment, such as a video game, social platform, or other interactive digital spaces. This representation can range from simple graphical icons or pictograms to highly detailed and customizable three-dimensional figures, often reflecting aspects of the user’s <<define "identity" "information and selfhood">>, preferences, or aspirations. The concept of the avatar, originating from the Sanskrit "avatāra," meaning the descent of a deity into the earthly realm, signifies the user’s ability to project themselves into a digital space, effectively "descending" into a virtual reality. This process of embodiment allows the user to interact within the environment, engage with other avatars, and navigate the complexities of virtual worlds. Avatars serve not merely as tools of interaction but as extensions of the self, often embodying aspects of the user’s personality or <<define "persona" "Persona">>. In some contexts, the avatar functions as a mask, concealing the user’s true identity, while in others, it reveals and amplifies certain characteristics, allowing for a form of self-expression that might be limited in the physical world.

A multimedial text is a text which exists on and across multiple platforms. In the era of "Big Marvel," this can be compared to the corporate world's zest for vertical integration, but the term ought to be untethered from capitalism's totalizing yoke and instead connected with texts, like Achewood, which exist online, on paper, in games, and, in short, across multiple <<define "media" "medium">> forms. A multimedial text may or may not be <<define "heterogeneric," "heterogeneric">> but the terms are not equivalent. Although different media forms do lend themselves to different genres, the two terms are distinct inasmuch as 'media' focuses on platform and the materiality of the text--as film, as game, and paper book--and 'genre' focuses on the tropes, dramatic structure, and other distinguishing features of the text.

Medium, often seen in this study in its plural "media" form, describes the technological substrate on which a given text is transmitted or appears. A text can be <<define "multimedial">>, in which case it appears on multiple media, or it appear via a single medium, like a paper book (although, even in this case, a book's <<define "paratext" "paratexts">> might well cross over into other media. Marshall McLuhan's famous dicta that "the medium is the message" and that a medium can be defined as a "extension of ourselves" gestures towards the co-constituitive relationship that media, <<define "genre">>, and performance have in contributing to personal identity in the <<define "information age">>.

The word “person” has an interesting history. On the one hand, there’s the common understanding of it, which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as the second entry: “an individual human being; a man, woman, or child.” On the other, it stems etymologically from the Latin persona, meaning “mask used by a player, character in a play, dramatic role, the part played by a person in life, character, role, position,” which gives “person” its first entry: “a role taken by a person.” Most intriguing is “person”s sister word, persona, which remains in English and means “the aspect of a person’s character that is displayed to or perceived by others” <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. These terms suggests two ways of understanding personhood: in one, the subject is constituted by their individuality, their mind, their personality – in a word, their self. In the other, a person is constituted by the way their identity is performed and perceived by other people – a sort of constructed social identity made up by the masks they wear. The former understanding presumes an autonomous subject and an autonomous will in a way predicated on a kind of essentialism; the latter is more in line with the insights provided by the postmodern turn, which has decentered the subject in radical and productive ways. This decentered subject has been the object of critical study for decades now. Judith Butler, in particular, has provided insight into the way a subject is constituted by their iterated <<define "performative acts" "information and selfhood">>, the organ of which is the body. Her argument is compelling, but as we migrate to new, digital worlds, it makes less sense to privilege the <<define "material body" "meatspace">> over the <<define "avatar" "Avatar">> as the instrument with which one plays oneself.

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The most naive way of expressing the distinction between <<define "data" "Data">> and <<define "information" "Information">> is to rely on Luciano Floridi's definition of information as "meaningful, well-ordered data" <<cite "8" "Floridi, Luciano. Information: A Very Short Introduction.">>. Data here are the raw material out of which instrumentally useful information is made. In other words, as Lisa Gitelman and Virginia Jackson put it in the introduction to 'Raw Data' is an Oxymoron, "data are apparently before the fact" <<cite "2" "Gitelman, Lisa. 'Raw Data' is an Oxymoron.">>. Instrumentally, then, we can think about data as 'preprocessed' information that needs to be mined and refined until it's meaningful, like the raw sense data of Kantian cognition that precedes the operations of the imagination and the understanding. Zeroes and ones, serialized dictionaries, and electrical variances become lights on a screen that make words, images, and other <<define "medium">> with meaning; the former is data, the latter information. However, as Gitelman's title suggests, this definition fails to account for the way in which data have to be "imagined as data to exist and function as such, and the imagination of data entails an interpretive base" <<cite "3" "Gitelman, Lisa. 'Raw Data' is an Oxymoron.">>--and, as research and news stories on everything from cameras that can't see people of color to algorithms that re-enact redlining have demonstrated, an interpretive base is awfully close to an interpretive bias. Data cannot be prior to interpretation because its extraction is accomplished by human-made tools that can reflect the biases, blind spots, and bad motives of their engineers. Garbage in, garbage out.

The glitch here is defined as both a technical term and as an aesthetic moment. From a technical perspective, a glitch is, per the OED: <blockquote>A surge of current or a spurious electrical signal; also, in extended use, a sudden short-lived irregularity in behaviour.<<cite "*" "Oxford English Dictionary">></blockquote> From an aesthetic perspective, however, the glitch is a moment when less becomes more, when the <<define "lossy" "loss">> contingencies of digital being paradoxically give rise to the production of something novel. This is often accompanied by a shift in the hermeneutic categorization of <<define "signal" "Signal">> and <<define "noise" "Noise">> as discrete; instead, under the sign of the glitch, the two switch places, intermingle, and become a new signal. In the context of informational performativity, we might think about the glitch as a mode of resistance to binary oppositions imposed by platforms. See [[Blue Kettle->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]] and [[Menkman's Glitch Studies Manifesto->Ross Menkman’s 2010 Glitch Studies Manifesto]].

Transcoding refers both to the technical process of converting data from one format to another and to the broader cultural transformations that occur when human experience is mediated through digital platforms. As Lev Manovich writes: <blockquote>In new media lingo, to 'transcode' something is to translate it into another format. The computerization of culture gradually accomplishes similar transcoding in relation to all cultural categories and concepts. That is, cultural categories and concepts are substituted, on the level of meaning and/or the language, by new ones which derive from computer's ontology, epistemology and pragmatics. New media thus acts as a forerunner of this more general process of cultural re-conceptualization <<cite "45" "Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media.">>.</blockquote> The process of transcoding is inherently <<define "lossy" "Loss">>; when converting from one format to another, some data is inevitably lost or transformed. This loss can be literal, as when a video is compressed for streaming, or metaphorical, as when human gesture is reduced to the limited set of interactions possible through a particular <<define "interface">>. Transcoding operates at multiple levels simultaneously. At a technical level, it describes the conversion of data between formats - analog to digital, one file format to another. At a cultural level, it describes how digital platforms reshape human expression and social interaction. At an epistemological level, it suggests how digital technologies fundamentally alter our ways of knowing and being in the world. The ubiquity of transcoding in contemporary life makes it a crucial concept for understanding how identity is performed in the <<define "information age">>. When social gestures are transcoded into likes, shares, and emoji reactions, or when conversation is transcoded through the constraints of chat interfaces and <<define "large language models" "LLM">>, new forms of selfhood emerge that are fundamentally shaped by the logics of digital platforms. The <<define "glitch">>--moments where transcoding fails or produces unexpected results--can reveal both the limitations and the possibilities inherent in these processes of translation between human and machine ways of knowing.

<<define "Data">> takes up space to store and bandwidth to transmit. By utilizing compression algorithms, the amount of space that data takes up can be reduced. However, that compression is seldom a lossless--or reversible--process. Instead, data is ordinarily lost during compression. These compression algorithms undergird the systems by which <<define "medium">> is transmitted online. Loss is not unique to digital transcoding. Consider the process by which a 70mm film is transcoded into a digital format. This process can be 'lossless' inasmuch as it produces an enormous video file that, in theory, could be used to print a new 70mm film. However, as the protestations of film-first afficionadoes and vinylheads attest, analog media is continuous where digital media is not; nuances are often lost. In his memoir, Brian Eno writes about the nostalgic premium that accompanies lossy media, and how that <<define "noise" "Noise">> can itself become the <<define "signal" "Signal">> that the user seeks out: <blockquote> Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit — all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. <<cite "283" "Eno, Brian. A Year With Swollen Appendices.">> </blockquote>

<a target="_blank" href="https://unity.com/">Unity</a> is a popular modern game engine that stands out for its flexibility. A single project created in Unity can generally be exported to many different platforms--Mac, Windows, Android, Web, VR, and others. Creators use a combination of the programming language C# and Unity's GUI to create their game. I have used Unity to create [[EndlessGame->Case Study: ENDLESSGAME]] and <a href="https://especiallygreatliterature.com/almosttothetick.html">Almost to the Tick</a>.

The term "virtual reality" (VR) was coined in the 1980s by Jaron Lanier, one of the earliest developers of VR technology and the founder of VPL Research, a now-defunct company that was instrumental in the development of VR technology. He defined it as "a computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment" <<cite "Lanier" "Lanier, Jaron. Virtual Reality.">>. This definition is still in use today, although it has been expanded to include non-computer-generated simulations, such as those produced by 360-degree cameras. Lanier's definition is helpful in understanding what VR is, but it is also important to understand what VR is not. VR is not, as is often assumed, simply a computer-generated simulation of reality; it is a simulation that is designed to be interacted with in a physical way. This physicality is essential to the VR experience; without it, VR would simply be a three-dimensional movie. The interaction can take many forms, but it must be more than simply looking at the simulation; it must be an embodied experience. This is why VR technology is often referred to as "immersive technology." The term "virtual reality" is sometimes used interchangeably with "augmented reality" (AR), but the two are not the same. AR is a technology that superimposes computer-generated images on the real world, while VR is a technology that replaces the real world with a computer-generated simulation. AR is often used for navigation, while VR is often used for entertainment. Most versions of the metaverse take place in a kind of VR.

"Motion-capture data" refers to the digital information captured and recorded from real-world movements and actions, typically using specialized technology known as motion-capture systems. These systems utilize various sensors, cameras, and markers to track and record the motions of objects or living beings, such as humans or animals, in order to create accurate and realistic representations of movement in virtual environments. The process of capturing motion involves placing markers or sensors on key points of the subject's body, which are then tracked as the subject moves. High-speed cameras or other sensor technologies record the spatial positions and orientations of these markers over time, generating a dataset that represents the intricate details of the subject's motion. This data can then be processed and translated into a digital format that can be applied to virtual characters, models, or animations. Motion-capture data has a wide range of applications across various industries, including entertainment, sports, medicine, and research. In the entertainment field, motion-capture technology is frequently used in filmmaking and video game production to create lifelike character animations. Actors wearing motion-capture suits perform actions, and their movements are captured and mapped onto digital characters, enhancing realism and immersion in visual media. In sports, motion-capture data is used to analyze athletes' movements, helping coaches and researchers study techniques, improve performance, and prevent injuries. In medical settings, motion-capture technology aids in assessing patients' physical movements and tracking their progress during rehabilitation and therapy programs. Additionally, researchers use motion-capture data to study biomechanics, cognitive processes, and human behavior in diverse fields of study. One of the challenges associated with motion-capture data is the sheer volume of information generated during the capture process. Raw motion-capture data may require processing to remove noise, calibrate measurements, and align data across multiple sensors or cameras. Moreover, accurately applying the captured data to virtual models or characters requires specialized software and techniques to ensure realistic and seamless animation. Motion capture http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/ . This passage requires expansion.

For N. Katherine Hayles, cognition can be defined as "the ability to sense information from the environment, interpret it, and act in contexts that connect it with meaning" <<cite "*" "Hayles, N. Katherine. The end of being human.">>.This definition is expansive, deliberately encapsulating processes performed by both biological and technological actors. Specifically, Hayles extends cognition beyond the biological and describes how humans and culture more broadly are "forming strong symbiotic bonds with computational media" <<cite "*" "Hayles, N. Katherine. The end of being human.">>. Hayles' definition is also pragmatic, echoing the Wittgensteinian maxim that the meaning of a word is its use in a language. Active cognitition turns the raw material of the noumenal world into information rendered meaningful inasmuch as it drives actions in context. This broad definition of cognition is articulated as a spectrum, from "high cognition" like abstraction, language, and mathematics to "low cognition" like pattern recognition. As posthumans in the Haylesean sense of the term, humanity has moved towards exteriorizing nonconscious, low cognition to technological apparatuses, giving rise to <<define "cognitive assemblages" "cognitive assemblage">>. This argument echoes Clark and Chalmers' discussions of <<define "the extended mind">>. In both cases, biological and technological systems enmeshed in cybernetic, nonconscious loops of greater or lesser complexity embody and produce consciousness.

A cognitive assemblage is N. Katherine Hayles' term for what Chalmers and Clark call <<define "the extended mind">>. In her words, cognitive assemblages are: <blockquote>tighter or looser collections of technical objects and human participants through which <<define "cognitions" "cognition">> circulate in the form of information, interpretations, and meanings <<cite "3" "Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Posthuman: The Literary Text as Cognitive Assemblage.">>.</blockquote> Hayles differs from Chalmers and Clark in focus, among other things; for her, interpretation is central, and meaning is "oriented towards a pragmatist sense of the consequences of actions" <<cite "11" "Hayles, N. Katherine. Writing Posthuman: The Literary Text as Cognitive Assemblage.">>.

From [["The Extended Mind in Krapp's Last Tape"->Krapp 5]]. In their 1998 paper 'The Extended Mind', Andy Clark and David Chalmers address the boundary between the mind and the rest of the world and ultimately advocate for what they call "active externalism," a way of thinking about the mind that acknowledges the active role of the environment, including technological devices, in driving cognitive processes <<cite '2' 'Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David. "The Extended Mind".'>>. For Clark and Chalmers, a student doing long division by hand is not just using the pen and paper as a tool; some of the work of <<define "cognition">> is actively platformed on the page. Because the mind is the seat of cognition, it makes sense to think about that student’s mind as extending beyond his skin and onto the page. In cases like these: <blockquote>the human organism is linked with an external entity in a two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own right. All the components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern behaviour in the same sort of way that cognition usually does. If we remove the external component the system's behavioural competence will drop, just as it would if we removed part of its brain. Our thesis is that this sort of coupled process counts equally well as a cognitive process, whether or not it is wholly in the head.<<cite '8' '9' 'Clark, Andy and Chalmers, David. "The Extended Mind".'>></blockquote> This <<define "cybernetic entity" "cyborg">> can be compared usefully to Hayles' <<define "cognitive assemblage">>.

The word "memory" is derived from the Latin memoria, meaning "recollection, memory, remembrance; a thing worth remembering, a memorial; a tomb or monument" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. The root of this word, memor, means "to remember, to call to mind; to mention, record, celebrate in memory; to be mindful of; to keep in mind, to keep in view" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. Memory, then, is the act or faculty of remembering, or the power of retaining knowledge acquired in the past, and is often used interchangeably with "recollection." The word "memory" is also used to describe the physical apparatus through which we remember. This usage is derived from the Latin memoria, meaning "a store-house, a repository; a place where something is deposited for safe keeping" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. In this sense, memory is a storehouse of information, and the act of remembering is the act of retrieving this information. This usage is common in computing, where data is stored in memory – in RAM, for example – and retrieved when needed. Indeed, the word "memory" is often used to describe the capacity of a computer to store information. The word "memory" is also used to describe a record of the past, either in the form of an account or a physical object. This usage is derived from the Latin memoria, meaning "remembrance, memory; a thing worth remembering, a memorial; a tomb or monument" <<cite "OED" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. In this sense, memory is a way of preserving the past, and the act of remembering is the act of keeping this record alive.

"Content" is a catch-all term that reduces news articles, stories, videos, podcasts, and other forms of media to a single stream of input. The shift from genre-specific terminology to totalized "content" is a consequence of the social media age, where everything can appear as a link on an endless feed.

An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure or set of rules designed to perform a specific task or solve a particular problem, often implemented through programming in computational systems. Algorithms form the backbone of digital technology, enabling machines to process data, make decisions, and execute actions automatically. They are foundational to the operation of everything from basic arithmetic calculations to complex artificial intelligence systems. In the context of <<define "Database">> and computational culture, algorithms not only execute processes but also shape the ways in which information is organized, accessed, and interpreted, thus influencing the construction of knowledge itself. Within the scope of this dissertation, algorithms play a crucial role in examining how digital technologies mediate and often manipulate human perception and behavior. The dissertation argues that algorithms, particularly those embedded in recommendation systems and social media platforms, actively participate in shaping the self by selectively amplifying certain content while suppressing others. This curation of information contributes to echo chambers and the radicalization pathways discussed in the broader work, illustrating how algorithms are not neutral tools but active agents in the construction of digital realities.

A great deal of scholarly work has taken place on the subject of magazines, magazine culture, and gender. Magazines make for a particularly fertile field of gendered analysis for several reasons: as "low-brow" cultural items, they are often (though not universally, with the proliferation of, for example, feminist magazines, or the ballyhooed repositioning of Teen Vogue as a venue for hard-hitting investigative journalism) less self-consciously concerned with issues like gender construction; they have, as Elizabeth Groeneveld writes, "targeted readerships based on gender for almost the entire history of their publication" <<cite "214" "Groeneveld, Elizabeth. Gender in Magazines">>; and they are heterogenous and multimedia by definition, containing a collage of articles, laser-targetted advertisements, and aspirational imagery. As noted Beckett scholar Jonathan Bignell writes in Media Semiotics: An Introduction, both men's and women's magazines can be read as primarily concerned with gender construction and performance. A look at the products advertised, for example, reveals that <blockquote>The largest categories of products advertised in women's magazines are cosmetics, clothes, and food... [and] the largest categories of products advertised in men's magazines are cosmetics, clothes, and cars.<<cite "58" "Bignell, Jonathan. Media Semiotics: An Introduction">></blockquote> The first two of these categories, clothes and cosmetics, are two of the most conspicuous modes through which individuals stylize their bodies into gendered performances. In other words, men's and women's magazines tell their readers what it means to be a good man or woman and then sell them what they need to fashion themselves according to that ideal.

A McGuffin (usually styled "MacGuffin") is a cinematic term that signifies a sort of plot device that is not in itself important -- for example, the Maltese Falcon or the briefcase full of gold in Pulp Fiction. The term was coined by screenwriter Angus MacPhail but popularized by Alfred Hitchcock: <figure> <video controls> <source src="assets/videos/macguffin.mp4" type="video/mp4"> Your browser does not support the video tag. </video> <figcaption>Alfred Hitchcock explaining the term "MacGuffin" in a 1972 interview with Dick Cavett. <<cite "*" "Cavett, Dick. 'Alfred Hitchcock'">></figcaption> </figure> <blockquote> It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, "What's that package up there in the baggage rack?" And the other answers, "Oh, that's a MacGuffin." The first one asks, "What's a MacGuffin?" "Well," the other man says, "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." The first man says, "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well then, that's no MacGuffin!" So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all. </blockquote>

Love and Information is a modular play written by Caryl Churchill. It first opened at the Royal Court Theatre in September 2012. I have adapted it into Twine <a href="assets/projects/lai_twine.html">here</a>; this adaptation is an appendix in the third section, a very brief [[case study->Case Study: LOVE AND INFORMATION]] in this dissertation. Please note that I expressly did not receive permission by the Churchill estate to create this adaptation (like my Beckett adaptations). however, because the work is scholarly, not-for-profit, transformative, and will have no impact on the sales of the original work, my usage constitutes <<define "Fair Use">> and is, I submit, defensible on those grounds.

The Ship of Theseus is a <<define "thought experiment" "Thought Experiment">> about identity. In short, the thought experiment considers a ship that has some of its components replaced every year. At what point, the experiment asks, has the identity of the ship changed? It was memorably formulated by Plutarch: <blockquote> The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths and returned in safety, the thirty-oared galley, was preserved by the Athenians down to the time of Demetrius Phalereus. They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new and sound ones in their places, so that the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.<<cite "*" "Plutarch. Lives: Theseus.">> </blockquote>

In the context of digital performativity, emoji perform a particuarly interesting function. As iconic representations of facial expressions and other stylizations of the body on chat platforms that ordinarily lack a visual component beyond embedded images and a profile photo, the emoji should be read as a <<define "gesture" "information and selfhood">> in the performative sense. Gretchen McCulloch has written that emoji function as emblems; that is, they have "precise forms and stable meanings" <<cite "161" "McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet.">> within particular contexts--and those meanings change when moved to different contexts. She argues that they contribute to digital embodiment by allowing people to provide tonal markers to plain text.

The precise dollar value of these cosmetic items is difficult to pinpoint because they are purchased with V-Bucks, which can be purchased with American dollars at an approximate rate of 100 V-Bucks per American dollar. Discounts are available with larger purchases, however; $24.99 will get you a ‘bonus’ 300 V-Bucks, and users can earn V-Bucks for performing in-game actions. YouTuber Dan Olson, creator of the popular channel "Folding Ideas", has an excellent video on just this topic that also opens with a discussion of D.J. Marshmallow's concert but digs deeper into the way that Fortnite's economy as a whole is built to take advantage of its (mostly underage) players. In his words, "V-Bucks are used here, as in most other microtransaction games, as a means to bypass financial regulations involving held value and some regional laws regarding gambling... the use of V-Bucks allows [Fortnite publisher] Epic to obfuscate the assigned value of both in-game purchases and the value of V-Bucks themselves." <<cite "*" "Olson, Dan. 'Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite'.">> <figure> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dPHPNgIihR0?si=zKkkqxo5KvNDwuD5" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> <figcaption>Olson's "Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite", the whole of which is worth watching if you have the time.</figcaption> </figure> In an unsurprising coincidence, the use of virtual currency also echoes Snow Crash’s two primary currencies, Kongbucks and Gippers. The proliferation of currency further estranges objects from their labor value.

<figure><img style="max-width:50%" src="assets/imgs/caryl_churchill_sketch.jpg"><figcaption>A sketch of Caryl Churchill by the Wikimedia user "Petticonifer", from 2022.</figcaption></figure> Caryl Churchill is a British playwright whose work engages engages with themes of gender, power, technology, and language, among other things. She has written for the stage, for television, and for radio. In a 2011 poll by The Village Voice, 5 of the 20 dramatists polled rated her as the greatest liviing playwright<<cite "*" "Soloski, Alexis. 'Who is the greatest living playwright?'">> This study engages specifically and in an extended fashion with two of her works: [[Love and Information]], which has here been adapted to Twine, and [[Blue Kettle->Case Study: BLUE KETTLE]], one of the case studies in the first chapter. An excerpt [[From The Skriker]] was also inspirational in the early drafting of this document.

Hugh Kenner was a literary scholar whose work fused close reading with a prescient eye for media specificity. He wrote four books that featured Samuel Beckett in a major way: Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study (1961), The Stoic Comedians: Flaubert, Joyce, and Beckett (1962), A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett (1973), and (most importantly for my research) 1987's [[The Mechanic Muse->Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse.]]. His The Counterfeiters: An Historical Comedy (1968) also bears on the work of this dissertation.

Montfort, an associate professor of digital media at MIT in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, sees himself as borrowing from the Oulipo tradition "a mathematical approach to literature, supplemented with contemporary technological capabilities and the language of programming" (Malecka et al 84).

My usage of "paratext" takes as its starting with Gerard Genette's definition, glossed eloquently in the paratext to his own book Paratexts by scholar Richard Macksey as: <blockquote>Those liminal devices and conventions, both within the book (peritext) and outside it (epitext), that mediate the book to the reader: titles and subtitles, psuedonyms, forewards, dedications, epigraphs, prefaces, interitles, notes, epilogues, and afterwords [...] but also the elements in the public and private history of the book, its [...] "public epitexts" (from the author or publisher) as well as "private epitexts" (authorial correspondence, oral confidences, diaries, and pre-texts. <<cite "xvii" "Macksey, Richard. Foreword. Paratexts.">></blockquote> In this study, "paratext" comes up primarily in the case of Achewood, where I use the term to refer to the blogs, cookbooks, and other ephemera that orbits around the central text of the comic strip. In the era of cinematic universes, "lore", and vertical integration, it is not atypical for a text to be outweighed by its own paratexts--indeed, it is difficult for it not to be, given how many authors have Twitter accounts and blogs of their own. When the ephemera in question has been written in the voice of characters from the primary text, however, something changes; because literary characters, like people more generally, are the accumulation of their words and deeds, a corpus of paratexts like what Achewood offers significantly broadens the characters themselves.

As a term that is related, but not identical, to <<define "medium">>, genre demands both a definitional and a functional approach. Two questions must be addressed: what is genre, and what does it do? One problem with the first question is the genre’s versatility. Even if we narrow our scope to the genres of literary texts, genre (from the Latin genus, meaning roughly “kind” or “type” but also “family” and “origin”) operates as a classificatory category on multiple levels of abstraction. “Novel” and “poetry” are both genres, but so are “science fiction” and “the Gothic,” and the difficulty in constructing a monolithic definition that accounts for these multiple valences of meaning reemphasizes the vexed nature of constructing organizational categories for diffuse objects like literary texts. Derrida’s influential “law of genre” – that is, the ironic command that “genres are not to be mixed” – contains within itself its own impossibility. Much of his argument ends up deconstructing his own law by reading the “law of genre” under a series of different generic signs. His conception of genre as “a concept that is essentially classificatory and genealogico-taxonomic”, which relies on “the identifiable recurrence of a common trait by which one recognizes, or should recognize, a membership in a class” is surprisingly operative as a pragmatic starting point--with the caveat that “every text participates in one or several genres” and that “such participation never amounts to belonging" <<cite "55" "Derrida, Jacques. 'The Law of Genre'.">>. The (or, more properly, a) genre of a text, then, is determined by the degree to which the text participates in those tropes common to those texts that belong to the genre in question – clear instances of the genre. For example, Robert Elliott, following Wittgenstein, states that one looks at “a number of satires about which there is no question – which are at the center of the concept, so to speak—and then decides whether or not work x has resemblances enough to the undoubted examples of the type to be included in it" <<cite "23" "Elliott, Robert C. 'The Definition of Satire'.">> In practice, we read similar texts, compare them with each other, and “derive through rational inference a temporary set.” What genre does is just as complicated as what it is. Besides a generic categorization functioning as a <<define "paratext">>--we read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle differently when we've picked up a pulp sci-fi edition than we do when we're reading the Norton scholarly edition--genre also has an <<define "epistemological function" "genre and epistemology">>. Genre can also be thought of as analogous to gender; as Lauren Berlant puts it in The Female Complaint, “To call an identity like a sexual identity a genre is to think about it as something repeated, detailed, and stretched while retaining its intelligibility, its capacity to remain readable or audible across the field of all its variations <<cite "4" "Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint.">>.

The <<define "genre">> of a text provides an interpretive framework, a discursive setting, and an epistemological posture for reading it. When E.D. Hirsch states that “all understanding of meaning is necessarily genre-bound”, he points to this constitutive role that genre-as-frame and <<define "paratext" "genre-as-paratext">> plays in providing the reader with a place to start. For Hirsch, “an interpreter’s preliminary generic conception of a text is constitutive of everything that he subsequently understands;” genre provides the “givens of a situation” which help suggest “a probable type of meaning” <<cite "14" "33" "Hirsch, E.D., from Validity in Interpretation.">>. Or, as Jonathan Culler says, a genre is “a set of expectations, a set of instructions about the type of coherence one is to look for and the ways in which sequences are to be read” <<cite "51" "Culler, Jonathan. 'Toward a Theory of Non-Genre Literature'.">> In other words, genre is always a provisional, participatory property of a text, which cues the reader that it (and its truth claims) ought to be read in a particular way.

One could conceive, following this notion of <<define "genre">>, a computer program that utilized machine learning and a sufficiently large corpus of manually tagged texts in order to process a given text and spit out the degrees to which the text participates in those pre-existing genres. Working with multiple criteria – word choice, sentence structure, styles of narration – one could actually train a computer to make itself better at “reading” genre. See Ted Underwood's “Gender, Genre, and Point of View” for an example of how one might implement this kind of study.

Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "The art of predicting the future by supposed communication with the dead; (more generally) divination, sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment." Etymologically derived from the Latin "necromantīa" and the Greek "νεκρομαντεία", referring to the art of "predicting the future by supposed communication with the dead" Necromancers are common in contemporary genre fiction and a staple villain of tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons. Despite occasional necromantic antiheroes like Tamsyn Muir's Harrowhawk from the Locked Tomb series, the art is generally a dark one; it is unsavory, and generally evil, to manipulate the dead to do your bidding. While writing this definition, I found myself thinking of Professor John-Paul Riquelme, a member of my orals committee who would have been responsible for reading parts of this document had he not died in 2022. As the preeminent scholar of the Gothic, among many other things, I wondered what he'd say about necromancy. I had a dark thought: I could use <<define "technonecromancy">>, as I do in 36 Blackbirds, to ask. And so I did; I fed ChatGPT4 a copy of Professor Riquelme's foreword to an overview of the 19th Century Gothic and asked it to write a definition of "necromancy" in his voice, knowing as I did so that there was something irreverent and maybe blasphemous about it but also feeling, rightly or wrongly, that it was an irreverence and a blasphemy that he might appreciate, given the last message I received from him was an admonition, on my dissertation, to "knock 'em undead'. What came out was a failure, I think: <blockquote>Necromancy, a term rooted in the ancient interplay between death and forbidden knowledge, refers to the arcane practice of communing with the dead, typically to gain insight or wield otherworldly powers. This Gothic art, steeped in mystery and terror, embodies a paradoxical engagement with mortality, where practitioners seek to traverse the tenuous boundary between the living and the dead. The necromancer, often depicted as both sage and transgressor, conjures spirits and revives corpses, invoking a spectral confluence of life and death. Through its rituals, necromancy challenges the very fabric of natural law, unsettling the established hierarchy of existence and delving into the shadowy realms of human fear and fascination. This eldritch art, akin to the literary Gothic's conjoining of opposites, underscores the enduring human quest to master the unknown, revealing the darker impulses of our desire for control and understanding in a world haunted by the inevitability of death.</blockquote> There are cosmetic similarities to Professor Riquelme's style: an interest in doublings and the conjoining of opposites, for example, but something is incontrovertibly missing here. There is an echo and a ghost, but none of his wit or rigor. I cannot imagine Professor Riquelme defining a term without divining something provocative and playful in its etymology, without finding some pun, without tracing some allusion that would darkly illuminate the term. And even where an echo is heard, it's difficult to know what I'm bringing to the hearing that echoes against what's actually there. Someone's hand is always moving the planchette.

I coin here the neologism "technonecromancy" as a portmanteau of <<define "technology">> and <<define "necromancy">> to refer to the practice of using <<define "large language models" "LLM">> like ChatGPT to channel and emulate the voices of the dead. In this document, the practice is primarily taken up in the collection of poetry 36 Blackbirds, where I provide the same prompt to a language model and see what poems come out. I draw specifically on "necromancy" here to evoke the unsavory, blasphemous, and maybe even immoral aspects of ventriloquizing the dead in this manner. This comes through especially strongly in the products proffered by Silicon Valley that purport to let those who grieve speak to their loved ones again; consider <a href="https://www.hereafter.ai/">HereAfter</a>, a startup that promises to let "loved ones hear meaningful stories by chatting with the virtual you" after you have died. The soul rebels against the productization of grief and of the desire for life after death manifest in this manner, and whatever chatbots can be wrung out of the combined writings of a grandmother seem, to me, to be fundamentally wrong. However. Throughout this document, I have been open about my agreement with the existentialist premise that we are, fundamentally, what we do; for Sartre, writing in "Existentialism is a Humanism": <blockquote>The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing.</blockquote> If an author, in particular, can be taken to be the totality of what they have written, and that totality can be fed into a system that can alchemize out a voice which can produce new words which cannot easily be distinguished from what the author has actually written, and if we take this existentialist premise seriously, then there is a meaningful way in which technonecromancy does permit one to speak to the dead, if only in echoes. Of course, the use of technology to hear from the dead is not particular to large language models. We do this when we listen to music recorded by now-dead musicians. Krapp does this when he plays back the young man he once was. The protagonist of Her Story trawls videotapes for hints of who her mother was. And so on.

The OED defines "procrustean" as "of, relating to, or resembling the practices of Procrustes; (hence) enforcing uniformity or conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality" <<cite "*" "Oxford English Dictionary">>. The Procrustes (Προκρούστης, roughly "the stretcher") of the definition was a Greek mythological figure who was famed for either stretching or cutting his victims' bodies so they could fit into an iron bed of fixed size: <blockquote>In Eleusis, moreover, he out-wrestled Cercyon the Arcadian and killed him; and going on a little farther, at Erineüs, he killed Damastes, surnamed Procrustes, by compelling him to make his own body fit his bed, as he had been wont to do with those of strangers. And he did this in imitation of Heracles. For that hero punished those who offered him violence in the manner in which they had plotted to serve him...<<cite "x" "Plutarch. Lives: Theseus.">></blockquote> The term has been generalized to refer to situations where arbitrary standards are imposed on heterogenous objects; for example, in computer science, a "Procrustean String" is a string of fixed length which is either padded with spaces or truncated to fit into an arbitrary length. In this study, the term can be applied to several of the major terms under examination. <<define "Gender" "gender">> is the most obvious example; the gender binary is itself a procrustean bed which coerces its subjects to stretch or truncate themselves to fit into arbitrary categories--and, as a hermeneutic system, conditions the interpretive possibilities of the audience for whom the gendered subject performs. <<define "Genre" "genre">>, similarly, suits; consider Kurt Vonnegut's attitude towards the categorization of his own novels as science fiction: <blockquote>I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labelled ‘science fiction’ … and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.<<cite "781" "Vonnegut, Kurt. Science Fiction.">></blockquote> <<define "Medium" "medium">> might, too, be considered as procrustean; necessarily conditioned by the <<define "losses" "loss">> and particularities of its technological substrate, McLuhan's maxim might be rephrased to say that the medium must be massaged if it is to fit the meaning that it's supposed to. All that said, Procrustes is killed by Thesues, and we do not need to lay in the beds we've been made to fit. Queer, <<define "glitchy" "Glitch">>, <<define "heterogeneric">>, <<define "multimedial">> texts and subject all exceed, with a greater lesser degree of ecstacy, the bounds of their beds.

The Death of the Author is a concept introduced by Roland Barthes, challenging the traditional notion that the author's intentions and personal history are the ultimate authority on the meaning of a text. Barthes argues that the author's identity is irrelevant to the interpretation of the text, which should instead be understood as a multi-layered space where various voices and perspectives intersect. As Barthes puts it, "the author enters his own death, writing begins" <<cite "142" "Barthes, Roland. 'The Death of the Author'.">>. This perspective shifts the focus from the author to the reader, proposing that the true locus of meaning lies in the act of reading, where the reader becomes the site of convergence for the text's myriad possible interpretations. This concept was influential in the development of poststructuralist thought, particularly in its rejection of authorial authority and its embrace of the text as a space of open interpretation. "Death of the Author" has since become a foundational idea in literary theory, particularly within the realms of deconstruction and reader-response criticism.

Working product designers (that is, the people who design the <<define "interfaces" "interface">> for apps, websites, and other interactive technological media) often distinguish between UI (user interface) and <<define "UX">> (user experience). As described in <<define "Figma">>'s resource library, UI refers to the "interactivity, look, and feel of a product screen or a website" <<cite "*" "UI vs. UX: What's the Difference Between UI & UX Design?">>. A UI designer might consider things like page layout, color scheme, font selection, and interactive elements. Realistically, a designer needs to be familiar with both UI and UX to create a good product. Figuratively, if a designer is like a writer, a UI "writer" would consider things like diction, character, plot, and punctuation to make a book enjoyable (or whatever else the book is meant to be). For this dissertation, I had to think like a UI designer when selecting the colors, fonts, stylization of the different kinds of links, the presentation of videos and images, and so on. I had help from my friend <a href="https://www.aliceclebeau.com/">Alice C. LeBeau</a>, who is a product designer by trade; over the course of creating this dissertation, I also became a professional product designer, which is a large part of my current full-time job.

Working product designers (that is, the people who design the <<define "interfaces" "interface">> for apps, websites, and other interactive technological media) often distinguish between UI (user interface) and <<define "UX">> (user experience). As described in <<define "Figma">>'s resource library, UX covers "a user's overall experience with the product or the website" <<cite "*" "UI vs. UX: What's the Difference Between UI & UX Design?">>. A UX designer considers how other products solve the problems that the product is meant to solve, the information architecture of the product, user feedback, and other things when designing a user experience. Figuratively, if a designer is like a writer, a UX "writer" would consider things like genre, market, audience, and the like to make sure a book does what it's supposed to do. For this dissertation, I had to think like a UX designer when defining its information architecture (that is, how the different case studies could be accessed and how they were arranged), its navigation elements, the interactive elements in each case study, and how to respond to some of the different feedback I received. I had help from my friend <a href="https://www.aliceclebeau.com/">Alice C. LeBeau</a>, who is a product designer by trade; over the course of creating this dissertation, I also became a professional product designer, which is a large part of my current full-time job.

Figma is a software tool used by product designers to sketch out <<define "UX">> and <<define "UI">> specs which are implemented by software engineers to create interactive technological media like apps and websites. Most of this dissertation was initially in Figma and then implemented in Twine via a combination of TweeCode, Javascript, HTML, and CSS.

The term “diegetic” comes from the Greek διήγησις (diegesis), meaning literally “narration;” the noun, in English, has come to refer to narration or recitation. Diegetic music, then, is music that occurs as a part of the narrative. A film’s characters can hear diegetic music. When O Brother Where Art Thou’s Soggy Bottom Boys take the stage and sing “In The Jailhouse Now” and the crowd sings along, the music is diegetic; another example comes from Blood Simple, where Maurice hits the jukebox and elicits the Four Tops’ “Same Old Song.” Contrast with <<define "non-diegetic">> and compare to <<define "transdiegetic">>.

Non-diegetic sound is not a part of the narrative as experienced by the characters. The audience can hear it, but it doesn’t exist inside the world of the media. Contrast with <<define "diegetic">> and compare to <<define "transdiegetic">>.

I have coined the term "transdiegetic" to describe a shift, in media, from <<define "diegetic">> to <<define "non-diegetic">> sound, or vice versa. The change is usually quick and seamless, which may account for why it’s so much easier to catch on second, third, fourth viewings. The Coen brothers are directors who use this technique often. For example, when Miller’s Crossing’s Leo is in bed listening to his phonograph blaring “Danny Boy,” the music is diegetic and indeed impacts the narrative – were it not for the volume of the music, he would hear his bodyguard get pumped full of lead downstairs. The song remains audible after Leo has jumped out the window to chase his would-be assassins, even though the phonograph has presumably burnt up from the house fire. It even swells when he fires his machine gun at the mooks’ getaway car. “Danny Boy” thus undergoes a transdiegetic shift. It begins as diegetic music but becomes nondiegetic as the scene progresses. Another more subtle example occurs in Raising Arizona: the theme of the lullaby that Holly sings to Little Nathan recurs in the Biker of the Apocalypse’s non-diegetic theme. Transdiegesis as a formal technique can subvert the traditionally voyeuristic role that a piece of media's reader/viewer/player has in relation to the characters; as an auditory analogue to the shot/reverse shot technique, transdiegetic moments often jar the player from one structure of identification into another. In ludology, the term "hypermediate", in contrast to "immediate", has been used to describe the subjective experience of a transdiegetic moment <<cite "47" "Allan, Matthew. 'Doki Doki Subversion Club'.">>.

<div style="text-align: center;"> <video id="cameraVideo" width="640" height="480" autoplay></video> <button id="startCameraButton">Mirror</button> <figcaption>‘What do you mean you’ve been spying on me?’ she thought--hot, blind, unreasoning. ‘What do you mean you’ve been spying on me, with this thing in my hand that is an eye?’<<cite "*" "Lockwood, Patricia. The Communal Mind.">></figcaption> </div> <script> document.getElementById('startCameraButton').addEventListener('click', function() { const videoElement = document.getElementById('cameraVideo'); if (!videoElement) { alert('Video element not found!'); return; } if (navigator.mediaDevices && navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia) { navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia({ video: true }) .then(function(stream) { videoElement.srcObject = stream; videoElement.play(); }) .catch(function(error) { alert('Error accessing the camera: ' + error.message); }); } else { alert('Camera not supported on this device.'); } }); </script>

TODO

Neither of us need to spend any more time thinking about Jacques Lacan than we already have.

<a href="https://ddlc.moe/" target="_blank">Doki Doki Literature Club</a> (DDLC) is a visual novel / dating sim / horror game created by Dan Salvato and released for free in 2017. Like [[Her Story->Her Story 1]], DDLC is a generically savvy game that takes advantage of its medium to highlight the porousness of the screen-world and the real world, with a particular emphasis on the glitch and the gothic. Critics writing about DDLC have highlighted how the game's uncanniness and horror element manifest via game-breaking moments that break the fourth wall that Christopher Barkman describes as "metaleptic" <<cite "2" "Barkman, Chris. 'There’s no point in saving anymore': Diegesis and interactional metalepsis in Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club.">>. Matthew Allan, citing Florian Kerschbaumer and Tobias Winnerling, instead defines these moments as hypermediate, in contrast to the immediate, and notes how these moments of "gothic glitch break the player's immersion, making them aware of the medium as it shifts their attention from the immediate to the hypermediated"<<cite "47" "Allan, Matthew. 'Doki Doki Subversion Club'">>.

Proceeding from the framework whereby the author's will is transcoded, through multiple lossy stages, into the gestures of actors upon a stage (and then to an audience's phenomenological experience of 'the play'), the dream of the 'automatic play' is one whereby each transcoding is totally lossless. That is: <ul> <li>* the author's will is captured perfectly by a definitive script that leaves no room for interpretative divergence;</li> <li>* the director exectutes the script as doggedly as a computer running a Python script;</li> <li>* the actors follow the instructions of the script and the director perfectly; and<li> <li>* the audience is perfectly attentive and perfectly receptive.</li> </ul> This automatic play is an illusion, though, whose premises reinscribe a Platonic notion of a play that exists as pure form and is always already corrupted by its embodiment on a stage. That said, it is an illusion with an intellectual and dramatic pedigree. Consider Heinrich von Kleist's "<<excerpt "On the Marionette Theater" "Kleist, Heinrich von. On the Marionette Theater.">>", where his interlocutor posits the superiority of the marionette to the flesh-and-blood performer. If <blockquote>the last trace of human volition could be removed from the marionettes and their dance transferred entirely to the realm of mechanical forces... he could perform a dance with it that neither he nor any other skilled dancer of his time ... could equal.</blockquote> In 1902, in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/49611/49611-h/49611-h.htm#Page_93">Samhain</a>, W. B. Yeats imagined actors restrained in barrels: "[I] had once asked a dramatic company to let me rehearse them in barrels that they might forget gesture and have their minds free to think of speech for a while. The barrels, I thought, might be on castors, so that I could shove them about with a pole when the action required it." Beckett took this idea further; see, for example, the urn-entombed characters of Play, or Endgame's Hamm, pushed across the stage on castors (or Nell and Nag, in their ashbins). In all of these cases, the losslessness of the director's will is accomplsihed by curtailing the freedom of the actor; transmission becomes pure signal when the actor is constrained and can only do what the director (or the script) allows them to do.

Both literature and computer science use the word "script" to describe, in the broadest possible sense, a set of instructions to be enacted. In literature, a script is usually the written text of a stage or screenplay. The instructions in a normal literary script fall into three major categories: dialogue, directions, and descriptions. Dialogue makes up the bulk of most scripts and describes what the actors should say; stage directions instruct the actors on how to move their bodies; and descriptions usually come at the beginning of a play or an act and describe the set and setting, characters, and so on. A play script, then, contains the necessary instructions for a director and a group of actors to put on a play. In computer science, conversely, a script is ordinarily a short piece of code that tells a computer what to do. Programming scripts tend to be short collections of simple commands that are executed from the top of the file down, automate actions which would otherwise be done by a human, and are interpreted rather than compiled--which is to say, they are executed by an interpreter, a program which can directly run commands without compiling the code down into a lower-level language. Much of the modern web runs on scripting languages, and two of the most popular languages currently in use--Python and JavaScript--are both considered scripting languages, though they can be used for more complicated tasks, as well.

A bit is the fundamental unit of <<define "information" "Information">> in computing and digital communications, representing a binary choice between two states: typically 0 and 1, or true and false. This binary system forms the basis for all digital processing, where combinations of bits are used to encode data of any complexity, from text to images to sound. The term “bit” is short for “binary digit,” and it is the building block for higher-level data structures such as bytes, through which larger amounts of information can be represented. The bit is essential in modern technology, as it underpins everything from <<define "algorithm" "Algorithm">> design to the functioning of <<define "database" "Database">> systems.

The ELIZA effect describes humans' tendency to anthropomorphize computer programs, attributing understanding and empathy to them even when aware of their artificial nature. The term comes from Joseph Weizenbaum's 1966 natural language processing program ELIZA, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by recognizing keywords and offering open-ended questions or reflecting statements back to users. Despite ELIZA's simplicity, many users became emotionally invested in their interactions with it, leading Weizenbaum to become increasingly concerned about the ethical implications of human-computer interaction. The ELIZA effect is particularly relevant to discussions of <<define "large language models" "LLM">>, where users often attribute consciousness or genuine understanding to statistical pattern matching. Unlike ELIZA's simple pattern matching, modern language models leverage massive training datasets and sophisticated neural architectures to produce more convincing responses, making the effect even more pronounced. This anthropomorphization shapes how users interact with these systems and influences debates about machine <<define "cognition">> and artificial intelligence. The phenomenon highlights tensions between interface and identification; the more familiar an <<define "interface">>, the more likely users are to project human qualities onto the system behind it. This is especially true of chat interfaces, which leverage familiar social patterns to encourage users to treat the system as a conversation partner rather than a tool. The effect raises important ethical considerations about how AI systems should present themselves and what obligations developers have to prevent users from forming inappropriate emotional attachments to algorithmic systems. These questions become particularly acute in the context of therapeutic or companionship applications of AI.

The word "technology" derives from the Greek "τέχνη" (technē), meaning art, craft, or skill, combined with "λόγος" (logos), meaning discourse or study. Technē for the ancient Greeks encompassed both the practical skills of craftspeople and the theoretical knowledge that guided their work. This dual nature - the unity of knowing and making - remains crucial to understanding technology's role in human experience. Heidegger's analysis in "The Question Concerning Technology" (1954) argues that modern technology represents a specific mode of "revealing" (Gestell or "enframing") that reduces both nature and human activity to "standing reserve" (Bestand) - resources waiting to be optimized and exploited. This differs fundamentally from the revealing characteristic of technē, which brought forth (hervorbringen) things into presence in harmony with nature. Modern technology, for Heidegger, is not merely instrumental but fundamentally shapes how we understand and relate to the world. This distinction becomes particularly relevant when considering how contemporary <<define "interfaces" "interface">> and <<define "media" "medium">> technologies mediate human experience. Where ancient technē revealed through craft and art, modern technology increasingly <<define "transcodes">> human experience into manipulable data, transforming social gestures into standardized, reproducible forms. The tension between technology as a mode of revealing and technology as a mode of control remains central to questions of human identity in the <<define "information age">>. This is particularly evident in the development of <<define "large language models" "LLM">> and other AI technologies that both reveal new possibilities for human expression and threaten to reduce human communication to computable patterns. Heidegger argues that "the essence of technology is nothing technological," suggesting that understanding technology requires looking beyond its instrumental aspects to examine how it shapes our way of being in the world. This insight remains crucial for analyzing how digital technologies condition contemporary modes of selfhood and social interaction.

Qualia refers to the subjective, conscious experience of sensory phenomena--the "what it is like" to experience something. Common examples include the redness of red, the taste of coffee, or the specific feeling of pain. The term is central to philosophical debates about consciousness, artificial intelligence, and the nature of subjective experience. The concept is perhaps best illustrated through Frank Jackson's "Mary's Room" <<define "thought experiment">>: Mary is a brilliant neuroscientist who knows everything there is to know about the physics and biology of color perception, but has lived her entire life in a black and white room. When she finally sees the color red for the first time, does she learn something new? The intuition that she does suggests that there is something about subjective experience - qualia - that cannot be reduced to physical facts. Philosophers are divided on the implications of qualia for questions of consciousness and artificial intelligence. David Chalmers considers qualia part of the "hard problem" of consciousness--explaining how and why we have qualitative, phenomenal experiences at all. For Chalmers, even a complete account of the brain's physical processes would not explain why these processes are accompanied by subjective experience. Daniel Dennett, conversely, in "Consciousness Explained" and elsewhere, argues that qualia is an unnecessary and misleading concept. He suggests that what we think of as irreducible subjective experiences can be explained through his "<<define "Multiple Drafts">>" model of consciousness, which sees awareness as a series of competing cognitive processes rather than a unified stream of experience. The debate over qualia has important implications for artificial intelligence and <<define "large language models" "LLM">>. John Searle's <<define "Chinese Room Argument">> suggests that even a system that could perfectly simulate understanding would lack the qualitative experience of actually understanding - the "what it is like" to know what words mean. This argument remains relevant to contemporary discussions about whether AI systems can be said to truly understand or experience anything, or whether they are merely engaging in sophisticated pattern matching. The question of qualia thus intersects with broader concerns about the nature of consciousness, understanding, and experience in both human and artificial systems. It raises fundamental questions about what kinds of experience might be possible for different types of <<define "cognitive assemblages">> and what it means to be conscious in an increasingly technologically mediated world.

<h1>[[Quad->Beckett, Samuel. Quad.]]</h1> A piece for four players, light and percussion. The players (1, 2, 3, 4) pace the given area, each following his particular course. Area: square. Length of side: 6 paces. <img src="assets/imgs/quad_script_1.png" alt="Quad diagram 1"> Course 1: AC, CB, BA, AD, DB, BC, CD, DA Course 2: BA, AD, DB, BC, CD, DA, AC, CB Course 3: CD, DA, AC, CB, BA, AD, DB, BC Course 4: DB, BC, CD, DA, AC, CB, BA, AD 1 enters at A, completes his course and is joined by 3. Together they complete their courses and are joined by 4. Together all three complete their courses and are joined by 2. Together all four complete their courses. Exit 1. 2, 3 and 4 continue and complete their courses. Exit 3. 2 and 4 continue and complete their courses. Exit 4. End of 1st series. 2 continues, opening 2nd series, completes his course and is joined by 1. Etc. Unbroken movement. 1st series (as above): 1, 13, 134, 1342, 342, 42 2nd series: 2, 21, 214, 2143, 143, 43 3rd series: 3, 32, 321, 3214, 214, 14 4th series: 4, 43, 432, 4321, 321, 21 Four possible solos all given. Six possible duos all given (two twice). Four possible trios all given twice. Without interruption begin repeat and fade out on 1 pacing alone. Light (2) Dim on area from above fading out into dark. Four sources of differently coloured light clustered together. Each player has his particular light, to be turned on when he enters, kept on while he paces, turned off when he exits. Say 1 white, 2 yellow, 3 blue, 4 red. Then 1st series: white, white + blue, white + blue + red, white + blue + red + yellow, blue + red + yellow, red + yellow. 2nd series: yellow, yellow + white, yellow + white + red etc. All possible light combinations given. Percussion Four types of percussion, say drum, gong, triangle, wood block. Each player has his particular percussion, to sound when he enters, continue while he paces, cease when he exits. Say 1 drum, 2 gong, 3 triangle, 4 wood block. Then 1st series: drum, drum + triangle, drum + triangle + wood block etc. Same system as for light. All possible percussion combinations given. Percussion intermittent in all combinations to allow footsteps alone to be heard at intervals. Pianissimo throughout. Percussionists barely visible in shadow on raised podium at back of set. Footsteps Each player has his particular sound. Costumes Gowns reaching to ground, cowls hiding faces. Each player has his particular colour corresponding to his light. 1 white, 2 yellow, 3 blue, 4 red. All possible costume combinations given. Players As alike in build as possible. Short and slight for preference. Some ballet training desirable. Adolescents a possibility. Sex indifferent. Camera Raised frontal. Fixed. Both players and percussionists in frame. Time (3) On basis of one pace per second and allowing for time lost at angles and centre approximately 25 minutes. Problem (4) Negotiation of E without rupture of rhythm when three or four players cross paths at this point. Or, if ruptures accepted, how best exploit? 1. This original scenario (Quad I) was followed in the Stuttgart production by a variation (Quad II). (5) 2. Abandoned as impracticable. Constant neutral light throughout. 3. Overestimated. Quad I, fast tempo. 15' approx. Quad II, slow tempo, series 1 only, 5' approx. 4. E supposed a danger zone. Hence deviation. Manoeuvre established at outset by first solo at first diagonal (CB). E.g. series 1: <img src="assets/imgs/quad_script_2.png" alt="Quad diagram 2"> 5. No colour, all four in identical white gowns, no percussion, footsteps only sound, slow tempo, series 1 only.

<code>PROGRAM MrsGorman (Input, Output); CONST &emsp;Indifferent = 60; VAR &emsp;Thursday, Indisposed, Called : BOOLEAN; &emsp;Bed, Chair, Hearth, Fire, Window, Open : BOOLEAN; &emsp;Rand, Temperature : INTEndlessGameER; BEndlessGameIN {Main program} IF Thursday THEN &emsp;IF NOT (Indisposed) &emsp;&emsp;THEN Called := True &emsp;ELSE {If Indisposed} &emsp;&emsp;Called := False; &emsp;IF NOT Called THEN Random; &emsp;&emsp;IF Rand = 0 THEN (Bed) &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;ELSE {if Rand = 1 then} &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;BEndlessGameIN {Else} &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;IF Temperature < Indifferent &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;THEN (Chair and Hearth AND Fire) &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;ELSE IF Temperature > Indifferent &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;THEN (Chair AND Window AND Open) &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;ELSE IF Temperature = Indifferent THEN &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;BEndlessGameIN {Else if} &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Random; &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;IF Rand = 0 &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;THEN (Chair and Window AND NOT Open) &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;ELSE {if Rand = 1 then} &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;(Chair AND Hearth AND NOT Fire) &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;END {Else If} &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;END {Else} END. {Main program}</code> <<cite '94' "Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse.">>

an excerpt from <h1>The Skriker</h1> by [[Caryl Churchill]] A passage in which Lily tries to explain to the Skriker, an old fel fey, television. SKRIKER: So how does this work? LILY: How? SKRIKER: How does it- LILY: You want to turn it off? SKRIKER: No, how does that picture get here. From wherever. LILY: How does it work? SKRIKER: Yes. LILY: Oh, you know, I don't know, you know, it's -- isn't it the same in America? SKRIKER: Take your time. In your own words. LILY: It has to be plugged in so it's got power, right, electricity, so it's on so you can turn it on when you press the button, so the light's on and that shows it's on, ok? SKRIKER: But what's / the electricity --? LILY: It's got all these tubes / and anyway -- SKRIKER: No how do you see / all over the world? LILY: And meanwhile, let's say this is something live we're seeing, there's a camera there pointing at the picture at the thing that is the picture, camera, you want me to explain -- the light gets in and there's the film, tape, the tape, it picks up the light somehow and it gets the picture _on_ it, don't ask me, and there you are if it was a tape like you hire a tape down the video shop / that's it, they SKRIKER: No, tell me. LILY: make a whole lot of copies. SKRIKER: It's happening there and it's / here LILY: I'm telling you, hang about, how it gets sent, I can't quite, through the air, if it's live, or even if it's not of course, if it happened before and they recorded -- say it's live, it's coming -- not the whole picture in the air obviously, it's in bits like waves like specks and you need an aerial / to SKRIKER: This is crap. LILY: catch it and changes it back into the picture / and it's not a solid thing, it's all dots SKRIKER: But how for fuck's sake? LILY: and lines if you look, I can't help it. If it's on the other side of the world they bounce it off a satellite yes I'm explaining satellite which is a thing they put up in space ok, they put it up I'm explaining that too and it's going round like a star, stars don't go round, like a moon but it looks like a star but moving about you sometimes see it at night, and it bounces off the satellite / all right -- SKRIKER: What bounces off? LILY: The picture. SKRIKER: The picture bounces off? LILY: The waves, the -- what is this? SKRIKER: You're holding out on me. LILY: I don't have all the technical if you want the jargon if you want the detail you'll have to ask someone else. SKRIKER: Don't fuck with me. LILY: Look, / that's all I --

<h1>2</h1> That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours. Let us imagine a language ...The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones; there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words 'block', 'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls them out; --B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. -- Conceive this as a complete primitive language.

<h1>7</h1> In the practice of the use of language <<excerpt "2" "Wittgenstein 2">> one party calls out the words, the other acts on them. In instruction in the language the following process will occur: the learner names the objects; that is, he utters the word when the teacher points to the stone. ---And there will be this still simpler exercise: the pupil repeats the words after the teacher-----both of these being processes resembling language. We can also think of the whole process of using words in <<excerpt "2" "Wittgenstein 2">> as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language. I will call these games "language-games" and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game. And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of much of the use words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, the "language-game".

<h1>On the Marionette Theatre</h1> <h2>by Heinrich von Kleist</h2> <h3>Translated by Idris Parry</h3> One evening in the winter of 1801 I met an old friend in a public park. He had recently been appointed principal dancer at the local theatre and was enjoying immense popularity with the audiences. I told him I had been surprised to see him more than once at the marionette theatre which had been put up in the market-place to entertain the public with dramatic burlesques interspersed with song and dance. He assured me that the mute gestures of these puppets gave him much satisfaction and told me bluntly that any dancer who wished to perfect his art could learn a lot from them. From the way he said this I could see it wasn't something which had just come into his mind, so I sat down to question him more closely about his reasons for this remarkable assertion. He asked me if I hadn't in fact found some of the dance movements of the puppets (and particularly of the smaller ones) very graceful. This I couldn't deny. A group of four peasants dancing the rondo in quick time couldn't have been painted more delicately by Teniers. I inquired about the mechanism of these figures. I wanted to know how it is possible, without having a maze of strings attached to one's fingers, to move the separate limbs and extremities in the rhythm of the dance. His answer was that I must not imagine each limb as being individually positioned and moved by the operator in the various phases of the dance. Each movement, he told me, has its centre of gravity; it is enough to control this within the puppet. The limbs, which are only pendulums, then follow mechanically of their own accord, without further help. He added that this movement is very simple. When the centre of gravity is moved in a straight line, the limbs describe curves. Often shaken in a purely haphazard way, the puppet falls into a kind of rhythmic movement which resembles dance. This observation seemed to me to throw some light at last on the enjoyment he said he got from the marionette theatre, but I was far from guessing the inferences he would draw from it later. I asked him if he thought the operator who controls these puppets should himself be a dancer or at least have some idea of beauty in the dance. He replied that if a job is technically easy it doesn't follow that it can be done entirely without sensitivity. The line the centre of gravity has to follow is indeed very simple, and in most cases, he believed, straight. When it is curved, the law of its curvature seems to be at the least of the first and at the most of the second order. Even in the latter case the line is only elliptical, a form of movement natural to the human body because of the joints, so this hardly demands any great skill from the operator. But, seen from another point of view, this line could be something very mysterious. It is nothing other than the path taken by the soul of the dancer. He doubted if this could be found unless the operator can transpose himself into the centre of gravity of the marionette. In other words, the operator dances. I said the operator's part in the business had been represented to me as something which can be done entirely without feeling - rather like turning the handle of a barrel-organ. "Not at all", he said. "In fact, there's a subtle relationship between the movements of his fingers and the movements of the puppets attached to them, something like the relationship between numbers and their logarithms or between asymptote and hyperbola." Yet he did believe this last trace of human volition could be removed from the marionettes and their dance transferred entirely to the realm of mechanical forces, even produced, as I had suggested, by turning a handle. I told him I was astonished at the attention he was paying to this vulgar species of an art form. It wasn't just that he thought it capable of loftier development; he seemed to be working to this end himself. He smiled. He said he was confident that, if he could get a craftsman to construct a marionette to the specifications he had in mind, he could perform a dance with it which neither he nor any other skilled dancer of his time, not even Madame Vestris herself, could equal. "Have you heard", he asked, as I looked down in silence, "of those artificial legs made by English craftsmen for people who have been unfortunate enough to lose their own limbs?" I said I hadn't. I had never seen anything of this kind. "I'm sorry to hear that", he said, "because when I tell you these people dance with them, I'm almost afraid you won't believe me. What am I saying... dance? The range of their movements is in fact limited, but those they can perform they execute with a certainty and ease and grace which must astound the thoughtful observer." I said with a laugh that of course he had now found his man. The craftsman who could make such remarkable limbs could surely build a complete marionette for him, to his specifications. "And what", I asked, as he was looking down in some perplexity, "are the requirements you think of presenting to the ingenuity of this man?" "Nothing that isn't to be found in these puppets we see here," he replied: "proportion, flexibility, lightness .... but all to a higher degree. And especially a more natural arrangement of the centres of gravity." "And what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?" "The advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the centre of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this centre, the attached limbs are just what they should be.� lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You'll look for it in vain in most of our dancers." "Just look at that girl who dances Daphne", he went on. "Pursued by Apollo, she turns to look at him. At this moment her soul appears to be in the small of her back. As she bends, she look as if she's going to break, like a naiad after the school of Bernini. Or take that young fellow who dances Paris when he's standing among the three goddesses and offering the apple to Venus. His soul is in fact located (and it's a frightful thing to see) in his elbow." "Misconceptions like this are unavoidable," he said, " now that we've eaten of the tree of knowledge. But Paradise is locked and bolted, and the cherubim stands behind us. We have to go on and make the journey round the world to see if it is perhaps open somewhere at the back." This made me laugh. Certainly, I thought, the human spirit can't be in error when it is non-existent. I could see that he had more to say, so I begged him to go on. "In addition", he said, "these puppets have the advantage of being for all practical purposes weightless. They are not afflicted with the inertia of matter, the property most resistant to dance. The force which raises them into the air is greater than the one which draws them to the ground. What would our good Miss G. give to be sixty pounds lighter or to have a weight of this size as a counterbalance when she is performing her entrechats and pirouettes? Puppets need the ground only to glance against lightly, like elves, and through this momentary check to renew the swing of their limbs. We humans must have it to rest on, to recover from the effort of the dance. This moment of rest is clearly no part of the dance. The best we can do is make it as inconspicuous as possible..." My reply was that, no matter how cleverly he might present his paradoxes, he would never make me believe a mechanical puppet can be more graceful than a living human body. He countered this by saying that, where grace is concerned, it is impossible for man to come anywhere near a puppet. Only a god can equal inanimate matter in this respect. This is the point where the two ends of the circular world meet. I was absolutely astonished. I didn't know what to say to such extraordinary assertions. It seemed, he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, that I hadn't read the third chapter of the book of Genesis with sufficient attention. If a man wasn't familiar with that initial period of all human development, it would be difficult to have a fruitful discussion with him about later developments and even more difficult to talk about the ultimate situation. I told him I was well aware how consciousness can disturb natural grace. A young acquaintance of mine had as it were lost his innocence before my very eyes, and all because of a chance remark. He had never found his way back to that Paradise of innocence, in spite of all conceivable efforts. "But what inferences", I added, "can you draw from that?" He asked me what incident I had in mind. "About three years ago", I said, "I was at the baths with a young man who was then remarkably graceful. He was about fifteen, and only faintly could one see the first traces of vanity, a product of the favours shown him by women. It happened that we had recently seen in Paris the figure of the boy pulling a thorn out of his foot. The cast of the statue is well known; you see it in most German collections. My friend looked into a tall mirror just as he was lifting his foot to a stool to dry it, and he was reminded of the statue. He smiled and told me of his discovery. As a matter of fact, I'd noticed it too, at the same moment, but... I don't know if it was to test the quality of his apparent grace or to provide a salutary counter to his vanity... I laughed and said he must be imagining things. He blushed. He lifted his foot a second time, to show me, but the effort was a failure, as anybody could have foreseen. He tried it again a third time, a fourth time, he must have lifted his foot ten times, but it was in vain. He was quite unable to reproduce the same movement. What am I saying? The movements he made were so comical that I was hard put to it not to laugh. From that day, from that very moment, an extraordinary change came over this boy. He began to spend whole days before the mirror. His attractions slipped away from him, one after the other. An invisible and incomprehensible power seemed to settle like a steel net over the free play of his gestures. A year later nothing remained of the lovely grace which had given pleasure to all who looked at him. I can tell you of a man, still alive, who was a witness to this strange and unfortunate event. He can confirm it, word for word, just as I've described it." "In this connection", said my friend warmly, "I must tell you another story. You'll easily see how it fits in here. When I was on my way to Russia, I spent some time on the estate of a Baltic nobleman whose sons had a passion for fencing. The elder, in particular, who had just come down from the university, thought he was a bit of an expert. One morning, when I was in his room, he offered me a rapier. I accepted his challenge but, as it turned out, I had the better of him. It made him angry, and this increased his confusion. Nearly every thrust I made found its mark. At last his rapier flew into the corner of the room. As he picked it up he said, half in anger and half in jest, that he had met his master but that there is a master for everyone and everything - and now he proposed to lead me to mine. The brothers laughed loudly at this and shouted: "Come on, down to the shed!" They took me by the hand and led me outside to make the acquaintance of a bear which their father was rearing on the farm. "I was astounded to see the bear standing upright on his hind legs, his back against the post to which he was chained, his right paw raised ready for battle. He looked me straight in the eye. This was his fighting posture. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, seeing such an opponent. They urged me to attack. "See if you can hit him!" they shouted. As I had now recovered somewhat from my astonishment I fell on him with my rapier. The bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I feinted, to deceive him. The bear did not move. I attacked again, this time with all the skill I could muster. I know I would certainly have thrust my way through to a human breast, but the bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. By now I was almost in the same state as the elder brother had been: the bear's utter seriousness robbed me of my composure. Thrusts and feints followed thick and fast, the sweat poured off me, but in vain. It wasn't merely that he parried my thrusts like the finest fencer in the world; when I feinted to deceive him he made no move at all. No human fencer could equal his perception in this respect. He stood upright, his paw raised ready for battle, his eye fixed on mine as if he could read my soul there, and when my thrusts were not meant seriously he did not move. Do you believe this story?" "Absolutely", I said with joyful approval. "I'd believe it from a stranger, it's so probable. Why shouldn't I believe it from you?" "Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god." "Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?" "Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."

A bunch of memes will go here.

Original interview available <a target="blank" href="https://www.appunwrapper.com/2015/07/10/help-interrogate-sam-barlow-about-her-story/">here</a>. A .pdf copy is also available <a target="_blank" href="assets/pdfs/app_unwrapper_interview">here</a>.

<h2>From Stephenson, Neal. "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line"</h2> Around the time that Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, and Allen were dreaming up these unlikely schemes, I was a teenager living in Ames, Iowa. One of my friends' dads had an old MGB sports car rusting away in his garage. Sometimes he would actually manage to get it running and then he would take us for a spin around the block, with a memorable look of wild youthful exhiliration on his face; to his worried passengers, he was a madman, stalling and backfiring around Ames, Iowa and eating the dust of rusty Gremlins and Pintos, but in his own mind he was Dustin Hoffman tooling across the Bay Bridge with the wind in his hair. In retrospect, this was telling me two things about people's relationship to technology. One was that romance and image go a long way towards shaping their opinions. If you doubt it (and if you have a lot of spare time on your hands) just ask anyone who owns a Macintosh and who, on those grounds, imagines him- or herself to be a member of an oppressed minority group. The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very important. Sure, the MGB was a lousy car in almost every way that counted: balky, unreliable, underpowered. But it was fun to drive. It was responsive. Every pebble on the road was felt in the bones, every nuance in the pavement transmitted instantly to the driver's hands. He could listen to the engine and tell what was wrong with it. The steering responded immediately to commands from his hands. To us passengers it was a pointless exercise in going nowhere--about as interesting as peering over someone's shoulder while he punches numbers into a spreadsheet. But to the driver it was an experience. For a short time he was extending his body and his senses into a larger realm, and doing things that he couldn't do unassisted. See also <<excerpt "HCI and GUI">>

<h2>From Stephenson, Neal. "In The Beginning... Was The Command Line"</h2> We had a human/computer interface a hundred years before we had computers. When computers came into being around the time of the Second World War, humans, quite naturally, communicated with them by simply grafting them on to the already-existing technologies for translating letters into bits and vice versa: teletypes and punch card machines. These embodied two fundamentally different approaches to computing. When you were using cards, you'd punch a whole stack of them and run them through the reader all at once, which was called batch processing. You could also do batch processing with a teletype, as I have already described, by using the paper tape reader, and we were certainly encouraged to use this approach when I was in high school. But--though efforts were made to keep us unaware of this--the teletype could do something that the card reader could not. On the teletype, once the modem link was established, you could just type in a line and hit the return key. The teletype would send that line to the computer, which might or might not respond with some lines of its own, which the teletype would hammer out--producing, over time, a transcript of your exchange with the machine. This way of doing it did not even have a name at the time, but when, much later, an alternative became available, it was retroactively dubbed the Command Line Interface. When I moved on to college, I did my computing in large, stifling rooms where scores of students would sit in front of slightly updated versions of the same machines and write computer programs: these used dot-matrix printing mechanisms, but were (from the computer's point of view) identical to the old teletypes. By that point, computers were better at time-sharing--that is, mainframes were still mainframes, but they were better at communicating with a large number of terminals at once. Consequently, it was no longer necessary to use batch processing. Card readers were shoved out into hallways and boiler rooms, and batch processing became a nerds-only kind of thing, and consequently took on a certain eldritch flavor among those of us who even knew it existed. We were all off the Batch, and on the Command Line, interface now--my very first shift in operating system paradigms, if only I'd known it. A huge stack of accordion-fold paper sat on the floor underneath each one of these glorified teletypes, and miles of paper shuddered through their platens. Almost all of this paper was thrown away or recycled without ever having been touched by ink--an ecological atrocity so glaring that those machines soon replaced by video terminals--so-called "glass teletypes"--which were quieter and didn't waste paper. Again, though, from the computer's point of view these were indistinguishable from World War II-era teletype machines. In effect we still used Victorian technology to communicate with computers until about 1984, when the Macintosh was introduced with its Graphical User Interface. Even after that, the Command Line continued to exist as an underlying stratum--a sort of brainstem reflex--of many modern computer systems all through the heyday of Graphical User Interfaces, or GUIs as I will call them from now on.