networked worlds

The need for artists and technologists to be in dialogue has perhaps never been so urgent. Or, perhaps, it is simply always urgent.

In its most popular use, worldbuilding refers to a practice derived from fantasy or science fiction, where systems, characters, and mechanics assemble to satisfy the expectation that a fictional world should be convincing and complete. More broadly, it should be stated, worldbuilding is simply part of writing fiction: Sally Rooney does worldbuildin... See more

So a lot of the scenarios in my projects that seem to hinge ludicrously across dystopia and utopia—another set of unproductive binaries we’ve created—are actually machine-generated.

What if an economic diagram can treat economic units as permeable membranes instead of enclosed boxes? What if it portrays the economy as a more interdependent, rhizomatic web of connections? What if a line can be used not as a border, but more as an entanglement like that of a cat playing with yarns?

The word for world is forest1. The word for world is mother2. The world is made, and remade, through ‘worlding,’3 ‘worldmaking,’4 or ‘worldbuilding’5. The world is rendered by empire, destroyed, and remade forever after. The world is a model, a simulation, an ‘infinite game’ that is open all the way up to its borders. The world is autonomous and al... See more

Ultimately it’s not just about what we make in the world, it’s the ways in which we remake ourselves that transforms the world around us. – Gaylene Gould