networked worlds

It’s only when we establish ourselves on our terms — as Pitchfork , RIP, once did — that we build durable worlds of our own.

Any study of worldbuilding would be remiss without mention of Biosphere 2, the experimental facility constructed in Arizona for studying the feasibility of life in a manmade ecosystem. In 1994, Abigail Alling and Mark Van Thillo broke into the complex – or rather, attempted a break-out, and in the process brought the years-long experiment to an... See more

AE: Reflecting back on the past year, one project that stands out for me is Mitchell F. Chan’s The Boys of Summer (2023) because I’m interested in how we are all folded into gamified networks. Which works or exhibitions have resonated the most with you over that time? ‍

I love that summary, particularly how it catches the message of hope. Filterworld isn’t a wholesale complaint about social media; it’s a quest to figure out how we can have something better than our self-reinforcing and flattening algorithmic feeds. That is what I want people to get from reading the book, in the end. Even though digital platforms... See more

The hefty tome of cross-references, which readers can navigate via one of the thematic paths outlined by sixteen notable cyberfeminists, or by using the entries like hyperlinks, has become an indispensable resource for historicizing the putting into practice of contemporary technology criticism.

I love hiking in LA, which is quite ironic when I think that this nature is completely artificial. All the icons of the Angeleno landscape are imported, which creates a paradox, a discomfort: the unconditional love of the locals for an absolutely fake landscape.

Once, we made sense of the world with sweeping narratives that provided a comforting sense of mastery. Now, with those narratives shattered beyond repair by a reality too complex for us to fathom, a new kind of coping mechanism is emerging—one where we make peace with the limits of our agency rather than pretending to overcome them. The task is no... See more

The first recorded use of ‘worldbuilding’ was in an issue of the Edinburgh Review , December 1820.