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Kormilitsyna, Ekaterina "What does the Internet look like?: Models of Planetary Scale Computation." MRes ( Master of Research) in Art and Design
, Cardiff Metropolitan University, 2020
Keywords/Fields of Study : digital worldbuilding; politics; aesthetics; aesthetics of politics; digital agency
43
pages, written in English
, copyright Ekaterina Kormilitsyna
Abstract: This research paper seeks to consider and (re)imagine models of digitality, by deploying a new materialist non-anthropocentric practice of examination. Understanding the internet in the context of the Anthropocene whilst giving agency to data generation; Agential realism and absurdist poetic strategies propose a method of engaging with “planetary-scale computation” (Bratton 2016) via a diffracted journey to explore various model-structures investigating the relationships between data, digitality, autonomy, humans, and politics without notions of hierarchies or an obsession with post-truth and fact-seeking.
Seeking to understand why the popularized spatial model of the virtual imaginary “cyberspace” (Gibson 1984) concerning the digital, has its limits, which become highlighted in moments of geological, economic, and digital conflict, New Materialism and Absurdism offer a generous and interdisciplinary field in which one conducts research and experimentation, allowing this study to draw on theorists working in archeology, architecture, design, filmmaking, and linguistics.
Given that the internet is multifarious, the challenge is to engage with a diffracted methodology to approach ideas of visualization and architectures. What does the internet look like? When discussing contemporary planetary problems, the models used for such discussion need to be positioned within the zeitgeist.
This research suggests, that to have a contemporary discourse, which is capable of engaging with planetary-scale issues of geopolitics and climate, we have to move on from ineffable models of imagination and find new architectures and terminologies. A new language is needed to discuss new worlds.
Department: Art & Design
, Cardiff Metropolitan University
Advisor(s): Stephen Thompson
