Publication

Designing for Meaning: Uniting Creative and Scholastic Research Through Collective Practices in Event Design

Preprint

A Mememetic Aesthetics Starter Pack: Meta-Mimetic Processes and "Thingification" in Emergent Digital Aesthetics

This paper was accepted for inclusion in the "Media Aesthetics" issue of Communications+1, but could not be published due to reviewer non-response. The unpaid reviewer crisis is a major issue in academia.

Web Aesthetics, Memetics, Nostalgia

I Miss the Old Future: Frutiger Aero, Youtube Video Playlists, and Generative Nostalgia

In this paper, we explore the role of nostalgia in Frutiger Aero to understand how critical-creative media practices indicate the emergence of a generative, rather than regressive, turn in digital nostalgia. We focus our analysis on Youtube Visual Playlists as an important site for collective memory-making and critical-curatorial practices, generative practices which situate nostalgia not as a longing for the past, but as a critique of the now–within which lies a vision for the future.

Full Abstract, Transcript Coming Soon

Web Aesthetics, Digital Methods, Memetics

Memetic Internet Aesthetics, Vaporwave and Weirdcore: Postmodern Malaise and Grief Across Fractal Time

I draw concepts from critical media theory, especially The Electronic Disturbance Theater’s concept of fractal time, to frame a semantic network analysis with the goal of analyzing affective commonalities and discontinuities across the Weirdcore and Vaporwave web aesthetics. Using a dataset of 50,000 Youtube Visual Playlist comments, I created two co-occurrence networks for comparison. Several overlaps across similar word node/topical subnetworks indicate a level of consistency as to the emotions and reactions evoked by these web aesthetics. .

Full abstract coming soon

Web Aesthetics, Game Studies, Memetics

TIP - Don't Be Afraid to Die: Synthwave's Memetic Aesthetics in Hotline Miami

In this paper, I explore the role that Synthwave, a popular web aesthetic, in the ludonarrative design of Devolver Digital’s 2012 ultra-violent indie hit, Hotline Miami. Reading the synthwave aesthetic alongside authorial intent, this paper explores Hotline Miami not as a fun gangster fantasy, but as an imperfect “two-way mirror” which uses collective-meaning making practices to frame a critique of Robert Hasan’s “condition of digitality.”

Web Aesthetics, Game Studies, Memetics

Lost in an Empty Place: Collaborative Intermedia Production and the Weirdcore web aesthetic

This paper looks to the role of collaborative intermedia production in the Weirdcore web aesthetic, focusing on the influence of Yumi 2kki, a collaboratively developed surrealistic exploration game. It frames the Weirdcore web aesthetic as a form of what Bogdanov would call “proletkult,” or proletarian culture. It describes the role of imitation and creative iteration in Weirdcore intermedia production, connecting these practices to affective connection and the creation of collaborative life beyond formal labor relations under bourgeois culture.

Full abstract coming soon

Game Studies, Memetics, Political Aesthetics

What Being Could Be: Aesthetic Politics and the Mimetic Re-turn in Death Stranding

Taking a posthuman, post-digital approach, this research looks to intentional ludonarrative design choices in Kojima Studios’ Death Stranding (2019) to argue an emergent memetic aesthetic regime of art might endow games with the power to activate latent political relationality beyond neoliberal subjectivity. Kojima’s monograph, The Creative Gene, exposes an idiosyncratic approach to design rooted in the idea that connections between alienated neoliberal subjects can be established through the use of “loveable memes,” a type of memetic intertextuality spanning embodied action and referential mediated connection–in other words, an approach strikingly similar to the mimetic re-turn as described by Lawtoo. This hints at the potential for a political aesthetic register which acts on the potential of embodied imitation and copying rather than on representation or (as in Ranciere’s aesthetic regime) revelation: a memetic aesthetic.

Full abstract coming soon

Practice-Based Research, Generative AI

Playing in Vector(al) Space: AI Toys, Huggingface, and Speculation

Building on practitioner knowledge and McKenzie Wark’s work on vectoral capitalism, this paper looks at the way that play and the work of the “hacker” class are exploited by Huggingface to drive its increase in valuation. It puts play in “vector space” against play within vectoral space, analyzing the importance of the AI “toys” which populate the program. Drawing from Walter Benjamin’s work on toys and play, it positions the “playgrounds” on Huggingface Spaces, which host AI model demos, as cultural artefacts which exist as by-products of Hacker Class labor. These toys are used to drive valuation by facilitating the integration of Huggingface into the AI development ecosystem.

Full abstract coming soon

Digital Methods, Politics, Digital Culture

Justice in Context: Making Sense of "Context" in Discourses Surrounding Viral Videos of Social Injustice

This paper draws from a dataset of 117,026 comments across nine discussion threads posted either during or shortly after Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial. We use semantic network analysis to better understand the different uses of “context” in online discourse and the implications of “context” for political debate on the internet.

Full abstract coming soon