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Heats, knots and hierarchies: Speculative genders in omegaverse fanfiction
As a digital genre, fanfiction enables the recontextualisation and transformation of characters, plots, and stories from popular culture. The dynamic combination of a community-driven writing practice with well-developed platforms that support an extensive and generative labelling system, supports the development of an ever-expanding network of tropes, which are continually being reinvented and reimagined in new forms. This article discusses one such trope, popularly known as “omegaverse” or alpha/beta/omega fanfiction. Currently counting 89 253 distinct works on the fanfiction platform aO3.org, omegaverse fanfiction draws on popular imaginations of wolf or canine social hierarchies and reproductive behaviours in order to reimagine characters from popular culture into a parallel gender structure as alphas, betas, or omegas. Using concepts from fan studies and feminist theory, this article shows how omegaverse fanfiction treats discourses about gender and embodiment in the same manner as it treats the original media texts, mining them for meaning in order to imaginatively transform them.
Daniel Johannes Flaten Rosnes - 24.05.2021 - 20:07
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‘Pandemic and Protest, Revolution and Reflection: The Online Manifesto in 2020-2021’
In 2015 a colleague and I set up a Tumblr and Twitter account called Crap Futures. The tagline was a quote from Ray Bradbury: ‘People ask me to predict the Future, when all I want to do is prevent it.’ At the time it felt slightly pessimistic — not to mention unscholarly, as we were using the blog to work out ideas from our research. Then came the double surprise of the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US election, and by 2020 ‘crap futures’ felt downright tame, almost conventional wisdom. At the same time we felt it was important not to fall into the trap of doomscrolling, apocalyptic paralysis, and the aesthetics of collapse. Instead we should start building the future we want — a point we made in our manifesto — and hold onto a glimmer of hope.
Daniel Johannes Flaten Rosnes - 24.05.2021 - 20:40
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Hugging Pixels: How Gaming Rethinks Physical Interactions
As we approach the one-year anniversary of the first confinement measures in most countries, COVID-19 has been a defining factor of our lives through 2020 into 2021. Due to the pandemic, all our lives were drastically changed; not simply by the losses and inevitable pain that comes with the disease, but also by the way in which it completely shifted the way in which our lives were organized. Where activities were once separated between the “inside” and the “outside” there is now only the “offline” and the “online,” both confined within our own household. Work and education are done remotely when possible, and socializing has abruptly become a virtual experience. Even attempts at socializing “in real life” must always be monitored by strict rules of social distancing and the wearing of a mask, which are marked by an absence of physicality. As a way to cope with such a situation, people have found ways to transfer their social lives online. How many Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving or the Winter Holidays on Zoom with their families in 2020?
Daniel Johannes Flaten Rosnes - 25.05.2021 - 01:02
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Digital Selfhood and its Mental Spatialities: Abstracts of Textual Constructs
Early cyberspatial theories reflected on the qualities of computer mediated experience by introducing aspects of immateriality, incorporeality, symbolism, abstraction, as well as exploring the mental, perceptual, and psychological dimensions of digital experience itself. Electronic interactions have been described as platonically erotic, transcendental, allegorical, even ecstatic conditions, that still seem timely and compelling nowadays, even since the pre-pandemic era. Human mind appeared as an inherent ingredient of the digital phenomenon since its birth. On the other side, ideas such as ‘body amnesia’ or ‘fleshworld’, emerged denoting the rigidity of the physical body to reach the other side of the screen.
Daniel Johannes Flaten Rosnes - 25.05.2021 - 01:09
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Open to Construction: reading and writing bodies in digital fiction and the open web platform
Drawing parallels between the open web platform and the open way a fictional body can be constructed from a text, this paper explores the creative and ethical strategies employed in the creation of a feminist interactive digital fiction for body image narrative therapy, advocacy and plurality. The digital fiction was created with and for young women and gender non-conforming individuals from diverse intersectional backgrounds.
If, as Possible Worlds theory posits, the real world serves as a model for the mental construction of textual fictional storyworlds, it follows that our experience and knowledge of real bodies, including our own bodies, serve as a model for the mental construction of textual fictional bodies. Unless a text draws attention to the physical appearance of a fictional character, the reader will tend to assume, according to Ryan's 'principle of minimal departure' (1991), that their body conforms to a familiar or generic norm (two eyes, two arms, two legs, etc.).
Daniel Johannes Flaten Rosnes - 25.05.2021 - 01:21
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A Platform's Media Specificity in Context: Follow the Pathfinders
Following the increasing hypertext practice in digital culture over the past decades, reinventing the medial mode of academic publication becomes desirable to open up new research practices and knowledge production. New digital platforms are taking practice-based steps towards more multimodal publications. This paper examines the born-digital book Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop which was published in the humanities publication platform Scalar. In Pathfinders, four classic works of electronic literature are documented using a combination of Traversals (filmed walkthroughs by authors and readers), filmed interviews and carefully described and photographed physical materials. As such, Pathfinders is positioned as a DH practice to "rescue" early works of electronic literature from both technological obsolescence and oblivion.
Milosz Waskiewicz - 25.05.2021 - 12:23
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What Do We Call This?
What Do We Call This?
Between 2019 – 2020 The University of South Wales collaborated with a consortium of creative commercial practitioners dubbed Fictioneers in a UKRI funded, Audience of the Future R&D demonstrator project designed to further develop digital storytelling within the UK Creative Industries. Using the popular Wallace and Gromit IP, the consortium drew upon their combined skills in games production, animation, creative marketing and new technology development to create a location-based experience targeting young audiences entitled Wallace & Gromit: Big Fix Up, designed to propel new and playful identities for a traditional narrative media.
Milosz Waskiewicz - 25.05.2021 - 13:05
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Scripting Observable with RiScript
This workshop presents a hands-on introduction to the RiTa v2.0 tools, including the new RiScript language. Version 2 of RiTa is a complete rewrite of the library that is easier-to-use, faster and more powerful. The workshop will cover the basics of RiTa and RiScript in JavaScript, with a specific focus on the Observable notebook environment.
Scott Rettberg - 25.05.2021 - 14:07
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From ‘Cinema Envy’ to Social Media Envy? The Changing Face of Videogame Characterisation in the Age of Platformisation
It was in Summer 2020 that Seraphine - a ‘virtual influencer’ in the mould of Brüd’s Lil Miquela – began building an audience on Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud. Each of her posts served to flesh out her persona: that of an anxiety-prone aspiring musician with an ‘adorkably’ girly personal style and a cute pet cat. In September it emerged that Seraphine was a new playable character in e-sports giant Riot’s League of Legends (Riot 2009), a free-to-play ‘multiplayer online battle arena’ funded by the sale of sale of ‘skins’ and cosmetics items that allow players to customise the appearance of their chosen characters. While the character proved highly popular, the launch was not without controversy, with some pundits finding Riot’s bids for ‘relatability’ clumsy and their portrayal of the Seraphine’s mental health issues ‘perverse’ and ‘offensive’ – especially when set against the backdrop of a worsening pandemic (Jackson 2020).
Milosz Waskiewicz - 25.05.2021 - 14:14
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Digital Methodologies for Analysing and Disseminating Community Research. (A reflection on practice by the artist/researcher)
The global COVID-19 pandemic has made me further address the value that artistic research has for our mental and psychological health and its significance in community healing. I have, for a while now, used digital technologies to create poetic spaces of shared personal stories interconnecting narratives to bring up issues of power, territory, displacement, historical memory, gender and violence. The need to live, work, socialise at a distance, through digital platforms has highlighted the importance of finding ways to share stories, connect and heal through community creative research practice. How can we engage global communities through electronic literature art practices?
This paper will explore the use of digital methods and tools to conduct and disseminate research in interdisciplinary projects alongside artists and communities and will address the motivations to researching with participants. It will draw from the findings coming up from our workshop in ‘Creative Digital Practices: Community Platform for Healing and Mapping’, (also submitted to the ELO conference).
Milosz Waskiewicz - 25.05.2021 - 14:18
