MIKE & ADY
- Hubspace has a lot of potential to enact rituals / spells e.g. ouija board... Maybe think about how you might test this, what you want from/for the participants
- Ady commented that the "unseen" narrative element as hinted at in the room description was effective, definitely a lot of room to build on this and create an experience around being "hidden" or "unseen".
- Similar to the ritual potential, it would be powerful to think about how you might initiate participants into this world — what are the relevant objects and rituals you could bring in and play with? Perhaps think about their introduction as an initiation rite. Similarly, what other parallels and metaphors could you use to design this experience, and make it more engaging and immersive?
ZOE
- @raven? See-er — CyborgWitchNameGenerator Meme
- Is it a feminist project? What's the scope — communicate the context !!!
- Test your concept and thinking. What do you mean by 'Cyborg' and 'Witch'? What are other people's own understanding of these identities, and how are they different? You're coming with your own assumptions and bias, maybe you need to make this more of a process and conversation. Conduct interview with women from different backgrounds?
I think this is really important feedback, that I should take and seriously work with. I don't particularly want to do interviews, because I'm not sure who I would ask and there are ethics considerations/formalities. But I think that testing these ideas is very important to make sure I'm not just imposing and prescribing my opinions and experience on/to other people.
I think the workshops would work better for participants, and for me in receiving feedback/ to test ideas if they took an open-ended but step-by-step approach. This way it's not a prescriptive experience and allows participants to bring in and build their own perspectives.
- For her: witches as solitary, sometimes amoral, self-serving/sustaining female figure. Doesn't interact/engage unless something is encroaching upon her spaces and desires. Cyborgs as a problematic figure — "female" bodies that are often of male creation, for the purpose of objectification and fulfilling the male gaze / desire / fantasy. Both the witch and the cyborg probably more so, carry a narrative of being sexualised and stripped of agency.
This really struck me as something to address and take a stand against. The influence of the male gaze has definitely been something I am aware of, in the conjuring of these fantastical body-identities. But I absolutely want my project to do the opposite of objectifying and stripping agency from someone/something. I want empower others through the pure and defiant agency afforded to them by these examples and identities of the "witch" and the "cyborg". I hope that both of these rebel-bodies, and both of them as a hybrid, multiply possibilities of deviance, and celebrate this creation and embodiment of difference.
I think cyborgs do hold this transgressive power because they actually are in full possession of their agency and choose to enact it in embrace of technology. They choose to transgress binaries of human/organism and machine, of the natural and artificial. I think there might be a gap in popular understanding / my definitions of the cyborg, and communicating this effectively.
Cyborgs are not androids or robots, not fully machine (no matter what they look like). Cyborgs take hybridisation upon themselves. Their very state of being, as this hybrid, is a fully realised act of agency, and certainly defiance when considered in the original 1985 context of Donna Haraway's 'A Cyborg Manifesto' (2016/85). 2020's (and futures', in the scope of the project) understandings of a cyborg is definitely not the same as it was then, but I think the core argument that Haraway presents of it as a body through which we can imagine, and materialise a more inclusive and diverse world is still very powerful.
The Witch I think is more instantly associated with power and agency because of her many iterations and manifestations across history, politics, myths, fictions and pop culture. Perhaps I need to build this defining feature of agency into the world? Have participants construct/propose/enact their own personas in the image of witch-cyborgs?
- Workshops/hubspace — you need to create a threshold for participants. Give them context, opportunities to situate themselves in the space. Are they here as themselves? Do you give them a persona and ask them to engage in a roleplay? Can they construct their own persona — what might they be allowed to be in this space? Should you be asking if they are gendered, what pronouns they use?
Is the witch-cyborg a spectrum of identity that they can plot themselves on? How might you get participants to understand their own identity in relation to these quite possibly very abstract ideas and thinking. - Set it up for them. What sort of activities might they engage in to realise this agential potential? Get them to choose a hat? Read something out? Might they mingle with other participants first? Are there different spaces e.g. an entry way, different rooms that serve their own purpose? Build a sense of narrative into the experience, and think about it as a real space. User map the workshop, play through the experience... with different personas?
Think about what participants might expect from the space/experience. How do they participate. Think about who these spaces, and the workshops are for. Is it only women? How might a straight, white male occupy and interact with the space differently? What might the purpose of the space be for them?
- Think about this context as a brains trust — with either the texts you've been drawing from and working with, or with others' perceptions and definitions of "witch" and "cyborg".
Set up your own thinking so that it is visible (with a sense of narrative and agency for participants), and test it.
Critique in Experimentation, Wednesday 6/5/2020
- Ady's definitions of "witch" — strong feminine power, doesn't take shit, radical, not being afraid of their power, unapologetic. Self-assured, mastery of magic.
"Cyborg" — didn't really know what it is, or how it's different from robots/androids. "A technological monster"!.There seems to be confusion here. TEST THIS. - Mulanne — Witches as Self-assured, masters of magic.
Clarifying if I meant cyborgs as humans with some kind of augmentation. Went into a tangent about the technology we attach to our body to function in other/additional capacities — build a workshop around this? - Tracery experiments — generating alternate worlds (hubspaces/rooms) out of each "poem", or use them to write the narrative of cyborg-witch characters — e.g. the ID cards.
- Mulanne — reminds her of Dungeons and Dragons. Look into one shot campaigns, online gameplays? Genre-mixing element, realised in worldbuilding. Make character sheets to direct roleplay? Build up different elements and snippets. Also lots of concept art to maybe look into — props, characters, spaces.
- Jacqui — ideas and research around "emergent identities", towards inclusivity and empowerment. Try plotting a line graph? map? of your research — the trajectory, where you might go next. Summarise your claim in 25 words.
- Eugenie/Andrew: could look into physical disability, the tehcnological enhancement/augmentation in this space. Mutations, particularly in sci-fi.
Check out DnD, Alita Battle Angel?
Other notes/thoughts/feedback from people:
- Adrian — Have you ever watched gameplay from 'Detroit: Become Human'? - you used the word deviant which is a term they throw around in that gamehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4SNXU0yqB8
Action list
- Build workshop experiment in consideration of this feedback. (Test "cyborg" and "witch", create a threshold, think about ritual, think about narrative and worldbuilding)
- Summarise research claims in 25 words
- Watch DnD / Alita Battle Angel / Detriot: Become Human gameplays
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