EXPERIMENTATION LOG — Cyborgs, Witches and Tracery

Aim

Testing/playing with Tracery. How does it work? What can it help me make? How might it help me generate narrative content and build out this cyborg-witch world?

How might I communicate my understanding of cyborg/witch potentiality through bodies and worlds, by using generative methods? Design fictions? 

Precedents / context

When I was talking to Ali about her project and process, she talked about using Tracery to create generative poetry, and suggested looking into it. I started using something else she suggested, Talk to Transformer in the quiz experiment, and this seemed like a nice progression into generative methods and worldbuilding.

Also in the quiz experiment and CyborgWitchNameGenerator (meme), I was starting to really play with language as an expression of, and constructor of worlds. Almost a queering, survival practice in the remaking, rewording of reality and experience. Tracery as a generative tool helps construct these alternate realities more fully, and with more control.

Process / methods

• I chose the poem format because it seemed approachable from a code/construction point of view, 4 lines was a good chunk of content to understand in relation to each other. 

• In the online editor, the example they give for the poem is made up of quite flowery, romantic language and words. Generating my own version was mostly a process of replacing these words. I kept some of them — 'lazy', 'dance', etc. But most did not have the ambivalent / wicked / mysterious tone I am trying to assemble together. 

Stock Tracery poem words

"move":["flock", "race", "glide", "dance", "flee", "lie"],
"bird":["swan", "heron", "sparrow", "swallow", "wren", "robin"],
"agent":["cloud", "wave", "#bird#", "boat", "ship"],
"transVerb":["forget", "plant", "greet", "remember", "embrace", "feel", "love"],
"emotion":["sorrow", "gladness", "joy", "heartache", "love", "forgiveness", "grace"],
"substance":["#emotion#", "mist", "fog", "glass", "silver", "rain", "dew", "cloud", "virtue", "sun", "shadow", "gold", "light", "darkness"],
"adj":["fair", "bright", "splendid", "divine", "inseparable", "fine", "lazy", "grand", "slow", "quick", "graceful", "grave", "clear", "faint", "dreary"],
"doThing":["come", "move", "cry", "weep", "laugh", "dream"],
"verb":["fleck", "grace", "bless", "dapple", "touch", "caress", "smooth", "crown", "veil"],
"ground":["glen", "river", "vale", "sea", "meadow", "forest", "glade", "grass", "sky", "waves"],

My final poem words

"move":["dance", "fly", "strike", "scheme", "creep", "swim", "crouch", "glide", "march", "pounce", "attack", "charge", "party", "twirl"],

"witch":["Huntress", "See-er", "Crrone", "Haaag!", "Priestess", "Sorcerezz", "Mage", "cyborgWitch", "witch-demon"],

"agent":["Spir-It", "Apparitizion", "#witch#", "Aura", "En-tit-y", "Cyborrrg", "Ghhoulz", "future", "past", "Time", "TimeKeeper", "Authorities", "Dynasty"],

"transVerb":["plot", "plant", "smirk", "hack", "betray", "stab", "cackle", "love", "initiate", "embed", "circling", "meet", "kiss", "instructs", "obeys", "bore", "twirled", "curse", "fume"],

"emotion":["glee", "rapture", "uncertainty", "regret", "mirth", "longing", "bitterness", "hysteria", "lunacy", "fury"],

"substance":["#emotion#", "mist", "fog", "silver", "cloud", "data", "mirrors", "electric current", "neon", "dark", "salt", "code", "spheres", "psswrdEncrypt", "pixels", "nothingness", "shimmer", "diamanteMesh", "moon"],

"adj":["bitter", "glittery", "sweetened", "horrid", "dark", "shrouded", "hidden", "lazy", "faked", "ancient", "sinister", "riddled", "opaque", "dreary", "sunken", "slimy", "mutated", "defiant", "deviant", "knowing", "shiny", "plastik", "fatal"],

"doThing":["come", "move", "cry", "weep", "laugh", "dreamt", "engender", "encode"],

"verb":["stain", "disgrace", "conjure", "dragg", "shudder", "rattle", "mutate", "veil", "slice", "hack", "engender", "borne", "aflame", "gleam", "cube", "fallen", "choreograph"],

"ground":["soils", "two-way glass", "stone", "seabed", "data-field", "Tree+Tree+Tree", "scrying lake", "dirrrt", "sky", "waves", "dimension", "grave", "discotheque", "stickyVinyl", "DanceDanceRevolution", "organza"],

• Some of the words (especially the agents/actors) I pulled from the CyborgWitchNameGenerator (Huntress, See-er, Crrone, Haaag!, etc.). And overall I tried to have a good mix of witch-words and cyborg-words, either within or across the categories. 

• I tried to select the 'move' and 'verb' words that foregrounded an act of agency, to convey the power and choice these cyborg-witch entities hold, or that their world affords. For example, 'betray', 'hack', 'curse', 'scheme', 'disgrace' all hold an active, decision-making power to them. 
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• For 'emotions' and 'adjectives', I wanted to find words that conveyed the condemned aspects of the female experience. I also used a few words from the 'Why Witches' text (Gauthier, 1980) which communicates this threatening, self-knowing power inherent in the figure of the Witch. Emotions that women are made villains of — 'mirth', 'hysteria', 'rapture', 'bitterness'. Adjectives that are a bit unpleasant and strange — 'riddled', 'dreary', 'horrid', 'sweetened'. 
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• For the 'substance' and 'ground' categories, it's asking you to specify the materials and texture of this world. This is where I built in more cyborgian, digital/virtual materiality. ('Code', 'psswrdEncrypt', 'spheres')
  
  For some entries ('Tree+Tree+Tree', 'dirrrt') I experimented with the spelling and punctuation conventions, but I found that I couldn't do too much of this because it would get really confusing in the output. The way the poem is strung together is pretty dense. 

• It's very easy to generate iterations once all the words are in, and throughout the process of testing the words, removing some and adding in others, I made sure to keep my favourite configurations. 

Reflection on action

• I definitely have a lot of content to work with now. 

• This was a really fun process. While I came up with most of the words, I could have never imagined or put together these sentences. I think the tone that is generated is really compelling and exciting to work with, reading some of these when they came up on screen was so delicious and satisfying. I could also just keep going and generate as many as I want, it was hard to stop. 

• I think the generative power of a tool like this really enhances the potential and possibility that is already present in the coupling of the witch and cyborg. It's starting to draw out the emotive tone/capacity of this world, and the materiality of it. How might one move through time and space as a cyborg/witch/other, and occupy and enact their agency? 
  
  The combination of agents, adjectives, verbs, substances are together very visually evocative, which is great for world-building and nice that I don't have to start from nothing. The world is almost already there, in the words — there are agents doing something, and operating in relation to each other and the spaces they are in. 

• At points the output would start to get boring, or repetitive-but-not, so it was also a process of tinkering with the words so that it flows in a direction that I was excited by. For example, towards the end, I started incorporating more words to do with time ('futures', 'pasts', 'dynasty', 'ancient') and whenever they appeared, different images would be called up, with a slightly different affect. 

Reflection for action

I think I need to look through the list of outputs again. Read it more closely, and think about the next possible iteration of these poems. Do I bring it into Hubs? Workshops? Use it as templates for alternate worlds? It would also be interesting to do text analysis on these poems, to draw out patterns or synthesise the tone/types of imagery that has been generated.

I think for Monday (tomorrow!) though, I should definitely build on this content to design more of an experience for the workshops, either as a representation or model for more generative content.

References

Gauthier, X. (1980), Pourquoi Sorcières?,  in de Courtivron, I., & Marks, E. (Eds.)Newt French Feminisms: An Anthology, New York: Schoken Books.