EXPERIMENTATION LOG — Hubspace workshop / gif shrine

Aim

How might I use Hubs as a space in which to realise a cyborg-witch world? Ontology? Politics?

How might I design a workshop to communicate and immerse others in my cyborg-witch world? And test it's resonance/transformative, imaginative power? (what it should have done)

Precedents / context

For Monday, we were running our first workshops and I thought Hubs would be a fun space to materialise and immerse participants in this world. Zoe and Andrew have also talked about Hubs as a platform on which we can think about participatory methods — conducting "events" and designing experience.

Honestly, I went into this without much fore-thought and concrete aims, which is definitely evident in the outcome. I think I just wanted to try something different and the spatial play that is afforded by hubs and its virtual 3D space was intriguing. Also rather befitting of my research topic. 

Process / methods

• Weeks ago when we were first introduced to hubs I tested it out by making a gif shrine of my favourite cyborg witches, mostly fictional characters from pop culture, some just gifs I felt represented the appropriate attitude. I didn't understand that I had to pin them in place, so it didn't save but I did take these screenshots — you can see Britney with the pink wig, Patty and Selma from The Simpsons, the Grand High Witch from The Witches, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy Summers, the Spice Girls, Trixie Mattel — all powerful, unapologetic and (more or less) self-defined embodiments of femininity. 

• It was a lot of fun, and I chose a mysterious, secluded setting — a boat in the middle of a foggy lake. Totally random, but I enjoyed the contrast between the muted, misty setting and the zany looped energy of these gifs. 

• I missed this as a solitary, quiet space ("shrine") on which to look and contemplate on some inspirational cyborg witches, so I thought this would be good to recreate for the purpose of a workshop, even as a space just to get a few people to come into and explore for themselves. 

• I started bringing together what gifs I could remember from the first version, and looking for ways to fill out the representation — pulling a mix of cyborgs and witches, women of colour, traditional and untraditional femininity, "attractive" and "unattractiveness", etc. 

• It was pretty easy to find witch content, but cyborgs were much harder, especially cyborg "women" that weren't sexualised and without agency. This is a consideration I haven't really accounted for yet, but definitely need to address and take a stand against. Zoe brought this up in the critique on Monday, that Cyborgs are also understood as objects of male creation and pleasure/fantasy fulfilment. This reading is true for much of pop culture's cyborg-women, so I have a lot more work to do in defining and contextualising it in this project, and the texts ('A Cyborg Manifesto' (Haraway, 2016/85)) I have been referencing. 

• I think the virtual environment and very materiality of a gif introduces cyborgian ideas, especially as I'm using them to work through a politicised conversation about gender and identity. But it did get me thinking about the cyborg as a body/identity. I don't think cyborgs are as definitively, or broadly defined in pop culture as the witch, but if you take technology as the base criteria, a lot of alternate understandings and readings might come up.
  
  Makeup is an easy one — viewed mostly as a tool of feminine power, but also a tool to constrain women to normative (and western) beauty standards. Notions of agency and self-defined identity come into this, but there also are interesting and deviant applications of the tool. Drag queens, for example (some who are included in the shrine) use makeup for their own gender-transgressing agenda. Plastic surgery is another technology that plays with the natural and artificial/crafted binary, but again, comes down to whether the body is being allowed to act upon its agency. 

• I collected all these gifs and tiled them all around myself in the hubspace. I wanted it to have a heady, overwhelming effect, of a blasphemous cyborg witch shrine. 

• CyborgWitchNameGenerator Meme. It occurred to me that the hubs space might also be a cool place to bring in objects I'd made already (as objects of the world), and have participants interact with them here. I put in the name generator meme, played with the scale of it and decided it would be weird and fun if it took up the whole floor. The immense sense of scale and felt spatiality contrasts with the irreverence of the content.
  
  I accidentally cloned it, but kept both because it seems to situate you in the space better, with essentially a floor and wall. 

• I also realised with a lot of excitement that hubs lets you put in the live feed from your webcam, so had some fun with that feature. This could be something to keep in mind for future workshops and experiments conducted in hubs — building a ritual around the webcam, or getting everyone to have a more direct relationship with the other participants, beyond the avatar. Or perhaps elevating yourself/someone to an omniscient, deity status by blowing them up in the sky. 

• I chose this displaced, constantly travelling setting (named 'Trippy Tunnel' on Hubs) because it captured a sense of privacy and safety, which feels appropriate for a shrine. Especially building on previous experiments around the characterisation of these cyborg witches as on the run from the law/authorities, this shrine should be a safe space and have protections/security measures.  

• When it came to contextualising the hubs space and letting participants understand what they could/should do here, I didn't think this through that much other than this short description. I tried to build in this feeling of being hidden, and invite participants to explore and worship/contemplate however they wish to do so. I think this part of the workshop could do with a lot more consideration and planning, which Zoe gave feedback on. 

cyborgWitch <shrine> 

Welcome into the time tunnelz, they can’t find us here. Take a look around — feel free to work out ur own W.ho W.hen W.itch, maybe even change your avatar name? Head into the Gif Shrine for a moment of respectful contemplation… (feel free 2 cackle)

• Some more screenshots of Mike and Ady in the space on Monday. They seemed to think it was cool to occupy and explore it, but I realised quickly that there really wasn't that much to do, and that I should probably go back and think about what I want from running a workshop.
  
  They also worked out their alternate name according to the meme — BotRot En-tit-y (Mike) and s.t.a.t.i.c. spir-It (Ady), which was cute. 

Reflection on action

• I think this was somewhere to start. It was fun to create and occupy, for myself, but based on user interactions and engagement, and Zoe's feedback I have a lot more things to consider and bring in. 

• I think hubs is a bit wacky and definitely playful, which fits well with the tone I am trying to achieve. There's a lot of potential in what I could get participants to do in hubs, to take part in creating the space and respond to prompts, or roleplay in personas, etc. I think there's a cool opportunity to explore notions of the body in hubs — through the avatar / webcam feed / text relating to the body / activating the body through movement, speech, listening, etc. And relating that back to rituals and how a (different? new?) sense of meaning or body can be created through technologically mediated connection.

• I think the "felt", but digital experience that the virtual space affords can be used to really interesting effect. Doing this I got really excited about experiencing this myself, but maybe if I came from more of a experience design approach, this potential can be realised. I hope users can start to see/feel the possibilities that cyborg/witches embody, understand how it might relate to their own identity and experience, and perhaps help me generate more interesting and realised outcomes.
  
  I haven't visited the idea of myths explicitly recently, but I think this could be a really exciting thing to think about in the hubspace, because it essentially is already a whole other world. How might I start to create/communicate a mythology in a participatory environment. I think it would also make the experience for a user much more engaging and exciting, to flesh out the materiality / reality of this world through storytelling, and possibly speculate about their role and enact agency within/on it. 

Reflection for action

I will write up all the feedback I've received around this experiment, and other relevant notes to fully process and work out how I might build on this, and towards the points provided in feedback. I think there's still a lot to be explored in hubs, and with workshops as a method, so I don't want to abandon this experiment, just map and plan it out more carefully.


References

Haraway, D., (2016). Manifestly Haraway, University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1985)