User:Barbs/PersonalReader

THE TERROIR
"Terroir's direct translation is 'a sense of place', and what it means is the sum of the effects of a localized environment, inasmuch as they impact the qualities of a particular product. Yes, that can mean wine, but what if you applied these criteria to thinking about Area X my personal reader?"
- Jeff Vandermeer, Authority (& me)

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To Annotate

Fiction
⟢ Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer

Non-fiction
⟢ Zeros and Ones - Sadie Plant
⟢ Computer Lib / Dream Machines - Ted Nelson
⟢ Staying with the Trouble - Donna Haraway

Articles
⟢ https://www.nathalielawhead.com/candybox/alternative-games-from-the-fringes-of-cyberspace-fighting-for-art-and-something-better-in-this-dystopian-digital-world

Video
⟢ Bad Graphics - Jacob Geller

Interactive
⟢ Chants of Senaar - Rundisc
⟢ Patchwork Girl - Shelley Jackson

Interactive

Patchwork Girl - Shelley Jackson (1995)

⟢ Played: Not yet because I haven't figured out how to emulate an older Windows aaaaaa but I watched a video walkthrough
⟢ Source: Internet Archive

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To be linked to the chain of existence and events, yes, but bound by it? No. I forge my own links, I am building my own monstrous chain, and as time goes on, perhaps it will begin to resemble, rather, a web.

I love you Frankenstein's monster I love you cyberfeminism I love you nonlinear storytelling I love you body horror

Links:

• https://cyberartsweb.org/cpace/ht/pg/pgov.html (this entire site is super interesting)

Fiction

Story of your Life - Ted Chiang (1998)

⟢ Read: 11/10/2025
⟢ Source: Physical copy

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SUMMARY

Story of your Life is a science-fiction novella.
The entire story takes place in one moment: When Gary asks protagonist Louise if she wants to have a baby together. It then switches between her memories of the past, working as a linguist in first contact with the alien species Heptapods and her process in learning their language, and her memories of the future, their yet unconceived daughter growing up until her untimely death at 25 years old.
The use of tenses in the future memories is strange. Louise remembers her daughter in future tense: "I remember I will.."

The story's themes are language and communication, linguistic relativity, free will and determinism, teleology, child loss, first contact with alien beings.

I had read the story before a few years ago, along with watching the movie adaptation Arrival, but wanted to reread and annotate it for SI28, as the linguistic relativity and free will themes feel very relevant to the project.

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EVALUATION

Heptapod physics
Fermat's principle of least time = the path taken by a ray of light between two given points is the path that can be traveled in the least time.

• Human physics are causal:
  • A difference in the index of refraction caused the light to change direction.
  • Experience events in an order, and perceive their relationship as cause and effect.
• Heptapod physics are teleological:
  • Light minimized the time needed to travel to its destination.
  • To satisfy goal of minimizing & maximizing, they need to know initial & final states to meet that goal.
  • Heptapods experience events all at once, and perceive a minimizing/maximizing purpose underlying them all.

Both are valid ways of parsing the utterance of a physical event.

Heptapod linguistics
Their bodies have no "forward" direction, so their writing doesn't either. They use a semasiographic writing system, conveying meaning without reference to speech, using a visual syntax. They make use of the two-dimensionality of writing: the utterance is visible all at once. Speech limits them, as it has to be put in chronological order.

As Louise becomes fluent in the Heptapod's written language over the course of the story, it alters her perception of time.

• Human consciousness is sequential
  • Enacting freedom of choice makes it impossible to know the future
• Heptapod consciousness is simultaneous
  • Knowing the future makes you never act contrary to that future, including telling others.
  • Knowing the future evokes sense of urgency and obligation to act precisely as you know you would, an instinct you feel right in following.

If the heptapods already know everything they say or hear, what is the point of their using language at all?

• Human spoken language is used as a transmission of information.
  
• Heptapod spoken language is a realization of a plan, to actualize.
  • Performative utterance: The speaker can perform the action only by uttering the words. Saying equals doing.
  • Louise describes the sensation of conversing when you know what will be said feels like performing in a play.

Heptapod motivations
To see, to observe. They act to create the future, to enact chronology. They never announce their motivations as to why they came or why they're leaving.
Gary describes it as a non-zero-sum game = a situation in which the interacting parties' aggregate gains and losses can be less than or more than zero.

Linguistic relativity
Is one of the major themes of the story. It asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. The theory has had many different versions across history.

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INTERPRETATION

Looooved the amount of science in this fiction! Ted Chiang spent a lot of time researching both the linguistics and physics that were the basis of this story. This is also why my evaluation is SO DAMN LONG lmao all of it was so interesting. He made the difficult theory very graspable, because physicist Gary and linguist Louise had to explain their research to each other and collaborate. I loved that their cross-referencing helped both characters further along in their own research.

Changing perspectives through learning from the more-than-human is a theme that I've been very fascinated by and trying to navigate in my own work and it's so difficult to find answers to the How of it all. I really enjoyed this interpretation that communication and language shape our realities and we can change others by sharing those knowledges. Though our thoughts and perceptions are also influenced by a lot of other things than just language.. I dug into the linguistic relativism theory a little more and like that it's very much still in dispute and there are widely different interpretations. It has also been used in a racist way, seeing other languages as intellectually "lesser" than others. The book is able to avoid this, Louise states multiple times that both the human and heptapod experience of the world are both valid and equal, just different.

The temporalities of it all!!! I love you non-linear storytelling. After the last paragraph I had to put the book down and stare at the ceiling for a bit because OUGH.

Links

• Rule and Constraint - Marcel Bénabou
  • Writing under constraint (like Heptapod B) allows Louise to go beyond her assumed rules of linguistics, and lets her explore new virtualities both of language itself and her own perception of time. It alters her reality.
• A Cyborg Manifesto - Donna Haraway
  • Made me think of her cyborg theory on writing: "Haraway's cyborg calls for a non-essentialized, material-semiotic metaphor capable of uniting diffuse political coalitions along the lines of affinity rather than identity" "Feminist cyborg stories have the task of recoding communication and intelligence to subvert command and control"

The Author of the Acacia Seeds - Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)

⟢ Read: 28/10/2025
⟢ Source: PDF

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SUMMARY

TBC

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EVALUATION

TBC

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INTERPRETATION

TBC

Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer (2014)

⟢ Read: Summer 2023 | 05/10/2025
⟢ Source: I lent my physical copy to Max, but I also have a PDF

SI28: Area X is a Writing Machine

Think of it as a thorn, perhaps, a long, thick thorn so large it is buried deep in the side of the world. Injecting itself into the world. Emanating from this giant thorn is an endless, perhaps automatic, need to assimilate and to mimic. Assimilator and assimilated interact through the catalyst of a script of words, which powers the engine of transformation. Perhaps it is a creature living in perfect symbiosis with a host of other creatures. Perhaps it is “merely” a machine.