SI28-Glossary
Meta
There is a unique beauty in everything that is meta.
Thinking about thinking, machines that relate to other machines, writing about writing, and infinite combinations of intricate relationships and rabbit holes.
Beyond this Special Issue, XPUB itself embodies the concept of metaness in the most wonderful way, flirting with the risk of being self-referential, but always fostering meaningful, compelling stimuli and inspiration.
Person: Tommi
Song: Elio e le Storie Tese – Gli occhi del cuore, from Boris’ soundtrack.
Marginalia
A form of annotation that highlights the center at the margins, making text dialectical. A brazilian radical art movement started in late 60s as a response to the military dictatorship by publishing subversive acts that challenged conservative values.
Person: Luca Tornato
Song: "Monólogo ao Pé do Ouvido / Banditismo Por uma Questão de Classe" - Chico Science & Nação Zumbi
Oddkin
We require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, including not only humans but also non-humans. Coined by Donna Haraway.
Person: Barbara
Song: Link
Assemblages
Assemblage of words, meanings, methods, tools and people. We were/are a wonderful and fun assemblage
Person: Youjung
Song: Link
Cognitive Loop
A narrative loop is a story structure in which similar events or challenges repeat with variations!
Person: Kiki
Song: Link
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation refers to a movement in American literature that emerged in the 1950s – the core group consisting of authors Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. Central elements of Beat culture include the rejection of materialism and conventional narrative values, explicit depictions of human existence, the search for spirituality, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation. The soundtrack of the Beat Generation was modern jazz, in particular the energetic sound of bebop and hard bop.
Person: Lea
Song: Link
Cognitive Assemblages
Distribution of cognition and agency: Neither humans nor technical systems are solely in charge. Both are “cognizers” that interpret and act on information, with agency distributed across the system. A system where human and technical actors, like humans, algorithms, and sensors, work together, distributing cognition and agency across the network, which is characterized by the circulation of information through human and technical cognizers that drop in and out of the network in shifting configurations that enable interpretations and meanings to emerge, circulate, interact and disseminate.
Person: Ema
Song: Constant Motion by Dream Theatre
Media-Specific Analysis
A theory we learned about through katherine Hayles' Post-Print. It has made me consider more deeply how the medium, the 'materiality' of a text plays a role in how it circulates and is received. It clicked for me especially to treat the networked nature of digital or technologically produced text as the 'starting point' so to say, instead of thinking about a text as being the thing that I see when I see it in front of me as I read it first.
Person: Robin
Song: Link
The Proust Effect
The Proust effect is the spontaneous, vivid reliving of a past memory, triggered by a sensory experience like smell or taste.
Person: Sibyl
Song: Link
Pragmatics
Paul Grice put down the basis of Pragmatics in linguistic philosophy to think about communication in broader terms other than Semantics. His theory of implicatures is about comunnication as an investigative process for relevancies is tied to the context where the communication happens in. Pragmatics proves that language on its own is limiting, through means of mind reading abilities and the common understanding of how things work in reality.
Person: Valentin
Song: Link
Superfluous
unnecessary, especially through being more than enough
Person: Daan
Song: Link
Writing
Tulips in bloom Clara born to war’s dark loom Hiding with whispers Under the floor Hunger and hope They rationed more Amsterdam wept But she survived A child of shadows Kept alive…
Person: Phillip
Song: Link
Drifting
We are like the drifting pros on Mount Akina in Initial D, full of motion and imagination, engaging in decentralized, fluid creation, with everyone choosing the medium they prefer.
Person: Soda
Song: Link
Absurdity
When the vast systems produced by technology exceed human understanding, sensation, and control, meaning does not disappear—it persists in a form that can no longer be digested. Absurdity does not arise from malfunction, but from the system’s very state of “normal operation.” The shadows cast beneath all colossal machines built by technology are absurdity itself; and every small shadow thrown by a screw, a gear, or a mechanical angle becomes the environment in which it grows. Absurdity is not a sudden catastrophe, but a byproduct quietly generated by systems in continuous operation. In this sense, absurdity is not error, but excess; not failure, but precision; not chaos, but a hollow space produced by over-functioning.
Person: Kiki
Song: Link