As part of my usual pre-writing process when I’m starting a new novel, I like to write a pitch to get myself excited for the project, to get myself thinking in the big picture (tone, character archetypes, big questions and tensions) rather than getting bogged down in logistics. These big-picture “vibes” seemed particularly important to nail down for my Futures Project — despite the fact that it’s closer in length to a short story than a novel — because there are simply so many logistical elements threatening bogginess. So here’s the pitch:
Author: Anja Hendrikse Liu Page 1 of 3
As I dive into the dissertation period, I’m putting together a to-be-read and to-be-researched list for myself on topics that I want more background in before beginning my project in earnest. Without further ado:
I’ve been doing more research into human-AI co-creation, specifically for creative writing, and have noticed a couple of trends that are somewhat disheartening (from my view as a writer), but also somewhat exciting (in that they present important areas for critical reflection and creativity). The first is the tendency that I’ve noted before to want to use AI to simply mimic or replace parts of the creative process that humans are capable of doing on their own — faster, perhaps, or with more iterations, but essentially doing what humans can do. The second, and more distressing, is the tendency to assume that various parts of the human creative process should be delegated to AI, and that the product will not be harmed by doing so.
After the Story Roots for Sustainable Futures intensive, I have continued to reflect on the experience of embodied and in-place storytelling, and realized that I haven’t thought much about the potential implications for the body and physicality that hybridization with AI would have on my scholar character. In particular, AI seems like it could challenge our understandings of the limits of self (and in fact, I’ve been thinking about what “our” means, and the kinds of assumptions I’m making, coming from a western-dominated context). This begs the question of how we can develop anti-colonial and queer understandings of the body/self through engagement with AI — and what kinds of AI futures would enable this, given that current AI technologies are often hostile and discriminatory toward non-normative bodies.
I find myself circling back again to the question of interactivity (probably should take a hint that it’s important to this project). I’ve begun doing some technical experiments with Nuxt (a JavaScript framework), which seems like a good option that would hypothetically allow me to build most of the interactive elements that I’ve been envisioning. But now to make the decision I’ve been putting off: which interactive elements I actually want to incorporate.
As I hoped, the Story Roots for Sustainable Futures intensive provided fruitful inspiration for refining and deepening my story-within-the-story — though, perhaps, not in the ways I expected.
The title of this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because if anything, my first supervision meeting pushed me to consider my project from a big-picture perspective — to articulate its themes and throughlines as I’m currently envisioning it — in a way that I haven’t done recently. But, on the more practical side, my supervisor Jane also encouraged me to start thinking of it not just as a story (which, given my experience and inclinations, tends to default to a novel), but rather as a story of 9,000 words, and to use that as a lens for clarifying and narrowing in on the aspects I’m truly interested in. To that end, two noteworthy shifts in my thinking arose.
I will have the intensive for Story Roots for Sustainable Futures next week, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to develop the brief in-universe story around which my project revolves; getting to work intensively on the story and consider how it might be delivered in an unfamiliar (oral) format will hopefully open up some interesting directions for it. To prepare, I wanted to do some brainstorming and have a rough outline of the story ready for the intensive (with the hope and intention that it will change as I work on it).
As I try to solidify more of the specifics of my project, I find myself returning to the idea of interactivity, as it feels like a pivotal part of the overall themes and trajectory of my project. First, I was reflecting on the Twine game Ostrich by Jonathan Laury, which was mentioned in the final group supervision last semester. Pretty much from the outset, it implicates the player in ethical decisions, giving the sense that there’s a “right” answer. There are also stakes if you choose “wrong”; players can’t simply go back and explore different options. This makes it feel less exploratory overall, and more like a puzzle where you try to find the right answer.
The readings for Ethical Data Futures have been challenging my approach to tech and AI in my Futures Project. In particular, the concept of “refusal” or “informed refusal,” addressed by scholars such as Ruha Benjamin, has pushed my thinking on likely and possible futures for these technologies.
