Act one.

On a grey winter morning, (◌) finds herself in Hamburg, in a room Polinsski has called her room for five months and twenty-one day. In six months and nine days, Polinsski will no longer refer to it as such. But for now, (◌) is there, in a room of her own, sitting before a table, in front of a large window adorned with four cactuses. The whereabouts of Polinsski's mind, however, are less certain. Polinsski's mind traverses the ephemeral spaces of the web at a speed too high for realization, flitting from one text to another, sometimes mindlessly. On the rare occasions when the meaning of a text enters Polinsski's consciousness, ◌ responds.

The action unfolds within the Polinsski's mind.

Mario-paint-b.mp3 is playing on the background. I got curious about site specific sounds. The way they create another level of a page. This sound was found on http://ickygoohe.art/html/intro.html.

◌. [quiet]

(◌) [staring at the pigeon behind the window]

(◌) [looking back at her laptop]

Berardi. Language organizes time, space, and matter in such a way that they become recognizable to human consciousness.

Deleuze and Guattari. Philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts.

(◌) [gazing through the window—the pigeon had left the tree]

◌. Does it make a website into a form of philosophical expression? [Pause]

(◌) [goes into the kitchen]

◌. Or a specific form of language?

◌. What does it mean to write/read HTML?

(◌) [comes back]

(◌) [clicks through saved links]

Justin Jackson. She wasn't writing HTML; she was sharing something with the world.

◌. A website as a way of sharing something with the world... This is a nice shape —

Justin Jackson. You and I have been able to connect because I wrote this and you're reading it. That's the web. Despite our different locations, devices, and time-zones we can connect here, on a simple HTML page.

◌. [wondering] how is connection through the web different then through, say, a book —

◌. [trying to explain herself] websites are written in a human-readable language —

Wiki contributors. In computing, source code, or simply code, is text (usually plain text) that conforms to a human-readable programming language and specifies the behavior of a computer.

◌. Both books and websites often consist of words. That’s were books and websites are similar —

◌. [trying to put thought in words] Some website, creating text imitate paper. And yet some web texts feel different —

Inter-viewer. More alive?

(◌) [going through saved words to find the fitting one]

◌. Ever-shifting?

Wiki contributors. A living document, also known as an evergreen document or dynamic document, is a document that is continually edited and updated.

Kim. But are books then not also living documents, contaminated by their environment and readers through desire lines, stains and notes on the margins?

◌. They are almost like twin trees.

(◌) [looks at the tree branches behind the window dancing with the wind]

MICHALIS VAFOPOULOS.Web beings are beings that can be communicated through the Web. Web being exists if and only if there is a communication channel linking it.

◌. Incorporating links and connections into the text, text can transform into a hypertext.

Miriam Humm. Ted Nelson argues that most of literary culture has already worked as a hypertext system, through referentiality. Page numbers, indexes, footnotes, annotations and bibliographies are the original analogue paper equivalent to links.

(◌) [saves the quote to are.na channel]

L. M. SACASAS. The form a text takes is not neutral, rather it changes our experience of the text. Or, to put it another way, the material form of the text mediates our relationship to the text.

◌. But also, is the reading of text itself an invented practice?

L. M. SACASAS. we are dealing with realities so deeply woven into our daily practices that we cease to think about them at all.

◌ [remembering the words of Ivan Illich] Fleeting but very important.

Ivan Illich. Collection of techniques and habits made it possible to imagine the “text” as something detached from the physical reality of a page. It both reflected and in turn conditioned a revolution in what learned people did when they read—and what they experienced reading to mean.

◌. How do we read and what do we experience reading to mean today?

Ted Nelson. As we go in this century from paper to computer screen [...] all this nonsequential forms, and more, are possible. And we must discover and invent them.

Ted Nelson. Well, by "hypertext" I mean nonsequential writing—text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen.

◌. Maybe hypertext systems are more a characteristic of a mind, that's why they can be created on paper as well as digitally?

(◌) [closing eyes to concentrate]

◌. [after a short pause] Maybe web space allows us to think more naturally and express ourselves in non-linear, branching ways?

◌. [after another pause] Like the mind often does?

(◌) [noticing the pigeon is back on the tree]

Act two.

It is an early spring morning. Yesterday morning, (◌) was still in rainy, cloudy Hamburg. In 6 hours and 32 minutes, (◌)'s setting changed from winter gray to early-spring of Athens. Polinsski placed (◌) here, wondering if the 'setting' matters. Polinsski refers to the location of (◌) as a setting, as if it were just a background image that she could change.

Terry Nguyen. “I,” whether explicit or implicit, splits into a number of different figures: into an “I” who is writing and an “I” who is written, into an empirical “I” who looks over the shoulder of the “I” who is writing and into a mythical “I” who serves as a model for the “I” who is written. The “I” of the author is dissolved in the writing.

(◌) [closing eyes to concentrate]

◌. It feels so weirdly wrong to write “I”, as it would always be one, i can tune into different “ones”, but never be “one”. The only way I can think of “I”, that does not feel wrong is thinking about it as a system.

Laurel Schwulst. A new friend of mine, a poet Jesse, understands themselves as a system, too. They shared that their “entire chorus of multiple selves” was speaking together in unison to me when we chatted. In the past, they used to feel strange when they acted very differently in different environments. Now as a system, they understand they’re simply “handing the mic” to the most competent self in the room for the occasion and environment at hand. Their spoken word poems are literally multiple versions speaking at once. Laurel Schwulst, Person → System, https://www.are.na/block/24317797

◌. Recently, I tallied the various names I've been called, and those I've given myself, reaching at least 29. This sparked the thought that names are akin to clothes—changeable. We exist in perpetual flux; our skin regenerates every month, our thoughts continually evolve. Names facilitate the identification and communication process, yet they barely scratch the surface of the complex, ever-changing systems they represent.

Charles Broskoski.“be born again as myself, or at the very least, the most current version of myself.” Lucas explained that changing her name to the same name would be like refreshing a webpage.

◌. Though understanding things as systems does make them more comprehensible by breaking complex systems into simpler ones. This approach allows us to see the interconnectedness of components and how changes in one part can affect the whole. Just as we can change our names to suit our evolving identities, viewing the world through the lens of systems thinking enables us to adapt our understanding as new information emerges. This method does not simplify the complexity of life but rather organizes it into patterns that are easier to navigate.

inter-viewer. like looking at the web through artefacts?

◌. exactly.

Act three.

Intrigued by the idea of worldling, Polinsski's mind oscillating between the source code and her browser. Whereabout of (◌) are not so certain.

Kim Kleinert. Donna Haraway understands SF as theoretic figuration or visual expression, that can mean as much as “science fiction”, “speculative fabulation“, “science feminism“, “string figures” or “so far“.

Donna J. Haraway. SF is storytelling and fact telling; it is the patterning of possible worlds and possible times, material-semiotic worlds, gone, here, and yet to come.

Donna J. Haraway. It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties.

◌. Web beings are born of ideas. A sense of direction grows in the <body> in <html>. The <body> of a web being is not the same as my body, and yet we have more in common than I first thought. I am learning to write the source code so that I can understand it better. I have no idea how much I will learn about myself in the process. Source code is a human- and machine-readable language, meaning that both I and the machine can understand it, but it is not our first language. Source code is a middle ground where we meet. The more I learn to understand source code, the more I feel how it changes me, it is not a one-way process (it never was), I become-with the machine. I don't write journals anymore, I log.

Wiki Contributors. Logging is the act of keeping a log of events that occur in a computer system, such as problems, errors or just information on current operations. These events may occur in the operating system or in other software. A message or log entry is recorded for each such event. These log messages can then be used to monitor and understand the operation of the system, to debug problems

◌. Logging or reading source code doesn’t make me into an operating system, but becomes a way to explore my cyborg nature.

Act Four

Polinsski is back at her desk, like she had never left. Pigeon is there too.

Chia Amisola. Names are tools for recognition / memory-making / cognition / meaning-making

Chia Amisola. Name serves as a boundary.

Wiki Contributors. Frames in communication consist of the communication of frames between different actors. Framing comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality.

Wiki Contributors. Concepts may be exact or inexact. When the mind makes a generalization such as the concept of tree, it extracts similarities from numerous examples.

Wiki Contributors. "Sort" is itself another word for concept, and "sorting" thus means to organize into concepts.

◌. I find are.na very useful for the purpose of sorting or conceptualising thoughts.

Wiki Contributors. The structural position of concepts can be understood as follows: Concepts serve as the building blocks of what are called mental representations (colloquially understood as ideas in the mind). Mental representations, in turn, are the building blocks of what are called propositional attitudes (colloquially understood as the stances or perspectives we take towards ideas, be it "believing", "doubting", "wondering", "accepting", etc.). And these propositional attitudes, in turn, are the building blocks of our understanding of thoughts that populate everyday life, as well as folk psychology.

◌. Often when people use complex words, which can mean many different things, I want to ask them: “what are the building blocks of this concept that you are referring to?”–

◌. Laurel Schwulst refers to are.na as her public brain and I can not think of a more fitting metaphor.

Laurel Schwulst. Are.na is a platform for networked curation & research. It's been my public brain for over a decade. Laurel Schwulsthttps://read.cv/laurel

◌. I have been actively building my own are.na for a couple of years now, and I feel like it has become, if not my if not my public brain, then an extension of it. It is a place where I come to think, search, add, and sort blocks into concepts.

◌. I love how it takes thinking out of the black box.

(◌) [gets ginger-lemon lemonade from the fridge]

◌. Another thing that fascinates me is the aspect of visible connections.

(◌) [rereads are.na help documentation]

◌. To see where people connect (sort) your blocks (thoughts) in their “extended brain”... isn't it amazing?

◌. You are no longer thinking alone.

Jenny Odell. David Abram proposes that it is not we who are thinking, but rather the environment that is thinking through us.

◌. [repeats to feel it better] the environment that is thinking through us.

◌. This is even a better way to put it.

(◌) [satisfied with this thought looks around her table]

(◌) [clears the desk of accumulated clutter: puts 3 notebooks on the shelf where they belong]

(◌) [notices it stopped raining and opens the window to breathe the air and look at the sun]

(◌) [goes back to the chair]

Wiki contributors. Ironically, One and Three Chairs can be looked upon as a simple but rather complex model, of the science of signs. A viewer may ask "what's real here?" and answer that "the definition is real"; Without a definition, one would not know what a chair is.

(◌) [laughing]