Myclines

Mycelines: A Sympoetic Imagination

By Qianxun Chen

A Myceline (a neologism made up of ‘mycelium’ and ‘line') is a “line” of text that grows like a mycelium. Mycelines can be generated based on a word-in-context analysis of one piece or multiple pieces of text. A shared word between two sentences has the potential to become a “node,” enabling new mycelines to grow from it. It breaks the linear, one-directional flow of the written language and demonstrates how interconnected our language is with new visual representations and evolving textual behaviors.

In Staying with the Trouble, Donna J. Haraway introduced the term sympoiesis based on autopoiesis, Sympoiesis means “making-with”, or “collectively-producing systems that do not have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries. Information and control are distributed among components. The systems are evolutionary and have the potential for surprising change.” By contrast, autopoietic systems are “self-producing” autonomous units “with self defined spatial or temporal boundaries that tend to be centrally controlled, homeostatic, and predictable.”

If we apply this way of thinking to words and text, to think about autopoietic as auto-poetics, auto-poetic can then be used to describe generative textual systems with centrally defined generative rules, while sym-poetic are for texts that are collectively produced among various dynamic components. Mycelines are created with sympoetic in mind. Here, words decide how they organize themselves spatially based on the flow of each sentence instead of following one predefined direction, allowing concepts and thoughts interact and merge in a process akin to anastomosis in fungal networks.

The Code below shows the process of word in context analysis of the text “Re-, Un-, Defining Tools” by the Feminist Search Tools working group. We can see that words such as “tool”, “think”, “conversation” and “process” are mentioned the most, which make them important nodes in the generated myeline network.

Concorder = class
newConcorderTester = Array(14) [
 0: "Myriad tentacles will be needed to tell the story …ing roots, reaching and climbing tendrilled ones."
 1: "But like Latour and even more like Le Guin, one of…rs, Stengers is adamant about changing the story."
 2: "That a symbiotic system — coral, with its watery w…bal transformation will come back into our story."
 3: "And at the same time, every imaginable, and many u…e first and the last beautiful words and weapons."
 4: "The story of Species Man as the agent of the Anthr…, only to end in tragic detumescence, once again."
 5: "Coal and the steam engine did not determine the st…lizing” transformations shaping the Capitalocene."
 6: "As a provocation, let me summarize my objections t… Anthropos is a setup, and the stories end badly."
 7: "It is hard to tell a good story with such a bad actor."
 8: "Bad actors need a story, but not the whole story."
 9: "That is the story of History human exceptionalists tell."
 10: "We need another figure, a thousand names of someth… the Anthropocene into another, big-enough story."
 11: "All of these stories are a lure to proposing the C…rucial for ongoing, for staying with the trouble."
 12: "The order is reknitted: human beings are with and … abiotic powers of this Earth are the main story."
 13: "Diverse human and nonhuman players are necessary i…tissues of the urgently needed Chthulucene story."
]

carrierText = FileAttachment {
 name: "carrier@1.txt"
 mimeType: "text/plain"
 <prototype>: FileAttachment {}
}

tentacularText = FileAttachment {
 name: "tentacular@1.txt"
 mimeType: "text/plain"
 <prototype>: FileAttachment {}
}

rm = n {
 n: 3
 root: n {children: Object, parent: null, token: "ROOT", count: 0, numChildren: -1}
 trace: undefined
 mlm: undefined
 logDuplicates: undefined
 maxAttempts: 999
 disableInputChecks: undefined
 tokenize: ƒ()
 untokenize: ƒ()
 input: Array(0) []
 <prototype>: n {}
}

!/bin/bash

# init: remove existing data and initialize new game-session


create file to keep track of chosen members
if [ ! -e ./.members ]; then
  touch ./.members
else 
  rm ./.members && touch ./.members
fi

# create moderation folder where to move emails
# from `<mlmmj>/<list>/moderation`
if [ ! -d ./moderation ]; then
  mkdir ./moderation
else 
  rm -rf ./moderation && mkdir ./moderation
fi

# delete .game-over mark
rm -rf ./.game-over
ct = await carrierText.text()

getAnalysis = ƒ(…)

sharedContext = ƒ(a, b, c)


test = Array(3) [
 0: "That is the story of History human exceptionalists tell."
 1: "The order is reknitted: human beings are with and … abiotic powers of this Earth are the main story."
 2: "Diverse human and nonhuman players are necessary i…tissues of the urgently needed Chthulucene story."
]

ctAnalysis = Object {
 ctAnalysis = Object {
 story: Array(22) 
 human: Array(9) 
 things: Array(8) 
 hero: Array(10) 
 bag: Array(9)  
 oats: Array(8) 
 telling: Array(7) 
 container: Array(6) 
… more
}

tAnalysis = Object {
 anthropocene: Array(30) 
 human: Array(25) 
 stories: Array(17) 
 capitalocene: Array(17)
 gaia: Array(13) 
 chthulucene: Array(15)
 story: Array(14) 
 man: Array(12) 
 called: Array(13) 
 earth: Array(9) 
 anthropos: Array(12) 
 beings: Array(10) 
 critters: Array(12) 
 term: Array(10) 
 history: Array(11)}

sortDict = ƒ(dict)

In this version, the text corpus is based on the content from Re-, Un-, Defining Tools.