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Tag: theory

morning world computer

Published June 18, 2026 by Warren Ellis

David Muenzer.

Afropresentism and Kinternet:

“Afropresentism says, I am here bearing witness, yes, and it aches. And yes, I am grieving. And most importantly, yes, I celebrate still being alive enough to feel all of that. I see that you are also grieving and I see that you are alive too… Yes, I celebrate the rage I know I’m not alone in. Yes, I see the everyday barrage— the advertisements and the architectures that have grown so elaborate, so unrelenting in their reminders of our compromise. And, yes everything I bear witness to that wounds me and wounds you I will meet with my own technology of refusal.”

Building from this philosophy and from the dialogue with Mutemi, Githere made the case for the kinternet–a conceptual model for a network that weaves together myth and ancestors; theory and practice. Sketched out by hand and distributed on paper to everyone in the audience, the kinternet is a technology of repair, rooted in grief, rage, slowing down, and connecting with one another in the present.

Genevieve Stebbins’ Delsarte System of Dramatic Expression (1886).

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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morning computer pluriverse

Published March 26, 2025 by Warren Ellis

Leonora Carrington, whom people are complaining about, again.

Ancient sculptures were scented.

…visiting ancient sacred sites would have been a rich olfactory experience. Sculptures in ancient Greece were covered with perfume just as bodies were. The practice was known as kosmesis, a “super-adornment” that also involved applying textiles and jewelry. Among the nearly 3,000 stone inscriptions found on Delos are those that record the ingredients necessary for kosmesis for the statues of Hera and Artemis. The list included sponges, oil, soda carbonate, linen, wax, and rose perfume.

Super-adornment!

Kerstin Brätsch.

This idea that there can be at any one given time multiple intersecting, beautiful in some cases, conflicting worlds in which design occupies, operates, and works is a really powerful concept that is driving where design is heading.

This links to a podcast episode that I haven’t listened to yet, but I like the term pluriverse. There’s a transcript lower down the page, which is great for me as I read faster than people talk.

Pluriversal design, the concept of a world of many worlds as design practice, is not a new idea but one that has drastically increased in influence. First, here’s Renata Marques Leitão explaining how the pluriversal design paradigm can restart discussions of change:

I think that we have to start to identify what I name theories of change, how change happens. What are our assumptions about how change happens and what’s the final result? What do we want to produce? What is the pathway towards change? And then our partners, they also have their theories of change. They also have their pathways. And you can’t really imagine that your pathway, just because you are a very educated person, is better than their pathway. So it’s a lot about recognizing our assumptions, especially assumptions about how change happens.

The idea that we all live in intersecting worlds is worth picking apart a bit: it’s either blindingly obvious or it’s a useful filter to look at life through, and I’m not sure which yet.

Sometimes it’s very difficult to separate what is real help and what is simply oppression. 

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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A Swarm Of Thoughts

Published March 27, 2023 by Warren Ellis

My favourite piece of Barthesian advice runs in a different direction: ‘It’s when you lift your head that you’re really reading.’ The greatest gift a work can bestow might be the semi-free association it inspires. ‘Barthes applied this floating quality to the entire sphere of language, to reading, to every utterance, to all conversation,’ Bois says, and follows up with a tip of his own. Wait for ‘the click’ in your response to a given piece, ‘that sudden, insouciant turning of the key’ that releases a rush of ideas. ‘Let a swarm of thoughts bounce off a snap; let the signs proliferate over and around an opposition, an analogy, before putting them in order.’
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