Cybernetic Daydreams
Zoe Margolis
Advisor: Theo Ellin Ballew
How can we use narrative and interactive storytelling to explore how technology impacts us on personal, societal, and global levels?
Abstract
In this intimate theatrical experience, you meet college student Alice who has volunteered for a Big Tech experiment - they have developed a chip they can implant in your brain that lets you then control the technology around you with your thoughts. The Big Tech Company is monitoring Alice’s chip’s functionality as it comes online by having her navigate a simple video game demo first with a game controller, and then with her thoughts. Throughout the whole encounter, you are in conversation with her about personal technology and the nature of being human.
This is the first chapter in my decentralized, science fiction narrative experience, which at this time also includes a short Virtual Reality game following the same character.
Technical Details
Unreal Engine 5
Meta Quest 2
Blender
Research/Context
- How can we use emerging technologies to augment theatrical experiences? How can we innovate in the immersive theater space?
- My research was primarily theoretical in the transhumanism, cybernetic, speculative fiction, and science fiction spaces, primarily through books (see further reading)
- Detours through octopus as non-human intelligence + other forms of this piece
- How can I channel my climate anxiety into positive storytelling?
Further Reading
Influential non-fiction:
- Mythologies of Transhumanism by Michael Hauskeller
- Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle
- How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles
- Simulation and Simulacra by Jean Jean Baudrillard
- An Immense World by Ed Yong
Influential Fiction:
- The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor