SHAKESPEARE AND NONHUMAN INTELLIGENCE (2024)
Cambridge University Press
Series: Elements in Shakespeare Performance
Cambridge University Press
Series: Elements in Shakespeare Performance
DOI: 10.1017/9781009202633
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The Infinite Monkey Theorem is an idea frequently encountered in mass market science books, discourse on Intelligent Design, and debates on the merits of writing produced by chatbots. According to the Theorem, an infinite number of typing monkeys will eventually generate the works of Shakespeare. Shakespeare and Nonhuman Intelligence is a metaphysical analysis of the Bard's function in the Theorem in various contexts over the past century. Beginning with early-twentieth century astrophysics and ending with twenty-first century AI, it traces the emergence of Shakespeare as the embattled figure of writing in the age of machine learning, bioinformatics, and other alleged crimes against the human organism. In an argument that pays close attention to computer programs that instantiate the Theorem, including one by biologist Richard Dawkins, and to references in publications on Intelligent Design, it contends that Shakespeare performs as an interface between the human and our Others: animal, god, machine.
Shakespeare and Nonhuman Intelligence was conceived in a Covid fever dream prior to the release of ChatGPT. It is really about our twisted relationship with writing as a nonhuman phenomenon. Secondarily, it serves as a corrective to the lack of interest in religion from proponents of the nonhuman turn. A longer version of the manuscript included an extended discussion of extraterrestrial visual languages conveyed to humans during psychedelic trips. |
YOUNG-GIRLS IN ECHOLAND: #THEORIZING TIQQUN (2021)
with Andrea Jonsson
University of Minnesota Press
series: Forerunners: Ideas First
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Who’s worse, the Young-Girl or the Man-Child? Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl is a controversial work of anticapitalist philosophy that has attracted musicians, playwrights, feminist theorists, and men's-rights activists since its publication in 1999. More than twenty years after its publication the international reverberation of Young-Girls shows no signs of weakening. Young-Girls in Echoland: #Theorizing Tiqqun is a guide to this ongoing postdigital conversation, engaging with artworks and textual criticism provoked by Tiqqun’s audacious, arguably misogynistic textual voice. Heather Warren-Crow and Andrea Jonsson show how Tiqqun’s polarizing figure has grown and matured but also stayed unapologetically girly in the works of artists and scholars discussed here. Rethinking the myth of Echo and Narcissus by performing a different kind of listening, they take us on a journey from VSCO girls to basic bitches to vampires. With an ear for the sound of Tiqqun’s polemic and its ensemble of Anglophone and Francophone rejoinders, Young-Girls in Echoland offers a model for analyzing the call-and-response of pop philosophy and for hearing the affective rhythms of communicative capitalism. |
GIRLHOOD AND THE PLASTIC IMAGE (2014)
Dartmouth College Press
series: Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture
Dartmouth College Press
series: Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture
The figure of the girl has long been prized for its mutability, for the assumed instability and (manipu)lability of the not-yet-woman. The plasticity of girlish identity has met its match in the plastic world of digital art and cinema. A richly satisfying interdisciplinary study showing girlish transformation, variability, openness, shareability, and multiplicity to be essential qualities of the digital image, Girlhood and the Plastic Image investigates the promise of youthful adaptability while exposing the girlphilia and girlphobia at the heart of discourses of mediation.
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Endorsements: “A timely and provocative contribution to both girls studies and media studies. Girlhood and the Plastic Image takes the powerful modern image of the adolescent girl as a new entry point for discussing the relations between gender, identity, and new media. In the process, this book troubles hierarchies at the heart of new media studies and questions some of girls studies’ central identity claims.” --Catherine Driscoll, associate professor of gender & cultural studies, University of Sydney "Heather Warren-Crow eloquently demonstrates that girlhood is central to discourse about digital media. This provocative and original book illuminates the many ways in which our understanding of digital images is shaped by notions of age and gender. Girlhood and the Plastic Image is an important contribution to both girlhood studies and the study of digital media.” --Kristen Hatch, assistant professor of film & media studies, University of California, Irvine |
Review:
"Warren-Crow (Texas Tech Univ.) offers a unique analysis of images of girlhood and the plasticity of digital media. Her critique begins by expanding and explaining Lev Manovich’s five principles of new media, as outlined in his benchmark The Language of New Media (2001). Warren-Crow's focus is on the fourth principle of new media, "variability." The variability of digital images is the principle that contends all new media objects are “not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in multiple, potentially infinite versions" (Manovich, Language, p. 36). For Warren-Crow, variability is then analogous to plasticity. Plasticity is briefly defined as the ability to mold, shift, and change form, something most readers will be familiar with from pop culture, and in particular in regard to images of female bodies being morphed and changed in Photoshop for all forms of advertisements, music videos, online profiles, etc. The author’s conflation of plasticity and variability allows her to propose a double articulation of the ways in which female identity and "girlhood" are subject to an intensified form of mutability and instability in the new media age. The book is suggested for anyone interested in merging conversations of feminism, visual culture, and new media studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
--C. Kane, Brown University, Choice
"Warren-Crow (Texas Tech Univ.) offers a unique analysis of images of girlhood and the plasticity of digital media. Her critique begins by expanding and explaining Lev Manovich’s five principles of new media, as outlined in his benchmark The Language of New Media (2001). Warren-Crow's focus is on the fourth principle of new media, "variability." The variability of digital images is the principle that contends all new media objects are “not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in multiple, potentially infinite versions" (Manovich, Language, p. 36). For Warren-Crow, variability is then analogous to plasticity. Plasticity is briefly defined as the ability to mold, shift, and change form, something most readers will be familiar with from pop culture, and in particular in regard to images of female bodies being morphed and changed in Photoshop for all forms of advertisements, music videos, online profiles, etc. The author’s conflation of plasticity and variability allows her to propose a double articulation of the ways in which female identity and "girlhood" are subject to an intensified form of mutability and instability in the new media age. The book is suggested for anyone interested in merging conversations of feminism, visual culture, and new media studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
--C. Kane, Brown University, Choice