Abstract
Keywords:
Virtual Worlds, Indigenous Histories, Institutional Memory, Worlding, Anthropocene, Terristories, Multispecies Storytelling, Decolonial Technologies, Pluriversality
This paper weaves through the terristories of MIT’s institutional and indigenous histories that inspired the creation of Stata Island – a social virtual world. Through spatial narratives, this work probes into the institutional symbols of MIT’s Building 20 time capsule and Tim, the beaver mascot. In this virtual world, MIT’s Stata Center building is rewilded into an interspecies cohabitation of beavers and humans, reclaiming ‘nature’s engineer’ as a worlding agent. The land around Stata Center is reclaimed by the waters alluding to the marshlands and colonial history of the region and as well as the potential climate futures. In doing so, this work invokes the coexistence of pluriversal worlds that are forced to disappear at the very moment the one-world world is brought into reality. Furthermore, this work highlights the potential of harnessing game engines for worlding practices. Stata Island can be experienced at https://www.stataisland.com.
- Mrinalini Singha is an artist and creative technologist currently pursuing her MS in Art, Culture, and Technology at MIT. Her work engages with the counter-mapping of narratives and subversion of monocultural tendencies through mediums such as film, game engines and tangible interfaces. She has worked on the Worlding initiatve as part of the Open Documentary Lab and is currently a SERC Scholar (Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing Scholar) at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing working at the intersections of computing and climate justice. Some of her explorations can be found at https://mrinalinis.work