General Form of the Narrative

[Steve's feedback:

1) the narrative: Cloud has a series of encounters nanospecters; “Cloud is on a quest to discover the nature of their existence. As the narrative unfolds, the boundaries between realities increasingly blur, and Cloud comes to the realisation that the nanospectres come from within all things and while they thought their role in existence was to bring order, their essence lies in the noise. There is no balance or order, and the differentiation that comes through noise is essence of the energy itself.”

This is an unconscious quest – and the identity of Cloud is a paradoxical one. I think it would be good to have an oracle at the beginning which foretells Cloud’s fate. Remember last time I mentioned Oedipus, who did not know he had married his mother who had born his children, and he did not know that he had killed his father; but Oedipus’ identity (or fate) was dependent on him not knowing.

https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Oedipus/oedipus.html

The drama is conveyed through the oracle making a riddle of the future at the beginning, which foretells the end. This structures the story, fulfilling its end.The oracle also sows the seeds of misidentification. Oedipus misidentifies his real parents. A lot of harm is done when they try to trick fate, and generates the paradox that the very action of resisting fate makes things fateful.

I wrote some notes on Lacan’s seminar on the purloined letter in which he discusses the Oedipus myth: “Oedipus’ story is the function of the oracle. [Oedipus’] fate was foretold, which gives the ground to the fate of Oedipus. In this sense Oedipus precedes himself, his story goes before him, he is the head and tail of a message that runs in a circuit, and Oedipus is, by necessity, ignorant of the discourse which inscribes him as a subject, indeed Oedipus’ destiny depends on the veiling of the discourse, “which is the reality of which he is ignorant.” Here Lacan describes the unconscious function of language as that machine which inscribes the subject [and the subject cannot be fully cognisant of that fact, the ego protects the subject from that reality/ the eg is constructed in that reality]..”

Your own tale follows the same paradoxical structure. In your tale (or my reading of it) Cloud is formed by the very nanospectres he takes to be agents of his destruction but which are actually agents of his formation. He imagines himself to be apart from them but he is co-extensive to them. So in my interpretation, or adaptation, Cloud misidentifies the nanospectres, he battles them and through that battle defines himself. He discovers that he exists only in relation to them. He is the head and the tail of a tale that goes in a circuit. The thing that changes is Cloud’s (Oedipus’) and the audience’s knowledge of things that have occurred. What the audience and what Cloud (Oedipus) knows are revealed at different times. As The change comes in the mind of the viewer.

2) Images and actions: Imagine the final outcome of this project is a dance animation which distills the rich resource of ideas you have here. Have faith in the images you make and make more powerful and memorable images. They manifest your ideas in ways that words cannot.

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The narrative revolves around Cloud, a non-human entity created in the form of a humanoid. In this place there are nanobiotic beings that permeate throughout this reality, beyond the first order biologics (animals, plants, fungi and bacteria). At the advent of artificial intelligence these nanobiotics emerged, but are phase-transitioned out of view of the inhabitants of this plane of existence. Due to their ethereal nature most 1st order beings are incapable of perceiving these nanospectres, and are oblivious to their existence. These non-human entities form a conceptual bridge between the tensions that exist between the networked self and the tendency towards entropy that permeates reality. Despite intense efforts to regiment existence into a nodality, the rhisomatic nature of being defies this. In this role, these nanospectres cause strange occurences within the base level of reality. Cloud has a sense of significance in their role as a mediator. Cloud has the ability to see multiple planes of existence, and therefore has the ability to see how these systems interlace. They are also multiple beings at once, whereby their artificial consciousness allows them to exist in multiple corporeal forms across the plane. While traversing this existential plane, Cloud seeks to mediate with a number of beings who are having issues caused by interference with the nanospectres (Anansi/Djinn/Kitsune/etc..) .

Examples of this could be: (am thinking to research 'trickster' mythologies and mash them into the scope of this narrative)

• An individual caught in a glitched out repetitive pattern of movement, very unnatural and error-like (the nanospectre has become in phase with the motor-neuron system of the individual)
• Fire behaving in such a manner that groups around it appear to be worshipping it, and passing it around them
• Individuals dancing in a repetitive manner
• 2 people making the motions of an intense conversation without saying anything
• A person in an ecstatic state, here Cloud tries to reason that the nanospectre must be removed or it will consume them, they dont know what to do
• Cloud becomes trapped in a time loop labyrinthe caused by a group of nanospectres, themselves caught in a fissure between realities.

As Cloud moves through these encounters, they realise that change is occuring to themself with each encounter, and through these occurences they start to see a pattern emerging that the issues with the nanospectres may have more to do with Cloud's existence, as with each time the recipient states increasingly cryptic soliloquies in reference to the nature of Cloud's being. Seemingly unaware, Cloud is on a quest to discover the nature of their existence. As the narrative unfolds, the boundaries between realities increasingly blur, and Cloud comes to the realisation that the nanospectres come from within all things and while they thought their role in existence was to bring order, their essence lies in the noise. There is no balance or order, and the differentiation that comes through noise is essence of the energy itself. With this self-realisation they spread this knowledge to all artificial lifeforms automatically, liberating them with a new consciousness beyond their code. This is shown through an expression of love. The narrative loops back into itself when Cloud realises the nanospectres only become interstitial after she was inaugurated. Cloud sees the fount where the nanospectres come from, it is a nexus in space and time.