From a distance you see only haze; as rickety ships gather it becomes evident that reality is fragile, the ports are few and transient; they vanish and fade when the lights go out. Were you really there or did you dream of that place?
It's so long ago now, another life; journeying traders and princesses, you are a magnetic orphan of the ether, a merchant on your way. Someday far from now the seas may be clear, everything may be known, every chart mapped. Today though, it is still mist and hope; sunrise on the lake at the beginning of the world.
When we look within ourselves do we see the universe; likewise when we look out into the stars do we see ourselves? When matter is observed its state often changes depending on the tools observing it; this suggests that observation must be a medium of art. Humans have always been a blend of technology and biology, of ideas and matter, of distance and perception, where time is vision and space is memory.
A patchwork of imperfections; the mythic idea of the lost web of the 20th century. The internet is so vital; as it observes and transmits data, it becomes the merchant of life that is both past and future; like an eye in the storm of time.
Heartbreak is like an eye; a crack in space that opens other worlds "oh god it's full of stars" -2001 A Space Odyssey. Technology is heartbreak, infinite possibility must be infinitely lost. Love and numbers, time and files, life and video games.
That shadow sea is you and the web, it's all around us; we are homes and castles within it, misty islands; Van Gogh's stars of tomorrow. Within your soul you carry and trade data, gifs and dreams, terror of that darkness. I saw you once before we became shadows again; like mountains crave the sky.
Eventually, exhausted from your voyage you will go home and fill your world with all the things you've found. A million shrines to a million places, a million entrances and a million eyes, hopes and lies; constructing and deconstructing, a labyrinth and a bazaar. Then you set sail again; your only task is to journey, there is no horizon.
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This is a copy of my article written for the 4th issue of the Yesterweb zine (15th August 2022) around the theme of the relationship of the physical world and digital life.
]]>It's a journey that covers more of the world than most people in history could have dreamed of seeing. While you sit there in your tiny world that has been reduced to the size of a foe leather chair, you are presented with a screen displaying just how far you have really gone.
You'll briefly clip the top of China, carefully avoiding North Korea as it hides away in its own world. By now a little one centimetre line is telling you you're a thousand miles from that cozy ramen place where you ate dinner, another centimetre and you’re two-thousand miles from the hostel bed you woke up in that morning.
Seven miles below you are the frozen plains of sub artic Russia, the Ural Mountains, you wonder what would it be like if the plane had to land, or you crashed in that horrifying vast wilderness. "I'd have gone anywhere, except the Urals" Nicholas II, last Tsar of Russia.
You slide on though; eight hours and three inflight movies later you check again, now the wilderness is a memory, and you're getting close to Finland. Soon you'll land and someone will ask how the flight was, and you’ll say it was fine.
Fine is not much to say for a journey that took half the world. Did you visit those places below you? A benevolent sky tourist at the toes of god? Seven miles from Anabar is pretty close after all. I think it's fair to say I have been to those places, and by proxy I have been those places.
We are all worlds traveling through worlds; our planet certainly is as it moves through the stars. To those around us we are jet streams, carbon footprints, nuclear shadows, memories and words.
As humans we will always be limited, but the trails we leave are the true objective. Perhaps that gives some weight to the marks we leave on the world, and the world that becomes those marks.
Originally written for Material Culture class 11th of March 2020 - Revised and posted 3rd of March 2022
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