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We (re-)centre the entangled exploitation of globalised labour and land agencies in computational contexts by decentring machine agencies from the conceptualisation of the 'posthuman' and AI
We lay foundations for a novel speculative methodology that combines divinatory or magical elements with gameplay to gain critically generative insights for advocacy, education, and research
We enable vocabularies for complex entanglements of labour, land, climate, and environment with digital policy across globally inequitable geographies and facilitate playful connections for cross-issue policy coalitions
Ghosts in the Machine: Rethinking Posthuman Agencies for Digital Policy through Divinatory Play is a year-long translational research project with partners across UK, India and EU. It is funded by an ESRC-IAA Impact Co-Creation grant at the University of Exeter [2024-2025].
Ghosts in the Machine is cognizant of the complicity of University of Exeter in technologies and industries of settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Palestine [see additional links 1, 2, 3, 4] and stands with student demands calling upon the University to disclose all its investments, cut ties, boycott, and immediately divest from this ghastly enterprise, support Palestinian education, and safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression. These demands are also core to our project concerned with AI, play, and posthuman digital policy because of the ongoing development and use of AI and digital means for technologies of genocide, settler colonialism, and apartheid. We assert that there can be no digital or tech justice in the face of genocides and stand for the end of all forms of oppression including colonialism, racism, casteism, queerphobia, ableism, censorship, war, and apartheid.
With this orientation, over 2024-25, we plan to develop three games to explore critical understandings of posthuman, divinatory play, and capacity building in multiple areas of digital policy...
A tarot-inspired oracle card game about tech and justice in an unjust world. It challenges players to rethink and unsettle the real-world impacts of computational tech like AI and the legal frameworks governing them. The game takes a decolonising and queerfeminist approach to spark conversations and collaborations for advocacy, education, and research. It positions computation and law as socio-political forms of technology, and asks players to examine their individual or collective participation and resistance against them.
A tabletop roleplay game (ttrpg) highlighting the human and non-human agencies which drive artistic creations. The game is set in the wintry, rural town of West Eeyorvik, where the melting ice poses a threat to existence. Only a true, fair and just artistic collaboration can save the animal, human, and machinic residents now.
A live action roleplay (LARP), exploring how to transform copyright law for more equitable systems for all beings, given particularly the proliferation of AI technologies. An earlier iteration explored the intersection of copyright law and policy, decolonial theory, Indigenous knowledges and climate justice. The new version will seek to develop a different LARP format that more closely simulates international law and policy development on copyright and digital tech.
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