Karen King: Information Animals & ‘Information Atmospheres’
How can arts-based research be used to amplify or shift critical discussions concerning the impact of human agency and technology upon information ecologies?
The first part of this presentation examines arguments in the opening three chapters of Alicia Wanless’s book, The Information Animal: Humans, Technology, and the Competition for Reality (2025), to establish a thematic framework for feedback and to provide context for my research. Wanless argues that any meaningful attempt to measure and predict what effect human actors and technologies have upon Information ecologies rests upon abandoning field-specific notions of ‘information’; Wanless calls for a paradigm shift toward consensus, calling for a fundamental redefinition of ‘Information’ as ‘Potential’ that is then formed and shaped by all that process it.
The presentation also draws upon Zeno’s paradoxes and the paradox of the heap. To reflect on behavioural similarities across existing theories that have inspired the research. This is because I am currently following two investigative ‘flows’, the first is concerned with the unpacking of the inherent tension within speculative, creative acts that seem to both simultaneously expand and self-limit potential?; the second is concerned with why my research ‘Material’ feels like material to work with, regardless of medium. Is this because tangibility is confirmed when research materials are subject to acts of storage, compilation, construction, rehearsal, and reconfiguration? I am ultimately concerned to find out more about how speculative creative acts construct our own ‘Information Atmospheres’.
Dr. James Sweeting: Anemoia, nostalgia for a future via the past
Key words: Nostalgia, Hauntology, Hauntological Form, videogames, Cyberpunk
Anemoia, as coined by John Koenig (Koenig, 2012), refers to a ‘nostalgia for a time you never experienced’. Yet, nostalgia can be argued to require a sense of loss in order to be present. Otherwise, it is either part of the now or beyond that it has returned from the past to haunt the present, building upon nostalgic desires as identified via hauntology.
To better understand this seemingly contradictory definition of anemoia, this chapter will be examining it via the terms of vicarious nostalgia (Sweeting, 2023, p. 23) and relative nostalgia (Sweeting, 2023, p. 29) to understand how the past connects with “experience” and whether they can indeed be separated yet still felt. The former “experiencing” something out of time vicariously via media which contributes to forming perceived memories of another time. The latter, engaging with media past its original release period thus mixing the nostalgic context. Although with increased access to pass media this is altering the perception of past media, which in turn contributes to Hauntological Form (Sweeting, 2024).
Further unpacking anemoia and its application of supposedly providing nostalgia for the future will be via an exploration through the concept of Hauntological Form. In which media form becomes dependent on the past as its contemporary form is haunted by the past, unable to shake off remnants of the past. The future is meant to be an unknowable entity, yet it is something that can be speculated about. During the 20th century the 21st century was looked towards via utopic anticipation, yet once it arrived, we were ultimately met with disappointment (Reynolds, 2020).
To compensate, we gradually looked to the past for comfort. This dissatisfaction with the contemporary future is part of what is possibly feeding into the nostalgia for the future as this acknowledges a desire for the “promised” future that has instead been lost. The way the “future” was depicted across a range of media from the second half of the 20th century. Today, instead of providing optimistic depictions of the future, we are increasingly seeing not only dystopic depictions, but ones that remediate them in the style of the dystopic futures imagined from the mid-to-late 80s to the late 90s; especially those from the Cyberpunk genre.
This is where Hauntological Form is significant, as it provides a means of continuing the momentum of form into the future, but is highly dependent on the residue of the past to sustain that momentum. The future of media, such as videogames, increasingly looks like the past, albeit with some polish and/or tweaks. Yet, videogames are just one part of this phenomenon, helping to exemplify the growing dependency on the past that the understanding of the future has as well as the perceived nostalgia for a future comes from.
References:
Koenig, J. (2012) Anemoia, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Available at: https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/anemoia (Accessed: October 28, 2025).
Reynolds, S. (2020) “(No) future music?:,” New Perspectives, 28(3), pp. 305–313. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20934993.
Sweeting, J. (2023) Hauntological Videogame Form: Nostalgia and a “High Technology” Medium. Thesis. University of Plymouth. Available at: https://doi.org/10.24382/5118.
Sweeting, J. (2024) “Hauntological Form: Where We Might Find the New in Contemporary Videogames,” Cinephile, 18(1).
Vagab(o/u)nds Research 