sonder-World-Wide-Web and digital cities
[Mitchell Price z5213534]
On the one hand, it may seem obtuse to select a virtual cyber-cityscape when tasked to “find an image of a contemporary landscape” in a course about nature. On the other, the connection seems completely apt amid discussions of “sonderwebs” and the virus that is Morton’s “ecological thought.” With the practice of sonderweaving it is hard not to think about the World Wide Web with its “thoughtsilk” taking the form of hyperlinks which underpin the internet’s infrastructural interconnection. Furthermore, it is not entirely clear if the “ecological thought” functions as a biological virus infecting life networks such as coronavirus or influenza, or whether Morton is referring to a cryptographic virus spreading through computer networks: self-replicating code taking control of servers and nodes. Or, perhaps, there is no longer (or never was) a difference between biology and cryptography.
The above image is of the proposed virtual city named Liberland Metaverse. The cyber-city was designed by the prestigious British studio Zaha Hadid Architects, and will operate as a space where “people can buy plots of land with cryptocurrency and enter digital buildings as an avatar” (Finney). For a long time, cyberspace was seen—and even valorised—as a second reality disconnected from the “real” world. Now it is often seen as an overlay accompanying our reality but still separate from it. Soon we will have to negotiate cyberspace as being part of our reality, equally as real as the Real itself.
The naturalistic imagery of the sonderweb with its delicate thoughtsilk and kin-cocoons is undoubtedly beautiful and peaceful until one realises that the sonderweb is also necessarily the sonder-World-Wide-Web. In this case, one may struggle to find peace amid the pervasive low-frequency hums of computers and server-rooms which have radically changed the world’s aural texture.
works cited
Finney, Alice. “Zaha Hadid Architects designs virtual Liberland Metaverse city.” 11 Mar. 2022, https://www.dezeen.com/2022/03/11/liberland-metaverse-city-zaha-hadid-architects.
Morton, Timothy. The Ecological Thought. Harvard University Press, 2010.