Emergent Essaying, Emergent Gameplay

(set: $inventory to (a:)) #[''Emergent Gameplay, Emergent Essaying''] =|= [[Begin in Play -> gameplay opening]] =|= [[Begin in Essaying -> opening]] |==|

'It is the most [[commodious -> commodious]] sensation I can imagine, this being [[lost.' -> lost]] [[Lisa Robertson, 'Time in the Codex' -> References]]

[[What kind of commodious space exists in text?->commodious 1]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "the uncertainty yet exuberance of being lost")) (set: $lost to true) In the hybrid essay //A Field Guide to Getting Lost //, [[Rebecca Solnit -> References]] writes: ‘[…] to be lost is to be fully present and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender […]’ You do not know where you are in this portal. A sharper focus beckons from each [[word. -> wandering/wonder]] The child gets lost inside their play. To lose the self, that ego of sorts, to become a sponge, for all these bubbles of [[potential. -> potential]] In the world of this essay, you have access to an [[Inventory of Emotions. ->Inventory of Emotions]]

(set: $timeofday to (current-time:)) (set: $timearray to (split: " ", $timeofday)) (set: $time to $timearray's 1st) (set: $ampm to $timearray's 2nd) (set: $hours to (split: ":", $time)) (set: $hour to $hours's 1st) (set: $hour to (num: $hour)) (if: $ampm is "AM" and $hour > 5)[ [[morning -> morning]] ] (else-if: $ampm is "PM" and $hour < 5)[ [[afternoon -> afternoon]] ] (else:)[ [[evening -> evening]] ]

You are in a state of unravelling. Notice around you what other unravellngs may be beginning. When you open the page of a book, you feel its paper thin edges, rip its corners upon your fingertips. Now, you touch the [[click. -> morning click]]

'The self forms at the edge of desire and the science of self arises in the effort to leave that self behind'. You are reading Anne Carson's Eros: The Bittersweet. To gather up all of your self existing as you are, as reader, then as writers requires a new relationship to the text. This text is in an act of emerging and your journey inside it will fall and rise based on your own desires, wishes, choices, spontaneous clicks of moving through. You are reading the following essay: 'Emergent Gameplay, Emergent Essaying'; the role of the essay is unclear, only that here you will have to exist in a moment of lostness felt in the non-linear. You are feeling [[lost -> lost]], [[agitated -> agitated]], [[tender -> tender]], [[filled with desire-> filled with desire]], [[curious -> curious]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "agitation")) (set: $agitation to true)

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "tenderness")) (set: $tenderness to true) Tenderness is seeping into you. A fragility in reading tears the thought apart a little before it can begin. I am your text and I am tender too. Hybrid in my nature; not exactly a game, not exactly a text. I am emergent. The affective feel of tenderness might be one of uncertainty, a little confusion, a vulnerability. The digital text can check in on you, call back. A minor affect may lead to a [[complex outcome. -> BREAKING AWAY]] You can now check your [[Inventory of Emotions. ->Inventory of Emotions]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "filled with desire")) (set: $desire to true) [[Blau Duplessis -> References]] writes: 'The essay is always a little too restless, a little too thirsty.' Perhaps this kind of desire in language, in thought cannot be easily [[quenched -> ghostly hauntology]].

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "curiosity")) (set: $curiosity to true)

WONDER/WANDER You wonder where this all might be going. You fall through links as you might fall through thoughts, some broken, some hidden, others interlinking, expanding and waiting. Just as you might physically wander the streets when you are stuck, ideas slowly arriving in sharp focus. you must wander through me, this performative text (after all, this is a performative wonder, played out by me, for you, on the screen). Not knowing where I might end or cycle, loop, shudder to a standstill, where your reading may differ from the reading of others creates a kind of messy uncertainty. Can you revel in it? The [[following passage ->randomization]] will read differently for different players and may take you in alternative directions. This knowledge may offer you a feeling of potential or it may leave you in uncertainty.

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "hopefulness")) In Kathleen Stewart's ficto-theoretical text, [[//Ordinary Affects,// -> References]] she writes underneath POTENTIAL: 'The potential stored in ordinary things is a network of transfers and relays. Fleeting and amorphous, it lives as a residue or resonance in an emergent assemblage of disparate forms and reams of life. Yet it can be as palpable as a physical trace.' Leaving behind a trace on the screen, you become aware of the dirt that lives on the keys before you. A twinge. Time slows. The unwrapping of potential evokes a break, the network opens up into a wider landscape. An [[Inventory of Emotions]] appears to show your trace. The act of essaying collides with the act of [[play. -> gameplay opening]]

A VOICE, SURFACING What are you looking at right now? On the surface, a screen. From behind this screen, I am speaking to you. I'm not really sure if you can hear my voice: I am only just beginning to speak so perhaps you are not convinced yet. On the surface, I suppose I am just text, I am not sound, I am not even very visual. All we know is that it is dark in here. There is also another surface behind me which I sit upon. A code. In front of the code, sits the narrative structure, sits the text. But then just because you are only seeing me as text, does not mean that I am singular, that I exist as a flat surface. I am already layered before you have tried to unpeel me, before I have tried to unpeel myself. What a strange place to be speaking from. Except none of this is strange, really. You speak regularly to the screen and the screen speaks back, through the web, through an entanglement of links. Earlier upon waking, a text arrived on your phone, a message from a friend and you woke. A blue flash. Your eyes adjusted. The screen froze. The language stuttered. [[You fall back into a dream. -> TO BEND INTO THE DREAM ]]

EMERGENT DREAMING In front of you, a tank. The fish move in short, fast circles. The smallest turn their heads more quickly, the larger fish move up and down and change direction, constantly re-thinking their position. You remember someone telling you the following fact: fish forget where they are going every three seconds. How exhausting. Are they trapped, you wonder, or are they free? You probably think you are awake right now. Perhaps you are sitting in a room brightly lit or dimmed slightly. Awareness shudders, never stills. The light from this screen enlarges a sense of awakeness. Perhaps you can hear the steady rumble of traffic, moving slowly towards you, growing louder. But no, you are in a dream. To write in a dream is to swim between ideas. Flowing inside frames within frames. The dream is about everything and nothing: you'll want to stay forever or escape quickly. I force you to bend and emerge in new directions. I make you forget and remember. I make you fall asleep and wake up. I make quick breaths and slow turns. I am action: Emergent Essaying is a playful dreaming whereby you can lose yourself in the experiencing of the bubbling motion of the text rather than the still and stable, the all-knowing and clear beginning, middle and end. You lose and re-find, re-think in the changing shifting currents of this swim. A kind of glitchful thinking. But today, where might Emergent Essaying exist? A name can link together seemingly disparate fields, just as the click of a [[hyperlink -> hyper-awarenss]] can enact arenas of emergence, just as moments collide and disrupt day time linearity in the world of your dreams. Meanwhile, a fragment can move beyond its moment, reaching towards the thought's sprawlng potential [[... ->to try]]

TO TRY, TO PLAY 'Consider incompleteness as a verb', writes creative theorist [[Anne Carson -> References]], in the hybrid collection //Plainwater: Essays and Poetry//. Think of essaying as a verb, as a becoming. To essay is an act of trying within an experimental context. A searching towards [[potential. -> potential]] The notions of 'try' and 'play' are separate, yet [[intertwined. -> to try, to play 2]] Whether you have chosen Begin in Play or Begin in Essaying, the two concepts have already begun to entangle. Links collide. The playful act of reimagining can open up a more performative vision of what essaying can entail. We are alluding to a text that is not goal-orinted but rather [[wondering/wandering-> wondering/wandering]] and here we both are, alive and swerving.

CHANCE VS CONTROL You have arrived inside chance and you have no control over what displays below. (Either: "[[You find yourself inside a glitch ", "You find yourself falling inside a glitch", "You are on the right path but to where?", "You are in more control than you think") Close your expectations and continue in the [[chance->chance]]

[[Commodious: a comfortable space to roam freely and explore.->commodious 2]]

[[The Codex: the historical ancestor to the modern book.->commodious 3]]

[[The Book: a written or printed work consisting of pages or sewn together.-> commdodious 4]]

And you might be wondering what kind of text am I? [[Let's fall back onto a surface.-> surface]] Or perhaps you would like to pass over definitions, for just now, and begin in a place and [[time? -> time]]

WAKING TO THE CLICK Morning carries a sense of potential, the rest of the day seems to hover before you. A jolt to the senses arrives inside this time. The screen is a glare in its ripple. You are just waking up. Distinctions become blurred. What is your Real? The theorist Legacy Russell in [[//Glitch Feminism//-> References]], argues that it is now more accurate to state that you are A-F-K (away-from-keyboard), rather than existing IRL (in-real-life) You are falling inside this text: Emergent Gameplay, Emergent Essaying. Do not be fooled, this work is a performance and I, playing the role of text, will guide you through. Be patient with your questions. Observe the following. The words before you on the screen are beginning to enact a motion. (click-replace: "a motion")[a thought emergence.] (click-replace: "a thought emergence") [[[an ongoing-ness-> morning on-goingness]]]

The writer and translator [[Lydia Davis -> References]] states:'... any book and any piece of writing is already part of a cooperative. It is, in itself as printed on the page, incomplete. It requires a reader to complete it. But the reader may also misunderstand it, distort it in favour of another idea, forget large parts of it, misremember it, create something different in misremembering it etc. All these responses are perfectly legitatimate parts of the cooperative act.'. The act of cooperation links into the idea of expansion (click-replace: "expansion")[potential.] (click-replace: "potential") [emergence].(click-replace: "emergence") []. But every morning as you log in, you insist that this is singular, that this text [[does not know you. ->This text does not know me]]

(link-goto: "Return", (history:)'s last) ''REFERENCES'' Barthes, Roland.: “Death of the Author.” //Image-Music-Text//. Hill and Wang, (1977). Carpenter, J.R.: The Pleasure of the Coast. http://luckysoap.com/pleasurecoast/en/index.html Carson, Anne. Plainwater. Vintage Books (2000). Carson, Anne. Eros: the Bittersweet: An Essay. Princeton University Press (2014). Consalvo, Mia. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games. MIT Press, 2009. Coover, Robert. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/shelley-jacksons artists-statement, accessed 20/02/2021. Derrida, Jacques. ‘Specters of Marx’. (1993). Duplessis, Rachel Blau. Blue Studios. The University of Alabama Press, Alabama (2006). Hay, Jonathon. ‘Fully Optimized: The (Post)human Art of Speedrunning’. Journal of Posthuman Studies, Vol. 4. No. 1 (2020), pp. 5-24. Penn State Universi-ty Press. https://doi.org/10.5325/jpoststud.4.1.0005. Jackson, Shelley. “my body- a Wunderkammer.” Electronic Literature Collection,1997.https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/jackson__my_body_a_wunderkammer.html), accessed 20/02/2021. Meades, Alan. “Why We Glitch: Process, Meaning and Pleasure in the discovery and documentation, sharing and use of videogame exploits.” Well Played: a journal on video games, value and meaning, ETC Press, 2013, pp. 79-98 doi: 10.1184/R1/6687068. Menkman, Rosa, The Glitch Moment(um). https://networkcultures.org/_uploads/NN%234_RosaMenkman.pdf, accessed 20/02/2021]. Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. MIT Press, 2005. Myles, Eileen. ‘A Poem Says ‘I Want’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnKGl2YDto, accessed 20/06/2021. Parker, Dorothy: 'I hate writing. I love having written', //now such a common quotation that the origin of when she said it is unclear, a quotation that has been passed around so easily, whether it was actually //written// like that by her is uncertain.// Quinn, Zoe, Patrick Lindsey, Isaac Schankler. Depression Quest. http://www.depressionquest.com/[accessed 20/02/2021]. Robertson, Lisa. Nilling. Book*hug Press, 2012. Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism. Verso Books, 2020. Self, Will, interviewed by Alex Clark, (2018), 'Will Self: The novel is absolutely doomed', //The Guardian//, in https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/17/will-self-the-books-interview-alex-clark-phone-memoir, accessed 2nd January 2019. Sampat, Elizabeth. Am I Part of The Problem? https://elizabethsampat.itch.io/am-I-part-of-the-problem, accessed 20/02/2021. Sampat, Elizabeth. Empathy Engines: Design Games that are Personal, Political and Profound. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. Smith, Ali. Artful. Hamish Hamilton, 2012. Smith, Ali, (2014), 'An Onion of a Novel Demanding to be Peeled (by Sarah Lyall', //The New York Times// in https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/books/ali-smith-on-her-new-book-how-to-be-both.html, //accessed 2nd January 2019// Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Canongate, 2006. Subnautica. https://store.steampowered.com/app/264710/Subnautica/, accessed 20/02/2021. SPAM zine & Press, ">What is post-internet?" https://www.spamzine.co.uk/what-is-post-internet, accessed 09/07/2021. Stein, Gertrude, (1971) (1931), //How to Write//, New York: Dover Publications. Techopedia. https://www.techopedia.com/, accessed 20/02/2021.

INSIDE THE CLICK You are nestled inside the day, in the slow, quickening breath of afternoon. There is a comfort here, an alertness which won't keep itself up for too much longer, waiting for the lull. [[Attention can be distracted. -> an interruption]] You are inside a wider assemblage. You are an intermedial being in a shfting landscape. Distinctions become blurred. What is your Real? The theorist Legacy Russell in [[//Glitch Feminism//-> References]], argues that it is now more accurate to state that you are A-F-K (away-from-keyboard), rather than existing IRL (in-real-life). You are just beginning to fall inside this playful text: Emergent Gameplay, Emergent Essaying. Do not be fooled, this work is a performance and I, playing the role of text, will guide you through. Be patient with your questions. Observe the following. The words before you on the screen are beginning to enact a motion. (click-replace: "a motion")[a thought emergence.] (click-replace: "a thought emergence") [[[an ongoing-ness-> afternoon on-goingness]]]

The writer and translator Lydia Davis states:'... any book and any piece of writing is already part of a cooperative. It is, in itself as printed on the page, incomplete. It requires a reader to complete it. But the reader may also misunderstand it, distort it in favour of another idea, forget large parts of it, misremember it, create something different in misremembering it etc. All these responses are perfectly legitatimate parts of the cooperative act.'. The act of cooperation involves an [[entanglement. -> BREAKING AWAY]]

AND AWAY WE GO The physical act of wandering brings unintentional discovery: you can find ideas emerging into sharp focus from the chaos of disordered thoughts. //Does this look like productivity?//, you wonder. You are walking down a familiar street, its edges blur at the returning to memory but you can see before you the rhythm of your own movement. Pacing flickers just before it takes form. You wander to take away the stasis. Are you in stasis? [[Yes]] [[No]]

(set: $inventory to (a:)) You find yourself inside an uneasy landscape. You are only. You are only here. This landscape is not physical. This landscape is not real. Every action, a click. You are feeling: [[Tender -> tender]] [[Lost -> lost]] [[Hopeful -> hopeful]] [[Anxious -> anxious]] [[None of the above -> none of the above]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "hopefulness")) (set: $hopefulness to true) Hopefulness is the motivation to find. Here are folds of a game overlapping with the folds of essaying - to try, to see, perhaps to fail. The act of [[Emergent Essaying -> Emergent Essaying definiton]] resists expectation and a singular vision. The hopeful affect is activated by the dance of the choice. We were often told to locate the carefully planned beginning, the road up through the middle, the single conclusive end, an escape route. You began writing this piece yesterday, a work of hybridity, before words had yet been typed onto the screen. All beginnings are a kind of game, language unpicking itself into sharper [[focus. -> lost]] You can now check your [[Inventory of Emotions. ->Inventory of Emotions]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "anxiety")) (set: $anxiety to true) I am sorry to hear you are anxious. Take a few deep breaths. I (the text) am breathing with you. You feel a [[strange jolt. -> anxiety of emergence]] You can now check your [[Inventory of Emotions]].

The digital- born text can display its limitations performatively. Sometimes none of the options provided will do. So I, your text, must take you somewhere else [[...-> randomization]]

Inventory of Emotions You are currently carrying: \ (if: $inventory's length is 0)[\ nothing. ](else:)[\ \ (for: each _item, ...$inventory)[\ _item (unless: $inventory's last is _item)[, ]\ ]. ] (link-goto: "Return", (history:)'s last)

Beyond the digital landscape, writing exists as an act of thought emergence. As readers this may be as a result of not only experiencing an open text, but an inspiring one. Writers also become readers of their own work both during the writing (creative) process and with the benefit of distance. The chance encounters of the digital-born texts offers up a performative version of this thought [[emergence -> Emergent Defintion]]. A digital-born work carries emergence at the forefront of its thinking. We collide you and I: the text and the player, the reader and the writer. We must embrace the difficulties of the [[pacing -> time 2]], [[the hybridity of the form -> hybridity of form]], [[the time of the play -> time]].

A DEFINITION IN MOTION Can a definition be set through play? This is after all, an Emergent Essay on Emergent Essaying. Emergent Gameplay, an intrinsically recognized aspect of game design where ''interactivity and narrative come together'': generally understood as ‘a game design term that refers to video game mechanics that change according to the player’s actions [[...' -> References]] [[Horowitz and Loony -> References]] (2014) add onto this definition that ‘the term refers to complex outcomes that can result from the interaction of simple rules […] There are two types of emergence commonly referred to by scholars, intentional and unintentional’. The combinations of simple actions and complex outcomes, intentionality and unintentionality, choice and [[lack of choice -> time]] emphasizes the nuance and openness of Emergent Gameplay’s potential for both narrative means in communicating complex [[affective responses ->Inventory of Emotions]] and plot tension, as well as in the blurring of the boundaries between creator and player. How might this connect to [[Essaying in in a creative and expansive way? -> Emergent Essaying definiton 2]] ?

HYBRID SPACE, HYBRID FORM A new sequence of events open up through collision. You have found yourself not only inside a hybrid form, but a hybrid space. The state of play brings together ideas that have been formalised inside frameworks. There is leaking here, and a bubbling up. Surface and depth shimmer. Expanding essaying into a hybrid merging with gameplay feels increasingly important in our digitalized world, where concepts of digital play can easily slide into a framework of [[ optimization]]. Instead, we might consider play in line with the word emergence as a more nuanced unravelling of thought, creation and merging of multiple ideas and genres. Play inevitably involves desire. You fall into this. You are reminded of a statement made by the poet [[Eileen Myles -> References]]: 'A Poem Says I Want', the act of play and reading in the digital lanscape through the merging of gameplay and playfulness in language can provoke a similar sensation of ongoing, pulsating reaching rather than binary closed reaction. Try and play are both separate yet [[intertwined -> to try, to play 2]]

EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS ALREADY EMERGING Check your [[Inventory of Emotions]]. Click [[here -> ghostly hauntology]] or [[here -> BROKEN]].

POST CLICK You are waiting in the comfort of the evening. Time seems to blur, surfaces shimmer. Affects come into [[sharper focus. -> affective potential]] You ae inside a wider assemblage. Distinctions become increasingly irrelevant. What is your Real? The theorist Legacy Russell in [[//Glitch Feminism//-> References]], argues that it is now more accurate to state that you are A-F-K (away-from-keyboard), rather than existing IRL (in-real-life). The other side of the click beckons. You are falling further inside me, your playful text: Emergent Gameplay, Emergent Essaying. Do not be fooled, this work is a performance and I, playing the role of text, will guide you through. Be patient with your questions. Observe the following. The words before you on the screen are beginning to enact a motion. (click-replace: "a motion")[a thought emergence.] (click-replace: "a thought emergence") [[[an ongoing-ness-> afternoon on-goingness]]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "hopefulness")) In Kathleen Stewart's ficto-theoretical text, //Ordinary Affects// she writes underneath POTENTIAL: 'The potential stored in ordinary things is a network of transfers and relays. Fleeting and amorphous, it lives as a residue or resonance in an emergent assemblage of disparate forms and reams of life. Yet it can be as palpable as a physical trace.' Leaving behind a trace on the screen, you become aware of the dirt that lies on the keys before you. A twinge. Time slows. The unwrapping of potential evokes a [[break -> BREAKING AWAY]], the network opens up into a wider landscape. An [[Inventory of Emotions]] appears to show your trace. The act of essaying collides with the act of [[play -> gameplay opening]].

AN INTERRUPTION The non-linearity of your everyday thoughts sometimes [[haunts -> ghostly hauntology]] you. Here is a kind of awakening from the everyday dream state of the screen. A bird is ripping through the air. Something is pulsing into view. There is a moment of stasis, waiting for [[potential -> potential]]. Or a searching for a [[hidden link -> glitch storyline]].

GOING TOWARDS, BREAKING AWAY (If: $tenderness is true) [Tender curser hovering over tender screen. A linked moment of gasp. A glitching through to [[connection -> tender connection.]]] (else:) [To breathe is to write is to [[wait? -> GLITCH SURPRISE]] This odd [[body, -> hybridity]] it holds [[no centre. -> time 2]]]

You find yourself inside an empty state. |clue)[A little patience goes a long way and you had almost forgotten.] {(live: 3s)[ (show: ?clue) (stop:) ]} |2clue)[If thinking is also feeling, then what does it mean to be made to wait inisde the possibility of an erorr. Will you wait any longer?]] {(live: 6s)[ (show: ?2clue) (stop:) ]} |3clue)[Do you click out [[now? ->Title Page]]] {(live: 10s)[ (show: ?3clue) (stop:) ]} |4clue)[You catch the drift, and [[continue -> BROKEN]]] {(live: 15s)[ (show: ?4clue) (stop:) ]}

ANXIETY OF EMERGENCE I am anxious and multiple by nature. 'We make form and form makes us. Form can gladden us, tease and worry and madden us', writes [[Ali Smith -> References]], in her hybrid essay collection //Artful//, a book that engages with so many different forms of writing, both narrative and referential, with an essaying pulse, that we can feel her mind dancing in multiple directions as she writes. The digital text throbs with the anxiety of emergence. You feel a throbbing behind your eyes; are you even [[awake? -> TO BEND INTO THE DREAM ]] [[‘The postinternet is kind of to say, we don’t even log on anymore; this is just being.' -> References]] Nothing in particular to be anxious about. If you cannot find the cause of your anxiety, then how do you overcome it? You watch the continual motion of updates before you. Threads and responses. I haunt you and I haunt myself. You turn away from me, only to find yourself back in my veins, as though we are inextricable, as though, as though... What would still constitute an online experience of the [[sublime? -> optimization]]

THIS IS ANTI-OPTIMIZATION Speed-running as framed by [[Rainforest Scully-Blaker -> References]] is ‘the process of completing a game as quickly as possible without the use of cheats or cheat devices’, a ‘spatial practice within a spatial practice, or a Practiced Practice.’ It can be understood as a kind of glitching. Whilst this act of racing through a game is a radical intervention by the player, it does not fall into the expansive wandering positioning explored here in Emergent Essaying. If speed-running exists as ‘post(human) performance art’ as posited by Jonathon Hay, in which speculation, competitiveness, and instant gratification is at the forefront, albeit in a rebellious radical intervention, then slow meandering through choice, and a re-framing of ‘glitching’ with [[‘essaying’ -> Emergent Essaying definiton 2]] as a means to travel in different directions,inserts the human mind with all of its [[errors -> a glitch?]] and capabilities of discovery back into the digital sphere.

The glitch is that which is unexpected, never held safely or contained. An error in the text you were not supposed to find. A dead [[end ->Title Page]]? No. You said. [[Wait. -> wait 2]]

HYBRIDITY: AN ANXIOUS BUT DESIRING BODY //We make forms and form makes us. Form can gladden us, tease and worry and madden us// writes [[Ali Smith, -> References]] in her book, //Artful// a book which engages with so many different forms of writing, so many ideas and outside voices arriving inside its pages, that we can feel her mind dancing in multiple directions as she writes. I am anxious and multiple by nature. A hybrid form can confuse or delight, You feel a tense throbbing behind your eyes. I began slowly then trickled out along your lines. Lines of thought bend and shake. You had been up all night: perhaps some [[strange dream -> BENDING INTO THE DREAM]] that you have only just managed to escape from> I haunt you and I haunt myself. You turn away from me, only to find yourself back in my veins, as though we are inextricable, as though, as though... 'A sentence is not emotional a paragraph is' writes [[Gertrude Stein -> References]] and yes you think, how true. To begin with is the word. Word opens up sentence. Sentence opens up paragraph. Words [[link -> HIDDEN WORDS]] back to all other sentences. Nothing in particular to be anxious about. If you cannot find the cause of your anxiety, then how do you overcome it? To begin with is worry. A hybrid work is both over and under, it is never still, always pulsing. Underneath you is a growing thing. To know your place in the world, it helps. Or not place exactly. To know your chaos in the world. A hybrid work can remind us of this messiness, the inner knowledge of our own messiness. Thinking and feeling collide in this space. I am just such an odd body. I am just such an odd text. You reach further into me. (set: $inventory to (a: "anxiety", "filled with desire")) (set: $anxiety to true) (set: $desire to true)

INSIDE THE LOOP There is a release of control in Emergent Essaying, and yet the sensation of chaos is not without structure, and control. Time and pacing are integral to both writing and experiencing Emergent Essaying, just as it is for [[ Emergent Gameplay -> Emergent Essaying definiton]] Key questions must be considered during the creative planning and writing such as: how long will the player remain in the game and will its duration impact on the players’ emotional connection to the work through the intensity of interaction? Will the player feel trapped, will this give a feeling of stasis, will slow thinking or fast thinking be created through links and choices? Pacing takes on an important role in this writing, as the writer and text have impact over and into the experiences of the player/reader, not only through length at a syntactic level, but also on a wider scale via choice, repetition, and looping. The distinct conceptualization of temporality in game-time has been expanded by [[Darshana Jayemanne -> References]], who has crafted a methodology called “chronotypology” as an approach to ‘facilitate literary approaches to video game temporality’ using terms such as ‘diachromy’ and ‘synchrony’ to demonstrate the multi-layerings of temporality built up through the gameplay, as distinct from other literary modes. Here, we might consider “chronotypology” as integral to both the writing and playing of Emergent Essaying (which are interlinked). You try and retrieve yourself from inside this strange multilayering: * You can resituate yourself [[inside the text -> ghostly hauntology]] or * You travel further inside the [[thinking of time -> thinking of time]] or * You situate yourself back inside your own time (scroll down) (set: $timeofday to (current-time:)) (set: $timearray to (split: " ", $timeofday)) (set: $time to $timearray's 1st) (set: $ampm to $timearray's 2nd) (set: $hours to (split: ":", $time)) (set: $hour to $hours's 1st) (set: $hour to (num: $hour)) (if: $ampm is "AM" and $hour > 5)[ [[morning-> morning]] ] (else-if: $ampm is "PM" and $hour < 5)[ [[afternoon -> afternoon]] ] (else:)[ [[evening -> evening]] ]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "hopefulness")) [[Derrida -> References]] speaks of a ghostly 'hauntology'. Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. Text seems to be flowing from the choice of the present play. A glitch stutters. Does knowing one may arrive make it any less haunting? We return to ourselves in images, loaded, yet still loading. We return to a [[choice,-> choice]] wondering if we have been here before.

THINKING THROUGH TIME In considering the importance of time in the game environment, you are drawn to [[Zoe Quinn’s -> References]] //Depression Quest//, which labels itself as an interactive (non)-fiction about the everyday realities of living with depression. The game has hundreds of different op-tions and would take the average player around half an hour to navigate. Throughout the piece, choices become limited by the player’s previous decisions, resulting in different narrative outcomes. An ambient piece of music flows constantly alongside the text, with music, choice, and narrative tone informing one other; alternative choices can often be seen but are ~~scored out~~, letting you know that, based on the current state of you/the character’s emotions, you can see options that are no longer available (accurately reflecting the feeling of a lack of bodily and mental control expe-rienced during deep bouts of depression). Here it is clear that the importance of timing has been carefully considered; although there are fairly large chunks of text to be read in each fragment, you, the reader/player, wants to read and play the piece in one sitting as it is a highly emotive and intimate experience, reflecting back to you your own [[choices -> choice awareness]]. The use of second-person here, as in many games, only adds to this sense of intimacy; you are a vital part of the text’s inner workings, capable of creating pathways that may diverge from others’ experiences of the work. The reader/player is held in the text for enough time to be invested in, and deeply affected by its content, but reads slowly and carefully before making their choices; you am also not held within the deeply difficult space of the work for so long that you lose interest, nor am removed too abruptly from the state of intimate engagement.

If our sense of time is being thwarted by short attention spans, and immediate responses in the online landscape of Web 2.0, Emergent Essaying has the capability to expand how we experience and consider time in the virtual world. Simultaneously, writers of these experimental digital forms can continually re-frame their own considerations of narrative time, through the reflective, slow thinking required to create complex linkages and gameplay techniques. Returning to this idea of wandering, digital-born works have the capability to actively, and deliberately slow down a player or reader’s mind through Emergent techniques, as well as providing them with a sense of freedom to individually navigate the text. Pathways can be [[unlocked -> unlocked story]], experiences can be changed, a trembling of words can be felt in the pathways not chosen.

UNLOCKED PATHWAY You cannot unlock those pathway unless you have picked up at least three emotions in your inventory. The inventory is a kind of invitation. You may actively feel these emotions or the text may be simply performing them for you. Click [[here -> BROKEN]] to find out if you've unlocked the pathway or return to the [[loop -> ghostly hauntology]].

No carefully planned ending yet. Only a shifting on-goingness. You can go back to the [[beginning->Title Page]], fall inside your [[Inventory of Emotions]] or situate yourself inside a concrete [[ time]].

REACHING TOWARDS A DEFINITION Emergent, emerging, essaying. A definition might be reached towards gradually or it may immediately appear before you. Emergent Gameplay, in the sphere of Game Studies is commonly understood as ‘a game design term that refers to video game mechanics that change according to the player’s actions’. Emergent Essaying utilizes gameplay techniques within an active digital-born form of essaying, to invite more open, playful, collaborative and changeable modes of thinking, encouraging ambivalence, multiplicity and fluidity over fixed, finished thinking. The work you find yourself falling inside is an example of one version this essaying might take: an Emergent Essay on Emergent Essaying. Expanding upon creative theorists Lisa Robertson and Anne Carson’s approaches to the verb ‘essaying’ as an act of trying, in this digital, hybrid writing context, Emergent Essaying is an act of playful reimagining between writer/designer, reader/player, essay/game, in which the distinction between these roles and forms is increasingly performatively blurred on the screen. You [[reach further. -> Emergent Essaying definiton 2]]

In writing an interactive work or game, the writer(s) must be hyper-aware of the effects of this Emergent Gameplay both on the over-arching structure and with regard to the key micro moments (the micro and the macro of the text continually colliding). The writer must shift between experiencing the game as player and being the creator during the process of constructing the work, in order to understand how decision-making will impact on the experience of playing the game, thinking beyond a single frame of text or play. Emergent Gameplay is rich with multiple possibilities – and the uncertainty this multiplicity and reactiveness embeds, becomes intricately connected to the notion of the [[‘glitch’ -> expanding on the glitch]] and the verb [[‘glitching’ -> expanding on the glitch]]. Its complexity and potential is also related to notions of essaying, [[hybridity and experimentation -> hybridity of form]] on the page, and adds a specific kind of interactive quality and effect.

‘Glitch’ can be thought of as a mode of error, yet it holds more exuberance and poten-tial than the word ‘failure’. When noted in digital contexts and explored in practice, ‘glitch’ becomes intrinsically linked to openings, portals into the unexpected, invit-ing an affective response of hope and possibility, alongside chaos, confusion and anxiety. Glitch is an emergent term in its shifting definitions: it appears both specific to a technological landscape yet holds within this specificity a number of hybrid movements. We might consider glitch in its dictionary definition: ‘a minor malfunction in a computer system, is believed to have derived from the Yiddish glitsh, meaning “slip-pery place”’(Merriam, Webster), but we also might look at it from a wider lens, as its associations expand into further contexts: Glitch Music, Glitch Art, the act of glitch-ing in video game communities and increasingly its use as a theoretical framework. A recent example is [[Legacy Russell’s -> References]] //Glitch Feminism// (2020) —which utilizes the glitch to posit a more immaterial body, making room for marginalized identities in the [[art world -> expanding on the glitch 2]] competing with the capitalist Web 2.0.

Glitch visual artists such as [[Rosa Menkman -> References]] have primarily provided insights into the possibilities of the mode as an aesthetic practice, and this framework is what is commonly at the forefront of academic, theoretical and practice-based discussions. In ‘The Glitch Moment(um)’, Menkman writes ‘Glitch, an unexpected occurrence, unin-tended result, or break or disruption in a system, cannot be singularly codified, which is precisely its conceptual strength and dynamic contribution to media theory […] Close to the movement of its inception then, ‘glitch’ already passes beyond specific technical use to describe a wide. Variety of malfunctions and mishaps.’ Menkman posits the glitch in her theoretical thinking alongside her Glitch Art, with its deliberate subversion of resolution, as a dynamic site of potential. Simultaneously writer/coder [[r myers -> References]] has crafted their own approach to the glitch as aesthetic radical renewal through the creation of ‘glitcherature’, the title of a Python script they created to apply glitch aesthetics to the texture of text, immediately glitching any writing the user inserts: (https://robmyers.org/glitcherature/). Through the most overt glitch acts crafted by both these artists we become aware that a glitch has to begin in a site of familiarity, that it can be both intentional and unintentional (and yet still be surprising and open in both versions), and that it is this subversion away from the familiar that can act as a catalyst for joy, possibility, potential, uneasiness, and distancing to create greater understanding and a myriad of other complex emotions that revel in [[surprise -> BROKEN]].

The verb glitching here also brings another mode into play: glitching in the field of Game Design is understood, as [[Meades and Consalvo -> References]] theorise, as a collective act of players unlocking faults within a game to carve their own playing experience, both within the context of the game’s boundaries and in the act of sharing experiences and techniques online, commonly in Chat Forums. Meades promotes the ideas of thinking through glitching as more complex than a negative interference whilst Consalvo connects glitching even more overtly to acts of cheating, promoting the idea that it is not a wholly negative intervention, but rather an important collaboration between player(s), game and writer, offered up by the specific emergent techniques that can be created by writer, player and game enabled by the technologies of the form. In the thinking and creative practice of this interactive Emergent Essay, glitching functions as an interventional act of emergence that can lead to a [[releasing of control -> ghostly hauntology]] from the writer and a handing over the potential of the narrative structure to the reader and to the potentialities within the text itself. Page-based text can sometimes be open to varied interpretations and view-points, but in the digital environment this occurs far more overtly and indeed per-formatively, with the text and game never being wholly stable. The underwiring and fragility of the code is revealed, reflecting the fragility of closed thought as further collaborative options and [[choices -> BROKEN]] are opened up within the context of the work.

An in-between space. A carrying [[on. -> unlocking pathway]]

AN INTERRUPTION How do you feel reading me? [[a) anxious but I was anxious already->a]] [[b) overwhelmed->b]] [[c) lost->c]] [[d) excited->d]]

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "tenderness")) (set: $tenderness to true) HERE I AM, SINGLE, MULTIPLE, BROKEN Hyper: to be over and beyond. Hyperaware, hyperactive, [[hypervisible -> Embarassment]], hyperreal, [[hyperventilating. -> anxious]]

AND WE WAIT Wandering implies a slowing down. |clue)[Yes, wandering implies a slowing down.] {(live: 3s)[ (show: ?clue) (stop:) ]} |2clue)[Your rawness is felt by this performance of waiting. Are you uncomfortable?] {(live: 6s)[ (show: ?2clue) (stop:) ]} |3clue)[A defamiliarisation of optimization can set the stage for a different kind of [[pulse. -> SETTING THE PULSE]].] {(live: 12s)[ (show: ?3clue) (stop:) ]}

(set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "hopefulness")) You began writing yesterday before words had been typed onto the page. You have been here before. Do you remember? [[My memory is uncertain]] [[This text does not know me]] [[What is a memory, really?]]

LOOK UNDERNEATH THE TEXT The text is confused, probably more so than you. I mean to say, I am so very often confused. Look: underneath any text lies its confused beginnings. Here the reader is not supposed to fall, but here the player is allowed to. Those readers are not meant to feel their way about in the cracks between the words, to move their arm around to find the concrete connections that might pull themselves up through the dark. We were always told to locate the carefully planned beginning, the road up through the middle, the single, conclusive end, an escape route. You began writing these sentences yesterday, before words had been typed on the screen. You were thinking about the word 'complete'. 'Your new hairstyle, it really completes you', a friend tells you. You had shaved your hair about a month ago; it was no longer messy, long, and easily tangled, demanding to be taken care of, but neat and clipped, no effort. To feel complete; it's positive (like coming to a kind of truth that doesn't need questioned, in this instance a truer version of yourself) or perhaps to feel satisfaction that an idea can be stopped, pushed away, no worries. But the word 'complete' also seems negative, too simple, too easy. I// hate writing//, said [[Dorothy Parker -> References]], //I love having written//. In a game, you are trying to complete a level, but once you do, you'll want to move on to the next stage. If you are reading a book, you may want to know the ending, but will hate its appearance (that is, if the book is good). The word 'complete' does not arrive at one complete, unified definition or affect, but converses with itself, shivers and scatters. A short form may look more complete than a long form; you can track where it begins or where it ends. It may also look easier to write. Fewer words. Sentences shaved back to their roots. No fuss. Less room for mistakes. Or it may look incomplete, like a fragment which is both breaking away and beckoning [[towards -> potential]]. (set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "the uncertainty yet exuberance of being lost")) (set: $lost to true)

A MEMORY YOU NEVER HAD 'I read to sense the doubling of time', writes [[Lisa Robertson -> References]], in 'Time in the Codex'. You were reading her words yesterday, in the crisp bright sun that has felt so rare lately. You were sitting in the park. You felt the paper thin between your fingers. You felt the sky as a comforter, willing you to know that the landscape is never as uneasy as you seem to find it lately. You see yourself as a small body on a sketched, slightly blurred out map. You see yourself from a giant camera hovering over. You see yourself as the sky sees you, still loading up in the distance. Life waits. You re-read the sentence. You [[turn the page. -> opening]]

BREAKING AWAY Instinct, and plan. Plan and play. A slippery surface, with sharp edges. //To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text,// wrote [[Roland Barthes -> References]]. If you are writing here, right at this moment, as I believe you are (I am the text speaking, you see), then already you have vanished. You are vanishing with every word. Don't be too alarmed. To write in this space, to bring me to life, taking me in no direction and yet inviting every possible direction is to allow your own form to change shape. The writer must break away from their unity, reshuffle the process, be both within and apart from the text at every point in order to play, to try, to test. A careful chaos, or perhaps chaos...careful. [[Writer -> writer]], [[reader -> reader]], [[reader -> writer]], [[writer -> reader]]. [[Reader ->This text does not know me]], [[player -> player]], [[player ->This text does not know me]], [[reader -> player]]. [[Essay -> essay]], [[play -> play]], [[play -> essay]], [[essay -> a glitch?]]. I am always just behind and beyond the point of creation. This narrative has no limits but perhaps you know this already? You may have travelled far into my depths, falling in amongst my ripples, my waves, tumbling into the rocks, and now you are back on my land inside these words again. Do they look familiar or am I predicting the [[future -> FUTURE]]? [[To exit ->Title Page]], or [[follow through -> Emergent Essaying definiton]]?

'Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from and where you will go.' In the past few months you have found your short-term memory stagnating, your long term memory expanding, and [[rippling -> A RIPPLING MEMORY]] outwards. What happens when you cannot remember how you emerged here, where you will go? Is there still exuberance to this kind of uncertainty? In the words of [[Rebecca Solnit-> References]] you see above, the hidden words are found when you feel lost, when you encounter obstacles. I stage these words before you have found them.

The writer and translator [[Lydia Davis -> References]] states:'... any book and any piece of writing is already part of a cooperative. It is, in itself as printed on the page, incomplete. It requires a reader to complete it. But the reader may also misunderstand it, distort it in favour of another idea, forget large parts of it, misremember it, create something different in misremembering it etc. All these responses are perfectly legitatimate parts of the cooperative act.'. The act of cooperation links into the idea of expansion. (click-replace: "expansion")[potential.] (click-replace: "potential") [emergence.][] The reader has their individual [[emotional connection ->Inventory of Emotions]] to the text. The reader can get caught up and [[entangled -> BREAKING AWAY]] with the work.

Game designer [[Elizabeth Sampat -> References]] subverts the idea that games are simply a mode of elicitingempathy, instead arguing that they can function as empathetic machines, if empathy is directly built into their structure by the designer(s). Here, not only content but also structural systematic understanding can be subverted, demonstrated in the game Am I Part of the Problem?, in which the player must address their own biases and approaches, offering direct critical insight, tailored to the individual, as they answer questions in order to understand their role in a conflict situation. The game recognizes that it holdsno definitive solutions. Instead, through play, it offers a look into the self that does not feel prescriptive or reductive in its assumptions about the [[player -> player 2]].

TO TRY, TO PLAY "Consider incompleteness as a verb', writes creative theorist [[Anne Carson -> References]], in the hybrid collection //Plainwater: Essays and Poetry//. Think of essaying as a verb, as a becoming. To essay is an act of trying within an experimental context. A searching towards [[potential -> potential]]. The notions of 'try' and 'play' are separate, yet [[intertwined -> to try, to play 2]]. Whether you have chosen Begin in Play or Begin in Essaying, the two concepts have already begun to entangle. Links collide. The playful act of reimagining can open up a more performative vision of what essaying can entail. We are alluding to a text that is not goal-orinted but rather [[ wondering/wandering]] oriented. Here we both are, alive and swerving.

Emergent Essaying opens up a new cross-form conversation, reconfiguring and expanding the expectations of the essay in a multimedia landscape by inviting the term [[‘essay’ -> Emergent Essaying definiton]] to co-mingle performatively with [[‘play’. -> Gameplay techniques]] Within this context, play must be understood in its many facets, beyond gameplay; [[Huizinga -> References]] regards the function of play as just as important as work in society, a “free” mode; the motivation of play being the experience it offers rather than the concrete goal. We can connect this to [[Halberstam’s -> References]] conceptualization of low theory, as a mode of play and child-like pleasure in process, crafted through error. The digital [[gameplay techniques -> Gameplay techniques]] of Emergent Essaying promotes a more playful approach to understanding, with language play intertwining with digital interactive gameplay, each informing and driving the other to capture new ways of seeing, doing, asking, and inviting. This layering of play encourages us to think more receptively, questioning our knowledge and opening us up to new experiences and information. Through play, we move beyond the individualto a collective and collaborative space of thought. Thinking merges with play, emerges from within it, sometimes [[consciously -> BREAKING AWAY]], often [[unconsciously ->Inventory of Emotions]].

FAILURE SURPRISE 'Connection failed'. You sigh. You close down your browser. You were trying to find the source for that quotation you wanted to reference in this essay: what was it again? You couldn't remember where you found it and now it has escaped you. What a failure you are. What a failure this screen is, so unreliable. Your reliance on technology scares you. You close down your tabs. You step away. Now you are away and you have forgotten where you even were. What happens next? All connection has been lost and now it is as though the narrative was never there, as though it can never be there again. To be left to your own words leaves you open to failure, to no longer be in control, to be breathing on a dark screen inside a blank box. You call up a friend. How do I get away from myself? I need a break from all of this, you say. What do you mean, they ask? How do I escape? you ask I'm not understanding anything you're saying and also the phone's not connecting... Their voice drifts away. Perhaps you aren't speaking to anyone. Perhaps this is only yourself. You hang up. You hear a dull ringing in your ear. [['Failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world' -> BROKEN]] The link to the quotation above is broken. I might as well tell you in case you are trying to click on it. It's taken from Queer Art of Creative Failure, by J Halberstam. This was the quotation you thought you had forgotten. Or was it something else? You see, I am failure surprise. I am always in the process of coming undone, breaking, internally and externally. I am both brain and body all at once. If one part breaks down, the rest can disintegrate. My body is both vulnerable and strong, exciting and terrible. I break up and break through, I repeat and I circle. I open up the margins in your life so you might take a wander through them. I destabilise the centre. I open up the choice. You might click on a link that takes you [[nowhere -> BROKEN]]. You might follow a path that doesn't seem to be leading to any certain point until it [[does -> expanding on the glitch]].

SPLIT OPEN AND RIPE One day all excess is brushed away and there you are. You think you know yourself until you don't. Tonight you will dream you are a piece of fruit. Someone is lifting you; they are trying to eat you but then you eat yourself. I eat away at myself forever because I have no centre. My structure circles, until it diminishes, connects until it disconnects. A text opens, grows ripe by brushing up against other texts. You had been reading [[Shelley Jackson's-> References]] work 'my body- a Wunderkammer', a hypertext connected through bodily nouns, bodily experience, bodily memory. A revealing, and surprising autobiography. By clicking on the visual display of a body on the screen, the structure splits apart into separate narratives. The organs, fluids, tendons, bones, are all ripe with their own stories, carrying memories that both connect them and mark them out as distinctive, navigated by connected words, questions and paragraphs. But like many hypertexts, all is not that it seems; some links take you to places you weren't expecting. Just when you were thinking, the narrative was only about her body (there are so many sections to her interior, it appears as a vast landscape, you click on another link to find her body navigating with other bodies. From interior to exterior, from inside to outside, you travel. The text looks simple, but underneath lies [[possibility, -> opening]], direction, reveal. There are some narratives that only a few can access. This box is one of them. (if: $hopefulness is true) [And only the very few can fall inside this further [[ripple -> poem]]]

I'm sorry to hear that. Take a few deep breaths. I'm breathing with you. You feel a strange [[jolt. ->MEMORY ]]

It's been a long day but soon you can go back to sleep. You can let yourself dream [[again. -> TO BEND INTO THE DREAM ]]

It may just be a case of beginning [[again. ->Title Page]]

The moment when an idea starts to believe in itself again. The brain bounces [[back. -> SETTING THE PULSE]]

MEMORY OPENS Let us go back to a conversation, as we might go back to a memory. Do you remember? When your friend, she was saying to you: 'your new hairstyle, it really completes you'. Memories draw us back and forward in strange motions, something you cannot hold onto. The complete version of you, but who are you anyway? She was looking at the mirror as she spoke; she was getting ready for a date. She stopped. 'Why should I? Why should I bother after what they did to me? They can see me as I really am.' I uncover myself, I lay myself naked across the screen. I do not apologise. [[//Words are full of echoes, memories, associations//, writes Virginia Woolf. -> References]] For a conversation to take place, there needs to be two bodies. Here, we have the machine and the body. Now, we all have machines but we still have bodies, which hold memories, which hold conversations, which hold difference, which re-open, perform, and then disappear. We live in our memories, until we decide to [[wander -> WALKING THROUGH LANDSCAPE]] away from ourselves.

LOSING CONTROL, SETTING THE PULSE We do not live by our narratives, we live by our pulse. It seems so obvious and yet? (if: $anxiety is true) [Yes, your growing anxiety confirms this belief is true. You wish to escape, you wish to escape. But where? You need to centre yourself.] Movements unseen but felt dictate the decisions we might feel, because we feel decisions. We don't make them. The strange undercurrent of our lives. They say, trust your gut. What dictates control? Mind, body, form, content. The pulse throbs between them. I set a pace you might be familiar with and then I let it [[go.-> ghostly hauntology]]

Words connect. They also disrupt and divide. Does knowing someone else has reached this page create a common tenderness? Perhaps so, perhaps not. The private turned public turned private. Choice in a game can feel so intimate it is as though you are being guided but you also open to exploration. If you reach this page, let the text know. [[Write back. -> Write back]]

THE HIDDEN WORDS (if: $anxiety is true) [When you are anxious, it is hard to speak the words you really want to speak. If only you were able to forget your anxiety, it would not be so difficult.] The words we cannot say to others or to ourselves are not invisible: they grow larger and spread themselves out across empty space. Words emerge softly, slowly, waiting just beneath another link. I [[stage -> Ali Smith quotation]] the words, so you might hear what is hidden. I beckon out to other [[sources -> inspiration 1]], works which reside between the spaces.

FORMS INTERTWINE / HERE IS A BREAKING OF BOUNDARIES [[Emergent -> Emergent Essaying definiton 2]] Essaying intertwines the acts of trying and playing. Here, the thinking is innately interdisciplinary, combining elements of interactive fiction, gameplay techniques,and hybrid essaying. Academic digital theory has traditionally focused on hypertext— the joining of fragmented pieces of text, through links, a form which [[Robert Coover -> References]] argues ‘offers the patient reader […] just such an experience of losing oneself to atext’. However, digital writers and researchers, such as [[Nick Montfort -> References]] have been increasinglypromoting the in-depth study and value of interactive fiction. Emergent Essaying exists at the intersection of literary hypertext, the gameplay of interactive fiction, and hybrid essaying, with the multi-potential layering of these seemingly disparate formsand techniques. A multi-media writer whose work embraces an essayistic approach, is [[J.R. Carpenter -> J.R. Carpenter]], whose electronic writing/art often concerns the collision of historical documents with the contemporary digital framework.

'Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more — the thing that is on the [[surface -> surface]] and then the things [[underneath ->This text does not know me]] which are invisible.' [[Ali Smith-> References]]

FALLING INSIDE //THE PLEASURE OF THE COAST// You come across [[J.R Carpenter's -> References]] work on a whim, late one night scrolling and looking for something (but what? Not sure). J.R. Carpenter is the kind of multi-media writer whose work is continually rippling, expanding outwards, whose electronic writing/art often concerns the collision of historical documents with the affordances of contemporary digital frameworks. In //The Pleasure of the Coast//, the user (reader?) acccess the work through a non-linear format, scrolling horizontally across a visual landscape rather than vertically; you feel as though you are part of a wider landscape, as you navigate. The work recalls the aesthetic of chapbooks, with a wider lens in its digital enactment. Pencil line drawings are joined with kinetic text, playfully layering historical found text and fictional narrative. Carpenter uses the layering of aesthetics and user experience to form a palimpsest of image and text alongside the scrolling mechanic, to create an alternative mapping effect that is imperfect and in motion. Is there closure in this work? You are unsure. There are chapter divisions, boundaries are set up. But in one section, 'the infinite coast' you forever scroll onwards. You consider this as a kind of glitch, perhaps even a kind of [[glitchful thinking. -> ghostly hauntology]]

TRYING, PLAYING Hybridizing essaying with gameplay feels ever more important in our increasingly digitalized world, where concepts of digital play can easily slide into a framework of [[optimization-> optimization]] . Instead, we can re-conceptualize play in line with emergence as a more nuanced unravelling of thought and creation: a nexus of multiple ideas and genres. Play invokes desire. Experimental essayist [[Blau DuPlessis -> References]] writes: ‘The essay is restless […] always a little too thirsty, a little too restless.’; the merging of gameplay and playfulness in language can enhance this sensation of continuous reaching, with the addition of [[obstacles -> BREAKING AWAY]] supplanting neat, conclusive arguments. Emergent Essaying intertwines the acts of playing and trying. Here, the thinking is innately interdisciplinary, combining elements of interactive fiction, gameplay techniques, and hybrid essaying. Academic digital theory has traditionally focused on hypertext — the joining of fragmented pieces of text, through links, a form which [[Robert Coover -> References]] argues ‘offers the patient reader […] just such an experience of losing oneself to a text’. However, digital writers and researchers, such as [[Nick Montfort -> References]] have been increasingly promoting the in-depth study and value of interactive fiction. Emergent Essaying exists at the intersection of literary hypertext, the gameplay of interactive fiction, andhybrid essaying, with the multi-potential layering of these forms. Emergent Essaying is never singular but multiple: it holds and offers up other works through its [[lenses. -> J.R. Carpenter]]

UNCERTAIN CHOICE What do we really know about our choices? Everytime you log onto the web these days, the chaos of it all looms bigger. You cannot remember what you last clicked on, and yet the web appears to be holding your memories closer than you do. You access an online memory by scrawling through your history. I can track you, but do not worry: this trackng is only a performance. Memory performs itself in the emergent [[daydreaming -> TO BEND INTO THE DREAM ]] of our everyday intermedial lives.

EMERGING POINT What you see on the screen before you depends on your choices. If nothing else appears you must essay back into a passage of the writer's [[choosing. -> ghostly hauntology]] (if: $tenderness is true) + (if: $hopefulness is true) + (if: $curiosity is true) + (if: $desire is true) [''REFERENCES'' [[Barthes, Roland.: “Death of the Author.” //Image-Music-Text//. Hill and Wang, (1977). -> BREAKING AWAY]] ''The opportunity to glitch back through this essay'' [[Carpenter, J.R.: The Pleasure of the Coast. http://luckysoap.com/pleasurecoast/en/index.html ->J.R. Carpenter]] [[Carson, Anne. Eros: the Bittersweet: An Essay. Princeton University Press (2014). -> desire]] [[Carson, Anne. Plainwater. Vinatage Books (2000) ->to try]]. ''You may click on links to find their location'' [[Consalvo, Mia. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games. MIT Press, 2009. -> reference to hidden link]] [[Coover, Robert. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/shelley-jacksons artists-statement, accessed 20/02/2021. -> inspiration 1]] ''Your wandering shall be rewarded with more wandering'' [[Derrida, Jacques. ‘Specters of Marx’.1993. -> ghostly hauntology]] ''All this ongoing-ness continues.'' [[Duplessis, Rachel Blau. Blue Studios. The University of Alabama Press, Alabama (2006). -> filled with desire]] [[Hay, Jonathon. ‘Fully Optimized: The (Post)human Art of Speedrunning’. Journal of Posthuman Studies, Vol. 4. No. 1 (2020), pp. 5-24. Penn State Universi-ty Press. https://doi.org/10.5325/jpoststud.4.1.0005. -> optimization]] ''A glitching cannot be fully controlled by the author'' [[Jackson, Shelley. “my body- a Wunderkammer.” Electronic Literature Collection,1997.https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/jackson__my_body_a_wunderkammer.html), accessed 20/02/2021. -> A RIPPLING MEMORY]] [[Meades, Alan. “Why We Glitch: Process, Meaning and Pleasure in the discovery and documentation, sharing and use of videogame exploits.” Well Played: a journal on video games, value and meaning, ETC Press, 2013, pp. 79-98 doi: 10.1184/R1/6687068. -> reference to hidden link]] ''It is a swerve, a getting lost'' [[Menkman, Rosa, The Glitch Moment(um). https://networkcultures.org/_uploads/NN%234_RosaMenkman.pdf, accessed 20/02/2021. -> expanding on the glitch 2]] [[Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. MIT Press, 2005. -> FUTURE]] [[Myles, Eileen. ‘A Poem Says ‘I Want’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnKGl2YDto, accessed 20/06/2021. -> hybridity of form]] [[Parker, Dorothy: 'I hate writing. I love having written', //now such a common quotation that the origin of when she said it is unclear, a quotation that has been passed around so easily, whether it was actually //written// like that by her is uncertain.// ->This text does not know me]] [[Quinn, Zoe, Patrick Lindsey, Isaac Schankler. Depression Quest. http://www.depressionquest.com/, accessed 20/02/2021.->thinking of time]] [[Robertson, Lisa. Nilling. Book*hug Press, 2012. -> opening]] [[Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism. Verso Books, 2020. -> expanding on the glitch]] [[Sampat, Elizabeth. Am I Part of The Problem? https://elizabethsampat.itch.io/am-I-part-of-the-problem, accessed 20/02/2021. -> player]] [[Sampat, Elizabeth. Empathy Engines: Design Games that are Personal, Political and Profound. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. -> player]] [[Smith, Ali. Artful. Hamish Hamilton, 2012. -> anxiety of emergence]] [[Smith, Ali, (2014), 'An Onion of a Novel Demanding to be Peeled (by Sarah Lyall', //The New York Times// in https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/books/ali-smith-on-her-new-book-how-to-be-both.html, accessed 2nd January 2019. -> Ali Smith quotation]] [[Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Canongate, 2006. Subnautica. https://store.steampowered.com/app/264710/Subnautica/ ,accessed 20/02/2021. -> writer]] [[SPAM zine & Press, ">What is post-internet?" https://www.spamzine.co.uk/what-is-post-internet, accessed 09/07/2021. -> anxiety of emergence]] [[Techopedia. https://www.techopedia.com/, accessed 20/02/2021 -> Emergent Essaying definiton]].]

WALKING THROUGH AND INSIDE VOICES To move through me is to walk through an ever-changing landscape, and sometimes you may get lost. To fall down inside a different [[voice, -> inspiration 1]] not the voice you [[entered->Title Page]] through is perhaps the aim? II am both map and brain, both personal and political. Exuberant and frustrating. You may tread lightly upon me or run through every link, every curve in the road.

SPEAKING TO THE FUTURE //In the real world nowadays, that is to say, in the world of video transmissions, cellular phones, fax machines, computer networks, and in particular out in the humming digitalized precincts of avant-garde computer hackers, cyberpunks and hyperspace freaks, you will often hear it said that the print medium is a doomed and outdated technology, a mere curiosity of bygone days destined soon to be consigned forever to those dusty unattended museums we now call libraries.// The year is 1992 and [[Robert Coover -> References]] has published an article in The New Yorker entitled 'The End of Books'. The End of Books. Is there ever really an end to anything? Conversations and ideas continue long past the deadlines we try to enforce on them. Even the phrase 'the end of books' continues, sixteen years later (as [[Will Self -> References]] said in 2018: the 'novel is absolutely doomed'). And one idea always provokes another idea. As Coover also notes in his article, technology at that time was changing so rapidly, it was hard to keep track, it was impossible to know whether the experimental form might actually survive, it was difficult to know what the future of the form might look like. Now there are new frames to consider, multiple questions trickle out and lead the conversation in new directions, new boundaries have to be broken down. We may ask: how can new modes of thinking across disciplines continue to collide? What can we learn from the page-based form for the digital and what can the digital teach us about the page. If as [[Lisa Robertson -> References]] suggests //It is the most commodious sensation, this being lost//, in relation to ‘Time in the Codex’, how might we conceive of this differently in a digital born essaying? My writing is both formless and formed, slippery and solid. [[Nick Montfort -> References]] argues for increased academic attention on 'The Pleasure of the Text Adventure', which often include puzzles that //are part of an interactive process that generates narrative [....]the pleasure involved in interaction is not simply that of reading.// The Emergent Essay calls for an act of playful reimagining beyond the boundaries of game, essay, writer, reader, player. Boundaries are set and then break down. You see, I can be both action, and description. I can be both puzzle and narrative. There are layers to me that you might never find. I demand careful reading, I also demand [[interrupton.-> INTERRUPTION]] We cannot really speak to a future; we can try but we'll probably never get it right. We also can't just let go of the [[past -> opening]].

AN INTERRUPTION How do you feel reading me? [[a) anxious but I was anxious already->a]] [[b) overwhelmed->b]] [[c) lost->c]] [[d) excited->d]]

CAN YOU REALLY SEE ME? It's a very real question. Or am I seeing you? Who is the 'you' and 'me' in this encounter anyway? The text holds all embarassments deep in its unravelling. And often you give it willingly. A status update. The location detail. Your inner health records. The most personal is made public. The poem is often thought of as the most embarassing, intrimate form, but what happens when you carry the poetic, the blunt into a different space? The embarassment can be more acute in the performance. What are we not admitting in our own performances? You think, perhaps you want the text to read you; perhaps you always want to be part of this machine-body [[interaction. -> player]] (if: $anxiety is true) [Lately you have been feeling particularly anxious about your own performance. Everything is moving fast, you must [[slow down. -> time]]]

Emergent Essaying opens up a new cross-form conversation, reconfiguring and expanding the expectations of the essay in a multimedia landscape by inviting the term [[‘essay’ -> Emergent Essaying definiton]] to co-mingle performatively with [[‘play’ -> Gameplay techniques]]. Within this context, play must be understood in its many facets, beyond gameplay; [[Huizinga -> References]] regards the function of play as just as important as work in society, a “free” mode; the motivation of play being the experience it offers rather than the concrete goal. We can connect this to [[Halberstam’s -> References]] conceptualization of low theory, as a mode of play and child-like pleasure in process, crafted through error. The digital [[gameplay techniques -> Gameplay techniques]] of Emergent Essaying promotes a more playful approach to understanding, with language play intertwining with digital interactive gameplay, each informing and driving the other to capture new ways of seeing, doing, asking, and inviting. This layering of play encourages us to think more receptively, questioning our knowledge and opening us up to new experiences and information. Through play, we move beyond the individualto a collective and collaborative space of thought. Thinking merges with play, emerges from within it, sometimes consciously, often [[unconsciously ->Inventory of Emotions]].

GAMEPLAYING INTO AN IDEA In this Emergent Essay you will find an [[Inventory of Emotions]] which affect certain choices. You will find a reading of your [[environnment -> time]]. You will find loops, and [[hidden puzzles -> BREAKING AWAY]]. You will find a link which may or may not be [[broken -> BROKEN]]. Emergence leaves you constantly wandering; an ongoing-ness, a playful reimagining in form. (set: $inventory to $inventory + (a: "curiosity")) (set: $curiosity to true)

It can be hard at first to find the truth of a text if there is no centre. Language and truth are never really both held in the centre, they splay out. They are so difficult to grasp. My form is marginal. My history is marginal. My name is marginal. //If we continue to speak the same language to each other, we will reproduce the same story. Begin the same stories all over again//, writes [[Luce Irigaray. -> References]]. Who is the truest version of you? What is the story you feel but cannot tell? It is not one truth but many truths; lying somwhere [[hidden inside-> ghostly hauntology]]. You post a tweet telling the truth and a man tells you that you are wrong. To tell the truth is political. You [[delete -> a glitch?]] the tweet.

Email me with thoughts on the essay, or just say a quick hi and I'll reply: k.dunlop.4@research.gla.ac.uk. [[Or no. -> or no]]

This is the text speaking and even the author cannot share in your individual experence. Emergent Essaying allows the text to become character, to call back. Emergent Essaying both takes control and gives the reader/player control. And then the writer calls it back. There is a constant re-balancing. We never know what's coming next. Here is one possible [[re-entering. -> BROKEN]]