Animism came to mind this morning, and I started thinking about something I wrote a while ago about locating agency in process based music. The question where do you place agency in process based music? ended up being mostly rhetorical. Diffusing the question by articulating real systems and situations placed in a perceptual context felt like a more naturally interesting project to me than trying to locate agency in any sense, really.
This morning I’m reframing that insinct to try to dismantle the question as a aspiration to the universality of agency, and asking myself: do I extend this instinct to software, too?
My language is harsher with software – any anthropomorphising is disclaimered with a “so-called” or a follow-up explicit thinging of some sort.
I pick up a rock and I say “look at this little guy” not “look at this little so-called guy”.