Where the Hydra Splits

A branching web piece on migrant longing, forking desire, and the deprecation of unexplored lives

I continue to indulge ie. I continue to obsess over cyborg and migrant consciousness, the aesthetics of borders. And I can sense now my own aesthetic emerging as the constraint itself: Where some web art sprawls, I keep being drawn to precision. Sharp lines. Language where sensuality cosplays as firmness.

The Concept

I’m again echoing Leila Aboulela, Avtar Brah, Gloria Anzaldúa. As we move, movement moves us. Reflexivity or funhouse mirror. As I move from Paris to Tokyo, I am longing for Paris. As I move from Tokyo to San Francisco, I am longing for Tokyo.

The metaphor of a capitalistic marketplace, where our newfound choice and ability to choose dilutes the value of each place, is not enough. It does not account for desire. Its branching nature. Hydra-like.

In the piece, you cannot open the other path that becomes obvious the moment you make a choice. The byproducts and potentialities of your choices, that tragedy, must be total and complete.

Web Aesthetics

The piece is built as a branching tree: HTML and JavaScript, responsive, minimal.

The screen is split: the upper four-fifths is a canvas of lines and dots; the lower fifth holds a black rectangle containing a single line of poetry. Every action updates both.

Step 1: A single dot glows at the center of the canvas. Nothing else. A poem line sits in the black rectangle below.

Step 2: The user clicks anywhere. A new dot appears where they clicked, connected to the origin by a solid black line. Simultaneously, a second dot branches off the origin in another direction, connected by a slightly greyed-out line. Two more dots sprout from the chosen dot as dotted lines: Possibilities, not yet real. The chosen dot glows. The greyed-out branch, if clicked, wiggles like a snake and settles back. It cannot be followed. A new poem line appears in the black rectangle below.

Step 3: The user clicks on one of the two branching dots, or clicks somewhere new. The moment they do, two new branches sprout from whatever they chose, and also from every unchosen dot, proliferating silently. This is key: Any line that was not clicked on, not followed, begins to grey out. This is the deprecation of unexplored possibilities. The older the abandoned line, the paler it becomes, five shades of grey, fading until barely visible. Ghost branches. Composting futures.

This interaction continues indefinitely. The line the user materializes is always black. Everything else is slowly disappearing. The poem cycles through randomized lines from the collection below.

The Poem

Each line stands as a different possibility, surfaced at random with each click:

The graying lines of longing

The branches othered

Deprecating lives

Composting futures

Wilting once

Fell from the hand of possibility

All here crammed into heaven

Larping home

Cosplay of the sedentary type

Lineage of eccentrics

Desire foregone

The roots muttering

Distance from catastrophe

In a recent retrospective in Berlin, a video of Joseph Beuys drives home the importance of warmth when incubating the future

Heartbreak, the nomadic art form par excellence

How will *you* be reborn? — Yenna to Philippa, *The Witcher*

The stochastic hydra grows a head for every place you’ve loved. You can only follow one neck at a time. The rest grey out, not gone, just foregone.