<% s.counter = 0 %>
<% $(document.body).removeClass('someclass') %>
*the digital vaivén* is a critical text that describes some of the relationships of digital embodiment with colonial identity. It also includes poetry that I have written about how I have navigated my Puerto Rican identity. I began my process by taking many digital humanities courses in the last two years. I had noticed that my interests leaned towards thinking about embodiment in relationship with technology and thinking about the body as archive. I have explored this through both critical scholarship and my own poetry throughout the years. In 2016 I was awarded the MacArthur-Leithauser Travel Award and used it to travel to Puerto Rico. Most of my family was born in Puerto Rico, but it was my first time ever traveling to the island. There I filmed visually immersive and panoramic 360° video, which is a kind of photographic virtual reality technology. This is weeks before Hurricane Maria would drastically change the island. Learning the language of decoding space and how poetry acts in that process has been difficult but enriching. This project has been an example as to why I write and how I make sense of my existence. To have creative and critical work be in deep intimate relationship with one another in this project has, too, proved to me how important it is to make sense of my colonial identity. It is an identity that begs for critical scholarship and gentle story.
*the digital vaivén* is based on the historical narrative of "the vaivén" that was conceived in during a great migration of Puerto Ricans in the 1950s. <img class="alignleft" src="3d-tic-tac-toe.mp4" width="394" height="394" alt="gif of classic atari 3D tic-tac-toe" /> This term means "swaying" and described the movement of Puerto Ricans to and from the island and the United States. The project is also inspired by the poetry of Tato Laviera and Nayyirah Waheed, critical scholarship of embodiment and digital identity, and my own personal experience in navigating my Puerto Rican identity.*the digital vaiven* is then visually framed by Atari Games and the Atari console. Founded in 1972, Atari Inc. is home to familiar games like *Tetris* and *Pong*. Their 8-bit, pixelated, virtual designs were a cultural turning point in how we navigate media in our society, forever revolutionizing the way we view and interact as people with a television screen. I focus on the form of *3-D Tic-Tac-Toe*, released in 1978 for the Atari 2600.
The grid is interactive. By clicking a tile, a piece of information in the project is rewarded to the user. Instead of four-in-a-row like the original game's mechanism, here the user has agency as to where to start and where to click. What the user does not know is how every click and interaction "breaks" the interface. The user's continuous clicks for more information eventually breaks down the interface into a glitch: a jumbled collection of information where the user does not know where to end or begin. A "glitch" is a malfunction in the execution of a computer program. However, the glitch is deliberate in this project to show that it is the "malfunctions" that are truly defining. This is an allegory to how I navigate my Puerto Rican identity: as I learn more and more about myself and my history, it reveals more and more glitches in my existence that still are so wholly me.
*vaivén* includes video, 360° film, and photo. The photos are either paired with critical text, poetry, or may stand on their own during the course of the project. Like Waheed's poems, these moments where a photo exists alone on the screen echoes the way in which *salt.'s* poetry floats on the page. The unpaired photos are meant to be absorbed as text theirself, forcing the user to engage with the media as critically as they do with the poetry and analysis. When met with one of these floating photos, I ask the user what stories might be present behind the pictures that inform the overarching narrative of *atlas.* These moments, when encountered, are an opportunity of reflection and thought.
The project is split into these floating photos, media, poetry, and moments I would like to frame a "critical fragments." These moments are both analytical and poetic, both discursive and haunting in their investigations. the digital vaivenis first and foremost a creative poetry piece, however these fragments are necessary in understanding the scope of the work and how it is framed. And, in many ways, they too act as poem that only enhances and informs *vaivén.*
Lastly, Laura Briggs' work in *Reproducing Empire*, particularly "Ghosts, Cyborgs, and Why Puerto Rico Is the Most Important Place in the World" is helpful to think about the relationship between technology and identity. Briggs interrogates manufactured histories that shape Puerto Rican experiences. She also uses Donna Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," which not only pushes on how we view experimentation of the Puerto Rican body and technology but also engages the reader to think critically on how the definition of "colonized" has changed in this day and age. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" was written in 1984 and describes the idea of the "cyborg" as a "cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction" (Haraway, 1). By analyzing structural and physical violence along with Haraway's conception of the machine body, Briggs questions the current narrative of Puerto Rican identity and what it means to have a manufactured body.
In order to view 360°/VR texts through a Google cardboard goggle device, please scan the QR Code available on pages where films appear throughout *the digital vaivén.* Here is an example of a QR code:
<img class="center" img src="VR Demo.png" />
This one will take you to demo you can use to become acquainted with your cardboard goggles. You will then be directed to a YouTube page with the video. If using an iPhone, all you need is your Camera application to scan the QR code. If using an Android phone, please download “QR Code Reader” from the Google Play store or any other QR Code scanning application.
<img class="alignleft" style="width: 100%;" src="screenshot_atlasdemo.jpg" alt="image" />
To make the video viewable with the cardboard goggles, please press the Google Cardboard icon on the bottom right hand corner of the video screen. From there, slide your phone horizontally into your goggles.
<img class="alignright" img style="width: 100%;" src="screenshot_atlasdemo_close.jpg" alt="image" />
[[Continue|Glitch Grid]]
<% $(document.body).removeClass('someclass') %>
<body id="body-2">
Works Cited
Arts, Electronic. "The Sims 3. *Electronic Arts Inc.*, 29 Mar. 2018, https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims/the-sims-3.
Baudrillard, Jean. *Simulacra and Simulation.* University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Briggs, Laura. *Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico.* University of California Press, 2002.
Grosz, Elizabeth, and Peter Eisenman. *Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space.* MIT Press, 2001.
Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s.*Australian Feminist Studies*, vol. 2, no. 4, Mar. 1987.
Laviera, Tato. *Bendición: The Complete Poetry of Tato Laviera.* Arte Público Press, 2014.
Poblete, JoAnna. *Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i.* University of Illinois Press, 2014.
Waheed, Nayyirah. *salt.* 8/25/13 edition, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %>
<img src="1.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
The liminal space created in the relationship between user and virtual reality device, and the conflict that arises in that relationship, becomes a complicated metaphor to the way in which the Puerto Rican identity navigates between space. What happens when the colonial identity curated in that liminal space is, actually, an experienced digital space? And what does it mean to be a product of an algorithm? Of a simulation? And what does it mean, then, to decode the colonial binary through an understanding of how glitches and errors manifest in the code?
Virtual reality acts as allegory to the experience of Puerto Rican embodiment. The history of Puerto Rico has been a history of people who must decipher what is real and what is not real. This conflict, like virtual experience, is real and tangible, even though we tend to talk about the digital as ephemeral or fake. We can think of the island as a simulated space; it is a space created within a particular set of historical and institutional limits and curated for the purpose of experimenting society for continental United States' use. How do we, then, reconcile the Puerto Rican body that is not born in this simulated space but inherits simulated traits and historical trauma? In many Puerto Rican narratives, bodies act as physical links between spaces. For a Puerto Rican living in the United States, connecting The Bronx in New York and the island of Vieques off the coast of Puerto Rico requires not only research of untaught histories in academic settings but also reconciling within one's self the fact that these places do and do not belong to you.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="22.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
*haiku*<br>
<br>
*shanghai streets of san juan*<br>
*split between two realities*<br>
*and one people*<br>
<br>
(56, Laviera)<br>
<br>
<img src="Haiku.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
Tato Laviera speaks to the in-between that the Puerto Rican identity embodies. In his poetry, he explores the complexity of Puerto Rican embodiment through storytelling and metaphor. Poems like "haiku" explicitly state the duality of place, speaking to "two realities" and "one people" that embodies those realities. San Juan, in the poem, becomes a place that is "split between," where it embodies places of the far, like Shanghai, and of the very near. Community lives in this space between realities. The "one people" Laviera refers to is the Puerto Rican people, existing in the "split" of not only places but culture. What is most important to take note of is that in the printed version of the poem Laviera creates large spaces between each word. The distance between each word is big enough to notice when reading on the page. The largest spaces are, in fact, between "shanghai," "streets," and "of san juan," showing that, despite distance, it is still stringed along into one line. Also notice that "haiku" is not in typical 5-7-5 syllabic format as most haikus are. Here, the syllables of each line are all different from one another, each line with a difference of one (6 syllables, 8 syllables, 4 syllables) from the original form for haiku. Laviera breaks form here, naming something "haiku" that is not a haiku, pushing the reader to think about even his writing as another juncture of known realities.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="2.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">
Spanglish<br>
<br>
pues estoy creando spanglish<br>
bi-cultural systems <br>
scientific lexicographical<br>
inter-textual integrations<br>
two expressions<br>
existentially wired<br>
two dominant languages<br>
continentally abrazándose<br>
en colloquial combate<br>
en las aceras del soil<br>
imperio spanglish emerges<br>
control pandillaje<br>
sobre territorio bi-lingual<br>
las novelas mexicanas<br>
mixing with radiorocknroll<br>
condimented cocina lore<br>
immigrant/migrant<br>
nasal mispronouncements<br>
baraja chismeteos social club<br>
hip-hop prieto street salsa<br>
corner soul enmixturando<br>
spanish pop farándula<br>
standard english classroom<br>
with computer technicalities<br>
spanglish is literally perfect<br>
spanglish is ethnically snobbish<br>
spanglish is cara-holy inteligencia<br>
which u.s. slang do you speak?<br></div>
<br>
(289, Laviera)<br>
<br>
<img src="spanglish.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
Laviera describes bi-cultural language in his poem "Spanglish" as something that is not just a fusion of culture but, often, representative of two realities in both combat and community with one another. In the poem, he even splits concepts into opposing couples. *"Las novelas mexicanas/mixing with radiorocknroll"* is one of many examples of cultures clashing to create entirely new cultures. He describes Spanglish as "perfect" and intelligent, not because of what it is, but because it is created through the culmination of histories and cultures clashing. Spanglish is "wired" with "two dominant languages," naming it as a space where Spanish and English meet. The term "wired" is important, as it is a term used also in programming and building machines. We can think of Spanglish as being built to help "wire" culture and an understanding of identity.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><div class="fullscreen-bg">
<img src="29.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%" >
</div>
<div class="background">
<div class="transbox" div align="left">
When I say "liminal space," I mean a space in which a body lives between two planes of existence but never fully belonging to either. My body is constantly living in this liminal space and it can travel between spaces without ever feeling like it belongs to either. The term "el vaivén" was first coined during the great transnational migration of Puerto Ricans from the island to mainland United States in the 1950s. Since then, the term, literally meaning "coming and going," has been used to describe constant movement of Puerto Ricans between the island and the USA. I am a child of "el vaivén." A child of this in between, where my toes lay hidden under Atlantic water while I've walked back and forth on oceans to learn what is "home." El vaivén is a place of in-between. In the most literal sense, it is a place where constant movement happens back and forth different homes. In the context of history, many U.S. based Puerto Ricans would return home to bring money and support the families they left behind for better pursuits. </div>
</div></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %>
<div class="fullscreen-bg">
<img src="38.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%" >
</div>
<div class="background">
<div class="transbox" div align="left">
<p>"The space of the in-between is the locus for social, cultural, and natural transformations: it is not simply a convenient space for movements and realignments but in fact is the only place--the place around identities, between identities--where becoming, openness to futurity, outstrips the conservational impetus to retain cohesion and unity" (Grosz 91).</p>
<p>Created from two entities, realities, or spaces, liminal space is where things are supposed to take form. It is in-between spaces, like el vaivén, that "becoming" is what defines it as a place for creation. However, for the experienced colonial identity, "becoming" is identity. To constantly and continuously "become" *is* predicated on history of colonization. What is being produced at the clash of identities is important in the "becoming," not what was already there.</p>
<p>In liminal space, the specificities of body become emphasized and hyper-focused. I am made startlingly aware of how my body belongs to spaces and, yet, my identity is made up by how much I have *not* belonged and *not known* those spaces. As a U.S. born Puerto Rican, in a very literal sense I do not know what it means to grow up and be raised on the island. I have also experienced a lack of belonging on the mainland, having confronted racism and normalized narratives of colonization by structural oppression. I have never needed to experience the physical "swaying" that el vaivén signifies for a particular generation, but I do know what it feels to form entire being on the basis of sitting in the margins of concepts *I know* I know. In this in-between space, every breath is louder, every movement bigger. What you experienced is an altered state of being, since the world that you built is only existing through the construction of two preceding spaces The history that I cannot name scars the ever-changing shape of my being.</p></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="48.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>The constant political tension of Puerto Rico's indecision of statehood, commonwealth, or being an independent sovereign nation is as torrid as the island's conception (Poblete, 10). The continuous conversation of the island's status perpetuates a lack of identity through a label. The gravity of this adds divisions that creates even more of a puzzle-like identity for Puerto Ricans. There is a people split between what they want to be, how they want to become, and *who* they want to be (Briggs, 196). This is all rooted in the island's notions of colonialism, as there are communities of people who would rather emulate America's government than anything else. There are people who are in the other end of the spectrum and would rather rebuild the space as an antithesis of American imperialism.</p>
<p>The puzzle-like identity is only made more real with the development of sugar plantations in Puerto Rico in the early 1800s. The exploitation of people brought to the plantations along with the physical change of the land creates a configuration of both people and space. Now, sugar cane is no longer grown in Puerto Rico because it was rapidly mass harvest by West African slaves brought to the Caribbean. There is a saying in Puerto Rico about this: "all the coffee is made with blood and sugar," a recognition of the lives lost under the work conditions of these plantations. (Poblete, 91)</p>
<p>Liminal space is created through configuration, through a history of constant physical change. Whether that being is an island, a collective identity, or an individual, I cannot deny how constant alteration has fabricated my understanding of my Puerto Rican identity. This also has forced me to understand that, in spite of its fabrication, it is still me. Not only does Puerto Rico struggle with defining itself as a physical space, but the space itself has gone through so much change that the changes become what is defining its history, The act of changing a space is what becomes important, not what was changed in the first place.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="4.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>"In Puerto Rico, the things we normally think of as necessarily aligned to constitute a nation or a region--its people, language, geographical borders, government, economy, and myths, stories, histories, literature, and/or imagination--can be radically discontinuous, occupying entirely different spaces" (Briggs 196).</p>
<p>"What is unusual is the transparency of its condition; as one of only a handful of places that did not win a national state in the waves of decolonization, either in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century or after World War II, Puerto Rico cannot look to the national state to provide an imaginary unity to gloss the contradictions of its situation. Puerto Ricans have long taken a somewhat ironic view of the contradictions of "nation" and "identity"" (Briggs 196).</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="56.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>"In 'A Manifesto for Cyborgs,' Donna Haraway argues forcefully that we face a transformed landscape that requires fundamentally new politics" (Briggs 199).</p>
<p>Briggs calls out research methods rooted in bias in "Ghosts, Cyborgs and Why Puerto Rico," especially in moments where identity is boiled down to statistics and research questions. These numbers and charts come from preconceived notions of those who are doing the research. Who is asking the question? Why? What is the question we should *really* be asking? And how does all of this ultimately create a space in which stereotype and assumption is the standard? Puerto Rico cannot turn to either the U.S. or itself to look for the idea of "nation" or "identity." Laura Briggs states that *Reproducing Empire*, along with its epilogue, "has been an effort to fill these gaps...it is an attempt to tell the story of "development" in light of what came before and after..." (Briggs 199). However, what if we imagine this idea of "identity" as what lives in those gaps?</p>
<p>The islander Puerto Rican's conscience has been shaped in these missing gaps of history. It has been redacted, corrected, erased, and rewritten in these gaps. According to Briggs, it is shoveled from a tomb of historical oppression and experimentation to extract truth. I would argue, though, that this is where true identity is revealed: not with who shovels the tomb to reveal the skeleton of history nor with what the skeleton clutches, but rather the story lies with the act of digging. Like Nayyirah Waheed's salt., it is not the skeleton of the poem that tells a story but, rather, how the discovery of the skeleton and registering that it *is* a skeleton becomes narrative. The reader realizes story in the decision to dig and create the hole where the skeleton lies. Identity lies in the movement of the dirt as it is lifted out of the hole onto another pile to reveal the skeleton and to cause a sweat that drips off the tomb raiding reader.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="16.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>Identity becomes a history of reconstruction and symbolism. This is a symbolism that takes the form of *simulacra*, a term used by Jean Baudrillard that comes in three orders of distinction (Baudrillard, "Precession of Simulacra"):</p>
<p>1. The image is counterfeit of the real and the image is recognized as illusion.</p>
<p>2. The image begins to break down because of mass production and, because of this production, the original image is threatened because the proliferation of said image is threatening the source material.</p>
<p>3. The PRECESSION of simulacra: the image precedes and determines the real.</p>
<p>This third order of simulacra, the precession of simulacra, I believe best describes the experience of Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora. What happens when the image constructed becomes what we consider the real? This image, this identity called Puerto Rican, called colony, called being the colonized, is only but manufactured through carefully curated histories. The identity becomes the image that precedes and ultimately creates the "reality" of the Puerto Rican. This identity, in spite of the immense amount of pride a people have for it, acts as a placeholder for a collection of histories without a unifying identity that neatly packages all those histories together. However, how do we embrace this lack of identity as identity? What does it mean to represent and mean things that aren't there?</p>
<p>The idea of the avatar as a means to talk about Puerto Rican identity is a consideration. The "avatar" in computing is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as a "representation of a person or character in a a computer generated environment" and often in some form of an interactive space. The avatar is what we see when we create a character in a video game, or when we select a profile picture or icon for social media; it is an extension of self into a digital space. This is how I imagine colonial identity: an avatar for intertwining histories.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="58.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>Spaces that continue to exist under colonial rule are simulations and is suspended in algorithm. This algorithm, a kind of computer code, is constructed in Puerto Rico through abolishing language, change of infrastructure, the experimentation of bodies, and the criminalizing of on-island nationalism by the United States' government. An *algorithm* is a set of rules that perform data processing for computers. When *algorithm* is used here, I mean that colonial spaces have their own sets of rules that help to parse through the data of the space. That space is coded in histories that can be understood as historically having been wired together to create the island. And, what people take pride in is influenced by the deliberate wiring of place. The algorithm is created in the oppressive systems that were placed to create, in reiteration, an entirely new island with every re-wiring.</p>
<img src="Sims3_Screenshot.jpeg">
<p>Colonial identity acts as a simulation that is suspended in a coded language and algorithm. This algorithm is constructed through the coded language of nationalism, identity, and omitted histories. We can think about Puerto Rico as an oppressive *The Sims* game. This is not to make light of the gravity of colonies, but this is to better understand Baudrillard's work and virtual embodiment in relationship to imperialism. *The Sims*, launched in 2000 by Electronic Arts, has published not only a main series of games but various spin-offs and downloadable content throughout its run. It is under the genre of "life simulation" in gaming. The player would create virtual people called "Sims" and build houses, guide their lifestyles and choices, dress them, and basically replicate real life as closely as possible. It is a type of sandbox game, with no clear goals or narrative to be played. If left alone, the game, technically, can run itself, with the individual "Sims" roaming and completing their own tasks as they see fit. However, often in these moments of granting "agency" to a "Sim," there would be some disaster waiting on the screen. Whether it is an oven on fire, a flood, a burglary, all things that are coded in gameplay, a Sim may not even react. Often, when left alone, a "Sim" would just do the bare essentials: eat, sleep, sometimes use the bathroom, and go to work. In a strange way, this has become a metaphor in which we can describe colonial identity. *The Sims*, in spite the illusion of free will, are still restrained in a world where their infrastructure is either controlled by a more powerful user (the player) or the code of the game. Colonial identity, whether controlled by governments or left alone, is still victim to the code of a space. As avatars--virtual people--in that space, the navigation of code is distinct to constructed identity.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="9.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pQV6Eevg3V8" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<img src="VR Demo.png">
<p>Virtual reality is a computer-generated simulation of real life. Replicating lived experience on the screen, virtual reality can be accessed by putting on a set of compatible goggles and physically looking around through a lens. Whole worlds are created in the screen and set in devices like the Oculus Rift or a Google Cardboard for VR access in your phone. Either way, virtual reality is a constructed world to make you feel as if you are somewhere entirely different than your own physical space.</p>
<p>Virtual reality, in its marketing, brands presence. The idea of needing to put on a device in order to feel and to experience creates questions on viewership, voyeurism, and the versatility of story. Virtual reality is a space constructed and curated by a developer, acting as an extension of our reality outside of the goggles. However, virtual reality is still reality. It is still real by virtue of existing. Just like we engage with our world--without VR headsets--within a set of parameters and rules, we engage with virtual reality in its own set of constraints. Colonial spaces can be seen as virtual spaces, where the parameters in which they exist in has been set by a developer. This developer is a collection of larger structures of institution that have a grasp on these spaces. And, because of the constant experimentation of spaces and body on the island, the digital identity of colonialism is in this configuration. In virtual reality, changing worlds is as easy as modifying a code. This has drastic consequences sometimes. A change can mean the whole space collapsing in on itself.</p>
<p>This 360° film was taken in Bayamón, where my great-grandmother lives in her small home with my uncle. Here, when the goggles are slipped on, you can turn all the way around to see the pictures on the walls, what is playing on the television, see my uncle, and face my great-grandmother as she giggles in her nightgown. You are feeling as if you are in her small house with her, standing in front of her as she shouts about her earrings in Spanish. You are also aware of your physical body, knowing that you are actually *not* with my great-grandmother in Puerto Rico standing in her living room. But do you smile when she laughs? Do you try to see what is on the television? Do you try to make out the faces on the wall? The 360° film makes you feel like you are experiencing the space in spite not being there. This particular experience of virtual reality still perpetuates actions and thoughts we practice in the physical world. Sometimes the experience breaks: you reach out your hand to touch great-grandma's hands, you try to walk towards my uncle who is curled in bed. Maybe you try to get a closer look at the photos on the wall. What has been created is a space that is constrained by its medium. It is not the physical place that you are experiencing but the representation of a space that has been recorded with a device. The restraints of your experience with the 360° film, however, does not make the space any less real.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="27.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>In the virtual reality video seen in the project, there are two varied experiences of embodiment and space that explores the conditions of liminality. In one experience, the user is confronted with empty space along with recorded poetry exploring identity in that space. The user is forced to experience this coded space, still very much colonized, with poetry that tries to push beyond the restraints of what might be experienced in the 360° film. Poetry, itself, is only but a representation of what is real. The spaces that you are confronted with are only but representations, they are not actually the space. It is only made more surreal and disorienting when you realize that these places are not the same after the hurricane. The user, with their own knowledge and culmination of histories, will never have the same experience of the VR as another. A Puerto Rican wearing a headset experiencing this poetry and this space will never have the same experience as someone who is not Puerto Rican. The versatility of story does not come with a change of words or a change of form but, rather, how the user absorbs these moments.</p>
<p>In contrast, the virtual experience with a poem about Hurricane Maria and the confrontation of bodies in space challenges the notion that ghosts are not, necessarily, beings the user cannot see. Rather, the ghost exists in the construction of the poem and acts as a representation of a memory that, actually, does not belong to me but has deeply affected my being. I was not on the island for Hurricane Maria, but to know my family on the island is still navigating the aftermath of the hurricane still causes a very visceral reaction of sadness and pain for me. The bodies the user confronts in this virtual reality experience are bodies that have logged memory without knowing where the memory comes from. In the ending of the experience, the user is surrounded by darkness with only the recording of a phone call between me and my mother. It is here how one can see how tracking of memories work: you "guard the heart" of a space, no matter if the space is constructed or not. Tracking to better learn to navigate sets preservation as a goal. How do we protect what powers the code while still decoding it to better make sense of the missing parts of our history?</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="33.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
The history is constructed and curated to produce the way colonial bodies now navigate the virtual reality of their in-between home. Any code, though, is susceptible to glitches. However, what happens if the *glitch* is one of the most defining things for identity? The glitch for a colonial space manifests in a variety of ways. The whisper of trees deep in the tabunoco trees of El Yunque. The crash of water at the ferry port of the small island of Vieques. The way my hundred-year-old great-grandmother laughs at nothing and everything. The glitch in Puerto Rican identity is how a people still can possibly exist knowing that they were only but a simulated game for American consumption. How does the glitch persist? An error is cyclic. Every time you press a broken hyperlink, search a non-existent webpage, or continue to run a broken code, you are always brought to 404 PAGE NOT FOUND. A 404 PAGE NOT FOUND error is when the user engages with the server of a website but the requested action cannot be completed. This often happens with broken or "dead" links. 404 is the standard response code when you press a "dead" link. The hyperlink, activated by hovering and clicking on a piece of information available to you on a webpage, can be broken if there is no information to be found behind the click or there is no distinct path to the information. I argue that, instead of this being a mistake, that colonial digital identity is created by the continuous loss of information and the loss paths too information. However, the hyperlink is still up on the webpage, still clickable and still there for the user to engage with. The "dead" link becomes a way to mark that there must have been information there before. The link becomes an artifact for this information, what is left behind after the data disappears, is deleted, or is loss.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="10.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<p>Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, only weeks after I came to the island for the first time to meet family and see the island myself for this project. It is surreal and unsettling to write on Puerto Rican digital identity with Hurricane Maria still so present in my spaces. Maria changes the way we perceive embodiment. Maria reveals the skeleton in the tomb. Maria did not destroy the island, but instead destroyed the imperial infrastructure and stripped the island to its skeleton. Yes, trees have grown back. And yes, the sun still shines. And yet, the decoding of space comes with understanding of the very real circumstances that Puerto Ricans must face on the island. We cannot ignore in this scholarship that, in spite of an attempt at a conceptual understanding of identity, there are still real people trying to survive on an island that is still devastated. What is left now is an erred space which, strangely enough, is the most *real* it can be. You are left with being forced to see the people of the island once everything is stripped away. Just like in the 360° films, particularly the one that tackles Hurricane Maria, the user is forced to engage with people in these spaces. The glitches--a people's thriving, the wind, the ocean's waves--show that there is still a humanity that must be recognized for a community.</p>
<p>Hurricane Maria highlights the in-between we call "home." The event helps to realize that the construction, in spite painful, is the best way to understand a collective consciousness. Many Puerto Ricans, much like the 1950s, have migrated to the United States and is again living in the physical back and forth to take care of families and find better opportunities. It is now, more than ever, that the liminality of the Puerto Rican digital identity is most pronounced. With two systems that cannot hold them--a broken island code and an America that rejects them--there is no other place but to exist in liminal space and to embrace the virtuality of identity. This is where colonial identity thrives. It is where we were born and it is where we, too, shall be suspended in an algorithm to join the departed. The way we have survived has always been to adapt to changing coded space. How do we serve the ghosts of our beings in this moment? How do we guard the heart, knowing that the heart only beats because of it never was meant to?</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="7.gif" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i always come back to trees. i use to hate grass and bugs, never cared for what goes bump in the night, couldn't stand the heat and cold and damp and dry. but i found the Lord in the way trees whisper sweet nothings to me. the way they mingle with mother Sun is always so comforting in our living room forest. i always come back to trees, come back to their rustling advice. come back to seeds of knowledge dropped into a journal page. knowledge that seeped out from another world to reach my heart through the whispers of a tree.</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="8.jpeg" alt="image" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">read the scars on my heart<br>
learn to be literate in pain<br>
it is written in cosmic burns<br>
<br>
run fingers on my wounds<br>
stitched in stardust<br>
<br>
i remember when the sun exploded in a room<br>
and fried my veins<br>
but the aftermath left a glow on my skin<br>
i remember your eyes<br>
and i made you cry tears from Andromeda<br>
<br>
and god, weren't we smiling through the shine of the Moon?<br>
<br>
we met at Sea<br>
we met in the pull of space<br>
we met in a pool of space</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="62.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">she resorts to paper to break the code.<br>
she resorts to paper cuts to remind herself that she bleeds.<br>
she looks to the night sky for answers, as if the algorithm had long been written in constellations.<br>
<br>
she writes to heal. she writes to escape. she writes to look for paper cuts.</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="39.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">
her words begin<br>
where her ink stains<br>
the skin between her index finger<br>
and your thumb<br>
blue and black like her arms<br>
words fought for in lead fields<br>
words starting revolutionary supernovas on lined paper<br>
marching up and down these pages<br>
yes, she writes for you<br>
her words are celestial bombs<br>
mapping universes in notebooks<br>
yes, we write for you<br>
hoping you see constellations<br>
connecting dots in planets<br>
her words begin in flesh<br>
where stardust has embedded itself<br>
her words are manna, holy, in the smoke of some burning bush<br>
<br>
no, she does not write for you<br>
she has dodged enough paper cuts<br>
and burning comets<br>
to know she loves her words more than you<br>
she knows you will feel for this pen<br>
and you may cry and laugh at the Sun’s writings<br>
but she provides for you<br>
your mortal sustenance<br>
and like dying stars do<br>
she may implode<br>
and she will not care<br>
<br>
no, the Sun does not shine for you<br>
she exists like you, with you<br>
and only writes when she feels the need to<br>
(she writes all the time)<br>
as a poet and a goddess<br>
she carries and she sweats and she glows<br>
and like the Sun, she radiates truth<br>
and shines into wormholes<br>
where you may get lost in rhetoric<br>
<br>
yes, yes, yes<br>
<br>
she hopes to write with you<br>
being an oracle trapped in Apollo’s temple<br>
where land meets space<br>
is a lonely purgatory<br>
and she wants to pull you out of those holes<br>
a seer carries a heavy burden<br>
and she is willing to share<br>
and like you, with you<br>
she hopes your words<br>
stain her hands too<br>
</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="50.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">to do:<br>
<br>
1. honor ghosts<br>
2. honor the glitch<br>
3. be the glitch<br></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="19.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">what does it mean to<br>
let go?<br>
i am protective of my energy<br>
of my journey<br>
<br>
to walk in binary code and feel the breeze of a beach is something strange<br>
<br>
to walk in truth needs to be witnessed<br>
but my witnesses do not speak<br>
the profane is woven into flamboyan-shaped tapestry<br>
<br>
God is too big to say much<br>
<br>
and to think, people believe God wrote this code<br></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="55.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">the work of Generations<br>
<br>
what do we receive?<br>
what do we filter?<br></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %>
<video src="49-video.mp4" autoplay loop width="100%" height="100%"></video>
<div class="poemitalic">i can stand in love, but you gotta stand here too</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="34.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i'm pretty sure my grandmother is sisters with the Moon<br>
<br>
she walks on beaches made of stardust and i try to fit<br>
my small feet<br>
into constellated prints<br>
<br>
i catch her drink a Bailey's in the kitchen<br>
trying to swallow the Milky Way and island wind<br>
at the stove<br>
<br>
i remember helping her smash garlic<br>
and squash platano<br>
into small discs as she stirred galaxies in a pot<br>
<br>
i knew very early on that i was from space<br>
<br>
birthed from Martian oceans<br>
and an ancestor's whisper<br>
i knew i was exceptional in my overalls and Tweety Bird socks<br>
<br>
my chin could only reach the counter<br>
but how hard did i try to reach<br>
for planets on the stove</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="43.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i am waiting for my wildly magic shift<br>
<br>
these growing pains<br>
throb rather than cut<br>
<br>
i do not know how to evolve<br>
when the word "grow" is not programmed<br>
<br>
into my heart</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="23.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">they planted flowers in war crimes<br>
it's the type of soil that lets rage<br>
and future promise<br>
thrive together<br>
<br>
las lagrimas de mis ancestros keep it watered
and tender</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="12.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">spirits walked the jungle with me<br>
they talked sweet and kind<br>
as if they waited for me to arrive<br>
<br>
but i can't be too egoista<br>
they met me with precaution<br>
<br>
"they hurt this island"<br>
they hurt this island<br>
do i hurt this island?<br>
<br>
i want to kiss bark<br>
and sing with coquis<br>
but am i fruit or poison to the tree?</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="63.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">the way spirits speak to me must be a glitch. must be where history seeps into this plane of existence with universe-steeped information that spills into my veins like god-giving water. this was always meant to be. i was in the code all along, but i had to carve this feeling out of some type of computational error. the way you whisper into my ear was never supposed to be. but here we are.</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="11.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">how do you learn to "heal"<br>
when the command isn't even programmed<br>
into your body?<br>
<br>
my code is written in "survive" and "exist"<br>
and i am learning a new language for "thrive"<br>
<br>
i've been speaking in tongues more often<br>
call it short-circuiting<br>
but is it because i can't control it<br>
<br>
or because i don't want it to stop?</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="20.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">get your hair straightened<br>
burn spirits out of your scalp<br>
and if you could've dipped your skin in milk<br>
instead of honey<br>
at your astrological conception<br>
it would have made worlds of difference, too<br>
<br>
it is empowering and terrifying to know you were never meant to exist<br>
this is why, i think, i ignored the Moon<br>
<br>
as a girl i was taught to dream and never do and so i burned spirits out of my scalp and burned spirit out of me and poured the ashes into a well of memory i can't quite remember. but it's in there somewhere along with other cremated histories.<br>
<br>
i am learning that my body is a database for these things: how to talk to the Moon, how to listen to the Ocean, how to plea with a Hurricane.<br>
<br>
did i burn the circuits down when i took heat to a curl?<br>
<br>
my heart is universe-shaped and electrified<br>
and i drink the Milky Way's formula<br>
and God-forbid the Moon will ever let me<br>
dip my toes in milk</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="41.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i pray that you see<br>
how trees grow out of<br>
my back<br>
tall and lush out of<br>
my back<br>
<br>
Atlas shares ancestral bone<br>
with dark-skinned goddesses<br>
and men so pale you would have thought<br>
they were dead<br>
inside they were dead<br>
<br>
cold hands on warm, holy hips<br>
this must be why i am skinned this way<br>
<br>
thick-skinned i am<br>
i have seen wars<br>
fought in ancestral ribs<br>
and the way my grandmother's sopa<br>
sizzles on the stove<br>
<br>
she fights a battle every friday at seven<br>
dinner is her Vieques<br>
there is an uneasiness in the way<br>
she has tried to season her heart here in the states<br>
there three locks on her door<br>
<br>
the spices she does not have in her gabinete:<br>
safety, presence, trust in foreign land<br>
<br>
it is hard to walk in truth<br>
when you are lied to<br>
so i am writing my own book of Revelation<br>
etching native tongue into the bark of these trees on<br>
<br>
my back<br>
<br>
i find myself writing in an ancient language<br>
i do not understand<br>
i am trying to be literate<br>
<br>
it is here in this bloodshed<br>
in the trenches of<br>
my hips<br>
and the soldier called Spirit<br>
where i've seen battles<br>
<br>
ignite<br>
<br>
funerals of the soul<br>
a wake for history<br>
grandma's sopa will<br>
never quell the hunger<br>
that i feel in my fingers<br>
as i reach out for some prophecy<br>
in her rice and beans and tears<br>
<br>
a need to remember to remember<br>
sits in the belly of the beast<br>
called borinquen<br>
<br>
and do not forget that Atlas was a jibaro<br>
Atlas is my ancestor, he must be<br>
<br>
he carried El Yunque on his back<br>
and you see remnants of his scars<br>
in my stretch marks and the dip in my<br>
spine<br>
his winding path to the top<br>
match the patterns in my curls<br>
<br>
one day i will learn to carry this heavy load<br>
learn to rewrite this code<br>
<br>
the ashes of burnt cultures<br>
dust the horizon of palm tree<br>
<br>
the trees are tombstones<br>
of the stories i carry<br>
and i know i will never be able<br>
to memorialize<br>
the burden on my back</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="45.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i am learning sweetness<br>
i was only able to taste salt<br>
and oh how happy i was<br>
with it</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="6.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">spirits are where code 404'd<br>
where ghosts cause a glitch or two<br>
in our world<br>
<br>
that's why you get that shiver up your spine<br>
<br>
it's the moment where other worlds leak into our own<br>
rain down on us<br>
with advice from the departed<br>
<br>
and it's all in an error<br>
<br>
when the intangible<br>
becomes the most authentic self<br>
is the moment<br>
where spirits remind us<br>
<br>
that we are not alone<br>
in the coded space of the colonized<br>
<br>
you break the code when you speak to trees</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="24.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
a forest grows on my tongue. this is why i talk to trees so easily.
i wonder if the heartbeat i feel below the bark was a gimmick or
as real as my own encased in rib. my ribs are made of wood and
when my passion catches fire my whole chest goes aflame. my
spirit runs hot like the stars. it is in the way my soul will rise
when i combust.
they've call this "phoenix rising."
it is really just me ascending.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="21.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">you came raging through<br>
and were we supposed to love you?<br>
and were we supposed to welcome you?</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="36.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i like to think that this house made of bone floats<br>
somewhere in the Atlantic.<br>
its marrow is juicy and full of flavor and sits on the shore<br>
of a home that i do not own.<br>
nothing much has changed in this house of bone.<br>
the lungs are still in the living room,<br>
my guts laid out on the kitchen table.<br>
my spine gets caught in between the blinds of the window.<br>
my heart is where the door is, where love and melancholy<br>
and joy, pure joy, and the rain come through like long lost relatives.<br>
i like to think that this house made of bone floats on water between two lands.<br>
even in flames, this house is hard to make into ash. burn this house down,<br>
i dare you.<br>
cremate my love into an urn and put it above your fireplace.<br>
remember me in your homes.<br>
throw me and my house into the fireplace.<br>
burn my bones.<br></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="51.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">i heard they were burying grandmothers in the backyard<br>
i heard they found their babies in the waters<br>
i heard the morgues were full<br>
and that the sick lay in the heat of packed emergency rooms<br>
waiting for death to boil them alive under<br>
an unforgiving white-hot sun<br>
i heard that you have no water<br>
that you've been using the water from the floods<br>
to flush your toilet<br>
i heard that your roof was ripped open<br>
and heard the hurricane strip my heart<br>
out of my ribs<br>
taking veins and muscle along with it<br>
leaving me nothing but the bones of a mourner<br>
i heard that we're ghosts now<br>
forgotten<br>
as fleeting as the chirp of a coqui<br>
i heard your roof rip<br>
along with your smile<br>
i heard you mourn for tu patria<br>
i heard your lips fall to the ground<br>
in a kiss, trying to speak to the land and ask why<br>
i did not hear you cry, though<br>
i am reminded in this moment that<br>
RESILIENCE was a genetic mutation<br>
inherited<br>
from daughter to daughter to daughters who grew up too fast<br>
we don't talk about it<br>
i did not hear that Carlos Santana song<br>
and the riffs of his guitar<br>
as if strings, too, cry<br>
Maria, Maria<br>
you look like the people who wrecked me<br>
they exist in memory and in the way<br>
i cry out<br>
"WHAT WILL YOU TO DO TO ME THIS TIME?"<br>
i heard you scream when you met the land<br>
it was shrill, it flooded the streets<br>
you have good people fishing through your wailing<br>
to find grandmothers<br>
that i heard they'll bury in the backyard<br>
i heard they are dead because of you<br>
i died along with them<br>
i heard you cry<br>
i heard you cry, Maria<br>
i heard you cry<br>
with agua negra pouring out your mouth<br>
and the devil lends a claw<br>
to wipe bile off our chin<br>
and the devil whispers "you ask too much"<br>
when he caresses your cheek<br>
when all we ask for is a coffin<br>
that can hold the baby found floating<br>
in the dirty bath water of San Juan<br>
the devil has always existed<br>
i know because he was there when<br>
they buried grandmother in the backyard<br>
he placed a flamboyan's flower<br>
on the mound of wet dirt<br>
because he heard, too<br>
the devil heard, too<br>
and he laughed a laugh that sounded like<br>
when coquis do not chirp anymore<br>
i heard the devil tried to cry<br>
i heard the devil try to cry<br>
but i heard he had no water, too<br></div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="35.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">"soy de mente clara."<br>
<br>
if my great grandmother on my grandfather's side is made of azucar<br>
then the mother of my grandmother is freshly ground pepper<br>
<br>
at ninety three she makes money by selling treats in her little apartment<br>
she dyes her hair just like grandma: red like her spirit<br>
<br>
she is tough, takes very little shit<br>
but her love shows in the way she stayed looking at me in our whole visit.<br>
<br>
"te contrasté" my own grandmother said on the phone.</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="37.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<div class="poemitalic">"dónde estabas?"<br>
<br>
my great-grandmother looked at me. <br>
saw me. <br>
with tears in her eyes.<br>
she is ninety-nine years old and she lives in bayamón.<br>
and it feels as if she was waiting for me this whole time.<br>
without either of us knowing.</div>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="30.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q21P3mM-6Ls" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<img src="VR Spaces.png">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="40.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYjU4M0I6N4" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
(Use your mouse to move the 360 video, or scan the QR code below with your phone, and insert your phone into a google cardboard.)<br/>
<img class="aligncenter" src="VR Maria.png" />
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="25.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vhUA7clXmT8" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Tato Laviera was a Nuyorican poet born in Puerto Rico, moving to New York City in 1960. His poetry focuses on transcultural identity with an emphasis on immigration and the Spanish language. Drawing from his 2014 complete collection Bendición, Tato Laviera explores the physical spaces that Puerto Rican people inhabit and the migration of bodies between culture
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="52.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<img src="salt-close.jpeg" style="width:100%">
<p>Nayyirah Waheed is an acclaimed poet who explores identity and race in her work. This project is inspired by her 2013 poetry book salt.. In the case of Waheed, I am deeply inspired by the form of her book. The book has a white cover that radiates ghostliness. Every poem feels as if it floats on each page, giving every one of the poems a skeletal, detached body. The "floating" of the poems on the pages, in a white book with the single word "salt" on the cover, gives *salt.* a minimal appearance that triggers in the reader a feeling of emptiness. The cover of Waheed's book showcases the way memory of feelings, thought, and even people are tracked without necessarily knowing what precisely was that memory. A fingerprint stain on the white of the book shows that someone must have held it. To tell who could have held it, what stories they hold in their self, and what caused the fingerprint cannot be deduced from the print alone. The knowledge that someone must've held the book before is the only thing that marks the white cover of *salt.*. This is how ghosts work: you know something or someone must have existed because it is marked in environment and feeling, but can only exist suspended in a moment without context.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="3.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<video src="3d-tic-tac-toe.mov" autoplay loop width="100%" height="100%">
Consisting of four floating and gridded parallelograms over one another, the goal is to have your Xs or Os, like a regular tic-tac-toe game, in a row or diagonal of four to win the game. The catch, though, is that a player can also create columns of Xs and Os between the parallelograms to win, as the parallelograms give the illusion that they are squares floating above one another on the screen. Using the interface of *3-D Tic-Tac-Toe* from Atari, we can see these parallelograms as a metaphor for layered planes of existence. It is in the in-between--the space created between two or more of these planes of existence--that Puerto Ricans navigate the multiple spaces they inhabit, traveling between those spaces to access different experiences of embodiment. I refer to this in-between as a type of liminal space. In *atlas was a puerto rican*, I use *3D Tic-Tac-Toe* as a way to visualize this experience of traveling between those spaces. Like *3-D Tic-Tac-Toe*, there is information that seeps between those grids to inform the user as they continue to play the game.
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="54.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="26.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="44.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="53.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="5.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="57.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="32.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="17.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="28.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="47.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="18.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="46.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="13.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="59.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="60.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="15.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="61.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="42.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><img src="31.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %><p>To my family, who instilled in me how to love the stones that sit in the waves of our history. It is never easy, and yet here we are. I love you so much.</p>
<p>To my advisor and mentor Professor Marisa Parham, the greatest lessons I have learned from you have not only been in *every one* of your classes but in the spirits that roam your office in Johnson Chapel. Thank you for years of being your student and for many more teachings. Thank you for teaching me that the act of existing in the spaces we do is radical.</p>
<p>To Professor Solsiree Del Moral, who taught me how to love my history with fervor and excitement. Thank you for making me feel like what has come before me is important.</p>
<p>To Professor Martín Espada, I love the way I write because of the way you love the way you write. Thank you for letting me know that poetry doesn’t need to be understood, it just needs to resonate.</p>
<p>To my powerful and talented team Andrew Smith, Lauren Tuiskula, Cassandra Hradil, Amir Hall, Frank Tavares, and Christopher Conway. This labor of love is just as much their work as it is mine. Thank you for making a vision into reality.</p>
<p>To my committee readers Professor Cobham-Sanders and Professor Brooks, for helping me to better conceptualize my work and truly making me feel like the expert of my story. Thank you for tender conversations about what this work truly means, whether in or out of the classroom.</p>
<p>To my friends for choosing to love me with all of your souls. How much I needed your support in this journey.</p>
<p>To my ancestors, who I know more intimately than some of the living.</p>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% $(document.body).removeClass('someclass') %>
[[Return Home|OpeningPassage]] <% $(document.body).addClass('someclass') %>
<br/><br/><br/>
<div class="main">
<div class="head">
<h1>the digital vaivén: <br/><br/>
ghosts, the glitch, and <br/><br/>puerto rican embodiment</h1>
</div>
</div>
<div class="text2">
irisdelia garcia<br><br><br></div>
<div class="pls">[[play|Introduction]]<br>[[acknowledgements|Acknowledgements]]<br>[[works cited|1. Works Cited]]</div>
<%
var ver=RegExp(/Mozilla\/5\.0 \(Linux; .; Android ([\d.]+)/).exec(navigator.userAgent);
if(ver&&parseFloat(ver[1])<5){document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].className+=' whitespacefix';}
%>
<a name="anchor1" class="vis-2 pos-49 size-27">
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=max">
<title>grid</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/site.20180331081959.css">
<!--[if lte IE 7]>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/site.20180331081959-lteIE7.css">
<![endif]-->
</head>
<body id="body">
<div class="pos vis section">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size cont">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size colwrapper">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-2 cont-2">
<picture class="img-2">
<source srcset="images/artboard-1-fin-800.png 1x, images/artboard-1-fin-1600.png 2x, images/artboard-1-fin-2400.png 3x">
<img src="images/artboard-1-fin-800.png" alt="" class="js img">
</picture>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-3 size-3 cont-3">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-4 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-5 cont-5">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font" [[2. Intro to Liminal]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-5 size-5 cont-6">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font" [[4. Spanglish by Laviera]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-6 size-5 cont-7">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font" [[45. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-5 cont-8">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-2" [[9. Briggs I]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-8 size-7 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-9 size-8 cont-9">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-3" [[50. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-6 size-9 cont-10">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-10 font-4" [[34. spirits are where code 404'd]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-10 size-8 cont-11">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[17. i always come back]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-11 size-8 cont-12">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-5" [[18. read the scars on my heart]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-12 size-11 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-12 cont-13">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-10 font-6" [[13. Virtual Reality]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-5 size-5 cont-1">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[16. Maria]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-13 size-5 cont-15">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[30. how do you learn to "heal"]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-14 size-5 cont-16">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[28. spirits walked the jungle]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-15 size-13 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-8 cont-17">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[58. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-16 size-9 cont-18">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-10 font-8" [[1. Works Cited]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-17 size-8 cont-19">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[61. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-6 size-8 cont-20">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[11. Baudrillard]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-18 size-14 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-8 cont-21">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[53. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-6 size-8 cont-22">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[56. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-6 size-8 cont-23">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[22. flamboyan shaped tapestry]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-16 size-8 cont-24">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[31. get your hair straightened]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-19 size-15 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-5 cont-25">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[36. you came]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-5 cont-26">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[3. Haiku by Laviera]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-20 size-5 cont-27">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[27. they planted flowers]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-20 size-5 cont-28">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[35. a forest grows on my tongue]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-21 size-16 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-8 cont-29">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[43. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-5 size-8 cont-30">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[47. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-8 cont-31">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[14. VR Videos]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-22 size-8 cont-32">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[54. Photo]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-23 size-17 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-8 cont-33">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[5. El Vaiven]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-24 size-8 cont-34">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[41. VR Spaces]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-25 size-8 cont-35">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[64. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-5 size-8 cont-36">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[52.Photo]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-26 size-4 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-5 cont-37">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[15. Glitch and ghosts]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-17 size-5 cont-38">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[25. im pretty sure my grandmother]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-27 size-5 cont-39">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[39. soy de mente clara]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-17 size-5 cont-40">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[37. i like to think]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-28 size-16 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-8 cont-41">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[40. donde estabas]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-8 cont-42">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[6. Grosz]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-24 size-8 cont-43">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[20. her words begin]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-16 size-8 cont-44">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[42. VR Maria]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-29 size-18 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-9 cont-45">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-10 font-4" [[32. atlas was a puerto rican]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-20 size-8 cont-46">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[63. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-22 size-8 cont-47">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[26. i am waiting for]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-22 size-8 cont-48">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[48. Photo]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-15 size-19 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-5 cont-49">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[33. i am learning sweetness]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-5 cont-50">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[57. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-30 size-5 cont-51">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[55. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-5 size-5 cont-52">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[7. Islanders]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-31 size-20 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-21 cont-53">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-9" [[24. i can stand in love]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-32 size-21 cont-54">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-9" [[21. to do]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-33 size-21 cont-55">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-9" [[38. Dear Maria]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-21 cont-56">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-10" [[44. Photo]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-34 size-15 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-5 cont-57">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[49. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-7 size-12 cont-58">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-10 font-6" [[46. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-22 size-5 cont-59">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-7" [[23. Generations]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-20 size-5 cont-60">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-6" [[10. Briggs II]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-35 size-22 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-9 cont-61">
<a class="button vis-3 pos-4 size-10 font-8" [[51. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-36 size-8 cont-62">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[12. The Sims]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-22 size-8 cont-63">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[59. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-22 size-8 cont-64">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[60.Photo]]</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-37 size-23 cont-4">
<div class="vis-2 pos-2 size-8 cont-65">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[62. Photo]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-38 size-8 cont-66">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[19. she resorts to paper]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-16 size-8 cont-67">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-4" [[29. the way spirits speak to me]]</a>
</div>
<div class="vis-2 pos-39 size-8 cont-68">
<a class="button-2 vis-3 pos-4 size-6 font-8" [[8. Photo]]</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html> <% $(document.body).addClass('someclass') %>
<a href="https://digitalvaiven.tumblr.com">
<video src="Glitch-GIF.mp4" autoplay loop width="100%" height="100%">
</video></a>
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% $(document.body).removeClass('someclass') %>
Double-click this passage to edit it.Double-click this passage to edit it.<img src="64.jpeg" alt="image" style="width:100%">
<% s.counter += 1 %>
<% if (s.counter > 22) {
print("[[Return|Grid1]]");
} else {
print("[[Return|Glitch Grid]]");
} %>