Archive … an archive of impossible objects might serve other purposes too, encountering ontologies for pure pleasure, for instance. As Thomas G. Pavel suggests in "Fiction and the Ontological Landscape," these might include delightfully intriguing categories such as “discarded ontologies,” “ontological ruins,” and “ontological relics.” To this we can add nonhuman ontologies that by their very nature are impossible to grasp for human-shaped minds. The archive could also serve as a sort of “ontological training ground… to train the members of the community in such abilities as rapid induction, construction of hypotheses, positing of possible worlds, etc.” In the context of design, it could serve as a resource for moving beyond futures as the primary way of framing the “not here, not now.” Essentially, a place that celebrates the ontological imagination …
A Machine-Generated Impossible Object An Object from an Alternative Visual History of Quantum Computing Swatches of Forbidden, Chimerical, and Imaginary Colors A Pocket Universe in the Home An Object from an Alternate Quantum Imaginary An Object Made from Words A Human Imagined through a Generalized Nonhuman Umwelt A Flag for Biomia A Vegetable Lamb
CGIs by Carolyn Kirschner
The paper examines fictional ontologies in relation to the distinction between sacred and profane ontologies. This distinction suggests that
