Gothic Simulation Fiction with Vicky Brewster

Romancing the Gothic is an independent online education project run by Dr Sam Hirst which offers a range of classes, courses and groups

Romancing the Gothic

Gothic Simulation Fiction: Embodiment and AI Discrimination with Vicky Brewster

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Since The Matrix films in the 1990’s, stories set within simulation have gained great popularity and become more frequent. As technology has developed, making virtual reality setups accessible for the casual gaming customer, and augmented reality just around the corner, simulation texts have become a field to debate issues of ethics in artificial intelligence and humanism. In this talk I examine two gothic texts. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton, in which Aiden lives the same day in seven different bodies in order to solve a murder mystery and attempt to escape the physical prison in which the simulation sit. And The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring, a dual narrative novel in which Mavi believes herself to be a new teacher at the exclusive and remote Vaccaro School, which is actually a simulated game in which the players win points by haunting the school’s inhabitants. 

This talk seeks to highlight how humanity continues beyond the embodied, examining the importance of hosts and the possibilities for consciousness when a physical presence is no longer required. The talk then uses Derrida’s theory of Hauntology to demonstrate the ways in which time is deconstructed by the simulation, again relegating the physical and highlighting the liminality and mutability of existence when physicality is removed. Finally, this talk considers artificial intelligence and sentience, and the rights (legal and ethical) of AI as it becomes more than or post-human, and the concept of ‘deserving’ so central to the ethics particularly of The Tenth Girl.

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Gothic Simulation Fiction with Vicky Brewster

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