Ambient Literature: Writing Probability

This chapter explores what might happen when data aspires to literary form. It presents examples of conventional psycho geographic literature of place to consider what kinds of literary forms are being remediated in pervasive media systems, before turning to the particular case of These Pages Fall Like Ash produced by Circumstance in 2013. A counter-strategy is developed by the ambient artist who choreographs a tentative encounter between systematic elements, which produces experience as form. The chapter describes within a field of work on “locative narrative”, building on Malcolm. McCullough’s work in urban information systems to consider the situated and the ambient as co-constituting particular aesthetic experiences. Ambient aesthetics are understood as grounded in emergence, potential, and ambiguity as a means to produce encounters between humans and the complex systems to which they are subject. Mihai Nadin’s work argues for the importance of the human capabilities of anticipation as distinct from the computers’ calculation of probability.