Whitelaw, Mitchell, Mark Guglielmetti, and Troy Innocent, ‘Strange Ontologies in Digital Culture’, ACM Computers in Entertainment, 7 (2009), 1–13 <doi:10.1145/1486508.1486512> pdf

The concept of a ‘strange ontology’ is articulated via the intersection of philosophical and computational definitions of ontology. Within digital media, each simulated world requires both; an ontology, to define its existence as data; and a subject, the player or user, who engages with the simulation. Glitches or interventions in these simulations create ontologies that are inconsistent with our lived experience, rendering them ‘strange’. We draw upon a range of works to illustrate this concept including game art, social networking software, Guglielmetti’s ‘Laboratories of thought’ and generative art. The paper aims to define this concept and outlines a terrain for further investigation.