Preserving the uncanny(?) - Digital Folklore in the Age of AI and Augmented Reality

With Stuart Dunn, Hannah Dawson and Érika Melek Delgado

In 2009, Trevor L. Blank wrote that “[m]any of the topics traditionally explored by folklorists—such as humor, expression, tradition, narrative transmission, commemoration, religion, and ritual—have taken on new or modified lives in the digital world”. The concepts which had underpinned these topics until the web came – the narrative, the story and the storyteller – had always existed outside the official records of the archive and the library, being transmitted and constructed through vernacular media: the very definition of “folklore”, as opposed to history. The web, which was then evolving from an electronic publishing platform to a vast conversational and social space, reshaped and reframed these concepts, giving rise to a new form of “digital” folklore. What now when, through AI, the web we know is becoming increasingly autonomous, creating its own narratives and stories, and becoming a “storyteller” in its own right? This panel will surface these questions, and look at how digital folklore is developing in the age of AI.

The panel will also consider how digital objects might disrupt narratives that are otherwise set in stone, and introduce the uncanny in our shared imaginative and physical space.

This discussion will interest any audiences who are interested in the generative and disruptive possibilities of the digital sphere. It will appeal to anyone who uses AI and augmented reality, and who is interested in critically exploring their uncanniness – how and why it surprises, entertains and challenges our imagination, just as tales told by human storytellers always have.

Stuart Dunn is Professor of Spatial Humanities at King’s. He is an expert in the digital mapping and GIS in the humanities, and has strong interests in the folklore of landscapes and the countryside.

Hannah Dawson is a Reader in the History of Political Thought at King’s, and Director of King’s Past. She has published extensively on early modern theories of language, nature, morality, and the state, and is currently working on the history of feminism. Her books include: Locke, Language, and Early-Modern Philosophy; Hobbes: Great Thinkers on Modern Life; Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism; The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing.

Érika Melek Delgado is a Lecturer in the History of Empire at King’s, and Associate Director of King’s Past. Her research encompasses histories of enslavement and liberation, and digital humanities. She is the Principal Investigator of Historical African Childhoods, Co-Director of Freedom Narratives, and leads a British Library Endangered Archive Program in Cuba.