The
online narrative, “The Flocking Party” (Landau),
creates a breeding ground where a flock of diverse perspectives
converge. Set in the future, the science fiction story rearranges
our familiar perceptions of politics, science, environment, and
relationships. It weaves together conflicting viewpoints, specifically
those of a protagonist researcher and a future political party.
More specifically, “The Flocking Party” investigates
analytic scientific research through a subjective and poetic
interweaving of voices. The simultaneous voices entice the reader
to reconcile
opposing concerns throughout the story. Readers aren't provided
with exact answers. Instead, they are entrusted with problems
that a global culture might face: conflicting ideologies, renegade
technologies, and invasive species. Each reader, for example,
interprets the role of invasive species in their own way. To
some they seem sinister, to others, like a fearlessly evolving
system.
“The Flocking Party” most often utilizes this concept of invasive species as a metaphor. Invasive species, by definition, inhabit territories where they don't belong, but they are also like pioneers, the foreign elements that stimulate the evolution of an invaded territory. “The Flocking Party” explores this theme in several forms. Humans, birds, viruses, and ideas cross thresholds into new continental and mental territories, respectively transforming their landscapes and producing openings for more invaders/pioneers. This is not unlike the way that the story was created. Each conceptual layer of the project built upon the others to create an interwoven configuration.