Bag theory is a research project that aims to revise the relationship between temporality and narrative structures through the retelling of a nonlinear history that weaves together seeds, plants, rocks, and computers. Diverging from the figure of an arrow, historical strands surrounding timekeeping, computing, and epistemic frameworks are spun together with textuality and textility to create a performative bag-of-words. In this container, I draw from my experience as an artist and educator to blur lecturing and communal storytelling. The shape of this knowledge dissemination takes the form of a week-long performance lecture series.  

 
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It seems certain that the development of technology was critical in the success of the genus Homo over the last 2 million years. Flaked stone artifacts are the earliest definite signs of modification of natural materials for use as tools.




It is frequently suggested or implied that the first tools were, in fact, the weapons of the hunters.




Laboratory analysis of human coprolites—fossilized feces […] tend to confirm the proposition that vegetables were predominant and that in most places protein sources were infrequently supplied by big-game hunting.




We’ve all heard about the sticks, spears and swords, the things to bash and poke and hit with, the long, hard things, but we have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained.




I suggest that two of the earliest and most important cultural inventions were containers to hold the products of gathering, and some sort sling or net to carry babies.




For Freud, weaving imitates the concealment of the womb: the Greek hystera; the Latin matrix.




The ‘Old Greek’ or ‘Homeric Loom’ were names given to the warp-weighted loom.




They may be: (a) of hard natural stone with no hole: (b) of soft natural stone (like pieces of soapstone).




The textile industry was an earlier adopter of punched-card technology and their use was credited to Joseph Marie Jacquard starting around 1810.




The computer emerges out of the history of weaving, the process so often said to be the quintessence of women's work. The loom is the vanguard site of software development.




It is advisable to study objects that are in some fashion similar to knots, yet simple enough so as to make a complete classification possible. Braids are such objects.




Scientists have created strange new particle-like objects called non-abelian anyons. These long-sought quasiparticles can be “braided,” meaning that they can be moved around one another and retain a memory of that swapping, similar to how a braided ponytail keeps a record of the order in which strands cross over each other.

  /                                   (excerpted from research document)