wayfinder ; a proposal of fragments
Wayfinder is both research and artefact; a shoebox archive containing fragments - photographs, letters, recordings, keepsakes - which serve as a performative script and an online repository of conversations and academic papers to be navigated, configured, and constructed by three actors.
Wayfinder deliberately aims to blur fiction and fantasy, not to confuse for its own sake, but to reflect how memory and grief actually function — partial, unstable, always oscillating between the literal and the imagined. The Droste effect in E.Z.’s writing is part of that same logic: her “academic” text both critiques and participates in the box, so the reader is never sure where theory ends and story begins. That blurring is the method. It forces navigation not just of order, but of reality itself. Wayfinder is built to marry form and content. To demonstrate ergodicity in action across mediums. To emphasise the labyrinthine nature of grief, memory, identity, and mortality.
wayfinder ; research frame
Drawing on ergodic theory (Aarseth, Eco, Hayles, Ryan), Pacific epistemologies of navigation and non-Western storytelling traditions (Hauʻofa, Case, Ingold), and performance practice (Kane, Churchill, Stephens), Wayfinder asks:
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How might embodied, material interaction with an archive (touching, arranging, handling) reshape how performers and audiences make meaning, particularly for those with alternative learning styles?
- In what ways does introducing design elements (artefacts, objects, spatial navigation) expand the creative capacity of scriptwriters/playwrights to represent themes that are intrinsically non-linear?
- How can an artefact-based script balance authorial integrity with co-creativity, moving away from dictation without erasing the writer’s role?
wayfinder ; the paths
Wayfinder consists of -
- a shoebox
- 79 "artefacts"
- a series of web pages containing the conversations of one Professor August Barrington and academic - 'E.Z.', including thesis fragments
- video footage of rehearsal process
- video interviews with actors and one John Tarrow
wayfinder ; contribution
Wayfinder offers three contributions. First, it demonstrates that performance meaning can be generated through navigation and configuration, not only linear plot, with potential value for kinaesthetic learners. Second, it reframes the script as an artefact: a designed archive of fragments that broadens how grief, memory, and identity may be staged. Third, it proposes a model of authorship where the creator provides a navigational framework rather than a closed text, balancing integrity with co-creation.
At a meta level, Wayfinder also questions how research itself is delivered. By allowing the “academic” writing of E.Z. to fold into the artefact, the project not only blurs fiction and theory, but allows us to demonstrate the ergodic form rather than simply explaining it. This is not stylistic play but a deliberate method; challenging assumptions about how creative-critical research at doctoral level can and should be presented.
Finally, the inclusion of Barrington as a figure of institutional hesitance was deliberate. His presence anticipated the pushback the project has faced; a reminder of the irony within academic systems that call for ‘original contributions to knowledge’ yet instinctively resist the unfamiliar forms that such contributions demand.