Hello World

The Arachne webzine is a collaborative project to examine the entanglement of mythology and embodied interactions with technology. The metaphors and mythos of weaving are pervasive in the present network cultures and in longstanding attempts to describe technology’s intertwinedness with all aspects of life.

The Arachne webzine is the result of homespun design work, which engages with each contribution on a one-to-one basis. Aspects of thought that we continue to engage with include: contemporary visual culture; intersectional gender, race, and labour studies; queer ontologies and metaphysics; human-machine interaction; trans and posthumanism; speculation; sound; magic; migration; and orientation.

We use the origin story of the spider found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 AD) as a recurring motif. Arachne (Greek: ἀράχνη) was a weaver who was challenged by the goddess Pallas Minerva (Greek: Athena, Ἀθηνᾶ) to a weaving contest. Her story represents the theme of humans holding contests with the gods. Although there are other accounts, in Ovid’s story, Arachne fatally lost, despite the goodness of her craft and the beauty of the garment she produced. As a sort of lenient curse for thinking she could beat Pallas Minerva, Arachne and all of her offspring were transformed into spiders, allowing them to keep weaving while no longer enjoying human pleasures.

From Ovid’s The Metamorphoses:

Contact: info at arachne dot cc for content inquiries.

Arachne is a labour of love by Dorothy Howard and André Fincato.