This project takes inspiration from Marina Warner’s Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds, particularly her exploration of monsters in Chapter 2, Hatching – Monsters. Warner traces the etymology of "monster" to the Latin monstrum, meaning both an omen and a thing revealed (monstrare—to show). Monsters, she argues, are liminal beings that mark thresholds—between self and other, human and non-human, chaos and order. Like Warner’s analysis of mythological figures such as the Hydra, Chimera, and Medusa, Dreams of Vermi-Computing and Other Monsters examines the symbolic weight of metamorphosis, fear, and transformation.

​

Worms, as decomposers, exist in this same liminal space. In both ecological and speculative contexts, they dissolve boundaries—between flesh and soil, waste and sustenance, past and future. Their blind, writhing forms evoke anxieties about dissolution and loss of control, yet they are also agents of renewal. This tension—between decay and rebirth, repulsion and desire—resonates with Warner’s reading of monstrosity as a force of both destruction and creation.

​

The software enacts this paradox through its viral, self-replicating form, forcing interactions with digital decay and the instability of information. Just as monstrous bodies in folklore and literature provoke fear but also transformation, Dreams of Vermi-Computing and Other Monsters inhabits the space between horror and revelation, urging us to reconsider what it means to be consumed, transformed, and reborn.