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[[Pile of Bones]] (working title) is an [[artistic-research]] and [[video-game]] development project initiated in 2025. It is developed between Brussels and Maastricht within the Professional Doctorate in Arts + Creative at research center What Art Knows, Academy of Arts Maastricht, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, and in the context of [[MERIAN]].

The project investigates how making a [[Play|playable]] [[dark-fantasy]] [[World-Building|world]] can become an artistic [[memory practice]] and a form of [[inheritance]] in relation to [[premodern]] [[Persianate]] [[Bestiary|bestiaries]]. It brings three [[Ecology of Practices|practices]] into contact: the [[World-Building|world-composing practices]] of ''[[Ajayeb al-makhlughat]]'', the compositional techniques of [[high dark fantasy]], and the [[Techne|technical operations]] of contemporary game-making. The bestiary provides the primary heritage anchor. Dark fantasy offers a contemporary interlocutor through which the pre-modern ~~bestiary’s~~ compositional acts as world-building are investigated. Game development provides the materials, tools, techniques, and conventions of the [[studio practice]]~~. The research approach consists in sustained immersion within this [[craft-intensive]] milieu, cultivating the [[practical intuition]] through which artistic decisions made~~.

The project investigates how making a [[Play|playable]] [[dark-fantasy]] [[World-Building|world]] can become an artistic [[memory practice]] and a form of [[inheritance]] in relation to [[premodern]] [[Persianate]] [[Bestiary|bestiaries]]. It brings three [[Ecology of Practices|practices]] into contact: the [[World-Building|world-composing practices]] of ''[[Ajayeb al-makhlughat]]'', the compositional techniques of [[high dark fantasy]], and the [[Techne|technical operations]] of contemporary game-making. The bestiary provides the primary heritage anchor. Dark fantasy offers a contemporary interlocutor through which the pre-modern compositional acts as world-building are investigated. Game development provides the materials, tools, techniques, and conventions of the [[studio practice]].

The project’s primary [[Site of Cultural Heritage|cultural site]] is the medieval bestiary, anchored in the thirteenth-century [[Ajayeb al-makhlughat|Ajayeb al-makhluqat wa-gharaib al-mawjudat]] (عجائب المخلوقات و غرائب الموجودات The Wonders of Creatures and the Marvels of Creation, shortened to ''Ajayeb al-makhluqat'' / ''Ajayeb'') by Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Qazwini. Its broader historical focus encompasses the 10th to 13th centuries, with particular attention to [[Khorasan]], a historical region connecting the Iranian plateau with Central Asia. Khorasan played a formative role in the emergence of New Persian literature and was a major center of scholarship and the development of Sufi traditions. Encompassing much of what is now northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern and western Afghanistan, Khorasan's major centers (Nishapur, Merv, Herat, and Balkh) participated in intellectual and commercial networks connecting [[Transoxiana]], the Iranian plateau, and the Indian subcontinent.

The project ~~is anchored in Ajayeb~~ al-~~makhluqat wa~~-~~gharaib~~ al-~~mawjudat (عجائب المخلوقات و غرائب الموجودات The Wonders~~ of ~~Creatures~~ and the ~~Marvels~~ of ~~Creation)~~, the ~~thirteenth~~-~~century cosmography~~ of ~~Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al~~-~~Qazwini. Its broader historical~~ and ~~geographical focus encompasses~~ the ~~Persianate worlds~~ of the ~~tenth to thirteenth centuries, particularly~~ Khorasan, ~~a historical region connecting the Iranian plateau~~ with ~~Central Asia~~.

The literary traditions of Khorasan and its wider cultural networks that inform this project include Ferdowsi’s ''[[Shahnameh]]'', Nizam al-Mulk’s ''[[Siyasatnameh]]'', Nizami Aruzi’s ''[[Chahar Maghaleh]]'', Attar’s ''[[Tazkirat al-Awliya]]'', and Nasrallah Monshi’s ''[[Kelile o Demne]]''. Spanning epic, political counsel, courtly knowledge, hagiography, and animal fable, these texts extend the project’s engagement with Qazwini’s ''Ajayeb al-makhluqat'', informing the historical, social, and cosmological texture of the game world. These literary and intellectual traditions form part of the researcher’s cultural inheritance through lifelong encounters with their texts and stories.

[[Pile of Bones]] proposes inheritance as a transformative kind of play: a [[Speculative Thinking|speculative]], [[Poetics of Variation|variational]], [[Experimental Disposition|experimental]], [[Episteme|epistemic]], [[Affect|sensual]], [[Techne|technological]] relation with the past. [[World-building]] occupies the center of this practice because the bestiary tradition is approached as a world-making [[techne]]: an art of gathering beings, composing relations, and making a world available to the senses. The pleasure of discovering [[Art of Description|a described world]] (in Ajayeb al-makhluqat and in the wider Persian literary heritage explored through Khorasan) is part of this inquiry. Calling these practices “world-building” is already an [[Epistemological Intervention|epistemological intervention]], bringing them into proximity with [[Secular Fiction|secular fiction]] and popular world-building, where they can acquire different uses and provoke different pleasures.

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 [[Pile of Bones]] (working title) is an [[artistic-research]] and [[video-game]] development project initiated in 2025. It is developed between Brussels and Maastricht within the Professional Doctorate in Arts + Creative at research center What Art Knows, Academy of Arts Maastricht, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, and in the context of [[MERIAN]].
-The project investigates how making a [[Play|playable]] [[dark-fantasy]] [[World-Building|world]] can become an artistic [[memory practice]] and a form of [[inheritance]] in relation to [[premodern]] [[Persianate]] [[Bestiary|bestiaries]]. It brings three [[Ecology of Practices|practices]] into contact: the [[World-Building|world-composing practices]] of ''[[Ajayeb al-makhlughat]]'', the compositional techniques of [[high dark fantasy]], and the [[Techne|technical operations]] of contemporary game-making. The bestiary provides the primary heritage anchor. Dark fantasy offers a contemporary interlocutor through which the pre-modern bestiary’s compositional acts as world-building are investigated. Game development provides the materials, tools, techniques, and conventions of the [[studio practice]]. The research approach consists in sustained immersion within this [[craft-intensive]] milieu, cultivating the [[practical intuition]] through which artistic decisions made.
+The project investigates how making a [[Play|playable]] [[dark-fantasy]] [[World-Building|world]] can become an artistic [[memory practice]] and a form of [[inheritance]] in relation to [[premodern]] [[Persianate]] [[Bestiary|bestiaries]]. It brings three [[Ecology of Practices|practices]] into contact: the [[World-Building|world-composing practices]] of ''[[Ajayeb al-makhlughat]]'', the compositional techniques of [[high dark fantasy]], and the [[Techne|technical operations]] of contemporary game-making. The bestiary provides the primary heritage anchor. Dark fantasy offers a contemporary interlocutor through which the pre-modern compositional acts as world-building are investigated. Game development provides the materials, tools, techniques, and conventions of the [[studio practice]].
+The project’s primary [[Site of Cultural Heritage|cultural site]] is the medieval bestiary, anchored in the thirteenth-century [[Ajayeb al-makhlughat|Ajayeb al-makhluqat wa-gharaib al-mawjudat]] (عجائب المخلوقات و غرائب الموجودات The Wonders of Creatures and the Marvels of Creation, shortened to ''Ajayeb al-makhluqat'' / ''Ajayeb'') by Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Qazwini. Its broader historical focus encompasses the 10th to 13th centuries, with particular attention to [[Khorasan]], a historical region connecting the Iranian plateau with Central Asia. Khorasan played a formative role in the emergence of New Persian literature and was a major center of scholarship and the development of Sufi traditions. Encompassing much of what is now northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern and western Afghanistan, Khorasan's major centers (Nishapur, Merv, Herat, and Balkh) participated in intellectual and commercial networks connecting [[Transoxiana]], the Iranian plateau, and the Indian subcontinent.
-The project is anchored in Ajayeb al-makhluqat wa-gharaib al-mawjudat (عجائب المخلوقات و غرائب الموجودات The Wonders of Creatures and the Marvels of Creation), the thirteenth-century cosmography of Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Qazwini. Its broader historical and geographical focus encompasses the Persianate worlds of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, particularly Khorasan, a historical region connecting the Iranian plateau with Central Asia.
+The literary traditions of Khorasan and its wider cultural networks that inform this project include Ferdowsi’s ''[[Shahnameh]]'', Nizam al-Mulk’s ''[[Siyasatnameh]]'', Nizami Aruzi’s ''[[Chahar Maghaleh]]'', Attar’s ''[[Tazkirat al-Awliya]]'', and Nasrallah Monshi’s ''[[Kelile o Demne]]''. Spanning epic, political counsel, courtly knowledge, hagiography, and animal fable, these texts extend the project’s engagement with Qazwini’s ''Ajayeb al-makhluqat'', informing the historical, social, and cosmological texture of the game world. These literary and intellectual traditions form part of the researcher’s cultural inheritance through lifelong encounters with their texts and stories.
+[[Pile of Bones]] proposes inheritance as a transformative kind of play: a [[Speculative Thinking|speculative]], [[Poetics of Variation|variational]], [[Experimental Disposition|experimental]], [[Episteme|epistemic]], [[Affect|sensual]], [[Techne|technological]] relation with the past. [[World-building]] occupies the center of this practice because the bestiary tradition is approached as a world-making [[techne]]: an art of gathering beings, composing relations, and making a world available to the senses. The pleasure of discovering [[Art of Description|a described world]] (in Ajayeb al-makhluqat and in the wider Persian literary heritage explored through Khorasan) is part of this inquiry. Calling these practices “world-building” is already an [[Epistemological Intervention|epistemological intervention]], bringing them into proximity with [[Secular Fiction|secular fiction]] and popular world-building, where they can acquire different uses and provoke different pleasures.