Film poster for 90s Disney Film "Honey I Blew Up the Kid". Depicts actor Rick Moranis standing in the middle of a white background with a giant red and white toddler's sneaker ominously hanging over him about to stomp on him. Poor man!

Welcome to the AltSalt sneak peek!

Envisioning the Future

i am a temple forged from sun
an army of iron shimmers from its
golden rays off a white cross
lodged into the beating heart of an empire

displacement.

Jessica Kahn is a musician and educator of Jewish, Scottish, and Andean descent, and contributor to the Alternative Worlds Andean collection.

On "Different Folks" and Andean musical fusion

(Dear Charles #2) Cultivating Cultural Change

Here follows an interview with Alejandro Fernandez, an Aymara descendant and creator of improvised and progressive psychedelic folk music.

Heritage, music, and creative freedom

Untitled

Rima(y) Raíz is a community collective created by and for the Andean/Andinx diaspora community of the United States.

Choclo y Chicha: a zine for (and from) the Andean Diaspora

Turn out the lights and explore a dream world in Ana Somnia

New feature now available: Resonating

Calling all Andean and Asian American folks! AltSalt is creating two multidisciplinary collections of work — and we want you to be a part of it.

Alternative Worlds: The Andes and Asian America

Mundos Alternatives: Los Andes y América Asiatica

This is the first in a series of posts to highlight members of the AltSalt community. First up we have Shirley Man-Kin Leung, organizer behind the Asian American collection for Alternative Worlds.

"To Dream and Be Intentional" — Interview with Shirley Man-Kin Leung

The Birth of Andean Futurism

Bibliography of Andean Myths

Alternative Worlds Workshop Weekend Schedule

This is because life itself is dynamic, a spiral — and you can see this play out even in history. Everything is always changing yet circling back on itself, evolving with similarities but transformed.

Andean Sacred Geometry

Offering resonance is an intentional practice used to cultivate deep listening and connection; we've adapted it for AltSalt.

What is Resonance?

Every year since my friend Bill committed suicide, his mother and I had exchanged Christmas cards. And I am one of those people who do holiday letters...

The Coming Out Ring

Reverberating with the past

(Dear Charles) The Shape of Our Future

A short story about legacy, revolution, and obliquely, terraforming Mars. Also contains a dumpling recipe.

Within the Fold

Dear Art,

I'm happy to be writing to you in this new format, in these times. I think it feels like taking a coat of fresh paint to refresh my perspective on things and what better way to do it than in a new platform like Zonelets? [Note: This is now on AltSalt, which is a fine platform as well, ha]

This platform invokes a lot of technology, but as I approach my 31st birthday this Friday, I'm feeling many layers of emotions that are hard to parse through (Charlie Brown style).

Here's a list of things that have got me down on my birthday:

It definitely feels hard to be celebrating anything during these times! But ultimately even when I think of all these things I still try to find hope, and I would like to articulate some of those things that I look to that give me that hope.

Somehow, I think a lot of things really come down to the things that I'm learning as I'm being around my family. I've been back with them for the past several months to recover after grad school, but ultimately they bring forth a lot of deep memories and feelings within me. Pains, for all the mistakes they've made, but also hope at the same time, since ultimately many people are just like them, all trying their best to make the best lives for their families and children, but getting mixed up in the world.

Despite what platforms like social media might have us believe, I truly believe that only a very small percentage of the population does not have any empathy for other people. We, as any New Yorker knows, tend to go into our own worlds and walk as if we don't even see each other, but as soon as we see someone fall down in the street, you'll see people flock over to help, as if we're broken from our spell. And then, we all just move on. People are like that on a macro level too I think. Most of us would never truly wish harm on other people especially if we see that affect right in front of us, it's only when we are confused or angry or frustrated or misled that we end up losing empathy for others... Ultimately, the majority of people wish each other peace and goodwill, and it's only when our lines of communication break that we feel we can become cruel to each other...

That's my hope anyway!

I've talked a little about technology with you, so I won't dwell on that too much, and socioeconomic upheaval is way too big a conversation for me to talk about. But something that I think connects these things has been something I haven't brought up, neither in our past conversations nor in this writing so far, and it's that I've been taking an interest in the principles of child development, parenting, and psychology. Maybe the easiest entry point I can think of for all this is the idea that children need to live as children first. This might sound funny, but have you seen "Honey I Blew up the Kid?"

"Honey I Blew Up the Kid" if you don't know, is a sequel to the hit 80s live action Disney film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." In "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" a goofy scientist father Wayne Szalinski, played by Rick Moranis, accidentally leaves his experimental shrink ray on and his children end up getting shrunk to ant size and must find their way home from their backyard. It's a technical marvel and became the basis for a Disney theme parks attraction. "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" is the sequel to this movie with a reversal, where a toddler is blown up to 50 feet high and begins to walk towards downtown Las Vegas, filled with product placement for the Hard Rock Cafe amongst other things. I actually consider it the better movie, but that's besides the point.

My point that I want to get to is that I love how this movie uses this sci-fi analogy for what happens when a child grows up too fast. The baby is still psychologically a toddler, so he thinks a truck is a toy truck, and he thinks a giant guitar sign at the Hard Rock Cafe is a guitar. But ultimately, he's still a child, so when he gets inevitably gets injured, he cries, and the audience feels sorry for him, because even though he's really big, he's not capable of being responsible. At that point, they realize the solution to stopping the baby is to send in mama, because that's the only thing the baby will respond to.

My point is a little on the nose here, but I think that lots of things in society are in this constant balancing act to rush children to become mature and responsible adults who can fend for themselves. This dysfunction is not only present in something like a sci fi contraption like a shrink ray, but also in how we push kids to think about college or careers from a young age, or how we punish them for being creative because we want them to have a stable career, or how we punish boys for being sensitive because men don't show their emotions ("man up" and all that).

I think this kind of problem in society has been a tricky balancing act in different eras, the problem of wanting our children to have a childhood, but also want them to be ready for adulthood. I do think with our current era, however, technology takes things to a whole new dimension, where parents are unable to keep up with the young crowd, with rapid change within a single generation. If a younger cousin or a niece or nephew were having struggles with something like cyberbullying or social media, I don't think most parents would even know how to begin to approach dealing with those things, whether from an emotional perspective or a technological perspective, and I think a lot of young people have to look to half a generation above them. I sense that now with many Gen Z friends looking to their Millennial friends for advice.

Anyway, the hope that I get is that young people are able to learn quicker and more capably than their predecessors with faster technology, dialogs, and better toolsets to converse. It's really remarkable, like you said last week in our chat about the students nowadays. It's also a bit terrifying as a slightly older person! But I think we, as any older generation, can only hope to shepherd the younger generation as best we can and have faith they'll make the right decisions. We can guide them, but ultimately our responsibility is to leave the future in the hands of young people (whose hands it was always in the whole time). We just have to be ready to show up like their mama or papa when the babies are in danger of getting themselves hurt.

I also think that this kind of balancing problem of allowing things to mature before they become adults is also prevalent in how we approach creating technology, and I think there's a thesis to be made that a lot of our problems in technology are as fundamental as the issues that a child faces psychologically... but I think that's a whole point to discuss for another piece entirely. I wanted to keep this first piece of writing short.

I also sense your perspective on going back to basics and getting away from the bloat of modern living, beyond just technology, is also going to be insightful in our conversations. I've already sensed that in our talks about growing gardens and such.

Anyway, like I said, I don't want to keep too long, so I'll eagerly await your response.

In his first letter to Art, Charles writes on human nature, technology, and the 90s Disney film "Honey I Blew Up the Baby"

First Letter to Art - Human Nature, Technology, and Blown Up Babies

Called forth from the dreamers, healers, witches, womxn of our bloodline, we are the beginning of a new story,..

Becoming Our Own Prayer

Everyone

United States

Peru

Essay

Letter

Latinx

Andes

A few minutes

Red, green, and yellow art with choclo and geometric iconography.

Cover of the author walking down a city sidewalk

A cover image with the text "Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide", & a cute character at the summit of a mountain alongside a flag.

The background is the Colombian Flag with the Words "Colo-Mitolo-Gital" spanning each stripe. In the foreground is a floating back and a pair of red heels. In the top right, there is two buttons

Screenshot of webzine: two side-by-side portrait-orientation images of cityscapes, overlapped by a rectangle containing a recreated text message conversation, all against a white background.

Blue text on white background: "These are the things they took from us, They left us bare These are the things they couldn’t"

A group of people surrounding a frustrated girl trying to draw, they all seem to be looking at what she's doing.

The cover uses a retrofuturistic artist's rendering of a space colony from NASA's Ames Research Center.

A shovel and axe in the shape of an X, along with the publications title, the author's name Alda Yuan, and info including the publication year of 2021 and version 1.0

Cover of a book with the title in Spanish, "El Código de Wira Cocha: Simbolismo Milenario Andino" and ancient stone structures in the background

The title "Cultural Correspondence" along with the illustration of a hands holding uprooted plants and dirt

An abstract image of bubbles and dots and rays of sunshine in a blue and pink color palette

Title page "Andean Sky" with subtitle "The story of an immigrant his search for home"

Title page of Riveted in the Word, showing title and author name Warren Lehrer against a clouded sky

Title 'Dear Charles' over a man holding his heart in a meditative stance

Portrait of a child with night sky and plants in the background

New Media Literature

Game

Interactive Fiction

Twine

Webzine

Multimedia Storytelling

Website

Zine

Digital Comic

Tabletop Roleplaying Game

Book

Choose Your Own Adventure

Poetry

A Modern Ghost

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 1

SoftwareApplication

Reflections at Sunset

See Sandy

Surviving and Diving

The Life is a Freestyle Quaranzine

Quechualish: An Indigenous Language Zine

Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide

Within the City

Colo-Mítolo-Gítal

shortly, briefly

Letter to Miguel, from “These Are the Things”

Cat Scratch Fever vol. 1

Different Nourishment: Exordium

Beanie Hat Prototype

Pumasi: A Lasers & Feelings Hack

Mosqhoq (Dreamer/Soñadora)

With a Lever: The DIY Guide to Institutional Change for Racial Equity

Artema #1: The Exile

El Código de Wira Cocha: Simbolismo Milenario Andino

Alt Worlds Collab

Cultural Correspondence

Andean Futurist Manifesto

Andean Sky

Riveted in the Word

(Dear Charles #3) Thinking, Feeling, Creating

Rooombra to the Rescue

Test Publication

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 2

Free

Paid

Resonate

Instagram

Twitter

ArtemioMorales.com

I'm a software developer, director of Artmayu Studios, and founder of AltSalt.I love the digital and literary worlds, especially exploring new kinds of digital literature, from experimental multimedia books to narrative adventure games.Currently, I'm in the process of learning more about my Andean background, and thinking through how to bridge that heritage with the world of technology.

Ecuadorian-American sociologist, of Huancavilca and Kichwa descent. Bi-coastal, born in Queens, NY and raised in both NY and CA. Musician, community activist, project coordinator at an immigrant and workers rights org, and co-founder of Rimay Raiz.&nbsp;

Bridging the worlds of the West and Andes through storytelling...Artmayu is a digital book production studio, and the studio behind AltSalt!Our name comes from Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, and Mayu, the celestial river from Andean cosmology.In addition to maintaining the AltSalt website, we make animated ebooks, games, and other creative digital projects.

Editorial content by the AltSalt team.

Shirley identifies as a queer, asian-american woman of color. She works as a community organizer in Northern Colorado and as a yoga teacher. When not being self-referential in a bio, you can find her painting watercolors, biking around town, dancing, or reading a book.

Imanalla! I'm Sandy, a zinester librarian in sunny southern California. I started making zines as a way to practice and maintain Quechua, my ancestral language and one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages of the Americas. I now feel like I have too many zine ideas and too little time, but I try to make it work!&nbsp;I participate in several Andinx community projects like the annual May Sumak Quichwa Film Showcase and oral history collective Rimay Raíz. I love creating spaces for our community to share our cultures, languages, and experiences in the diaspora.&nbsp;In my spare time, I enjoy reading/watching things in the realms of sci-fi, fantasy, or horror. I also like to weave and garden (especially with, you guessed it, Andean potatoes!).&nbsp;

Writing, scriptwriting, andean ethnofuturism, nueva trova, improvised music, folk music, non white centric SciFi, decolonization and decolonising art

I'm a writer and cartographer. I mostly write scif/fantasy and have worked on some table top rpg projects such as the in*die zine and unbreakable rpg. I manage the integral states project, where I draw US states and territories as fantasy maps and pair them with pre-colonial histories.&nbsp;

Envisioning an alternative world

From the Community

Heritage, music, and creative freedom

On "Different Folks" and Andean musical fusion

displacement.

Becoming Our Own Prayer

First Letter to Art - Human Nature, Technology, and Blown Up Babies

Within the Fold

Andean Sacred Geometry

"To Dream and Be Intentional" — Interview with Shirley Man-Kin Leung

Alternative Worlds: The Andes and Asian America

The Coming Out Ring

What is Resonance?

Choclo y Chicha: a zine for (and from) the Andean Diaspora

Featured

Added this Week (October 27, 2024)

From the Community

Heritage, music, and creative freedom

On "Different Folks" and Andean musical fusion

displacement.

Becoming Our Own Prayer

First Letter to Art - Human Nature, Technology, and Blown Up Babies

Within the Fold

Andean Sacred Geometry

"To Dream and Be Intentional" — Interview with Shirley Man-Kin Leung

Alternative Worlds: The Andes and Asian America

The Coming Out Ring

What is Resonance?

Choclo y Chicha: a zine for (and from) the Andean Diaspora

Catalog