Two new Lexicon posts: AI and Drift
The lexicon project continues to evolve, with new entries added by Sarah-Jane Field (project and website owner) and Kim Shaw. The entry for ‘AI’ explores its historical and cultural significance, linking tragedy and expression to societies chose name for today’s novel technology. Kim Shaw’s contribution is a record of her fascination with the word ‘Drift’.…
Keep readingLLM and Hornet (After Angela Banner)
While New York City enforces a moratorium on generative AI and LLMs in schools, I argue that clearer definitions and distinctions of technologies are necessary to navigate their danger, potential and impact, rather than conflating them uncritically.
Keep readingNews: Sense & Reason on Virga Gallery
Sense & Reason, a project I began last January, has now been added to Virga Gallery, an online space run by [cloud] collective. Alongside a summary of the work and my broader research, there are prints and a special Virga edition of the Sense & Reason zine available to buy from the [cloud] shop. The…
Keep readingNew lexicon entry: On ambivalence and little images
Companionship, advertising boards, and a long, long history.
Keep readingOf interest: new EU rules on machine-generated content
I’ve added a line to my privacy pages disclosing that the legalese was drafted with an LLM’s help – not because anyone would be duped, but because surreptitious use helps no one.
Keep readingStill Refusing the Straight Line (and hopefully, avoiding gross oversimplifications)
Since ‘why is there an astronaut in a field of flowers/’ (2019–21), I’ve resisted linear narrative – not out of obtuseness, but because our habits of perception are the crisis. Sarah Wilson’s ‘I Eat the Stars’ apparently makes the same argument. Maybe it’s time for me to return to ‘Image in the Age of Entanglement’…
Keep readingBulk editing to undo ‘brain-in-the-jar’ image
A note on why the letters ‘AI’ have been bulk-edited out of this site’s categories and tags, replaced – provisionally – with ‘machine learning’. The term AI is not just hyperbolic; it reinforces a brain-in-a-jar picture of intelligence, places human activity outside nature, and works like a black hole, absorbing ire and fantasy that may…
Keep readingLove your window too much? Not a good idea in 1136: nor – it could be said – today
After a Pints of Knowledge talk by Kristina Bauman (@medievalmarginalia) on anchoresses, I’ve been thinking about the window of the anchorhold and the window of the smartphone – and what the dominant ideology of the day does to how we see ourselves. (With a some links to Joseph Henrich and Guy Debord.)
Keep readingNew article: ‘Feeling Smartly: in the dust motes’
For some time, I have approached media without favour – treating analogue and digital, original and found, writing and image, with equal respect. My new essay for Six Minutes Past Nine and Clot Magazine, ‘Feeling Smartly: in the dust motes’, works through that by way of Evelyn Waugh and Anna Kornbluh – writers I both…
Keep readingWIP: Pattern – never just a pretty picture
I often find myself thinking about specific words, and how they are employed, how they cluster together, and especially how different tribes receive these clusters as some kind of weapon, whether or not the sender meant for them to be. Words and what lies between them, how people respond to them, often makes me think…
Keep readingMy dog died, and in her honour, she’d want us all to do better
This week’s post is a small pause in the lexicon series and passages about my work. Following the loss of my dog Poppy, nearly sixteen years old and a very wonderful soul, I’m sharing a handful of recent articles and podcasts about building a more equitable world – because that felt like the right way…
Keep readingNotes: Really, really, it’s ok not to know.
I have been quiet lately. There is too much noise, and I have little desire to add to it right now (surely this won’t last). But also, because I am in catch-up mode. I will be sharing a new zine very soon and will no doubt make a noise about that when the time comes.…
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