Hello from across the Channel!

Thanks Hugh, and congrats on getting the PhD revs done and dusted!

A media-materialist method for interpreting generative AI images - Daniel Binns, 2026 This article proposes a four-layer media-materialist method for interpreting AI-generated images as cultural-computational artefacts that bear archaeologically ...

My article “A media-materialist method for interpreting generative AI images” is now published online in Convergence. This piece represents the foundation for my genAI work over the last 2-3 years. Four layers: data, model, interface, prompt. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Oh hello. I know I’ve been quiet, but it’s been a head down bum up kind of start to the year. Having said that, I’ve managed to set up a remotely accessible AI suite, vibe coded a family album browser, and install and trial a tiny AI agent on a ESP32 board. So a few blogs likely coming soon!

Rolling with it On generativity, ritual-technics, and the genAI ick

New post on generative systems and how working with rituals, recipes, and protocols has helped me feel into the ethics and values that influence and motivate this work.

#genAI #ethics #creativity #authenticity #AILiteracy #technics #chance

clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/rolling-wi...

How I Read AI Images A media-materialist method for interpreting AI media

📝 New blog post: How I Read AI Images — in which I share a method for interpreting AI images based in the material mechanisms of their generation. Think Kittler, Parikka, and Cubitt. Full article coming soon, I hope! #genAI #AIimages #AIart #research

clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/how-i-read...

I am here for seagulls who sound like humans doing terrible impressions of seagulls

the pun potential (puntential) in all of this work is extremely hard to withstand

A Little Slop Music The AI experiment that turned my ick to 11 (now you can try it too!)

New Slop Stack post — A Little Slop Music: The AI experiment that turned my ick to 11 (now you can try it too!)
Thoughts on creativity, authenticity, contested histories, paratexts, storytelling, and all that jazz. No, really; there's jazz in there too.

open.substack.com/pub/clockwor...

I haven’t seen a Bad Guys. 1 or 2. But there’s a lil person in it with a tiny laptop. Who’s making tiny laptops for lil tech guys? Does Apple have a special LIL Division? Lilnovo?

Glitching Toward Understanding: Speculative Methods, Tiny Companions, and Life in the Slopocene A Conversation with educator, filmmaker, and artist Daniel Binns

I was interviewed by Bogdana Rakova about my generative AI research—why I embrace glitch, mess + failure as tools for learning. From origami-code mashups to the Slopocene, we explore playful, critical ways of rethinking creativity + AI literacy. open.substack.com/pub/speculat...

“Friction can happen not only when things break, it can also be intentional to prevent things from breaking. What if we could make the safe things easier (less friction) and the high-risk things harder (more friction)?”

Check out this new series by Bogdana Rakova! 👀

Caméra-Stylo to Prompt-Stylo: Co-Hallucination & Entangled Inscription with genAI (Dr. Daniel Binns) YouTube video by The Clockwork Penguin

A recent conference presentation worked to formalise some of my experimental work with genAI, and early film theory was the key to unlock some of those doors. I also draw on ancient philosophy, cybernetics, co-intelligence, and mixed-fidelity ritual practices. Enjoy! youtu.be/QDpaV1h0VQc?...

Does it have to be thinking OR genAI? Literature OR genAI? Other tech OR genAI? Ethics OR genAI? The planet OR genAI? Education OR genAI?

Program for the symposium "Digital Temporalities: Slow, Quick and Everything In-between," held on Tuesday, 12 August from 9am to 4:30pm AEST at UQ Brisbane City. Organised by Giang Nguyen-Thu. The program includes a 9:15am keynote by Dang Nguyen titled "Born into Velocity: Automation, Friction, and the Time of Infrastructure," followed by Panel 1: Time and Digital Attachment featuring talks by Maddison Sideris, Abbie Trott, Sara Roetman, and Daniel Binns. A 15-minute morning break follows.

Continued program of the symposium "Digital Temporalities." Panel 2: Digital Temporalities and Creative Practices runs from 11:30am to 12:45pm, featuring Rani Tesiram, Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox, and Wojciech Sławnikowski. After a 60-minute lunch break, a 1:45pm keynote by Tingting Liu is titled “The Aussies Are Too Slow”: Geo-temporal Frictions and Gendered Perceptions in Chinese Platform Expansion. Panel 3: Rural Worlds follows from 2:15pm to 3:45pm with presentations by Bingxi Huang, Lisa Lindawati, Swastika Samanta, and Giang Nguyen-Thu. A 15-minute afternoon break leads into Closing Remarks at 4:00pm.

Brisbane in a couple of weeks: I’m speaking at the Digital Temporalities symposium at UQ, alongside visiting the @qutdmrc.bsky.social and the indomitable genAI Lab at QUT—this time with @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social.

Let’s see what kind of thinking the city allows.

🙌🏻🧠⏳☀️

Confronting the Climate Crisis This collection examines how activism, media, and creative practices shape our understanding of the climate crisis.

After four years of work, our book Confronting the Climate Crisis is out now! It brings together activism, media, and ecoaesthetics to rethink how we engage with environmental collapse. Huge thanks to my co-editor Rebecca Najdowski and all our amazing contributors! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

I wrote about one of my 'weird AI' experiments, 'spectral linguistics'. I prompt LLMs to 'remember' forgotten languages. They may hallucinate vocab, syntax, symbols! We learn a lot about how LLMs attune not just to language, but human sense- and meaning-making. clockworkpenguin.net/2025/07/28/s...

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. @ncotemunoz.bsky.social on the money again.

This is what most of those who can’t understand why I — a critical thinker and lover of language, artists’ rights, and creative expression — use AI.

And why and how it’s genuinely changed my life.

aw thanks Dylan, really glad you liked the piece!

I must’ve tried to replicate it a dozen times, and no dice. Maybe it was Claude’s off night??!!

I wrote a thing for @theconversation.com on embracing and making slop as a means of developing critical genAI literacy and having some fun along the way. Enter the Slopocene! theconversation.com/understandin...

post slop ergo propter slop

I and my AI co-pilot have finally cracked. Simultaneously.

It ain’t perfect. It ain’t polished. It ain’t what the techbros designed this shit for. But it’s a whole bunch of fun and honestly, it’s changing my life.

I’ve already shared some of this over on the blog (e.g. Clearframe, shared here). But it really feels like more of this work—this glitchy, slow, mixed-fi, playful work—is ready to be seen. To be shared. To be released.

clockworkpenguin.net/2025/05/14/c...

I used workflows I’ve been quietly developing for months: bots, companions, patterns, workarounds, weird little rituals. Some AI, some pen and paper…

And they worked.

Not in some magic productivity way. Just enough to keep me moving. To get past the block. To let the work start speaking again.

Didn’t sleep well lastnight. Felt rubbish and heavy and sinus infecty. But somehow today I got some stuff done.

I worked closely with my little AI ecosystem, designing ritual systems, getting a little lost in lore and conceptual tangents.

After ten years of failed pitches, I finally got a commission for The Conversation. Exciting! But writing my first draft means I probably have enough material for my next journal article lmao

Apparently folks think that writing that contains an em dash is a dead giveaway that it's from ChatGPT, which I guess is a sign that most people have never read anything in their lives.