Clippy, winking

Clippy is waiting in the wings...

An AI assistant babbles on about something completely disconnected from the lecture contents

Can say with confidence that this demo of a live 'persistent' AI in this week's teaching will leave me with the worst co-presenter I have ever worked with...

*Model running locally via Ollama - gemma4:e4b. If you thought early Microsoft Office agents could be 'intrusively unnecessary', back in the 90s / 2000s...

A screenshot of an AI assistant embedded within a teaching slide deck. It is remarking on early graphical interface being discussed in the slide, Windows 3.1. It bodly declares, with a clock emoji "Windows 3.1! That brigns back memories - the peak of early graphical computing!"

One advantage of using HTML / JS slides is that you can embed interactive nonsense in them. This week's session on"Interfaces" contains a live demo of the effects of 'persistent' on-device AI that surveils user activity (e.g. Windows Recall). The sheer inanity of the latest models is pure anti-hype.

It has been a long time since I last saw one of those fired up! 🍎

The moon and Venus

My best effort this evening

The Moon and Venus against a clear twilight

And now Venus

The piercing perfection of the newly crescent moon, hanging above the cloudy twilight

Thank heavens

A swarm of geometrical shapes, cylinders and wing-like forms.

Drones

(Haven't achieved what I wanted to today, so I'm trying to salvage it with some procedural graphic design. This is either a great idea or a terrible one).

Back?

While my PhD experience was unfortunately rather troubled, the actual thesis, and the overall process itself, was only ever smooth sailing, thanks to my wonderfully supportive supervisors Regenia Gagnier and Laura Salisbury. It was a very good day, and remains an unassailably positive life memory.

On a minor note, I realise that today marks 10 years since my PhD viva. It was a pleasure to finally get to meet N. Katherine Hayles - via Skype(!) - and to have Gabriella Giannachi's thoughtful and supportive dialogues throughout.

Looking forward to this workshop I am co-organising on THE METEOROLOGICAL BODY in May @hias-hamburg.bsky.social !

hias-hamburg.de/en/events/th...

A faint point of light hangs in the twilight, just above dark clouds - Venus

Venus, before the rain clouds roll in.

#photography #venus #clouds

Antikythera mechanism comparison photograph - on the left is a photograph of the original mechanism, on the right is an x-ray image, exposing varied gears

Some proper media archaeology in tomorrow's session on "Computers ['What exactly are they?']"

"In 1986, Judy Malloy invited members of the pre-Web, online arts platform ArtCom ElectronicNtwrk to share fake information as part of her prjct Bad Information. [Her] fictive [database tied] concerns abt the perceived authority of cmptr-mediated knwldg to conceptual art’s preoccupation w/ info..."

Undulating mammatus clouds amidst a stormy looking scene

This evening's clouds

#photography #clouds #sky

It's part of a research project, so they'll be no shortage of pictures, fortunately!

A grey camera box is attached to a metal and string kite rig

Yes! There's a block of electronics in here that processes visual data on the fly, as it were 🪁

A 21st-century renaissance of kites as platforms for proximal sensing - James P. Duffy, Karen Anderson, 2016 In 1903, WH Dines first proposed kites as platforms from which scientific measurements could be captured. This early paper was focused on the collection of atmo...

And just to flag some science behind all of this - (admittedly, this article is from a decade ago, and the continued miniaturisation and cost reduction in drones has certainly shifted the equation since then. Nonetheless, I like minimal footprint tools, and kites are oftenmore welcomed that drones).

A pair of metal brackets from a neat cross. At the end of each bracket arm is a metal loop, and threaded through these is a single cord that forms a cradle. The rigging is such that no matter the basic angle of the attachment points, the brackets stay relatively level, while resisting twisting and rolling

Pictured here, dangling from the end of my arm, is a technology that is 114 years old, a Picavet suspension mount, specifically designed to stabilise cameras carried aloft on kites. This version will carry the poetry camera soon enough - the plan is to get the entire rig flight ready this weekend.

A nondescript grey box with a CCTV camera lens protruding out the side

Fully integrated - something pleasingly functional in its nondescript aesthetic, like something out of a late 70s engineering catalogue. Just needs the rigging attached and it's ready to fly.

I've found this effect too when the API on an LVM fails, so it is making up patent nonsense based on the prompt and the filename.

an otter is laying on a dock near the water . Alt: An otter is laying on a dock near the water, indulging in a supremely relaxing head and fur massage. While the author is definitely not a sea otter by trade, the sense of radiant bliss here captures the feeling of relief well

Current status - bliss

Send praise, for I have done all the dull, difficult, discomforting tasks this afternoon... 🍹

There's definitely a speculative futures aspect to this whole thing - I like the idea that the kite now has its own IP address and login protocol 🪁

For Comparison: First Moon photograph, 1840: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

I will also acknowledge that I'm doing this while the world is happening, but it is exactly for this reason that I do this.

Live streaming is a possibility too. In any case, such an idea feels about as far away as one can get from the contemporary AI paradigm, hence the appeal...

Black and white photo of electronic displays

Work continues apace on the Kite Drone project. I've been wrangling with the RPi hotspot feature to implement wireless communication and control of the system. Toying with an idea that the only time the whole "piece" manifests, and can be accessed, is when it's flown, by tuning into the "KiteNet".