Man, I am not good at upkeeping this. With the start of the semester (although it is week 4 already), it has been really challenging to maintain a routine and actually want to be on my computer to formally type these up. I could do it on my phone, but I have such a tiny screen I much prefer this as a big screen activity. Even then, I spend so much time on my computer during the week it is hard to want to tippy tap on my own time...
Now
As of Sept 8th, I have my full roster of classes. This is what I spend most of my weeks doing.
Went to West Virginia for the first time for a wedding! It is so beautiful there. We stopped in Pittsburgh to visit my sister, who also started grad school there this fall. The drive to Pittsburgh was awful and took forever, since we left Brooklyn around 3.30pm and hit rush hour and had to drive through Tribeca. On 9/11 no less. It took the same amount of time to get to Pitt from NYC as it took to get from Charleston back to BK.
When I got back, I cat sat the most beautiful boy for the newlyweds.
Attended several talks:
Ken Goldberg, through New School's Code at Lang Colloquium
He opened around the lineage of myths and etymology of robots and uncanny valley.
Discussed differences between Representational Uncanny (looking human) vs. Experience Uncanny (acting human)
History of his works. I thought it was interesting he kept reinforcing the points that robots / AI will not replace humanity, but his project Telegarden (1995) vs Alpha Garden (2020) did exactly that. Marginally hypocrital.
Reinforced the conversation around creativity
big takeaways of "SLOWNESS + BOREDOM = CREATIVITY", which is a consistent theme now.
Fun fact: Maya Man is his niece, and we talked about her Whitney project featured on the hour called A Realistic Day in My Life Living in New York in my Networked Media class this week.
Andrew Bazley speaking on Why Natural Selection Kept us Queer, through Living Room Lectures hosted by Index Space.
Distilled down to: queerness is a beneficial human trait, there is no queer gene, why is heterosexual the default mode of thinking?
Interesting visuals of bacteria + antibiotics, which is very similar to how neural networks work.
Media
Still reading The Night Sky. It is a bit cumbersome when my brain is so tired from the week.
From the Play for Peace bundle:
Rewatched Scooby Doo (2002) and The Room (2003) yesterday.
Research
Started reading Erich Neumann's Art and the Creative Unconscious. The opening essay features Leonardo da Vinci, which I wasn't expecting going into it. The first essay specifically discusses the Great Mother as the birth of creativity and how da Vinci was probably touched by the gods (specifically Nekhbet, the Egyptian vulture god). The Great Mother as a androgynous ourobouros "The father of fathers, the mother of mothers, who hath existed from the beginning and is the creatrix of the world." (13). I drew some parallels from both the Great Mother and da Vinci's queerness to the natural selection talk. Still getting through it, the second essay looks more promising. Lots of Freudian and Jungian analysis, but I am definitely intrigued by the archetype analysis.
I've always been interested in mythologies and spiritualism, which I guess is a big theme of this weeks readings. I do want to read Thought-Forms next likely.
Today, we are once again living through a profound transformation of life and perception—this time driven by digitalization, algorithmic automation, and artificial intelligence. As with earlier technological upheavals, these shifts have brought about widespread anxiety, disorientation, and a renewed sense of alienation. The global resurgence of nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism is one symptom of this deeper unease. In response, many contemporary artists are turning—once again—to mysticism, spirituality, and nonhuman ways of knowing to make sense of the present.
Immensely sad piece about the impacts of echo chambers with chatbots. Lately I have been perusing r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. This isn't something that I want for myself. But it seems more a symptom of the ongoing lonliness epidemic.
Leslie Jamison strikes again. I had a pretty lengthy conversation with a friend about this, and it feels unsatisfying in a resolution. I know there is actively still research happening in this space, but perfectionism is very much a systemetic issue (thinking about grading all the time and participation trophies).
Olivia Guest et al. wrote a letter against AI, and also maintains a list of Critical AI literacy references. Anna Kornbluh has a similar set of resources for teachers.
History repeats itself. I referenced a few times the chart of academics who succumbed to autocracy vs. resisted. I think I'm somewhere in the "emigrate" category, and I'm currently looking up ways to move elsewhere. The UK has a 2 year visa for people who graduated from a top 50 university and a lot of conversation this week have been around potentially moving there.
Archival!
Web nostalgia.
Pretty pictures oh my.
woohoo physical media!