LinkLog #4

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.

Code Toolkit: JavaScript

Introduction to Computational Media

Networked Media

Web Projects

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 :

I Get This Call Every Day

a personal tale of unwinnable realities.

'The Attendant'

Flight 155’s landing gear has jammed and it's stuck in limbo, burning fuel ahead of an emergency landing.

MOTHERED - A ROLE-PLAYING HORROR GAME

A ROLE-PLAYING HORROR GAME

Rewatched Scooby Doo (2002) and The Room (2003) yesterday.

Research

Art And The Creative Unconscious : Neumann,erich

Book Source: Digital Library of India Item 2015.139225dc.contributor.author: Neumann,erichdc.date.accessioned: 2015-07-04T02:40:23Zdc.date.available:...

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.

Death, Art, and Spirituality - Journal #156

Anton Vidokle traces historical encounters between spirituality and art.

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.

Trapped in a ChatGPT Spiral

A look at just how close and dangerous our relationships with A.I. can be.

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.

The Pain of Perfectionism

It’s the fault people humblebrag about in job interviews, but psychologists are discovering more and more about the real harm it causes.

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).

Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia

Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously to a) counter the technology industry's marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Critical AI

On this page are some resources for Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) from my perspective.

AGAINST AI -

This site is a rough draft, shared to ease back to school prep. Process is product! Materials here are intended as solidarity solace for educators who might find themselves inventing wheels alone while their administrators, trustees, and bosses unrelentingly hype AI and nakedly enthuse the negative consequences for educator labor.

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.

Scholarship Under Autocracy

We Have Been Here Before

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.

When Online Content Disappears

A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible.

Archival!

(ESSAY) The Poetics of Memory Online: Hypnospace Outlaw and Literature on DeviantArt by Ian Macartney

In the semi-discarded archive of old-internets, Ian Macartney explores half-remembered corners of web 1.0. Digging through experimental fiction, video games and GlitchLit in the latest instalment of Digital Dreamland.

Web nostalgia.

The Generative Art Museum

A project to spread the word about generative art

Pretty pictures oh my.

Social Media Replaced Zines. Now Zines Are Taking the Power Back

At a time of fleeting memes and cultural platforms operated by multibillion-dollar companies, an old mode of creativity and community-building gets a second life.

woohoo physical media!