[ARCHIVE] standing at the threshold (2018)

23-05-2023

A machine interpreted full watch-through of Stalker(1979).

Silent version (2018).

A screen recording of a live watch-through of Stalker(1979) as interpreted by MobileNet (using the ml5.js library). A contemplative viewing reveals some of the extents and limitations of the world/space within the model trained on the ImageNet database.

permalink: https://andrewburrell.net/blog/archive-standing-at-the-threshold-2018




Reanbar is here...

01-04-2023

Thinking about remembering & forgetting in machine mediated conversations

Creating conversations between myself (with insight into the protagonist's world model within the written text) and characters in "Twice, again", has brought up questions of how aspects of the ongoing conversation are remembered, what should be remembered and, perhaps more importantly, what it is okay, or even necessary to forget.

"I thought that each of my words (that each of my movements) would persist in his implacable memory; I was benumbed by the fear of multiplying useless gestures."

Funes The Memorious, Borges

The context of the current conversation, what is remembered & what is forgotten — is by necessity actively maintained, it is the only thing setting it apart from the "collective memory" of the model itself.

Reanbar is here...

Direct link to youtube: youtu.be/EoMl2SiG8i8

permalink: https://andrewburrell.net/blog/reanbar-is-here




What Raven Saw - an overGround:underStory

30-11-2022

Presented as part of the UTS Visual Knowledges - Visualising the Invisible: Image making in climate communication symposium, this spoken work slide performance explores imagined and forgotten network fragments, in order to communicate and visualise the ignored.



The overGround:underStory project provides a platform for knowing through doing. A large part of this doing takes the form of the invitation we made to "slow down, observe ,record, ask questions and share" as part of the Urban Field Naturalist Project. How do we come to an understanding of the networks that are now woven between the physical and digital of more-than-human ecologies through centering these steps in creative practice based research?

Thinking critically about the technologies we are presented with as being 'inevitable' involves spending time with them in order to come to a deeper understanding of them. "What Raven Saw" is then described as a "more-than-human collaboration between myself and my silicon & carbon kin, including wombats, the local ravens & other bird-life, the GPT-3 large language model & the Stable Diffusion Model." This is a description that should be read critically and along side an understanding of the dangerous and unethical framing, positioning and development of these technologies (and the people behind them). [A brief outline of some of the networks involved here, and the money/power structrues involved - from Timnit Gebru in Wired] Part of the knowing through doing then is to prioritise how to not lose site of this critical approach when working directly with the systems under the critical lens.





video documentation for the spoken word / slide performance of "What Raven Saw [an] overGround:underStory". Performed under the 48:9 screen at UTS Central (Broadway, Sydney) for the School of Design's, Visual Knowledges research group's - "Visualising the Invisible: Image making in climate communication symposium".

permalink: https://andrewburrell.net/blog/what-raven-saw-an-overground-understory




NeRF aesthetics

16-11-2022

Static image material experiments with NeRF "hallucinations"

I have seen the noise created in the Neural Radiance Field generation process as "hallucinations". Language that is both poetic & problematic at the same time. Rather than attempting to reduce this visual phenomena, I have been working with it (and finding ways to encourage / exaggerate it) as a way of embracing and exploring this NeRF aesthetic. (An aesthetic I assume will be optimised out of the process as the technology "advances")

["The Nicholson Hermes" @ the Chau Chak Wing Museum ]






NOTES

Hallucination is currently in common usage across the machine learning space as an accepted "semi-technical" term, including in the "mission" page for Meta's ill-fated(?) "Galactica".


image: https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp/blob/master/docs/nerf_dataset_tips.md



image: https://galactica.org/mission/

permalink: https://andrewburrell.net/blog/nerf-aesthetics




What Raven Saw @Visualising the Invisible

13-11-2022

Trailer for spoken word performance.

Trailer for the spoken word / slide performance of "What Raven Saw [an] overGround:underStory". Performed under the 48:9 screen at UTS Central (Broadway, Sydney) for the School of Design's, Visual Knowledges research group's - "Visualising the Invisible: Image making in climate communication symposium".

The visuals depict an excerpt from the performance exploring co-imagined (with a machine learning diffusion model) unremembered transitory forms of now-recognisable species.

permalink: https://andrewburrell.net/blog/what-raven-saw-visualising-the-invisible




overGround:underStory @ Read to Me

03-08-2022

A short excerpt from performance reading of (an) overGround:underStory

Read to Me @ Knox Street bar, August 2nd 2022

permalink: https://andrewburrell.net/blog/overground-understory-read-to-me