feed.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="4.2.2">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2025-07-01T08:20:27-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/feed.xml</id><title type="html">⧉</title><subtitle>Notes and log entries.</subtitle><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><entry><title type="html">A break in their own isolation</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/07/01/break-in-their-own-isolation/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="A break in their own isolation" /><published>2025-07-01T00:00:00-05:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/07/01/break-in-their-own-isolation</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/07/01/break-in-their-own-isolation/"><![CDATA[<blockquote>
  <p>The qualities described by Sheila and Aaron – being ‘open to learning and helping,’ learning to ‘let go’ of obsessive mastery of a topic or project, valuing ‘enrichment’ – and, in other interviews, of being a ‘constant learner’ who is not ‘arrogant,’ who can ‘ask more questions’ – suggest a social and moral reframing of the ideal interdisciplinary scientist. This reframing depends on scientists’ capacity to embrace a ‘break’ in their own ‘isolation,’ and hence to define themselves relationally, as part of an eclectic and dynamic ecosystem; and to express relational ideals such as humility, helpfulness and mutuality in place of authority and control.
<cite>— Liron Shani, Talie Fried &amp; Michael M. J. Fischer, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2025.2513879" class="web-link">Becoming amphibious: scientists’ identities and affective relations in the swamp of computational biology</a>” (2025)</cite></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Why post this?</strong> Enjoyed this ethnographic analysis of the “swamp” of <a href="https://cbd.cmu.edu/about-us/what-is-computational-biology.html" class="web-link">computational biology</a>, which has broader relevance as an example of how adaptive capacity manifests in practice. The paper shows researchers developing “relational credibility” – a legitimacy built through openness, not institutional authority. Successful computational biologists develop “sufficient knowledge and sensitivity to understand the other side” through sustained engagement across difference.</p>

<p>Instead of the synthesis and integrative frameworks prioritised by conventional interdisciplinary work<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>, this “amphibious” model doesn’t try to resolve tensions between different knowledge types. Instead, it creates viable ways to inhabit uncertainty, to work within those same tensions, operating across domains with different timescales, risk tolerances, and material infrastructure. In computational biology, “getting [one’s] hands wet” isn’t metaphorical, but requires <em>literal</em> hands-on engagement with biological experiments, alongside collaborators from other fields – an embodied translation through mutual learning, with no single participant operating from a position of mastery.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></p>

<p>Yet this raises questions about accessibility. Who can <em>afford</em> to be amphibious? This kind of adaptive capacity isn’t equally available; sustained engagement and vulnerability comes with its own emotional costs. Success in computational biology depends on capacities that most existing evaluation systems neither recognise nor support, motivating researchers to develop informal workarounds and alternative forms of peer validation.</p>

<p>How specific is this to computational biology? The paper’s “swamp” metaphor highlights fluidity and temporality, but where else does making sense of complex problems require crossing between different approaches to risk, time, and materials? When does this amphibious model work, and when (and where) does it break down?</p>

<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  <ol>
    <li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>See Andrew Barry, Georgina Born, and Gisa Weszkalnys, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140701760841" class="web-link">Logics of interdisciplinarity</a>” (2008), which critiques the common understanding of interdisciplinarity “simply in terms of the synthesis of two or more disciplines”, noting how this obscures alternative approaches. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>Anthropologist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2016.1270343" class="web-link">Kirsten Hastrup’s analysis of Arctic fieldwork</a> captures much the same dynamic, showing how “the implicated disciplines become visible as human practices, embodied, and emplaced.” In our own <a href="https://easst.net/easst-review/381/views-from-the-edge-prototyping-rapid-ethnography-in-madeira/" class="web-link">10-day experimental ethnography in Madeira</a> back in 2018, planned “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9526-z" class="web-link">walkshops</a>” proved impossible to convene, but insights came from shared encounters with unfamiliar tools and methods. In these cases, as in computational biology, new understanding emerged <em>because</em> individual expertise was insufficient, forcing collective sense-making. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
  </ol>
</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="quotes" /><category term="collaboration" /><category term="interdisciplinarity" /><category term="ethnography" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[The qualities described by Sheila and Aaron – being ‘open to learning and helping,’ learning to ‘let go’ of obsessive mastery of a topic or project, valuing ‘enrichment’ – and, in other interviews, of being a ‘constant learner’ who is not ‘arrogant,’ who can ‘ask more questions’ – suggest a social and moral reframing of the ideal interdisciplinary scientist. This reframing depends on scientists’ capacity to embrace a ‘break’ in their own ‘isolation,’ and hence to define themselves relationally, as part of an eclectic and dynamic ecosystem; and to express relational ideals such as humility, helpfulness and mutuality in place of authority and control. — Liron Shani, Talie Fried &amp; Michael M. J. Fischer, “Becoming amphibious: scientists’ identities and affective relations in the swamp of computational biology” (2025)]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Exquisite corpse</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/06/20/exquisite-corpse/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Exquisite corpse" /><published>2025-06-20T00:00:00-05:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/06/20/exquisite-corpse</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/06/20/exquisite-corpse/"><![CDATA[<div class="image-container">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/06/holbein-skull.jpg" alt="Anamorphic skull from Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors (1533), stripped of its original perspectival distortion">

  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/06/zermatt-belay.jpg" alt="Toni Frissell's 1954 aerial photograph of mountaineers on a Zermatt rock face – one belaying from above while another ascends via static rope line">
</div>

<blockquote>
  <p>A poet writing ‘with’ ChatGPT is again just enjoying their own abilities to mine what they index as gems from a resource. Exploring a landscape or a cave system or an ancient megalith is a far more apt metaphor for so-called ‘co-creative’ activity – sure, the environment may appear to attend to you over time, but let’s make no mistakes about the dramatic unevenness in the scales of these mutual encounters.</p>

  <p>But the learning side: that’s where the magic happens. The machine encounters unstructured data, updates its parameters stochastically, and alters the logic it uses next time. This process is literally abductive reasoning: each backpropagation cycle tests a hypothesis against new or known data, generating error feedback that modifies the model’s latent representation space and alters its space of reason. When the training process completes (or is considered complete) the model dries out into a kind of husk or a super beautiful cocoon. When I talk ‘with’ ChatGPT, I am talking to a corpse.
<cite>— Roberto Alonso Trillo &amp; Marek Poliks, “<a href="https://echo.orpheusinstituut.be/article/interface-after-ai" class="web-link">Interface after AI</a>” (2025)</cite></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Why post this?</strong> This “talking to a corpse” analysis cuts through anthropomorphic confusion to reveal what’s actually happening technically – inference through fixed weights. But what’s absent is exactly what enables productive exploration.</p>

<p>This requires navigating what anthropologist Jakob Krause-Jensen recognises as a productive contradiction: these systems are “not human, and yet not-not human”. As he observes, you have to engage “as if” they were human, because that’s what works for exploration.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> The performative necessity of treating it as a dialogue partner itself becomes a generative constraint. In <a href="https://justinpickard.net/log/2024/09/15/latent-futures-in-cambridge/" class="web-link">earlier work</a>, I’ve approached this as a “belay line into latent space”. The rope doesn’t need to learn or adapt; its static properties – a reliable anchor point, consistent tension – are what make exploration possible. But more than being secured to equipment, you’re engaged in a kind of phantom dialogue with the mountain itself. The model’s “corpse-ness”, its fixed weights and response patterns, create the stable constraints that permit structured navigation.</p>

<p>Yet when the authors call for “reciprocal learning”, identifying what current systems lack, they’re looking for indetermination in the wrong place. They want <em>architectural</em> flexibility – models that can learn and adapt during interaction. But indetermination is already present in the interpretive work users do: in the gap between prompt and output, and between output and context. These represent different kinds of user agency. The first gap is generative uncertainty – you never know exactly what the model will produce from your prompt. The second is contextual translation – taking that output and applying it to your specific situation, needs, or constraints. The margin of indetermination the authors want isn’t missing from the model’s architecture; it derives from this interpretation at the interface.</p>

<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  <ol>
    <li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>From Krause-Jensen’s comments on “AI and the Craft of Anthropology” at the RAI Anthropology and Education Conference, 25–28 June 2024. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
  </ol>
</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="quotes" /><category term="genai" /><category term="tools" /><category term="interfaces" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Latency at the interface</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/05/21/latency-at-the-interface/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Latency at the interface" /><published>2025-05-21T00:00:00-05:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/05/21/latency-at-the-interface</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/05/21/latency-at-the-interface/"><![CDATA[<h4 id="on-june-5th-ill-be-participating-in-latent-futures-an-online-seminar-organised-by-professors-jen-ross-and-richard-sandford-this-event-challenges-the-conventional-view-of-futures-as-distant-projections-exploring-instead-both-processes-already-unfolding-and-possibilities-concealed-within-our-present-arrangements">On June 5th, I’ll be participating in <a href="https://www.latentfutures.org/" class="web-link"><em>Latent Futures</em></a>, an online seminar organised by Professors Jen Ross and Richard Sandford. This event challenges the conventional view of futures as distant projections, exploring instead both processes already unfolding and possibilities concealed within our present arrangements.</h4>

<div class="image-container">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/05/NEC-videophone.jpg" alt="1960s NEC videophone demonstration showing the materiality of presence-at-a-distance, where mediated faces emerge through technological latency">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/05/chat-gpt-memory.jpg" alt="ChatGPT's memory interface revealing the usually hidden infrastructure of algorithmic forgetting, where personal data is selectively preserved or erased">
</div>

<p>In both technological history and our theoretical frameworks, we’ve artificially separated two understandings of latency: as measurable delay (a millisecond lag in telecommunications) or hidden potential (the compressed possibilities in statistical models). My talk reunites these bifurcated genealogies, positioning latency as a “generative threshold condition” that emerges wherever different systems, timescales, and ways of knowing come into contact.</p>

<p>Working at these thresholds through recent collaborative projects – from “<a href="https://vjnks.com/projects/latent-intimacies" class="web-link">Latent Intimacies</a>” at Medialab Matadero to <a href="https://justinpickard.net/log/2024/11/10/performing-smallness-in-barcelona/" class="web-link">experimental software development with Tim Cowlishaw</a> – I’ve come to see that interfaces aren’t passive boundaries, but active sites where constraints and possibilities are negotiated. Millisecond gaps in video calls, dimensionality compression in image recognition, designed impermanence in experimental systems – these aren’t problems to be solved, but generative conditions that shape what becomes possible.</p>

<p>Drawing on examples from film, AI image captioning, and my own experimental prototyping experiences, I’ll show how latency operates simultaneously as constraint and possibility. This approach offers a way to recognise futures already unfolding at the boundaries of perception and practice – not by projecting possibilities onto an empty future, but by cultivating attention to threshold phenomena in the present.</p>

<blockquote>
  <h2 id="latency-at-the-interface-constraint-possibility-and-perception">‘Latency at the Interface: Constraint, Possibility, and Perception’</h2>

  <p>This paper rethinks latency – not just as delay or hidden potential, but as a quality of interfaces where different systems, timescales, and ways of knowing meet. Across its history, “latency” has described both measurable delay (as in experimental psychology, telecommunications) and hidden or compressed potential (in psychoanalysis, statistics, and, more recently, generative AI). Rather than treating these technical and metaphorical genealogies as separate, I argue that they share a common logic. Latency marks a threshold: it is at the interface – where constraint and possibility are negotiated – that what is imperceptible can, under certain conditions, become perceptible.</p>

  <p>Drawing from my own work using intentional delay and decay to surface alternative data practices, across collaborative AI prototyping and experimental software, I show how this threshold logic can ground the analysis of latent futures already underway. This perspective clarifies the stakes of working with latent futures, offering a portable analytic for researchers seeking to recognise and cultivate possibilities at the boundaries of systems, disciplines, and temporal regimes.</p>

  <p>My analysis positions latency as simultaneously constraint and possibility. This understanding emerged through hands-on, necessarily partial engagements with latent phenomena. Established approaches failed to explain what was observed, resulting in what Helen Verran terms ‘disconcertment’: moments of unease that signal the limits of existing frameworks. Here, partiality becomes a resource for surfacing threshold phenomena. Latency, then, is not a delay to be eliminated, but a generative condition.</p>

  <p>Building on John Law’s ‘method assemblage’ and Sara Ahmed’s analysis of orientation, I argue that research approaches themselves operate as interfaces, amplifying certain patterns while rendering others less discernible. I close by outlining how cultivating interface conditions and attending to constraints can help discern possibilities that would otherwise remain imperceptible, inviting engagement with latent futures already unfolding at the boundaries of perception and practice.</p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<h4 id="references"><strong>References</strong></h4>

<div class="custom-bibliography">
  <p>Ahmed, S. (2006). <em>Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others</em>. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.</p>

  <p>Bacon, F. (1620). <em>Novum Organum, Book II</em>. London: John Bill and Christopher Barker.</p>

  <p>Cowlishaw, T., and J. Pickard. (2024). “Codes, Cards, and Compost: Performing Smallness in Software.” Paper presented at <em><a href="https://hibrides.axolot.cat/" class="web-link">Híbrides: Small Embodied Data</a></em>, Axolot &amp; UOC, Barcelona, Spain, November 28–30 2024.</p>

  <p>Jankauskas, V., P. Casas, J. Goikoetxea, V. Castillo, J. Pickard, and M. Ramirez. (2024). “<a href="https://vjnks.com/projects/latent-intimacies" class="web-link">Latent Intimacies</a>.” Collaborative prototyping project produced at <em>LAB#03 Synthetic Minds</em> Collaborative Prototyping Lab, Medialab Matadero, Madrid, January 24–February 10 2024.</p>

  <p>Law, J. (2004). <em>After Method: Mess in Social Science Research</em>. London: Routledge.</p>

  <p>Nguyen, K., director. (2018). <em>The Hummingbird Project</em>. USA: Lionsgate Films.</p>

  <p>Ramos, R., B. Martins, D. Elliott, and Y. Kementchedjhieva. (2023). “SmallCap: Lightweight Image Captioning Prompted with Retrieval Augmentation.” arXiv preprint. 🔓<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01475" class="web-link">https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.01475</a></p>

  <p>Shannon, C. E. (1948). “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” <em>Bell System Technical Journal</em> 27 (July–October): 379–423, 623–656. 🔓<a href="https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf" class="web-link">https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf</a></p>

  <p>Verran, H. (2001). <em>Science and an African Logic</em>. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.</p>

  <p>Verran, H. (2023). “How to Use Disconcertment as Ethnographic Field-Device.” In <em>An Ethnographic Inventory: Field Devices for Anthropological Inquiry</em>, edited by Tomás Criado and Adolfo Estalella, 43–51. London: Routledge.</p>

</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="talks" /><category term="genai" /><category term="prototypes" /><category term="latency" /><category term="futures" /><category term="interfaces" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[On June 5th, I’ll be participating in Latent Futures, an online seminar organised by Professors Jen Ross and Richard Sandford. This event challenges the conventional view of futures as distant projections, exploring instead both processes already unfolding and possibilities concealed within our present arrangements.]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Perhaps they had simply migrated elsewhere</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/23/perhaps-they-had-simply/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Perhaps they had simply migrated elsewhere" /><published>2025-01-23T00:00:00-06:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/23/perhaps-they-had-simply</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/23/perhaps-they-had-simply/"><![CDATA[<blockquote>
  <p>[<strong>Interviewer:</strong>] You yourself are an avid hiker and explorer. These are moments when you contemplate what ties us to the territories we traverse, their myths and legends, their wondrous and unsettling creatures. Is your book born of an attempt to connect these two universes that dwell within you: the ultra-contemporary digital world of design and innovation, and that of past myths?</p>

  <p>[<strong>Nova:</strong>] Indeed, while I’ve done a lot of work on digital technology, in recent years I’ve turned my attention to studying our ways of relating to the world, taking the Alps or the environmental crisis as my subjects. As an anthropologist, this is observational work. In fact, the book’s hypothesis, that “the wondrous creatures now make their homes in our machines”, came directly from a conversation in the Alps, where someone told me such entities had vanished from the mountains. To which I replied, perhaps they had simply migrated elsewhere.</p>

  <p>What interests me is studying a kind of contemporary folklore that helps us grasp both our tools and the world we inhabit. For me, these are different domains: transformed territories, such as the Alps, and those of digital technology. I don’t want to draw a line between these worlds – there are continuities that connect them, shared beliefs that sustain our collective imagination.
<cite>— Nicolas Nova &amp; Maxence Grugier, “<a href="https://fisheyeimmersive.com/article/digital-mirabilia-conversation-avec-nicolas-nova-sur-la-persistance-du-merveilleux-numerique/" class="web-link">On the stubborn persistance of digital wonder</a>” (2025)</cite></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Why post this?</strong><sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> My machine-assisted translation of a <a href="https://fisheyeimmersive.com/article/digital-mirabilia-conversation-avec-nicolas-nova-sur-la-persistance-du-merveilleux-numerique/" class="web-link"><em>Fisheye Immersive</em> interview</a> with Nicolas Nova, published posthumously, about his new book.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> Only now am I coming to fully appreciate how his recent, book-length works, untranslated from the original French, represent missing pieces of my own research puzzle.</p>

<p>As established disciplines and knowledge systems fragment and calcify, Nova’s careful methods and enduring preoccupations assume fresh resonance. His emphasis on systematic observation, attention to vernacular knowledge and practices, things both quotidian<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">3</a></sup> and anomalous, compilation of bestiaries and lexicons, becoming an ‘informed amateur’ in niche domains<sup id="fnref:4" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:4" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">4</a></sup> – these offer crucial tools for wayfinding in ‘des territoires très transformés.’</p>

<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  <ol>
    <li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>A prompt stolen <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20250123194353/http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2011/03/16/keyboard-hack-3" class="web-link">from the man himself</a>. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>See <a href="https://we-make-money-not-art.com/monsters-and-wonders-inside-our-machines/" class="web-link">Régine Debatty’s review/overview</a>, and <a href="https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/it/edizioni/riviste/magazen/2023/2/mapping-our-digital-menagerie-a-monster-manual-for/" class="web-link">the article that preceded the book</a>. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
      <p><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20240623015655/http://www.nicolasnova.net/pasta-and-vinegar/2008/01/10/question-your-tea-spoons" class="web-link">Question your teaspoons</a>. <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:4" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>Such as <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20240324060336/https://dataairlines.bandcamp.com/merch/8-bit-reggae-collision-and-creolization-by-nicolas-nova" class="web-link">8-bit reggae</a>. <a href="#fnref:4" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
  </ol>
</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="methodology" /><category term="fieldwork" /><category term="observation" /><category term="digital folklore" /><category term="opacity" /><category term="ethnography" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[[Interviewer:] You yourself are an avid hiker and explorer. These are moments when you contemplate what ties us to the territories we traverse, their myths and legends, their wondrous and unsettling creatures. Is your book born of an attempt to connect these two universes that dwell within you: the ultra-contemporary digital world of design and innovation, and that of past myths? [Nova:] Indeed, while I’ve done a lot of work on digital technology, in recent years I’ve turned my attention to studying our ways of relating to the world, taking the Alps or the environmental crisis as my subjects. As an anthropologist, this is observational work. In fact, the book’s hypothesis, that “the wondrous creatures now make their homes in our machines”, came directly from a conversation in the Alps, where someone told me such entities had vanished from the mountains. To which I replied, perhaps they had simply migrated elsewhere. What interests me is studying a kind of contemporary folklore that helps us grasp both our tools and the world we inhabit. For me, these are different domains: transformed territories, such as the Alps, and those of digital technology. I don’t want to draw a line between these worlds – there are continuities that connect them, shared beliefs that sustain our collective imagination. — Nicolas Nova &amp; Maxence Grugier, “On the stubborn persistance of digital wonder” (2025)]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Keeping track: 2025-W3</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/19/keeping-track/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Keeping track: 2025-W3" /><published>2025-01-19T00:00:00-06:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/19/keeping-track</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/19/keeping-track/"><![CDATA[<h4 id="attention-stretched-thin-across-winters-grey-voices-cast-into-future-rooms-as-old-stories-assume-new-weight">Attention stretched thin across winter’s grey, voices cast into future rooms as old stories assume new weight.</h4>

<div class="image-container">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/01/morris-mural.jpg" alt="Wall-sized mural depicting William Morris against a leaf-print wallpaper pattern">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/01/underground-embroidery.jpg" alt="Circle line moquette fabric design featuring interconnected red human figures on a blue background">
</div>

<p>When my friend <a href="https://davidbenque.com/" class="web-link">David</a> invited me to specify my own role title as an affiliate of his para-fictional institute<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>, I found myself wrestling with fundamental questions of identity beyond traditional institutional boundaries. If there were no limits, what role or remit <em>would</em> I opt into? After some reflection, I found myself gravitating toward historical examples of institutional ‘keepers’ – those tasked not with ‘delivering projects’ but maintaining and tending to collections, practices, relationships over time.</p>

<p>This sparked strangely with anthropologists Andrew Graan and Carl Rommel’s recent work on <a href="https://doi.org/10.3167/saas.2024.320302" class="web-link">project temporalities</a>, which I chewed through this week, particularly their observation that projects aren’t neutral vehicles for human action. My own recent encounters with improvised, pragmatic research practices – from a former Zoological Society researcher’s account of collecting sperm by placing Eppendorf tubes in freeze-dried birds, to prototyping markdown templates for my own field observation needs – highlight both the limits of project frameworks and the need for scaffolds that can support more open-ended forms of attention and care.</p>

<h5 id="undertakings"><strong>Undertakings:</strong></h5>

<ul>
  <li>Review of materials from four recent funding applications, mapping and taking notes on recurring patterns and tacit themes. Though mostly a stocktaking exercise after an intense run of proposal writing, this helped clarify how my work is developing, particularly around ideas of documentation and collaborative work.</li>
  <li>Check-in with the complete Anarchive editorial team, after a prolonged hiatus; good to realign and identify immediate priorities, particularly around interview processing and breakthroughs on this web canvas interface.</li>
  <li>Some early progress developing the spine of a markdown notetaking/documentation system tailored to my own needs, setting up a dedicated Obsidian vault for experiments.</li>
  <li>Long-overdue catch-up with David, ostensibly seeking his advice on structural armatures for creative/hybrid practice, but quickly sliding into more general life chat. The call jolted us into reactivating a publishing experiment that had stalled when I left for Madrid this time last year, leaving me working out how to triage 2000+ phone screenshots against some still-emerging criteria of ‘relevance.’</li>
</ul>

<h5 id="side-missions"><strong>Side-missions:</strong></h5>

<ul>
  <li>Trial day at new local coworking space was less that I’d hoped for; felt unsettled, still stabilising, an environment in transition. The comparatively more business-like atmosphere (and user base) suggest a different model of shared space that my previous experiences – more infrastructure than social container, at least for now. Did use the day to crack on with some postponed/unhelpfully-scaled admin tasks, emails, etc., and grateful for that. Left my laptop charger behind, prompting a jittery early start on Wednesday.</li>
  <li>Got a bit overexcited by the programme for this Brussels workshop on ‘<a href="https://www.lesnouveauxhabitsducolportage.be/" class="web-link">Prototypes for a pirate colporage</a>’, having gone a bit off the deep end with the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/fe8d0d96-ccbf-4410-8955-306987aea3b5" class="web-link">Walter Benjamin fixation</a> during my PhD.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> Ticking many of my boxes (speculative methods, experimental publishing, the circulation of knowledge), this prompted a flurry of Instagram/Mastodon follows, despite having just deleted the former’s app from my phone.</li>
  <li>Friday-Saturday: Down in London for the weekend; watched <em>Glass Onion</em> at D’s sister’s place while on cat-sitting duty, the 2022 tech billionaire satire landing with a muffled thud in the cold January of 2025. Despite the bitter weather, D and I made it up to Walthamstow for an exhibition on <a href="https://hyphenonline.com/2024/11/11/william-morris-gallery-exhibition-islamic-art-textiles-ceramics-metalwork-manuscripts/" class="web-link">William Morris and Islamic art</a> the following day, though combined food market and family day crowds made for a somewhat rushed visit.</li>
  <li>Sunday: Met up with an old friend and her family, as the five of us gazed, bewildered, at the ‘industrial womb’ currently occupying the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, and made an impromptu dérive through the footprint of the Great Fire of London, from St Paul’s to Pudding Lane, prompted in part by her child’s recounting of diarist Samuel Pepys <a href="https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/04/" class="web-link">burying his parmesan</a>.</li>
</ul>

<h5 id="next-week"><strong>Next week:</strong></h5>

<ul>
  <li>Coffee/similar with <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/geography/staff/8971/dr-asa-roast" class="web-link">Asa</a> in York; hoping to draw on his combined experience as a researcher and <a href="https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/serious-play" class="web-link">confirmed game enthusiast</a> to stress-test some of my early ideas for an April academic workshop on ‘plurimodal’ ethnography, play, and worldmaking.</li>
  <li>Resynchronising with Tim after the winter break, mapping out collaborative activities and sketch some plans for the year ahead, including identifying next steps for our reflexive software development work.</li>
  <li>Blocking out some time for Anarchive editing, returning to these autumn interviews now the midwinter funding application sprint is over.</li>
  <li>Further iteration and testing of my markdown note-taking templates and protocols, alongside some parallel experiments in visual/spatial documentation.<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">3</a></sup>
</li>
  <li>Scheduled call with Laura, gauging our enthusiasm to develop some academic writing based on the <a href="https://justinpickard.net/compost/latent-intimacies/" class="web-link">Latent Intimacies</a> project.</li>
</ul>

<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  <ol>
    <li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>Probably best not to ask; at least, not <em>yet</em>. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
      <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom_(video_game)#Appearance_in_other_media" class="web-link">Badge</a>: ‘Ask me about the colportage phenomenon of space.’ <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>Sticking fiducial markers to things, mostly. <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
  </ol>
</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="weeknotes" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Attention stretched thin across winter’s grey, voices cast into future rooms as old stories assume new weight.]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Gimbal: 2025-W2</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/12/gimbal/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Gimbal: 2025-W2" /><published>2025-01-12T00:00:00-06:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/12/gimbal</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2025/01/12/gimbal/"><![CDATA[<h4 id="face-first-into-the-new-year-last-of-the-winter-application-blitz-amid-frost-and-an-oscillating-half-grief">Face-first into the new year, last of the winter application blitz amid frost and an oscillating half-grief.</h4>

<p><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GPN-2000-000596_(5554020684).jpg" class="web-link"><img class="img-padded" src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2025/01/MASTIF.jpg" alt="NASA gimbal rig, formally known as the Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility (MASTIF)"></a></p>

<p>Between funding applications and year-end reflection, these past weeks have been an exercise in maintaining orientation through multiple forms of motion. This image of NASA’s <a href="https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/MASTIF-Description-1962.pdf" class="web-link">Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility</a> (MASTIF) captures this need for articulated movement, for finding ways to work with prevailing forces, while retaining the ability to pivot and respond.</p>

<h5 id="undertakings"><strong>Undertakings:</strong></h5>

<ul>
  <li>Submitted a funding application for a tiny, peri-academic group project exploring how people develop practical techniques for working with complex systems they can’t fully comprehend. Drafting the proposal required a careful negotiation of the envisaged team members’ interests and methodologies, creating interfaces between different forms of knowledge and practice.</li>
  <li>Drafted and submitted a proposal for a tech art installation, including a call with a teammate in Bilbao on Wednesday, and pulses of text-wrangling with the project lead on Friday and Saturday. Getting better at submitting materials that are ‘good enough’, avoiding the drive for perfection and (in the process) leaving a bit more space for the reader.</li>
  <li>Back into the <a href="https://anarchive.fo.am/" class="web-link">Anarchive</a> workflow (an experimental publishing project with <a href="https://fo.am/about/" class="web-link">FoAM</a>), continuing to untangle two September-October interviews that have emerged as webs of interconnected themes and references, reflecting networks of practice and understanding. My next steps will require a careful attention to how different themes relate and intersect, as I attempt to document these patterns without flattening them.</li>
</ul>

<h5 id="side-missions"><strong>Side-missions:</strong></h5>

<ul>
  <li>Completed a <a href="https://yearcompass.com/" class="web-link">YearCompass</a> workbook for 2024-25, having peer pressured a friend into doing so, and then been peer pressured back, in turn. It was bit of a slog, taking a couple of days of focused attention, but it was good to hold some time and space to look back before looking forward, and get a better sense of my current trajectory and the changes or steers required. This led me to choose ‘<a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/gimbal#etymonline_v_33780" class="web-link">gimbal</a>’ as my word for the coming year (hence the post title and NASA image) – evoking this sense of maintaining orientation through turbulence.</li>
  <li>Tour of a new local coworking space, operated by a <a href="https://bcorporation.uk/" class="web-link">B-corp</a>, in a former <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c77xd65gd6ro" class="web-link">bonding warehouse</a> adjacent to the river (tour manager was quick to point out the comprehensive floodproofing). The space is under 5 minutes from our house, so while money is tight, I’m keen to explore the possibility of a weekly anchor point for focused work and ambient human contact. The space’s ongoing development – subdividing larger areas originally intended for single companies into more flexible configurations – suggests something interesting about York’s organisational landscape: a shift toward smaller teams requiring more flexible, distributed infrastructure.</li>
  <li>Couple of <em><a href="https://www.frostpunkgame.com/" class="web-link">Frostpunk</a></em> binges to shake application stress.</li>
</ul>

<h5 id="next-week"><strong>Next week:</strong></h5>

<ul>
  <li>Trial day at the coworking space, taking this as an opportunity to prototype some lightweight documentation methods and reflection protocols – with an eye to how this might support my ongoing practice. Something here about finding ways to trace and support emergent patterns without choking them.</li>
  <li>Catching up on emails; less inbox management than reestablishing rhythms of connection, getting some conversations back up and running after the break.</li>
  <li>Possible London trip from Friday – balancing much-needed social time with current resource constraints.</li>
</ul>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="weeknotes" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Face-first into the new year, last of the winter application blitz amid frost and an oscillating half-grief.]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Performing smallness in Barcelona</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/11/10/performing-smallness-in-barcelona/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Performing smallness in Barcelona" /><published>2024-11-10T00:00:00-06:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/11/10/performing-smallness-in-barcelona</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/11/10/performing-smallness-in-barcelona/"><![CDATA[<h4 id="later-this-month-ill-be-taking-a-slow-journey-to-barcelona--looping-through-france-via-lyon-and-luma-arles-before-joining-my-collaborator-tim-in-tarragona-well-be-presenting-at-híbrides-a-three-day-event-exploring-small-embodied-data-sharing-our-ongoing-exploration-of-how-software-might-perform-smallness">Later this month, I’ll be taking a slow journey to Barcelona – looping through France via Lyon and LUMA Arles, before joining my collaborator <a href="https://www.timcowlishaw.co.uk/" class="web-link">Tim</a> in Tarragona. We’ll be presenting at <a href="https://hibrides.axolot.cat/" class="web-link">Híbrides</a>, a three-day event exploring ‘small embodied data,’ sharing our ongoing exploration of how software might perform ‘smallness.’</h4>

<div class="image-container">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2024/11/smallness-timandj.png" alt="A split-screen video call showing Tim and Justin in discussion, with Tim holding a Raspberry Pi">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2024/11/smallness-if.png" alt="A dark display showing four if-then statements as a framework for regulating mental or emotional states">
</div>

<blockquote>
  <h2 id="code-cards-and-compost-performing-smallness-in-software">‘Code, Cards and Compost: Performing Smallness in Software’</h2>

  <p>This talk explores ‘smallness’ in software through two tools: Humus, a forgetful, Rust-based ‘composting database’, and Querent.py, a Python system for tarot practice built on Humus. Developed by ‘doing ethnography through writing software’ across our home cities (York, Tarragona), these tools embody alternative temporalities and data practices. Tarot, a system structuring intuition while overflowing its own bounds, informs our approach to data representation, revealing tensions between intuitive knowledge and computational schemas in enacting smallness.</p>

  <p>By focusing on situated development and local deployment, we show how small software can engender different affordances, supporting more intuitive ways of knowing. This ongoing work explores practical ways to achieve smallness, contributing to discussions about AI, small data sets, and degrowth. Our tools challenge conventional notions of data persistence and retrieval, offering a glimpse of alternative technological possibilities.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>What started as a skill exchange – Python tutorials for a crash course in ethnographic methods – has developed into something more experimental. Our remote collaboration has been unfolding through Jitsi calls and GitHub commits, with shared terminal sessions becoming a kind of digital field site. The codebase becomes a palimpsest extruded through time, with snippets serving as both technical specification and communicative gesture.</p>

<p>Central to this work is the link between physical practice and digital interfaces. From card-shuffling to coding to Tim’s guitar-playing, we’re exploring how software might honour rather than abstract away from embodied practice. Our tools reflect this philosophy: Querent.py is designed to augment the use of a physical tarot deck, while Humus embraces forgetting and decay as fundamental operations. Similarly, our approach to smallness isn’t just about scale – it’s about fostering more proximal, ‘thick’ interactions between users and their data. By rejecting complex solutions, we’re enacting what Tim calls “a refusal of largeness.” The line between small and large might shift, but the act of drawing that line is itself a performance of smallness.</p>

<p>We’re treating the development process itself as an ethnographic field site, taking software as both a method and our object of study. Using a homebrew command line tool to document how choices about programming languages, data structures, and interaction shape our understanding, we’re exploring what it means to ‘do ethnography through software.’ Sometimes this kind of philosophical carpentry means building wide-aperture funnels to catch and regulate your users’ attention<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>; sometimes it’s just about choosing the right tool for the job.</p>

<p>Ping-ponging our way through this development cycle, Tim is bringing his craft and pragmatism to temper my more speculative, increasingly cybernetic<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> tendencies. His recent work on the project’s sequencing helped clarify how Humus and Querent.py demonstrate alternative versions of computation – small and situated, resisting accumulation. At <a href="https://hibrides.axolot.cat/" class="web-link">Híbrides</a>, we’ll share these early experiments in ‘small’ software development and local computing, opening and holding space for future work.</p>

<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  <ol>
    <li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>Like the homeostatic pattern-matching system in the second image above. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>No, I don’t know either. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
  </ol>
</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="talks" /><category term="software" /><category term="scale" /><category term="smallness" /><category term="tools" /><category term="research" /><category term="ethnography" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Later this month, I’ll be taking a slow journey to Barcelona – looping through France via Lyon and LUMA Arles, before joining my collaborator Tim in Tarragona. We’ll be presenting at Híbrides, a three-day event exploring ‘small embodied data,’ sharing our ongoing exploration of how software might perform ‘smallness.’]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Adding a chair to a desk scene</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/10/30/adding-a-chair-to-a-desk-scene/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Adding a chair to a desk scene" /><published>2024-10-30T00:00:00-05:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/10/30/adding-a-chair-to-a-desk-scene</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/10/30/adding-a-chair-to-a-desk-scene/"><![CDATA[<blockquote>
  <p>‘Design that is also research is what we learn in the actual designing of things; of keyboards and desks and tables and chairs and lamps and switches. In making those things and thinking about the people who will touch and use them you generate knowledge, understanding and insight about the future. […] A reason these renders take so long is that even adding a chair to a desk scene forces me to ask questions like; how long does this person sit? What kind of things do they like? Are the proud of their work? What else might they need to do? How might their personality be reflected in the chair? And in exploring and answering those questions I feed the knowledge back into the stories and the world-building.’
<cite>— Tobias Revell, “<a href="https://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2024/10/30/box101-i-suppose-its-a-gift-but-not-a-good-one/" class="web-link">Box114: I suppose it’s a gift. But not a good one.</a>” (2024)</cite></p>
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Why post this?</strong> Three encounters with technical tools this past week track Tobias’s observations about design-as-research, revealing how material resistance generates knowledge. Fresh from an <a href="https://sshx.io/" class="web-link">ssxh</a> session with <a href="https://www.timcowlishaw.co.uk/" class="web-link">Tim</a> yesterday, jamming on some user scenarios for our <a href="https://justinpickard.net/compost/xamota/" class="web-link">Xamota</a> collaboration in real-time, each <a href="https://clig.dev/" class="web-link">CLI</a> interaction prompted questions about context, timing, and rhythm – much as Revell’s chair forced a consideration of its future occupant. While Tim explored user pathways longhand, riffing on his own experiences, I engaged in a rhythmic back-and-forth with Claude (<a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/3-5-models-and-computer-use" class="web-link">※</a>), supplying recent weeks’ codebase prototypes as prompts, each turn in the dialogue revealing new possibilities.</p>

<p>At <a href="http://dorkbotmcr.org/" class="web-link">Dorkbot Manchester</a> last week, artist <a href="https://www.nicolaellis.com/context/" class="web-link">Nicola Ellis</a> described her long-term engagement as a “welcomed outsider” at Ritherdon &amp; Co Ltd, a Lancashire manufacturer of roadside cabinets. From using industrial machines to create <a href="https://www.nicolaellis.com/2019/semi-automatic-machine-self-portraits/" class="web-link">self-portraits</a> to capturing welding rhythms with light sensors, Ritherdon’s culture of measurement – born of lean manufacturing protocols – has supplied Ellis with tools and materials to reveal the human gestures underpinning industrial efficiency.</p>

<p>These dialogues between tool and intention are evident across scales and contexts. While Ellis’s long-term presence at Ritherdon has supported a sustained immersion in factory rhythms, pattern-maker and graphic designer <a href="https://www.himhallows.co.uk/about" class="web-link">Paul Hallows</a> is approaching similar questions from a different angle. Teaching himself <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_360" class="web-link">Fusion 360</a> for a small batch manufacturing project, Paul’s solo venture into digital fabrication is prompting a careful mapping of the gap between platonic digital forms and material constraints – from surface texture to vacuum forming requirements, and the geometry of connection points. Even in this more contained investigation, tools actively shape the design process, each blockage suggesting new possibilities.</p>

<p>From renders to factory machines, resistance is crucial to discovery and documentation. Without friction, we risk leaping to implement preconceptions rather than identifying new openings or possibilities. In each of these cases, the machine is both constraint and interlocutor, forcing us to confront implications we might otherwise miss.</p>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="quotes" /><category term="design" /><category term="tools" /><category term="research" /><category term="material" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[‘Design that is also research is what we learn in the actual designing of things; of keyboards and desks and tables and chairs and lamps and switches. In making those things and thinking about the people who will touch and use them you generate knowledge, understanding and insight about the future. […] A reason these renders take so long is that even adding a chair to a desk scene forces me to ask questions like; how long does this person sit? What kind of things do they like? Are the proud of their work? What else might they need to do? How might their personality be reflected in the chair? And in exploring and answering those questions I feed the knowledge back into the stories and the world-building.’ — Tobias Revell, “Box114: I suppose it’s a gift. But not a good one.” (2024)]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Organised Atoms in Cornwall</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/10/15/organised-atoms-in-cornwall/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Organised Atoms in Cornwall" /><published>2024-10-15T00:00:00-05:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/10/15/organised-atoms-in-cornwall</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/10/15/organised-atoms-in-cornwall/"><![CDATA[<div class="image-container">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2024/10/organised-atoms-bucket.jpg" alt="Orange plastic bucket filled with safety goggles and gloves for a workshop at Cornwall's United Downs Raceway">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2024/10/organised-atoms-water.jpg" alt="A close-up of an open book showing the title of Chapter 5: 'Water! Water! Everywhere'">
</div>

<h4 id="earlier-this-month-i-made-the-trip-down-to-cornwall-to-interview-dave-and-amber-of-then-try-this-as-part-of-my-work-on-foams-anarchive-ahead-of-our-conversation-i-joined-dave-at-the-united-downs-raceway-for-his-latest-organised-atoms-workshop--a-family-event-combining-electronics-field-geology-and-mining-heritage--amid-ferocious-rain">Earlier this month, I made the trip down to Cornwall to interview Dave and Amber of <a href="https://thentrythis.org/about/" class="web-link">Then Try This</a>, as part of my work on FoAM’s <a href="https://justinpickard.net/compost/anarchive/" class="web-link">Anarchive</a>. Ahead of our conversation, I joined Dave at the <a href="http://uniteddownsraceway.co.uk/Home/" class="web-link">United Downs Raceway</a> for his latest “<a href="https://thentrythis.org/projects/organised-atoms/" class="web-link">Organised Atoms</a>” workshop – a family event combining electronics, field geology, and mining heritage – amid ferocious rain.</h4>

<p>The deluged forced us indoors, softening the boundaries between participants and organisers. Older kids and their adults grappled with Then Try This’s cardboard synths in the raceway’s VIP booth, while younger participants decamped to view mineral specimens under a Raspberry Pi-powered microscope with co-facilitator Rosi, in a hastily-rebranded “Rock Lab.”</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Aided by the weather conditions, this workshop started with electronic minerals – from the cardboard synths and iPhone components, and worked backwards to the ground – and it seemed to work better than doing it the other way around. One of the best things about activities like this on the [United Downs] raceway is that you can easily cover a wide range of subjects, chemistry, geology, technology, history – in a context that is distant from any educational or school setting. Many of the people coming have cultural connections either with a family history of mining, or memories of watching cars smash into each other on the raceway – usually both.
<cite>— Dave Griffiths, “<a href="https://thentrythis.org/notes/2024/10/11/organised-atoms-at-united-downs-raceway-fun-palace-workshop/" class="web-link">Organised Atoms at United Downs Raceway: Fun Palace workshop</a>” (2024)</cite></p>
</blockquote>

<p>The United Downs Raceway, with its history as the site of the Ale and Cakes Mine, and its current role as Cornwall’s  “<a href="https://www.huckmag.com/article/poignant-photos-of-cornwalls-last-raceway" class="web-link">last remaining track for banger and stock car racing</a>”, served as neutral ground, an environment where families could engage with science and technology at a safe distance from formal education. The workshop was part of the “<a href="https://funpalaces.co.uk/about-fun-palaces/" class="web-link">Fun Palaces</a>” celebration weekend, one in a raft of free, hands-on, locally-run, pop-up activities running nationwide, inspired by Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price’s “Fun Palace” concept.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></p>

<p>Dave’s emphasis on local materials and off-grid technology assumed a deeper significance amid the (literal, when not shrouded by rain) ruins of Cornish mining history. His approach echoed a long-established tradition of resourcefulness in the region. Faced with similar geographic and resource challenges in the early 19th century, Cornish engineers pioneered highly efficient steam engines, known as Cornish engines, to pump water from deep mines while reducing exposure to the high cost of imported coal. This necessity-driven, collective innovation led to rapid advancements in steam technology. Established in 1811, monthly publication <em>Lean’s Engine Reporter</em> shared detailed performance data of steam engines across different mines; a possible early case of open knowledge sharing (an approach championed today by <a href="https://thentrythis.org/about/" class="web-link">Then Try This</a>, among others).<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote web-link" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></p>

<p>By connecting participants with materials and industrial heritage, “Organised Atoms” not only offered practical, hands-on experience with minerals and electronics, but also subtly illustrated how history can inform contemporary approaches to technology and learning. Observing the workshop in action was, for me, a heartening experience. As well as the vicarious satisfaction of watching pre-teens smashing rocks with hammers that were, in many cases, more than a third of their own body size, co-facilitators Dave and Rosi’s mix of local history, minerals, and electronics was a compelling demonstration of place-based learning.</p>

<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
  <ol>
    <li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>The original “<a href="https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/91951/dangerous-immoral-ahead-of-its-time" class="web-link">Fun Palace</a>”, conceived in 1961, combined Littlewood’s theatrical approach to public participation with Price’s work on technology-driven spaces. Drawing inspiration from early cybernetics and systems thinking, it aimed to create a “laboratory of fun” that would democratise access to culture, anticipating more recent ideas about lifelong education and flexible, adaptive public space. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
    <li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
      <p>My familiarity with the case of the Cornish pumping engine was, I’ve since realised, the result of a decade-old rabbithole into the work of economic historian <a href="https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v10i10.1284" class="web-link">Alessandro Nuvolari</a>, while grappling with appropriate technology and open source hardware for some of my early PhD coursework. While Nuvolari’s arguments (in particular, the parallels with open source software) are not without their detractors, the distinct local context and particularities of early-nineteenth-century Cornish mining are evident in the technologies it produced. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote web-link" role="doc-backlink">⤴︎</a></p>
    </li>
  </ol>
</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="workshops" /><category term="geology" /><category term="technology" /><category term="heritage" /><category term="tools" /><category term="learning" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Latent futures in Cambridge</title><link href="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/09/15/latent-futures-in-cambridge/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Latent futures in Cambridge" /><published>2024-09-15T00:00:00-05:00</published><updated>2025-07-01T08:19:48-05:00</updated><id>https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/09/15/latent-futures-in-cambridge</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://jcalpickard.github.io/log/2024/09/15/latent-futures-in-cambridge/"><![CDATA[<div class="image-container">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2024/09/latent-futures-x-y-axis.png" alt="Stamped x-y axis, gesturing to a 2x2 scenarios matrix">
  <img src="https://files.justinpickard.net/images/log/2024/09/latent-futures-i-see-a-man.png" alt="Machine-generated image caption, as part of Smallcap tests">
</div>

<h4 id="later-this-week-from-the-19-20-september-ill-be-at-the-tacit-engagement-in-the-digital-age-conference-in-cambridge-this-event-brings-together-scholars-and-practitioners-to-examine-the-shifting-relationship-between-human-cognition-creativity-and-artificial-intelligence">Later this week, from the 19-20 September, I’ll be at the ‘<a href="https://cms.mus.cam.ac.uk/news/call-papers-tacit-engagement-digital-age-teda-2024" class="web-link">Tacit Engagement in the Digital Age</a>’ conference in Cambridge. This event brings together scholars and practitioners to examine the shifting relationship between human cognition, creativity, and artificial intelligence.</h4>

<p>As an editor and independent researcher working at the boundaries of ethnography, technology studies, and creative practice, I’ll be contributing to the ‘Agency, Art and Augmentation’ session. My paper draws insights from two recent collaborative projects that explore alternative frameworks for human-AI engagement through the lenses of experimental publishing and collaborative prototyping. I show how these projects uncover ‘latent futures’ – overlooked possibilities within current technological configurations. By sharing these experiences and observations, I hope to contribute to broader discussions about how we might navigate the indeterminacies of an increasingly AI-mediated world; focusing on the specific ways these technologies are reshaping our relationship with knowledge, memory, and creative expression.</p>

<blockquote>
  <h2 id="latent-futures-anarchival-practices-and-intimate-prototypes-in-human-ai-interactions">‘Latent Futures: Anarchival Practices and Intimate Prototypes in Human-AI Interactions’</h2>

  <p>This paper explores alternative frameworks for human-AI interactions through two projects: the ‘<a href="https://anarchive.fo.am/" class="web-link">Anarchive</a>’ (2021–), an experimental publishing initiative working with the archive of transdisciplinary arts network <a href="https://fo.am/" class="web-link">FoAM</a>, and ‘<a href="https://github.com/modern-online/latent_intimacies" class="web-link">Latent Intimacies</a>’ (2024), a set of AI prototypes using locally-hosted speech synthesis and language models. Deploying ethnographic methods in service of collaborative artistic practice, these projects approach AI as a ‘minor technology’ (Anderson &amp; Cox 2023; Fartan 2023), detached from scalar norms of efficiency and optimisation. By grounding speculative exploration in specific contexts and outcomes, they track parallels between generative language models, experimental publishing, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, and archival practice (Lewis et al. 2020, Yiu et al. 2023, Farrell 2024).</p>

  <p>FoAM’s ‘Anarchive’ reframes archival practices in relation to technology, collective knowledge, and creative practice. Experimenting with memory and speculative futures, this ever-expanding publication promotes a critical engagement with current paradigms and their alternatives (Adema and Hall 2012). Current work on this project takes a non-linear, exploratory approach to the theme ‘Re/imagining technology’, providing a rich context for examining how AI interacts with and shapes memory and collective knowledge.</p>

  <p>The outcome of a collaborative prototyping residency at <a href="https://www.mataderomadrid.org/en/programs/medialab-matadero" class="web-link">Medialab Matadero</a> in Madrid, ‘Latent Intimacies’ comprises three technological prototypes, probing human-machine intimacy through vulnerability, protocol, and latency. The three prototypes – exploring concrete-encased tiny datasets, curated language models, and wearable AI for multispecies interactions – leveraged varying configurations of hardware and open-source software to ground our conceptual explorations in tangible experience (cf. Bogost 2012). These objects challenge our assumptions about technology, demonstrating potential interactions that diverge from conventional user interfaces and anthropomorphic conceptions of AI (Suchman 2023).</p>

  <p>Embracing speculative, arts-based approaches and ethnographic methods can unsettle dominant AI narratives and suggest alternative trajectories (Malpass 2017), including those that prioritise collective knowledge, speculative thinking, and intimate, contextual interactions. By exploring these ‘latent futures’ through anarchival practices and intimate prototypes, we open new possibilities for understanding, engaging with, and shaping our technologies (Forlano &amp; Halpern 2023).</p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<h4 id="references"><strong>References</strong></h4>

<div class="custom-bibliography">
  <p>Adema, J., &amp; Hall, G. (2012). The political nature of the book: On artists’ books and radical open access. <em>New Formations</em>, 78(78), 138-156. 🔒<a href="https://doi.org/10.3898/NewF.78.07.2013" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.3898/NewF.78.07.2013</a></p>

  <p>Andersen, C.U., &amp; Cox, G. (2023). Toward a Minor Tech. <em>A Peer-Reviewed Journal About</em>, 12(1), 5–9. 🔓<a href="https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v12i1.140431" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v12i1.140431</a></p>

  <p>Bogost, I. (2012). <em>Alien Phenomenology, or, What It’s Like to Be a Thing</em>. University of Minnesota Press.</p>

  <p>Farrell, H. (2024, January 11) <a href="https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/chatgpt-is-an-engine-of-cultural" class="web-link">ChatGPT is an engine of cultural transmission</a>, <em>Programmable Mutter</em>.</p>

  <p>Fartan, T. S. (2023). Rendering post-anthropocentric visions: Worlding as a practice of resistance. <em>A Peer-Reviewed Journal About</em>, 12(1), 43–60. 🔓<a href="https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v12i1.140437" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.7146/aprja.v12i1.140437</a></p>

  <p>Forlano, L., &amp; Halpern, M. (2023). Speculative histories, just futures: From counterfactual artifacts to counterfactual actions. <em>ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction</em>, 30(2), 1–37. 🔓<a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3577212" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.1145/3577212</a></p>

  <p>Lewis, P., Perez, E., Piktus, A., Petroni, F., Karpukhin, V., Goyal, N., Küttler, H., Lewis, M., Yih, W., Rocktäschel, T., Riedel, S., &amp; Kiela, D. (2020). Retrieval-augmented generation for knowledge-intensive NLP tasks. 🔓<a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2005.11401" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.48550/ARXIV.2005.11401</a></p>

  <p>Malpass, M. (2019). <em>Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practices</em>. Bloomsbury Visual Arts.</p>

  <p>Suchman, L. (2023). The uncontroversial ‘thingness’ of AI. <em>Big Data &amp; Society</em>, 10(2). 🔓<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231206794" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231206794</a></p>

  <p>Yiu, E., Kosoy, E., &amp; Gopnik, A. (2023). Transmission versus truth, imitation versus innovation: What children can do that large language and language-and-vision models cannot (yet), <em>Perspectives on Psychological Science</em>, 19(5), 874-883. 🔓<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231201401" class="web-link">https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231201401</a></p>

</div>]]></content><author><name>Justin Pickard</name></author><category term="talks" /><category term="genai" /><category term="archiving" /><category term="prototypes" /><category term="intimacy" /><category term="latency" /><category term="futures" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[]]></summary></entry></feed>