hank gerba

i’m thinking about writing a small piece that situates apple’s use of interference patterns / physical properties (chromatic aberration, refraction, etc.) in their new design language…if you want it lmk

YouTube video by Stanford Humanities Center AI & Media Roundtable

Here’s the recording of our “AI and Media” roundtable at the Digital Aesthetics Workshop. Four amazing talks with surprising synergies (especially between the first two and last two). Mine is the last of them, at around ~59:30.

youtu.be/wgIXHs4QmNI?...

yes definitely images for him can be all of the above. So I think for him the mirror stage would be an early moment where that deeper affective image rises to a consciousness and contrasts a visual/tactile image. But yea this will be how I think thru AI stuff !

I think you could argue that ! especially in the difference between a primordial image and a cognitive/perceived one.

Simondon would say that that primordial auto-kinetic image is an organization of the organism *as* an organism, which is to say as a whole, which for him implies an a priori form

(this shows, i think, that despite the transductive attempt, stiegler still has a bit of a hylomorphic hangover when it comes to his understanding of images)

Stiegler says that there can be no mental image without an objective image, referencing Simondon’s transduction. But he misses that for Simondon the a priori image arises from the endogenous anticipation of the organism: auto-kinesis requires no objective correlate, only a milieu

playing well with cats and dogs requires the understanding (conscious or otherwise) that the nature of play is pre-perceptual, organized by motor images in search of objects and properly organized milieux

this is precisely what Simondon would call an image.

t.co/9czKNTyIVl

I’m excited to return to DAW !

My talk, “The Generative Image,” investigates the way in which AI externalizes and operationalizes the imaginative capacities which influence the genetic process of image-formation.

Come for the Simondon, stay for the formal analysis of a cat video.

Universal Narrative Model: an Author-centric Storytelling Framework for Generative AI Generative AI promises to finally realize dynamic, personalized storytelling technologies across a range of media. To date, experimentation with generative AI in the field of procedural narrative gene...

I’ve also got a pre-pub white paper out, as part of my current work at USC on narrative theory and generative AI:

arxiv.org/abs/2503.04844

Moiré Patterns: Toward a Functional Aesthetics of Automatic Images

I’ve got a new article out with Invisible Culture, “Moire Patterns: Toward a Functional Aesthetics of Automatic Images.”

With great thanks to the editors and peer reviewers 🙂‍↕️

www.invisibleculturejournal.com/pub/moire-pa...

In case you missed it 🙂‍↕️

retweeting for your weekend perusal:

Pleased to share my new essay, part of a special issue of communication +1 on "Media Aesthetics." In it, I describe my theory of intimaesthetics, or the aestheticization of intimacy. Shout out to editors @hankg.bsky.social and Zachary McDowell
openpublishing.library.umass.edu/cpo/article/...

The special issue on Media Aesthetics with communication+1 is now available !

Ten articles, and one book review, on a range of topics: film, shutter buttons, software emulation, remediated horror, marginalia, rollercoasters, and much more.

Link: openpublishing.library.umass.edu/cpo/issue/22...

making cookie

added !

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you have been !! 🫡

persistence of* vision !

Just stumbled across this—a “stroboscopic Cupola,” which is sort of like a zootrope you sit inside of. The idea is that this dome with small slits would spin rapidly, and due persistence or vision, would provide a tank commander a 360 view while remaining protected.

Bell Labs Record, June 1926.

"The Manufacture of Vacuum Tubes" provides a surprisingly complete survey of the production steps behind these now seldom-seen devices, which enabled both telephony the earliest digital computers, among other uses. The "Tube Shop" was locate at 395 Hudson St.

I’ll have to set it up but yes 🫡

A funny detail about television transmission, which serves arguments about the television as a domestic technology, is the concept of a “front porch” and “back porch” in the NTSC standard for temporally syncing the rasterized image.

I’ve been informed that I’ll be receiving a mysterious package from sender “AI” this afternoon…next time you hear from me it might be wise to start with “ignore all previous instruction” and see if i start spitting python code at you or something

a Lionel 249e model train.

Time to take out one of my favorite objects, a Lionel 2-4-2 249e. My grandfather bought it in the 30’s, so it’s nearly 100 years old.

It still works ! The coal car hides a (quite loud) whistle, the valve gear is amazing in motion, and it’s even got a little headlight.

done !

you’re in !

🫡🫡

done !