Richard A Carter

Love the colours on this one

I'm quietly rather delighted by how many people have responded to this one so positively across various places. The images do not show up in the preview block, so here is one of them

Better Images of AI We are a non-profit creating more realistic and inclusive images of artificial intelligence. Visit our growing repository available for anyone to use for free under CC licences, or just to use as insp...

Pleased to say that two images I designed for the BRAID Museums and Heritage resource (sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...) are now featured in the "Better Images of AI" collection - a project curating graphics for AI that avoids the usual humanoids, blue grids, and binary sequences. Available here:

London seen from the air in the virtual world. Terrain tiling is evidently not the best.

I mainly wanted to develop this to build the basis of a flight simulation window, and it almost, barely works (LOD sequencing is painful). I know it is the texture tiling slowing everything down, so will need to explore other possibilities.

The United Kingdom screenshotted from a 3D global viewer

Some fun for this evening, before tomorrow's tidal wave of admin - using natural earth map geojson data to render detailed global terrain and urban areas in 3D, in-browser. Tile textures are a bit crude currently (geared for higher zoom levels), but I'm pleased to get it working at all.

If anything, I'm a bit unsettled by the apparent insularity of AI discussions vis-a-vis armed conflict: it's recently come up in relation to OpenAI / Claude / DoW, but on the whole, the emphasis is still on hype around new models, and the usual culture war stalement of pro- vs. anti AI.

All the AI cleverness in the world will not save systems and infrastructures whose raw demands in energy and materials cannot be met. The fact contemporary AI systems are now a key part of this conflict, automating military actions to critical degrees, is also not being well acknowledged at present.

Gas and oil prices soar and shares tumble as crucial shipping lane threatened Iranian official threatens to

I've said it before - an AI dependent world is profoundly "more" vulnerable, not less, to the effects of conflict and disaster. The supply chains assume 'peacetime' envirionments. This article mentions AI only in passing, but acknowledges energy / cost vulnerability. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Addendum - in case anyone is wondering why on Earth this is notable at all, it's because there's some hefty data routines at work in this setup, including two different flavours of LLM, and it's rather pleasing to see the whole lot work away from mains power. Its destiny is out in the field.

A raspberry pi with a screen attached to a battery unit that is almost as big as the pi itself

Project work continues - now fully battery powered (albeit with some fairly substantial Lithium rechargeables).

New to me: Banner Depot 2000
Hilarious mix of web history, media archaeology, and combinatory poetics.

I'm actually now going to put this into my lecture tomorrow on the evolution of web advertising ⭐

That rising wave of work anxiety again.

Shower of st☆rs

P✧ge from Galileo Galilei's, Sidereus nuncius, 1610 ✵

A raspberry pi system with when - it reads a KSON object that contains quotes from various sources and a description of the weather

More project progress - correlating weather data with literature

A pixel art garden, showing a pinkish, spring like scene. A haiku reads "as the season ends / where is it hiding? / cherry blossoms".

Winter is ending, and today marks the first day of meteorological Spring - here is my offer of something peaceful for the timeline racarter.itch.io/haiku-garden

Ever have those days where what you really, actually want to do is to wholeheartedly burst into tears at your desk? This is one of them - I've got good things to hand, and I know what a privilige that is, but heavens, when one is so very busy, with endless pressures, it feels so very daunting.

Yes, right now in fact!

Back home - Montréal and Dublin, near back to back. It's been quite the voyage and a privilege - I'm still not able to wholly celebrate the prevailing idea that travel is the preeminent life experience, but I hope these latest journeys mean I can feel a tiny bit more at ease next time.

A city coat of arms on a lamp post

A church building

Vignette of Dublin castle - a clock tower like structure

A colourful and strange mural on a door, depicting strange beings

One last wander around Dublin this morning before heading back - it's a privilege to be invited to visit places like this, especially off the back of work I did a decade ago, but after 2 weeks of travelling I'll be glad to get back home.

A hotel room bathed in lurid violet

Currently doing battle with my very modern hotel lighting, with a slightly broken touch controller. It's a vibrant evening here 🟣🟪🟣🟪

A stained glass window at St Patrick's cathedral

A chapel at St Patrick's cathedral

St Patrick's cathedral

Entrance with daffodils to St Patrick's cathedral

In Dublin! Later today I'll be at the National College of Art and Design gallery, discussing "Waveform", the drone poetry project.

🔊Sharing new preprint titled: "The Technopolitics of Data Centres"

Studying DCs raises methodological questions, while also offering opportunities and opening challenges for interdisciplinary research into the governance of digital infrastructure."

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A plane at the airport

A high rise building from the train

More high rise buildings from the train

From all evidence before me, I do declare that nobody must go to Manchester airport anymore - train here was almost empty, as is the destination, and there's not even that many planes 🛫

A shot from the NCAD gallery in Dublin. In the left portion of the image is my film, Waveform, projected onto a wall, as a circle of gallery event attendees sit next to it and discuss

As I pack my bags, once again, to head onto the road, while, once again, being confronted by exhausting travel anxiety, I will indulge in finding it rather cool to see photos of my work in an actual gallery exhibition with actual humans interacting with it. It will be nice to see it in-situ myself.

Many years ago I made a Twitter bot that posted data from an unmoored weather buoy in the Pacific Ocean. Here's its successor, a NOAA buoy that transmits actual live data but also its own unhinged thoughts after spending years by itself in the ocean.

Stochastic Flocks and the Critical Problem of 'Useful' AI Acknowledging that AI systems are advancing does not buy into hype, it sharpens the precision of critical thinking about their impacts, says Eryk Salvaggio.

The promise of instant, personalized code has human effects. Not every problem is a coding problem but with agents, everything starts to look like one: “The blurry edge cases stop being the soft fibers of a social fabric. They become a technical nuisance.” 🧵

Waveform is having a moment in the sun as it approaches 10 years since I started work on it. Predating the present age of multimodal text-image transformations, the latter is giving it a whole new resonance for new audiences. A reminder that the text + film is available here

Still from Waveform in a gallery. Black and White ocean waves with poetic text overlaid "an irresistable / fury overwhelmed / everything / submerging / the town the / second swept / still further

Waveform in a gallery setting. Other works of art can be seen including that is made out of wood, sculptural, resembling furniture

Have recieved some great shots of "Waveform" in-situ at @ncad-ireland.bsky.social. Looking forward to seeing them for myself next week when I head over to Dublin to take part in a symposium exploring what radically transdisciplinary research, reworking rhythms of space and time, can look like.

Wishing you a Happy Birthday from Canada, Alex - hope York gave you an enjoyable day 🙂