Richard A Carter

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 🙂

The snowy skyline of Montreal at dawn

A day of exploring awaits before hometime - if there are any Montréal must-sees, I'm open for suggestions!

UKRI AI Research and Innovation Strategic Framework

Addendum - today marks the release of the new UKRI AI Research and Innovation Strategic Framework, so it's a good moment to be in this space. www.ukri.org/publications...

The snowy Montreal skyline

It's done! The close-out of the AHRC - SSHRC-CRSH Humanities AI Sandpit, and I find myself leading a new project bid! Exciting and daunting, but with some really great people involved. Let's see where we go.

I hasten to say the people here are being very patient and pleasant and helpful, but it all feels "very" complex - in having to balance out specific blocks of funding vis-a-vis international funding bodies, and varying definitions, and varying regs relating to what can be spent where and when.

It's day three of the AI sandpit - now all about the wicked miniutia relating to bilateral international funding, and the requirements thereof. I must admit I often find it mystifying how academics are supposed to be instant experts in budgetary administration in order to even apply to grants!

Looks like my project proposal, Ecological AI, is being selected to go forward for further development - let's see where we go 🌿🌿🌿

Aw thank you most kindly 🙂

It definitely is a good event, but we're all so tired - very intense!

Thank you so much! That was the idea, but also to get away from raw blocks of equations too!

Addendum - This session really cheered me up, as it did feel a bit lonely yesterday, and it was great to see others who really care about negotiating often complex and fraught digital-ecological relationships, but also see genuine, thoughtful possibilities too.