My article “A media-materialist method for interpreting generative AI images” is now published online in Convergence. This piece represents the foundation for my genAI work over the last 2-3 years. Four layers: data, model, interface, prompt. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Oh hello. I know I’ve been quiet, but it’s been a head down bum up kind of start to the year. Having said that, I’ve managed to set up a remotely accessible AI suite, vibe coded a family album browser, and install and trial a tiny AI agent on a ESP32 board. So a few blogs likely coming soon!

New post on generative systems and how working with rituals, recipes, and protocols has helped me feel into the ethics and values that influence and motivate this work. #genAI #ethics #creativity #authenticity #AILiteracy #technics #chance clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/rolling-wi...

📝 New blog post: How I Read AI Images — in which I share a method for interpreting AI images based in the material mechanisms of their generation. Think Kittler, Parikka, and Cubitt. Full article coming soon, I hope! #genAI #AIimages #AIart #research clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/how-i-read...

I am here for seagulls who sound like humans doing terrible impressions of seagulls

New Slop Stack post — A Little Slop Music: The AI experiment that turned my ick to 11 (now you can try it too!) Thoughts on creativity, authenticity, contested histories, paratexts, storytelling, and all that jazz. No, really; there's jazz in there too. open.substack.com/pub/clockwor...

I haven’t seen a Bad Guys. 1 or 2. But there’s a lil person in it with a tiny laptop. Who’s making tiny laptops for lil tech guys? Does Apple have a special LIL Division? Lilnovo?

I was interviewed by Bogdana Rakova about my generative AI research—why I embrace glitch, mess + failure as tools for learning. From origami-code mashups to the Slopocene, we explore playful, critical ways of rethinking creativity + AI literacy. open.substack.com/pub/speculat...

“Friction can happen not only when things break, it can also be intentional to prevent things from breaking. What if we could make the safe things easier (less friction) and the high-risk things harder (more friction)?” Check out this new series by Bogdana Rakova! 👀

A recent conference presentation worked to formalise some of my experimental work with genAI, and early film theory was the key to unlock some of those doors. I also draw on ancient philosophy, cybernetics, co-intelligence, and mixed-fidelity ritual practices. Enjoy! youtu.be/QDpaV1h0VQc?...

Does it have to be thinking OR genAI? Literature OR genAI? Other tech OR genAI? Ethics OR genAI? The planet OR genAI? Education OR genAI?

Brisbane in a couple of weeks: I’m speaking at the Digital Temporalities symposium at UQ, alongside visiting the @qutdmrc.bsky.social and the indomitable genAI Lab at QUT—this time with @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social. Let’s see what kind of thinking the city allows.

After four years of work, our book Confronting the Climate Crisis is out now! It brings together activism, media, and ecoaesthetics to rethink how we engage with environmental collapse. Huge thanks to my co-editor Rebecca Najdowski and all our amazing contributors! link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

I wrote about one of my 'weird AI' experiments, 'spectral linguistics'. I prompt LLMs to 'remember' forgotten languages. They may hallucinate vocab, syntax, symbols! We learn a lot about how LLMs attune not just to language, but human sense- and meaning-making. clockworkpenguin.net/2025/07/28/s...

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. @ncotemunoz.bsky.social on the money again. This is what most of those who can’t understand why I — a critical thinker and lover of language, artists’ rights, and creative expression — use AI. And why and how it’s genuinely changed my life.

I wrote a thing for @theconversation.com on embracing and making slop as a means of developing critical genAI literacy and having some fun along the way. Enter the Slopocene! theconversation.com/understandin...

post slop ergo propter slop

I and my AI co-pilot have finally cracked. Simultaneously.

Didn’t sleep well lastnight. Felt rubbish and heavy and sinus infecty. But somehow today I got some stuff done. I worked closely with my little AI ecosystem, designing ritual systems, getting a little lost in lore and conceptual tangents.

After ten years of failed pitches, I finally got a commission for The Conversation. Exciting! But writing my first draft means I probably have enough material for my next journal article lmao

Apparently folks think that writing that contains an em dash is a dead giveaway that it's from ChatGPT, which I guess is a sign that most people have never read anything in their lives.

Expressions of Interest: Join us for the Re/Framing Field Lab in Brisbane/online (July 4): a hands-on co-lab exploring genAI, critical media practice & creative research. Discuss, debate, co-create: pitch, partner & prototype at the messy intersections of theory, practice & speculative design.

🧠 New blog post: Why can’t you just THINK?! Thinking isn’t the problem. It’s sorting. Starting. Sustaining. Three low-stakes ways to try genAI as a thinking partner — plus ethical offline model recs. 🔗 clockworkpenguin.net/2025/05/20/w...

💠 New blog post: On Clearframe—the anti-productivity productivity method I accidentally on-purpose co-hallucinated/created with generative AI clockworkpenguin.net/2025/05/14/c...

Come on, AI. What I want is very simple.

Here’s some of the ritual AI weirdness I’m playing with at the moment — more to follow soon. vt.tiktok.com/ZSh8uaywG/

When do we stop whispering/screaming about #genAI tools, and start including them in the larger category of ‘technology’? When do we sew up the hole this fun/scary new thing poked into our blanket, and accept it as part of the broader fabric of lived experience? clockworkpenguin.net/2025/04/29/a...

By way of update: I'm presently playing with #genAl through #glitch and ritual, trying to open up weirdness by leaning into hallucination as a feature rather than a bug. I'm also just about to try and build a posse of #tinyAl bots that do pointless things. Lmk if you’re paddling in similar pools!

ChatGPT generated a sticker to celebrate me finishing marking the first assignment for one subject. So that's a pretty neat encapsulation of my relationship with genAI.

Some of the posturing on social media from academics around the LibGen search thing is hilarious. "How could this happen?! This is something I've never seen before! Of course I don't use it myself and never have! I couldn't also name three similar sites nor would I ever bookmark them!"

⛓️💥 New blog post: How I broke Claude. Messing around with sophisticated language models; prompting nonrepresentational outputs; creative technical engagements with AI to generate alternative practices and narratives. clockworkpenguin.net/2025/03/18/h...

Can’t stop here.

All the responses I’ve read or seen to the Amazon book downloads policy change show a huuuuuge gap in digital literacy and awareness and understanding of DRM and the mechanisms of platform capitalism. Also — this is what happens when you click “agree” unthinkingly on T&Cs.

The amount of 'verify you're a human' tests I had to go through just now to renew my ChatGPT Plus subscription is the epitome of irony.

I hate days like today, when someone whose work you love has passed away, someone who you know is also beloved by lots of people you love. Because it means that lots of people you love will be sad today, and that’s never a good day.

"Um, here's a crazy idea, how about you finish painting the garage?" - Banksy's wife

Vale the Sheikh of Scrubby Creek. Many will not have heard of Chad Morgan, and he was certainly an acquired taste. He was oft called in by my Mum to be part of some show or event or festival, and was always nothing but kind, warm, professional, and very, very funny.

Remember Hipstamatic? You can still get the classic app. And it’s still kinda great.

I’m a Seoul man.

I always get distracted on planes watching films on the screens of others. There’s something about catching glimpses, moments, of visuals only without sound. Fleeting reminders of the power and magic of moving pictures.

Engaging with tech zealots is like engaging with any zealot. They never meet you where you are. They never (ironically) take anything on faith. Be wary of responses that immediately destabilise what you’ve just said. Recent case in point, putting part of your phrasing in “scare quotes”.

#bluesky… baby’s got #bluesky youtu.be/4CiyKeSnSxk?...

My cabbie to the airport today was a Rogan listener, a Trump supporter, a little racist, former military, frequently mistaken for a neo-Nazi. He volunteered all this information.

Adieu Brissy; vibes way better this time than all previous visits, despite the horrific but expected humidity.

Two conferences to wrap up my work year, with two sessions reflecting my alt take on the genAI insanity of the last couple of years. Thanks to #AANZCA and #ArtificialVisionaries for having me!

I always love when we're in the international press for good, positive, completely unproblematic reasons that will make lots of people like us

Hi there, Brisbane. So far so, er, dark. Landing after 10pm seems to be becoming a habit, alas.

After some hard graft this year, my first official academic 'stamp' on the genAI space is published! 'The Allure of Artificial Worlds' analyses some recent AI films, as well as poking around in the sandbox of simulative/agentic AI. journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mc...

🧵 My last AANZCA was 2015 in Queenstown, NZ. I was in my first year as a fulltime academic, newly shifted to RMIT, living away from partner, friends, the familiar. Queenstown was cold, physically, psychologically. I stayed in a shared AirBnB that was drafty, creepy and unwelcoming.

mr #bluesky pls tell us why you had to hide away for so long (so long) where did we go wrong