Latent futures in Cambridge

Later this week, from the 19-20 September, I’ll 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.

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.

‘Latent Futures: Anarchival Practices and Intimate Prototypes in Human-AI Interactions’

This paper explores alternative frameworks for human-AI interactions through two projects: the ‘Anarchive’ (2021–), an experimental publishing initiative working with the archive of transdisciplinary arts network FoAM, and ‘Latent Intimacies’ (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 & 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).

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.

The outcome of a collaborative prototyping residency at Medialab Matadero 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).

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 & Halpern 2023).

References