Current activities

Last updated: Monday, 16 September 2024

This note serves as an (irregularly-updated) index of my current activities and interests. Click on activity names or linked concepts to explore related notes.

Experimental publishing

Anarchive: Experimental archival and publishing project with FoAM, mapping and recontextualising their 20+ years of transdisciplinary work.
• Context: Team-based, ongoing
• Methods: Editorial strategy, editing, writing, (an)archiving
• Current focus: Drafting texts for the fourth of five themed readers (“re/imagining technology”), planning interviews
Counterfactual computers: Exploring alternative trajectories for computing history through speculative case narratives.
• Context: Solo, slow burn
• Methods: Writing, historical research, counterfactual reasoning, STS, speculative fiction, design
• Current focus: Refining methodology, research, initial scenario development

Ethnography & computational methods

Enxaneta:1 Collaborative Python-for-ethnography skill exchange, exploring the intersection(s) of computing and ethnographic research.
• Context: Collaboration with Tim, active development
• Methods: Programming, ethnography, software development
• Current focus: Prototyping “tiny tools” for thick description and ethnographic analysis
↳ Xamota: Research exploring the interplay of structured data and intuitive “knowing” through reflexive software development
• Context: Collaboration with Tim (part of Enxaneta), slow burn
• Methods: Reflexive software development, Bogostian carpentry
• Current focus: Scoping and definition
↳ Querent.py: Situated software for personal tarot practice; part of a larger piece of research on inuitive knowledge and computational data structures.
• Context: Solo (part of Xamota), exploratory
• Methods: Computational design, Python programming, reflective practice
• Current focus: Research and planning
Zwicky:2 Exploratory tool for computer-supported morphological analysis.
• Context: Solo, slow burn
• Methods: Computational design, NLP experimentation, exploratory data representation
• Current focus: Literature review

Generative models & information-seeking

Panpneumaton:3 Post-hoc comparative study of LLM use and shamanic journeying.
• Context: Collaboration with T.M. Sullivan, slow burn
• Methods: Ethnography, comparative analysis, lateral theory
• Current focus: Editing preliminary draft paper
Latent Intimacies: Using open-source speech synthesis and language models to explore new forms of human-machine intimacy.
• Context: Team-based collaboration initiated by Vytas, dormant
• Methods: “Études Brut”4, ethnographic observation, interviews, interaction design
• Current focus: Seeking opportunities for further development
↻ Local language model experiments: Hosting open-source generative language models on my own laptop.
• Context: Solo, exploratory
• Methods: Staring blankly at the command line
• Current focus: Temporarily dormant

Personal tools and practices

duckyPad interactions: Prototyping novel interactions with an open-source mechanical macropad.
• Context: Solo, exploratory
• Methods: Scripting, interaction design
• Current focus: Temporarily dormant
Gnomon:5 Conceptualising and (later) dogfooding feral, “non-fungible” approaches to time management and planning.
• Context: Solo, slow burn
• Methods: Self-experimentation
• Current focus: Research and planning

  1. Named for the helmeted pre-teen who tops out a Catalan castell. ⤴︎

  2. Named for Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky. ⤴︎

  3. Sullivan’s coinage; a neologism blending “pantheon” and “pneumatics”. ⤴︎

  4. “Studies in rawness,” broadly speaking. ⤴︎

  5. The shadow-casting part of a sundial. ⤴︎

Tags: meta

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