11781
Gilbert
@gilbert #11781
CEO, Netmorf.
386 Follower 386 Following
To those on the Netmorf corporate retreat: we’ve had a lost attendee badge handed in at reception
This part week I’ve been the first guest curator at Contemporary NFT Daily. Gallery and short essay: https://www.contemporarynftdaily.com
What’s interesting about this piece, getting some traction over the last days, is how its lite-doomerism makes no mention of blockchains! Only a few years ago blockchains were a primary element in narratives of a network uncaringly optimised for computational agents autonomously redistributing capital. Isn’t it typical of doomerism to underestimate the capacity of humans to mess up even the most perfectly bleak singularity? https://mirror.xyz/ramonmarc.eth/1G9oLJWblzK1u8rLxIcgqjYO0uULbS3LyBTePqLHmok
While three-person startups feel bound to communicate like corporations the consumer crypto space is going nowhere and inspiring no-one.
I’m curating and posting regular articles on digital community, lore-craft, and design at Foklore. In the Folklore channel here and the Telegram feed linked at https://folklore.institute
By way of follow-up on the Remilia Quarterly piece posted a few weeks ago, this is McKenzie Wark on the contemporary politics of cuteness. https://www.frieze.com/article/mckenzie-wark-politics-cuteness-246?utm_source=FRIEZE&utm_campaign=1bdc721c5d-newsletter-politics-cuteness&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f0ebe20dcf-1bdc721c5d-519502209
Despite basically everyone I admire in the space showing up to vote for me got sniped by a pay-to-win 😔
Less than an hour to go and it's close, need a few more legends to show-up 😅
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@bias·15:09 24/10/2024
I just provided 42 votes to your effort.
BRANDING AND THE OPEN WORK: It’s a year since my piece about headless brands and Folklore’s adoption of the labyrinth as an open-ended icon was published. https://folklore.mirror.xyz/v3KHFm-Fz288fjTIcp5Gd63rXoANBewXqbypQqZesSw
Less than 12 hours to go on the Crowdmuse Cyberphysical comp — give me a little boost somebody? This needs to get made and sipped. https://www.jokerace.io/contest/optimism/0x079a413af162d0807f4b160f396160c61e5da84f
For the Crowdmuse/IDEO CoLab Ventures cyberphysical design contest I developed a Netmorf-branded vial of mildly psychedelic Blue Lotus flower extract, to be produced in collaboration with Berlin-based mood-shop Amama. Vote for it here, 24 hours to go: https://www.jokerace.io/contest/optimism/0x079a413af162d0807f4b160f396160c61e5da84f$0
friends, please vote for me in the crowdmuse cyberphysical design comp so that I can release another netmorf physical product https://jokerace.io/contest/optimism/0x079a413af162d0807f4b160f396160c61e5da84f/submission/18934952731597637207227136237727347319227886458710481577574409260322581483660
On the calcification of computing metaphors: “Our software interfaces are fiercely rigid; they can’t be meaningfully nudged — in big ways or small — to more closely reflect our mental models or meet our individual needs.” https://alexanderobenauer.com/think/
This 2012 essay is in resonance with Kei Kreutler’s ‘How to Repair a Spaceport’, recently-published by Folklore. https://www.kabk.nl/en/lectorates/design/understanding-repair-peter-maxwell
There seems to be a renewal of interest in the idea of distribution first design. https://hipcityreg.substack.com/p/distribution-determined-design
CULTURE OUTPERFORMS PEDAGOGICAL STRICTURE: On manipulating social hierarchies to seed desirous memes in Jesuit colleges and Montessori schools. https://asteriskmag.com/issues/07/culture-studies
F**K POLISHED AESTHETICS: I’d say the trouble with technologists stewarding artistic tools is that they assume polish and lustre to be the goals and so they work to eradicate the uncanny. This six-year old interview with Robbie Barrat on machine learning and image generation has aged relatively well all things considered. But to look on these images is to be reminded of that thrill of glimpsing a version of ourselves in the garbled, strange, alternate image-physics of the computational. https://www.ssense.com/en-us/editorial/fashion/do-androids-dream-of-balenciaga-ss29
On parasocial worlds and being absorbed. “In historical critiques, reading was condemned not just as a form of insubordination but as an addictive process that threatened the reader’s ability to come back from fantasy and into reality again.” https://reallifemag.com/take-me-away/
Computerised companions. Will they be ‘designed’ to fulfil emotional needs of human users, or will they exist beyond the scope of design? https://thejaymo.net/2024/09/12/milo-2-0/
Resonates
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Kei 🗝️
@keikreutler·16:25 09/09/2024
How to Repair a Spaceport:
A metaphor for our technological present https://folklore.mirror.xyz/6Lm7xORHWDb-YoVtqv3Vc2G7dT73xiKws5pJBv9ADZE
This essay is a first, playful attempt to explore how we approach interoperability in the realm of technological uncertainties.
Many thanks to Folklore, @rafa, and @gilbert for making it happen.
A metaphor for our technological present https://folklore.mirror.xyz/6Lm7xORHWDb-YoVtqv3Vc2G7dT73xiKws5pJBv9ADZE
This essay is a first, playful attempt to explore how we approach interoperability in the realm of technological uncertainties.
Many thanks to Folklore, @rafa, and @gilbert for making it happen.
First subscriber :D Thank you @fs for subscribing to PNG in the EYE for a year. I hope you find your catch-up video airdrop very makes quite sense.
11781
Gilbert
@gilbert·14:40 16/09/2024
I’ve launched a Hypersub for my ongoing superfiction PNG in the EYE. It’s a one-year project, initially with a single subscriber tier at a very low price. A second tier for physical collectibles will launch in a few weeks with something veeeery exciting. https://www.hypersub.xyz/s/gilberts-png-in-the-eye-1l2uiy7xpekg0/1
I’m writing NFT fan-fiction at Hypersub. 12 episodes to come, and a print book at the end. Subscribe. https://www.hypersub.xyz/s/gilberts-png-in-the-eye-1l2uiy7xpekg0/1

I’m airdropping subscribers a new and exclusive two-minute positively deranged video catch-up on the story so far.
11781
Gilbert
@gilbert·14:40 16/09/2024
I’ve launched a Hypersub for my ongoing superfiction PNG in the EYE. It’s a one-year project, initially with a single subscriber tier at a very low price. A second tier for physical collectibles will launch in a few weeks with something veeeery exciting. https://www.hypersub.xyz/s/gilberts-png-in-the-eye-1l2uiy7xpekg0/1
I’ve launched a Hypersub for my ongoing superfiction PNG in the EYE. It’s a one-year project, initially with a single subscriber tier at a very low price. A second tier for physical collectibles will launch in a few weeks with something veeeery exciting. https://www.hypersub.xyz/s/gilberts-png-in-the-eye-1l2uiy7xpekg0/1

The memory game ‘I went to the shops’ as a blueprint for fostering lore. https://aw.network/posts/large-lore-models
“What if data didn’t have to travel so far, especially when communicating with others around you? What if search algorithms prioritized results that were closer-to-home?” Alice Yuan Zhang’s brief primer on bioregional computing. https://naive-yearly.are.na/alice-yuan-zhang
Resonates
6581
Kei 🗝️
@keikreutler·16:25 09/09/2024
How to Repair a Spaceport:
A metaphor for our technological present https://folklore.mirror.xyz/6Lm7xORHWDb-YoVtqv3Vc2G7dT73xiKws5pJBv9ADZE
This essay is a first, playful attempt to explore how we approach interoperability in the realm of technological uncertainties.
Many thanks to Folklore, @rafa, and @gilbert for making it happen.
A metaphor for our technological present https://folklore.mirror.xyz/6Lm7xORHWDb-YoVtqv3Vc2G7dT73xiKws5pJBv9ADZE
This essay is a first, playful attempt to explore how we approach interoperability in the realm of technological uncertainties.
Many thanks to Folklore, @rafa, and @gilbert for making it happen.
✨new, Folklore-commissioned essay✨@keikreutler reflects on technological heterogeneity through the metaphor of the fictional Spaceport. “For our purposes, we could define protocols as systems that prioritize interoperability over formal standardization, with spaceports acting as their central metaphor. Spaceports take the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) line further, to establish ‘rough consensus and running worlds.’” https://folklore.mirror.xyz/6Lm7xORHWDb-YoVtqv3Vc2G7dT73xiKws5pJBv9ADZE

@depatchedmode what triggers the synthetic voice to change on zorglish? I’m trying to screen record a video with *smurge* and there’s one pronunciation I really want to get 😂😂😂
DIGITAL PIRACY AS CONSERVATION: This decade-old piece on ‘shadow libraries’ and the relative lack of profitability of text as an object of copyright enforcement (compared to music and video) has a new resonance in the age of the LLM. http://computationalculture.net/article/book-piracy-as-peer-preservation
Adam Curtis in 2017: “In reality, the computers give great insight into the power of common identity between groups. No one’s using that. What’s sitting with the computers is a way of seeing new groups, new common identities between people.” https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/adam-curtis-on-the-dangers-of-self-expression/
Is token-gated writing via hypersub a paragraph.xyz integration or can it be another publishing site?
Advice pls. Setting up a hypersub offering frequent digital drops and less frequent physical drops. Best to offer a separate tier for digital+physical? or single tier and use the physicals as perks for people subscribing 3 or 6 months+? 🙏
Any tips on starting a token-gated group chat?
UBIQUITOUS, ENDLESS: The meander, or self-avoiding line, winds its way through time. It traverses Ancient Greek pottery, Zapotec architecture, Imperial Chinese woodwork, and Navajo weaving. More than a decorative motif, the meander is metaphor and method, an unstudied artistic generator. https://www.servinglibrary.org/journal/17/a-key
A technical (but accessible) piece on OCR, revealing how language is parsed inbetween pictorial and textual states and elaborating some of the sociological implications of these processes. https://www.sourcetype.com/editorial/608/adversarial-alphabets-part-1-how-machines-read
Parker Ito’s 10,000 oil paintings were the main event in NFTs this week. One pre-history of schizo-aesthetics is traced in this piece on the visual codes of aughts teen magazines for girls. “Collage aesthetics have guided … endless cohorts of teens into adulthood, freeing them, for a period of time, from the oppressive imposition to present one True Self.” https://dilettantearmy.com/articles/cut-and-paste-teen-magazines-and-the-collaged-self
Rare published writing from Noah Caldwell-Gervais, producer of epic video essays immersed in the fandom of beloved gaming franchises. In this piece he is teasing out something reflexive, asking how a player’s often fragmentary experience — repetitions, failures, restarts — can be reconciled with the suspension of disbelief that coherent virtual worlds require. https://thebaffler.com/latest/against-slop-caldwell-gervais
MAGICWORDS, x-dexing, and word2complex are three *more-than-computational* scripts for engaging with the essay as digital and material document. https://varia.zone/en/more-than-computational-reflections.html
Can I have some more Netmorf microfibre cloth orders please it's insanely fun to assemble and send them and they look real nice. Utility roadmap: you clean your glasses and screens with it. https://www.crowdmuse.xyz/collect/netmorf-sightmorfer-microfibre-cleaning-cloth-with-art-by-guile-twardowski
‘Translated Accounts’ is the only book of James Kelman’s that I’ve read. I’ve often sought out fiction whose form is described as experimental. Would like to read more of him.
Now shipping! Netmorf SightMorfer® microfibre cleaning cloth with art by Guile Twardowski. https://www.crowdmuse.xyz/collect/netmorf-sightmorfer-microfibre-cleaning-cloth-with-art-by-guile-twardowski