LLMs, copyright and creativity in the age of Generative AI The Writing the Wrongs of AI project started last year when I began to see social media posts from writers, outraged that their books had been hoovered up by big tech companies to train AI without their knowledge or consent, and with no attribution or remuneration. It was Val McDermid’s tweet pointing people towards a … Continue reading Writing the Wrongs of AI
I wrote this paper in 2014 as a Masters level project in the first year of my PhD. At the time, my supervisor urged me to either publish it or at least ‘put it on the web’, but I didn’t because I thought it was incomplete (it is, and it was my first attempt at LaTeX), and because of imposter syndrome etc etc etc. Last … Continue reading Google & the Algorithm: Side Effects of Search
A lot has happened over the last six months, and I’ve been a bit remiss in documenting it. In August 2023 I had the opportunity to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas, and I bloody loved it! The show was called Evil Google Sells your Words / You Can’t Search Google for Poetry, and featured an auction of artifacts … Continue reading BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth / Edinburgh Fringe 2024
CALL FOR PAPERS / TALKS “An articulation is the form of the connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time”.[1] Deadline: Friday 27th January 2023 (11.59pm UK time) A 2-day single track symposium taking place in Edinburgh on 23rd-24th February 2023, Articulating Data is … Continue reading ARTICULATING DATA: MACHINE LISTENING, VOCALISATION, AND THE (IN)SECURITY OF LANGUAGE IN A DIGITAL AGE
If it is not the duty, it should at least be the delight, of poets to contemplate the world of science Edwin Morgan, ‘The Poet and the Particle’ (1974) The Particle Poem Collider is my latest project in collaboration with Ray Interactive and the Push the Boat Out poetry festival – a performance and a pamphlet of poetry generated by AI from the work of … Continue reading Particle Poem Collider – an exploration of creativity and AI
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Articulating Data: machine listening, vocalisation, and the (in)security of language in a digital age CALL FOR CREATIVE COMMISSIONS £2,500 | Deadline: 14th November 2022 (11.59pm UK time) “An articulation is the form of the connection that can make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time”.[1] A 2-day single … Continue reading ARTICULATING DATA – call for artists
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The original iteration of Newspeak visualised the words of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as if they were commodities on a stock exchange. Using live data scraped from Google Ads, the text of the book scrolls across the screen as ticker-tape. The fluctuating prices of the words are determined by what they are worth to Google in the context of an advert. The project is a political … Continue reading Back for the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe! NEWSPEAK & {poem}.py at the Scottish Storytelling Centre – what are #wordsworth ?
I’ve been let loose to curate the first Creative Informatics Lab since lockdown (17th Sept 2020 – sign up here). These last few months have been really difficult and have thrown many of my plans and commitments into freefall. I’m only now beginning to get back some kind of grip on actioning future projects. I will catch up with pre-pandemic projects asap, but in the … Continue reading Data as Culture | Data as Politics: Creativity and curation in a post-digital world
I had exciting things planned for this year; events and exhibitions in America, Ireland, Rotterdam, Cardiff, London, Dundee, Germany and even a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. There was much to look forward to, but then came that week back in early March when things began to fall apart, and the volume of cancellation emails became almost unbearable. I know I’m not alone in this, … Continue reading Critique in a time of crisis
Arcadia (2020) : Benjamin at the Mall Fruitmarket Gallery Bookmarket, Waverley Mall, Edinburgh EH1 1BQ 6th Feb – 29th March 2020 / Preview 5th Feb 6-8pm Arcadia (2020) comments on the role of digital capitalism in the virtual and physical spaces of modern consumerism. Text from Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project (1939) is fed through Google’s advertising platform and displayed as if the words were commodities … Continue reading Arcadia (2020)
pip thornton art & research 