Dr Kate Compton Profile picture
Weird Futurist. Maker of many interesting things, now playing with toys in Denmark (all hot takes here are my own) Ask me about JavaScript. She/her
Oct 22, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
declaring a new term:
A Bach Faucet is a situation where a generative system makes an endless supply of some content at or above the quality of some culturally-valued original, but the endless supply of it makes it no longer rare, and thus less valuable Use: "Yeah, we solved narrative generation, but it turns out that no-one wants to read five thousand fanfic stories unless they have an emotional connection to the authorship, and it flopped. Was a total Bach Faucet."
Jun 8, 2022 7 tweets 2 min read
Sometimes I get frustrated when I compare arts and tech salaries, but

look

tech people

I'm not saying you are the problem
I'm saying the exchange rate is in our favor
and someone with a FAANG salary could literally commission their own opera once per year

so we should do that Sure, you could post on Stack Overflow,

OR

pay 10% of your salary for a 20 person off-broadway production of "cryptodaddy47, You Are Wrong About C Pointers (and Everything Else)"
Jun 7, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read
Since we've all decided that @TaikaWaititi needs a cowboy movie to complete his vampire and pirate trilogy, I want to introduce you to Walter Scott and Albert Johnson Three elderly people in a b... Walter Scott was a fake gold prospector. He sold fake investments and defrauded a variety of New Yorkers, while also performing in sold-out theatrical shows about himself, AT WHICH HE WAS ARRESTED FOR FRAUD
Jan 16, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
What is the earliest recorded pet name, and what is the earliest recorded pet named after food? I want to know when humans truly became themselves.
Jan 10, 2022 11 tweets 3 min read
I am **very slowly** cracking the "remote student participation activity" puzzle

Currently working on a four-channel model of what is needed. You need all four channels, or it falls apart (based on experience) Instruction channel: announ... Channel 1: Instruction channel

Where you announce the assignment, assign groups, make breakout rooms, etc.

The obvious role of this channel is providing clear rock-solid instruction (so it can scale without intervention)

Less obvious: also provides TIME-KEEPING!
Dec 3, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Oh my god its actually Kimmy Sanchez from Arrested Development
Dec 3, 2020 5 tweets 1 min read
Upper and lower case letters are so weird "this glyph represents a face sound"
"this glyph represents a face sound, but more formally, and only at the beginning of a larger face sound sequence"
Dec 3, 2020 5 tweets 1 min read
2020 status symbol:

A real fancy mask holder You know what would make a lovely handcrafted 2020 gift?

Handcrafted mask holders.
Nice pice of wood, with the family name, and lil gold hooks for each person

That needs an instructable
Nov 30, 2020 15 tweets 2 min read
heck yeah bad idea project a js file called gal.js " // just generative gals being Is this character design
Nov 29, 2020 13 tweets 4 min read
I do love a pretty bug ImageImage Still a bug, still pretty Image
Nov 29, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
Ok, you've convinced me, I'm gonna spend today making it Working title:
"Gal-eidoscope"
Nov 13, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
"Its not an exact science"

Mate, no science is an exact science.

I went to a talk that mentioned that their remote mile-long particle accelerator would give the wrong readings whenever a deer jumped over the buried track. From what I understand of particle physics, its both *incredibly precise*

and 90% consists of screaming
"can you NOT"

at raccoons, gusts of wind, local teens smoking near the intake valve, minor earthquakes, and the sun itself
Dec 20, 2019 24 tweets 3 min read
I hope Midsommar kicks off a wave of Instagram horror, where really good-looking food and flowers arrangements and twee beachside decor hides a dreadful truth. You are in East Beachside for your sorority sister Madden's wedding, a town that her Massachusetts family has vacationed in for "like, forever".

She's vegan, but she talks a *lot* about local fish.
Nov 29, 2019 8 tweets 5 min read
Today's Cards Against Humanity stunt could be an entire chapter in a dissertation of human/AI co-creativity

cardsagainsthumanityaichallenge.com Because I *did* write a dissertation on human/AI co-creativity:

I just made some diagrams showing different ways that humans, internet humans, and AI can collaborate

in this CaH project
@JanelleCShane's Skynit,
and @botnikstudios's Harry Potter
Aug 12, 2019 27 tweets 9 min read
..testing a wildly-complex creature-generator pipeline in Python-modified SVG. The problem:
I often want to create hand-drawn* vector components to use in Twitterbots, generative art, etc

How do I efficiently create drawings in Illustrator, while also annotating metadata like IDs, attach points, etc, available for later manipulation?

(*well, wacom-drawn)
Jan 29, 2019 4 tweets 2 min read
@jag_pag I agree with the others, and would add

Being able to do "Artist-in-a-box", the term we used on Spore to mean how we took the practice/logic of an artist and translated into code. @jag_pag The important goal *isn't* one-to-one accuracy (or GANN-style info-dump-and-let-the-computer-guess), but a well-studied *translation* or caricature of whichever creative discipline you're working in.
Nov 30, 2018 7 tweets 2 min read
💃
AI is a theatrical term with no technical meaning

AI is a theatrical term with no technical meaning

AI is a theatrical term with no technical meaning

AI is a theatrical term with no technical meaning, hey!
💃 Nothing but love for my original AI agents.

(note: there are some descriptions dating to ancient Greek and Arabic too)
May 23, 2018 16 tweets 5 min read
Do you know this book (grapefruit, by Yoko Ono)? I've been reading it and profoundly affecting my bot-making.

Art appreciation and bot-making thread follows: I've been trying to identify a peculiar tendency of bots (and other algorithmically generative text):

When the pleasure of the "artwork" is getting people to ~imagine~ what is being described.
Apr 8, 2018 12 tweets 3 min read
Was thinking about this again, and it's important to recognize:

WE CONFLATE THING BEING DIFFICULT FOR HUMANS
WITH THINGS BEING DIFFICULT FOR COMPUTERS

and this colors everything we do in AI. On reflection, maybe it's "things smart people enjoy stuggling with". Chess, modernist music/art/poetry, Go.

"My AI is smart so it should have smart people hobbies"

But those hobbies are...not representative of challenges for machines.