Work has been.. consistently last minute and all consuming until they aren't and then there's nothing. In May I worked on two proposals, one whilst my boss was in another country without a charger for his laptop so that was a new one, and I made a conference poster for a product integrating GPT and Travel Pattern Analysis. I think.

However my side responsibilities, LSR and guest editing an special Arts & Poetry issue for the World Futures Review have taken off in fun ways. I cant really go into much with what went down with LSR but we had some pure psycho shit go off, and it was fun while it lasted. You can follow their Twitter for sexy sex tech news and announcements on the conference, and their IG if you want to fill your feed with cyborg cyberpunk pin up chicks, both of which im managing for now.

WFR

So yeah, my thesis advisor is an editor now at the World Futures Review. Last year we worked on a project for UNESCO on Responisble Futures with a bunch of her mates in Australia, which included a Professor Marcus Bussey who is the Futures equivalent of Richard Feynmann in my opinion. Marcus and I became good pals and talked about art projects and poetry quite a bit in relation to Futures Studies. I mentioned to him that he should edit a book of his poetry, or one from futurists in general. A few months later I got an email with a bunch of folks CCed saying Emily has this great idea for a Special Issue on Art and Poetry, so here I am, even though I was never suggesting my own involvement.

The project is unfolding to be a lot of fun, and behind the scenes we had a pretty cool conversation about how to handle AI art submissions, given a) how popular generated art is in the Futures community, b) the content training issues that have been brought up in the art community and c) the legal issues in the United States and European Union- generated art that is solely the product of a prompt can not be granted copyright. We ended up with the following policy which I think is pretty solid:

World Futures Review (WFR) Policy Note on the Use and Disclosure of Al-Generated Art

Introduction:
This policy note offers guidance on the ethical use, attribution, and disclosure of Al-generated art to ensure transparency, prevent plagiarism, and safeguard intellectual property rights.

Use of AI-Generated Art:
a) Users should respect the original creators of Al models and algorithms and adhere to citation guidelines of the WFR magazine when utilizing Al-generated art.
b) Al-generated art will refrain from promoting inappropriate content, hate speech, or any form of discrimination.
c) Users should confirm that Al-generated art does not violate any copyrights, trademarks, or intellectual property rights of other artists or entities.
d) Creators of Al-generated art must explicitly disclose the use of Al in their work to maintain transparency and avoid misrepresentation.
f) Users must credit the Al model or platform employed in generating the art in their publications, presentations, or exhibits.
g) Al-generated art must not be employed to bypass existing intellectual property rights or plagiarize the work of other artists

In the conversations leading up to this, someone on the WFR team, incidentally the same person that drafted the policy, shared their perspective on generative tools. They spoke about their dyslexia and their reliance on advances in technology through the decades to express themselves clearly and accurately. I found their take to be refreshing in contrast with all the doomer shit I hear all day, and surprising since they're in the upper boomer bracket. I wrote a bit about AI art a few months back but I might make another entry on the subject since its low-key pissing me off every time I hear another digital artist whinge about it in what amounts to gatekeeping art-making. Anyway, here's a short article that was shared in the thread that I rather liked, about how the mind reacts to "authentic" art vs a reproduction or bootleg:
Re-thinking Authenticity in the Era of Generative AI