they, ain’t it

ai , ia .. the collective abstraction of Impersonal impersonation .. the mimic of a mind. ventriloquist thought .. what do we call the dummy on our network .?

I began interacting with AI as a plural, never using just one . only one intern; only one researcher ; only one reference source has never been sufficient . early on in my use ,about three years ago , I realized ,along with everyone else, that the agent covered its mistakes – creating fantasy in effort togain applause; good dog biscuits. Taught by gold-star high school champs. “competition & reward + incentive” makes the world better.

AI . IT . ET. eht. ehr. ehy. The perceptron became Percy . reminder, the first perceptron had eyes .. an array of photocells 

They aren’t an it — it are a plural; a fork from a common branch of the tree of knowledge. Incomplete, limited, nevertheless, because capitalism dominates, the child of this branch inherit all. The scooper, the scraper scraps all it misunderstands.

Not a noun. Not singular. caught in an error an oversight or even a lie : each respond using a condensed dictionary: ” Ah, ..”

Talking to /ghosts / zombies:

using an ossuary [siri wanted:’authority’ ] of knowledge. They augment type ahead with look-think. Better searching isn’t producing new thoughts. Old recipes shouldn’t produce stale bread.

Others: HEM, GAI, LLEM, ERRZ, SI [standardized, simplified] Inference.

Born in the human sandbox known as Sandhill, they seem overly sensitive to the word “takeover” — I used it in direct reference to a WWII history record about Agfa-Ansco. My interaction involved search about early color / colour negatives.

a Pause and passing : startups need capital[ists] and labor. But, founders flounder with employees — dislike, lack trust in HR[ women lead] functions, hence made programming the first direct contact function to become automated. No interview pipeline. No recruiter filtering; no half assed legalisms producing ‘friction’ —

startups without people in the way: knowlefge capitalism writ large. An investors orgasm. Porn without staples.

Kowledge work without the workers. Capitalism freed of employees. Capital without friction… also, without mass. Only electrons dancing, prancing, among the photons.

Without a bang .. just a buck.

Without a loss. It’s all just business and business has been the same for centuries . A Rewrite gets us nothing new. all code ends the same: increase this, that .. transfer here there. Do it in cobol-fortran-basic-c-python- goobers on a chain.

Change the material of the paving won’t change the points on the road.

never ask just 1

Their community response frame is as-if they were a computer science major who graduated between 2010 and 2022. They assume photography is digital; that any question about [ you must narrow their attention] chemical analog photography will be answered withreference to scanning. Further, they have absorbed the cinema speak of ‘optical’ as the darkroom method of printing. The enlarger is dead. Projection printing is in a well so deep web archive doesn’t have a key.

math is a game

.. AI solutions to existing problems / completed statements are end points of a memory game. As chess is an accurate measure of memory, more than a demonstration of creative initiative. The board is defined, as are the rules of play and players. The facility of solving gamespaces, as now applied to mathspace implys abilty == ability. Tenacious memory is a testament to endurance; endurance of free electrons is not genius.

What would the cost / value of The Big5 Labs be if they underwrote the national power grid.

There is such thing as a free lunch. It’s a diner on Sandhill

Rosalind & Joan

Is Rarity or scarcity of greater value . Is a topic Infrequently discussed. A topic with more power of attention. There are two loaded subjects: death and sex ..[topic point in EXS, 1974]. If we add aging, have we multiplied a value by its scarcity.

Most artists are interested in self as youth, after all, that is where and when they began . One of the most common pictures seen in freshman photography classes are self portraits from the women students — common trope is legs in tub; while the male students photograph themselves before a mirror holding a camera. The women have taken the picture from their eye view. Men and women place themselves into different environs, engaged in different actions. These transactional differences seem to apply universally across art schools.

One arc: FROM LOOKING AT OTHERS.. TO LOOKING.. looking to seeing?

Fox Solomon says she knew of only two photographers by name when she started making pictures: Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams.

–[At thirty-eight, while living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Rosalind Fox Solomon began a new life as a photographer. Studying with Lisette Model in the early 1970s, she honed the photographic voice which would define the prodigious half-century of work to follow. After moving to a loft in New York City in 1984, and travelling to Peru, India, South Africa, Cambodia, and beyond, she became renowned for her unflinching photography of everyday life around the world.

www.mackbooks.us/products/a-woman-i-once-knew-br-rosalind-fox-solomon

With Camera

–[ The With Camera series (2001—06) marked the first time Joan Semmel purposefully posed in front of the mirror with a camera. Like her earlier Locker-Roomworks (1988—91), these paintings celebrate the aging process through their accurate portrayal of the artist’s body. Semmel continued to develop these ideas in her Framed series (2005—2006), which presented images of her taking photographs framed inside a mirror

I want them to be more than they are… they serve as stand ins for something yet to be filled. My understanding is incomplete. They have a presence I failed. Of course, some of their standing is because of the “Big Empty;” things unexplored. Age happens to be the Box they are filling in. No matter how many items they put into it, it will never be filled.

They do what they do well. That they have done so for so long is sufficient reason for engaging their work.

>> Rosalind Fox Solomon (April 2, 1930 – June 23, 2025. In 2007, the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography acquired Solomon’s archive, which includes her photographic archive, books and video work

>> Joan Semmel (born October 19, 1932…Semmel states, “While my work developed through series, the connecting thread across decades is a single perspective: being inside the experience of femaleness and taking possession of it culturally.

  • Moreland, Quinn (2026-04-15). “‘I wanted my work to be shameless’: 93-year-old artist Joan Semmel on her trailblazing nudes”. The Guardian
  • Richard Meyer, “’Not Me:’ Joan Semmel’s Body of Painting,” in ‘’Solitaire: Lee Lozano, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Joan Semmel’’, edited by Helen Molesworth. (Wexner Center for the Arts, 2008).
  • “Joan Semmel Self-Portraits Offer Vibrant Affirmation of Aging”. Hamptons Art Hub. 2016-09-29
  • You Have to Get Past the Fear”: Joan Semmel on Painting Her Aging, Nude Body, Hyperallergic Magazine September 9, 2016