iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Andrew C. Smith

Marc Weidenbaum @disquiet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If you’re making music and are concerned your creative efforts are being buried in an avalanche of rote AI-produced and AI-promoted competition, the bad news is you’re not wrong.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 26/09/2026

Been thinking lately about how indexical markers of sound are less note, shape, theme, and more an index of plugins, treatments, max4live patches

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

not everything is always a 1:1 analogy, but more that it’s a trajectory of capitalist accumulation to always eliminate the smaller player. what you might term the “means of production” is always being replaced by a higher order - the-thing-which-generates (there’s a German word for this I’m sure)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

Sure, although I hope you’ll take a longer view if you expand on this. I think there’s an ahistorical error in your argument in that saas companies can be analogized as cottage industries where LLMs are more like factories, replacing and devaluing the brain-based labor.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

so what I’m hearing so far is that “means of production” refers alternately to the individual’s brain, or at times to the individual’s saas business

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

This argument is coherent but in a largely inconsequential way. No one is seriously arguing the users of LLM coding tools do not own their software.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

To be fair you said “Tokens are the output. Tokens are the logs” which by pretty straightahead syllogistic logic implies that logs are the output. Then later you said the logs are the input to the lumbermill. So I don’t think I’m misunderstanding much except reading a weak grasp of logic.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

Like you just said logs are input in a reply thread where you said logs are output

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

This is literally your most recent post. I’m not a hater but your argument is internally incoherent to a degree you need to grapple with before logging on

don't think you know what a token is. Tokens are the model's output. Tokens are the logs.
The method vou use to direct the tokens

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

Oh okay let me go to the lumbermill and collect my output, the logs

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

the models themselves would be the means of production in your analogy — which is what I articulated, that the tokens are spent on models but the models themselves are owned by someone else. the tokens and the brain bear no relationship as the brain does not need tokens.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

how is paying per token for the usage of a model and its ecosystem akin to owning the means of production? this seems like renting the means of production.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

what if we distracted all the agent swarms by getting half of them to be just circling back while the other half are just checking in

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

agi is when the machines become recursively self defeating

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 19/09/2026

Chat, rando on Craigslist wants $200 cash to “hold” a piano. Although she says Zelle is ok

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Reposted by Andrew C. Smith

Screen Slate SF Bay @screenslatesf.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The Portal Kickstarter is ~$16k away from their next goal, which they need to hit to open in November. They need to hit that goal BY 6 PM TODAY. GET THEM THERE FOLKS. TELL YOUR FRIENDS. OPEN THE PORTAL. OPEN THE PORTAL. OPEN THE PORTAL. OPEN THE PORTAL. www.kickstarter.com/projects/the...

kickstarter.com

The Portal Cinema - San Francisco

We're just a few months away from opening a new non-profit movie theater on Mission at 29th and we need your help!

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 16/09/2026

when you have definitely not read the room

screenshot of an email from redacted: "hey the lab, we're doing a two day hackathon [redacted] it's september 27th/28th, trying to secure a venue ASAP. last two were tokyo [redacted] and mumai [redacted] down to talk? nick"

me: "absolutely not"

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 13/09/2026

for any of my very niche topic followers wondering yes this is Larry’s nephew

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 08/09/2026

When I was 23 I ghost wrote a chapter of a college textbook on rock music where the “author” provided the section topic as a single unanswered bullet point: Nirvana: Greatest band of the 90s?

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 30/08/2026

Oh so he wants to make sure people who need aid don’t own homes in probably-gentrified areas, and then make sure they have to take out debt on their homes to fund basic necessities, and then make sure they lose their homes. Cool cool what could go wrong

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 14/08/2026

there’s a specific type of person I can only describe as a “grocery store head”

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/08/2026

technically any digital circuit can be replicated by a ds-1 (not verified)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/08/2026

(this was not aimed at you! keep all your synthesizers)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/08/2026

sell all your modular synthesizers to buy more boss ds-1s. it'll make you a better artist.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/08/2026

and most of all do NOT under any circumstances become a painter if you're not already a total freak

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/08/2026

I have more pro tips for your art applications. Do not, under any circumstances, talk about a "leap of faith" leaving a tech job to take on art full time. Your panelists are probably artists, curators, administrators, other various fuck-ups who do not, I repeat DO NOT want to hear that shit.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 08/08/2026

“Not that it will be good necessarily” is basically how I go into every Tod Machover piece but yes

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 08/08/2026

Oh wow Norman Lebrecht is taking a hiatus from complaining about orchestras augmenting their musicians with women and minorities for once

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

Anyway, this is getting too long, so in short I believe that the dynamics of a small town org are different from a big city one. This will only hurt the org, not (really) the composer. It’s a slap on the wrist from a publication and writer with no business or authority slapping.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

But what I’m trying to get at is that a rant of this sort does nothing to help the organization or the art form, and ultimately dissuades the board of a small-town org from taking risks. I especially feel for Riley Nicholson (new Exec Dir of the festival) who took a risk.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

Ultimately, we as composers and curators expect a general ignorance from critics and writers. Even, I would say, more so than audiences. There are very few exceptions of people with the broad taste required to assess contemporary music in its full breadth (you know who you are…)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

Critics, especially those in small towns like Santa Cruz, owe it to their local orgs and audiences to do their research and due diligence when presented with any new work. That doesn’t mean it has to be a positive review, but it doesn’t warrant this kind of bad faith rant.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

While this is incredibly funny to shit talk, I think the review is doing a major disservice to the Cabrillo Festival as an organization, and the idea of curating work that is at all challenging, especially regarding boredom.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

don’t do it they’ll make you TA music theory

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

This is incredible!! The reviewer is usually the food writer I thought. (I uh kind of know her.)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/08/2026

oh it’s a pretty common visual arts term referring to, eg, mike kelley (no shade! just a clarification!) I actually think I’ve used it to describe Sarah’s “queer trash” but in my case it was a raving compliment lol

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 30/07/2026

Preparing to turn 40 by finally listening to the entirety of the yankee hotel foxtrot expanded edition

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 28/07/2026

resisting the urge to describe Smegma as "if mike kelley started a band" just to trigger people

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 18/07/2026

As Miles Davis once said, the best gifts are the ones you don’t give (dm me if I know you and I’ll send you the address)

Invitation to my birthday with my address blacked out.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 16/07/2026

“I never met anyone with greater respect and admiration for fame and money than Morton Feldman.” Petr’s still got it! (Really though some gems in here.)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 15/07/2026

The announcer: “in some ways this is the worst game to lose, because you don’t go home, you go to Miami”

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 10/07/2026

I didn’t see this - but Randall Museum has good trains with a live train operator on Saturdays (usually a guy in his 70s/80s) and it’s free and a beautiful view and a new playground. Fairyland is pretty funny but hasn’t been a huge hit. Anyway for next time

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 08/07/2026

Wow this Marianne Amacher book from Blank Forms is pretty incredible as an archival document / artist book. (“Intelligent Life”)

[typewriter sheet with the following text:]

TY CHOLINE is very pleased with his most recent
script - REINDEER EARS!
He is able to HEAR as a
REINDEER HEARS. He's just finished simulating the intricate parameters shaping the REINDEER'S auditory neuroanatomy. He LISTENS to Bach now as a REINDEER. The BIO-MUSIC script is ready to be played on the Home Consoles - to "play" the music of Bach, Mozart, Blondie, whatever music or sound is selected, or spontaneously created, as a REINDEER would HEAR it.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/07/2026

unfortunately the best team might win

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