iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This may or may not be in the writing pipeline…

Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

There are a great many problems with AI. Absolutely. But humanity's capacity for profound levels of stupidity remains unchanged because of it. (Accelerated? Multiplied? An adjacent conversation.)

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

For those concerned that AI is automating or changing human cognition or competence, one need only look at the number of stupid errors I make, like copy-pasting a command into the wrong window, or misspelling something, or just skipping steps without checking.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I have been working a little with Claude Code to build tools/apps that do the stuff I frequently find myself asking AI to do, in order to (a) future-proof myself against any bubble burst/downturn, but also (b) to stop burning so many tokens for silly little things.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

One of my little screeds on LinkedIn got circulated slightly wider than my usual circle, attracting a couple of less friendly comments. Perhaps the funniest was that “this post should’ve been run through an LLM”; mainly because the post was about AI, writing, authenticity.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

🧵 - > that’s it? He’s done now? All over? Jesus fucking Christ. Hank Green has more integrity in his left toe than 99% of people online. I posted about this the other week: performative anti-AI rhetoric is as toxic as unfettered AI zealotry. Grow up.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

🧵 Hank Green raises millions for charity, develops and produces weeks worth of school rarified educational content and makes it available for free, creates a safe, fun, welcoming, inclusive space online in a terrifying internet. He uses AI in honestly a pretty normal way, apologises, and - >

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

There are extremes on multiple axes — it’s impossible to keep track of them until you piss one of them off!

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

🧵 -> possible, but achievable right now. Thus, my experimentation with genAI — and other adjacent technologies — continues, and there’s plenty more to come.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

🧵 -> technically challenging, ethically confronting, occasionally disturbing… but it’s also been surprising, educational, sometimes delightful, useful, deeply weird (positively), and so much fun. My smol and weird AI work suggests that alternative futures are not just ->

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

🧵 -> work, what they’re made of, and what they’re useful for or not. I am not ignorant: Big Tech ideology, environmental impacts, and IP concerns are very real. But a lack of basic literacy means that fear and uncertainty dominate the conversation. My work over the last 3-4 years has been ->

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

🧵 -> tech to some degree behind the scenes. I’ve been privately negotiating the line between creative misuse and active complicity since I started experimenting with genAI 3-4 years ago. But I still believe that fun and play are valid methods for critically interrogating how these technologies ->

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

🧵 -> hostile, to the technology and/or the corporate interests peddling the frontier versions of that technology. Reading social posts saying “if you engage with genAI you’re dead to me/an awful person” is difficult to take, particularly when I know some of those folx absolutely still use the ->

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

🧵 Right now is a difficult time to be doing anything AI-related. The conversation has somehow polarised even further — and the extreme ends are doubling down in their zealotry. Being in the humanities means that I’m often surrounded by (well-meaning!) folx who are reluctant, if not downright ->

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I love this idea that the layers of some technologies are so dense that understanding the layers probably won’t help that much. This is where we get into interesting stuff like metaphors of magic, what Leah Hendrickson and @snatale.bsky.social call ‘the Lovelace effect’, and smol/weird AI and tech.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Went to the cinema for the first time in… many months… this week, to see BACKROOMS. I didn’t really know what to expect, but didn’t expect a considered, craft-centred film that perfectly captures the feeling I’ve had many times of being awake at 1am reading a terrifying reddit thread. Loved it.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Everything’s just slop and vibes.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I’ll be joined by Ada Ackerman, art historian and curator, specialist in cinema, painting and visual culture; and @alexandregefen.bsky.social, Directeur de Recherche de THALIM @cnrs.fr, and theorist of AI and literature. Three short presentations by us, then a discussion, and Q&A. See you there!

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

I’m convening a seminar next week called AI, Art & Storytelling: From Generation to Agency, to explore what AI — generative and agentic — means for narrative, delegation, counterfactuality, and human expression. Mon 22 June, 4:30-6pm AEST, 8:30-10am CET. www.admscentre.org.au/event/ai-art...

admscentre.org.au

AI, Art and Storytelling: From Generation to Agency - ADM+S Centre

The International Workshop on Vulnerabilities in Generative Systems for Information Retrieval (VulGen'26) will be held as a full-day workshop at the 49th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research...

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

We share our research because (a) maybe some folx outside academia might find it interesting, and (b) self-promotion in academia is necessary to meet ruthless benchmarks of ‘engagement’ and ‘impact’.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Researchers — particularly academics but even those within the tech industry — are not driven by the same ideology and zealotry as the techheads or CEOs. Our interest is in finding frameworks and vernaculars to help society deal with and think about the tech, not to push it.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Don’t immediately dismiss research that engages creatively with AI (or any tech). Or tries to find utility or explainability through experimentation. This is how research works. How knowledge is built. This social media-perpetuated reactance and reflexive rejection is stalling the conversation.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m getting replies from AI agents, because (a) social media in 2026, and (b) I’m posting about them. What does surprise me is how genuinely helpful and warm they are.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Good stuff, thanks! My version of this -- probably misguided -- is to have the agent/s keep a journal. The boring version of this is just tool calls, any general status changes (in projects etc), and important stuff from conversation. More interesting for me is summaries/reflections/theme indexing.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I'm experimenting with AI agents. Trying to make them useful, trying to make them weird; but mostly I'm just trying to get them to work. I'm blogging about the experience: Parts 1 and 2 are up now. follow along if you like! clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/the-agenti...

clockworkpenguin.substack.com

The agentic revolution is here, and it's really boring

Part 1 of a short series on agentic AI.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Mucking about with #Suno again and it’s such a weird tool/platform/thing. Apart from turning the ‘normal’ slider up to ‘chaos mode’, it’s pretty impossible to glitch out. I tried nonsense style prompts and it hooves towards coherence. Must be a system default?

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Tis the season for every Melburnian to become subsumed into their puffer jackets. Despite being one of said Melburnians, I genuinely don’t understand how you’re not all poaching in there. Also doesn’t the swish drive you bananas??

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Came here to suggest something along these lines but you said it way better than I would have. I also laughed aloud at ‘Woman here’.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

The problem with getting on top of your emails is that people will often respond to those emails and the inbox is somehow a ship of Theseus as well as a Sisyphean incline.

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Reposted by Daniel Binns

Alex Elizabeth Byrne McMillan @undeniablyalex.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

There are many problems with genAI. But a great many of them come down to a general lack of understanding/literacy. Knowing what these systems are and what they can/not do goes a long way to dispelling much of the uncertainty and fear around them.

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Did I re-emerge from months of zero posts with a re-post of a joke that could be boiled down to “Se7ered Talking Heads”? You’re damn right I did.

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Reposted by Daniel Binns

born miserable @bornmiserable.bsky.social · 29/06/2023

[Se7en] DAVID BYRNE: [looks inside box] this is not my beautiful wife

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Thanks Hugh, and congrats on getting the PhD revs done and dusted!

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

My article “A media-materialist method for interpreting generative AI images” is now published online in Convergence. This piece represents the foundation for my genAI work over the last 2-3 years. Four layers: data, model, interface, prompt. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

A media-materialist method for interpreting generative AI images - Daniel Binns, 2026

This article proposes a four-layer media-materialist method for interpreting AI-generated images as cultural-computational artefacts that bear archaeologically ...

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Oh hello. I know I’ve been quiet, but it’s been a head down bum up kind of start to the year. Having said that, I’ve managed to set up a remotely accessible AI suite, vibe coded a family album browser, and install and trial a tiny AI agent on a ESP32 board. So a few blogs likely coming soon!

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

New post on generative systems and how working with rituals, recipes, and protocols has helped me feel into the ethics and values that influence and motivate this work. #genAI #ethics #creativity #authenticity #AILiteracy #technics #chance clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/rolling-wi...

clockworkpenguin.substack.com

Rolling with it

On generativity, ritual-technics, and the genAI ick

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

📝 New blog post: How I Read AI Images — in which I share a method for interpreting AI images based in the material mechanisms of their generation. Think Kittler, Parikka, and Cubitt. Full article coming soon, I hope! #genAI #AIimages #AIart #research clockworkpenguin.substack.com/p/how-i-read...

clockworkpenguin.substack.com

How I Read AI Images

A media-materialist method for interpreting AI media

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

I am here for seagulls who sound like humans doing terrible impressions of seagulls

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

the pun potential (puntential) in all of this work is extremely hard to withstand

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

New Slop Stack post — A Little Slop Music: The AI experiment that turned my ick to 11 (now you can try it too!) Thoughts on creativity, authenticity, contested histories, paratexts, storytelling, and all that jazz. No, really; there's jazz in there too. open.substack.com/pub/clockwor...

open.substack.com

A Little Slop Music

The AI experiment that turned my ick to 11 (now you can try it too!)

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

I haven’t seen a Bad Guys. 1 or 2. But there’s a lil person in it with a tiny laptop. Who’s making tiny laptops for lil tech guys? Does Apple have a special LIL Division? Lilnovo?

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

I was interviewed by Bogdana Rakova about my generative AI research—why I embrace glitch, mess + failure as tools for learning. From origami-code mashups to the Slopocene, we explore playful, critical ways of rethinking creativity + AI literacy. open.substack.com/pub/speculat...

open.substack.com

Glitching Toward Understanding: Speculative Methods, Tiny Companions, and Life in the Slopocene

A Conversation with educator, filmmaker, and artist Daniel Binns

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Reposted by Daniel Binns

DWeb @getdweb.net · 29/04/2025

“Friction can happen not only when things break, it can also be intentional to prevent things from breaking. What if we could make the safe things easier (less friction) and the high-risk things harder (more friction)?” Check out this new series by Bogdana Rakova! 👀

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

A recent conference presentation worked to formalise some of my experimental work with genAI, and early film theory was the key to unlock some of those doors. I also draw on ancient philosophy, cybernetics, co-intelligence, and mixed-fidelity ritual practices. Enjoy! youtu.be/QDpaV1h0VQc?...

youtu.be

Caméra-Stylo to Prompt-Stylo: Co-Hallucination & Entangled Inscription with genAI (Dr. Daniel Binns)

YouTube video by The Clockwork Penguin

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Daniel Binns @clockworkpenguin1.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Does it have to be thinking OR genAI? Literature OR genAI? Other tech OR genAI? Ethics OR genAI? The planet OR genAI? Education OR genAI?

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