iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

What if this was labeled as “outputs of vector media” rather than image metadata? I’m still reading Impett and Offert’s Vector Media book but I’m curious on this.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Overheard on 17th St. in DC: “Okay, who’s in charge of telling Sarah?”

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Dr. Black's Medieval Remedies @winstonblack.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

My god, what an image. Dead kings in a plastic box, carried off as the world burns.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I’m not sure where we are in the cycle. Are serif fonts cool again?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

On vacation for the next few days. I have temporarily changed my name to Mr. Edge Piece Metapuzzle.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

My new hobby is generating posters/flyers "in the style of AI slop". Is this making the snake eating its own tail? Or it this reinforcing a new aesthetic? www.404media.co/we-are-livin...

404media.co

We Are Living in a ‘ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic’

"Hey if this is your flyer, I’m not going, I’m not donating, I’m not sharing. Don’t ask me."

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

"But drawings show, as Braciale puts it, 'the incomparable subjectivity of the human hand and eye.' We can all look at the same object, but what we notice is different." #indexofamericandesign #watercolorart #nationalgalleryofart www.nga.gov/stories/arti...

nga.gov

Create with Us: How Drawing Can Teach You to See Your Belongings in a New Light | National Gallery of Art

Sketch everyday objects, inspired by the Index of American Design.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

“If AI erodes trust, as we are witnessing within so many other sectors of our society, we lose a critical connection to our past and our capacity for planning the future.” open.substack.com/pub/encoding...

open.substack.com

Preserving Trust in AI Knowledge Ecosystems

Keynote remarks delivered at the 2026 AI Summit hosted by the University of Wyoming Libraries

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Joe Dator @joedator.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Today's Daily Cartoon for @newyorker.com by Kevin Maher and me.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Prompt yourself. From the blank page, ask yourself a question. Who is this for? What do you want them to feel? You may want to go prompt the model—the LLM—from the desert of your blank page. But don’t. Prompt yourself! #promptyourself #blankpage

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Hey mail art friends! And printing press nerds! And 1990s nostalgics! Check out “SLEEPY HOLLOW, 1998,” a Story Delivered to Your Mailbox on @kickstarter.com www.kickstarter.com/projects/jay... Full disclosure: this project is co-created by my amazing sister @meganwesterby.bsky.social #mailart

kickstarter.com

“SLEEPY HOLLOW, 1998,” a Story Delivered to Your Mailbox

A cozy, nostalgic, 1990s reimagining of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” through mailed letters and story artifacts

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Dr. Bryan C. Keene (they/elle/iel) @wtfarthistory.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

A propos of nothing… this image is not AI, but the individual is a doctor (and Jesus). Just a perfectly normal fourteenth-century manuscript illumination for your feed… #medieval #medievalart #memes #history #art

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Swinging your hammer more than anyone else doesn’t build better houses. Or write meaningful words. More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/t...

nytimes.com

More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use.

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Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com · 10/03/2026

A little offended Grammarly didn't make a sloppelganger of me

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

And is this now just the world we live in?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Is this AI altered image meant only to be seen from a distance? To blend into the background of your Google Maps browsing?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

They have other locations. This must have been a staged photo for an opening, and they decided to make everyone smile more?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

WE LOVE POENERS. IRL, this says WE LOVE WIENERS. They sell hot dogs. This is the Dog Haus.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

In the distance, one smiling face seems to betray the uncanny valley of the others.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

The lead marketing image is surreal AI slop. The restaurant is real, it exists, and people definitely can sit at those tables and outside at the patio. But someone decided to turn up the dial on expressiveness. EVERYONE MUST BE SMILING BIGGER. Did they know? Did they sign a waiver?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

A fast casual burgers and dogs place opened up in my neighborhood, the Dog Haus maps.app.goo.gl/4VUrL22LKHH5...

maps.app.goo.gl

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Insane smiles, too much food, “WE LOVE POENERS”. What’s happening here?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

I don’t want to live in the AI Dog Haus (a thread 🧵)

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Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Art History will continue to be seen as an elitist discipline if the public apparatuses for communicating it refuse to acknowledge the scholarship that has drawn attention to art's role in serving and subverting power. Read the righteous review by Sherry Lindqiust here. hnanews.org/hnar/reviews...

hnanews.org

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry - Historians of Netherlandish Art Reviews

The Château de Chantilly justifiably billed its exhibition as a landmark show, and for early modernists and medievalists, it was the most anticipated

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

“We spent decades trying to tear down the walled gardens around content and criticizing publishers for locking away knowledge. Now, the predatory nature of AI scraping is forcing us to build our own walls.” From Rosalyn Metz at The Digital Shift open.substack.com/pub/rosalynm...

open.substack.com

The Cost of Open by Default in the AI Era

Can We Protect Donor Materials from Generative AI?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

"The paradigm, not the palace, becomes the problem." Pamela Patton's essay "Is Spain “Different”? Self-Segregation, Exclusion, and the Future of Medieval Iberian Studies" is a must read in a superb Speculum centennial issue. @pamelapatton.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

journals.uchicago.edu

Is Spain “Different”? Self-Segregation, Exclusion, and the Future of Medieval Iberian Studies | Speculum: Vol 101, No 1

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Index fans! "Towards a Linked Open Index: Reconciling Museum Records to Wikidata for Index of American Design Constituents" by Abigail Foster, Samantha Norling, and me, in the Journal of Open Humanities Data doi.org/10.5334/johd... #indexofamericandesign #federalartproject #linkedopendata #wikidata

doi.org

Towards a Linked Open Index: Reconciling Museum Records to Wikidata for Index of American Design Constituents | Journal of Open Humanities Data

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

Pluribus is a fantastic TV show and I’m a fan. And I just realized the premise was captured in one legendary Star Trek story — Tuvix. #pluribus #tuvix #startrekvoyager

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Add the library and we have three walled cities?

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Nancy Um @nancyum.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Our new data article explores funding trends in art history over the past 60 years with Wikidata facilitating cross-institutional collaboration, with @qwesterby.bsky.social and Lidia Ferrara, published in Journal of Open Humanities Data openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com/articles/10.... #ArtHistory

openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com

A Practical Join: Using Wikidata to Aggregate Awards and Affiliations Data from Residential Fellowship Programs in Art History | Journal of Open Humanities Data

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Have you ever been inordinately upset with yourself for losing one glove from a pair you really liked?

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

More reason to steer towards small AI models, that you can run on your own computer.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Fantastic opportunity for a senior art historian of premodern art or architecture 👀

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Applications for fellowships in art history at many institutions are open this fall. Read a short blog post at HistPhil that I wrote with @nancyum.bsky.social on "Taking the Long View: Gauging the Impact of Residential Fellowships in Art History over the Decades." histphil.org/2025/09/08/t...

histphil.org

Taking the Long View: Gauging the Impact of Residential Fellowships in Art History over the Decades

Editors’ Note: Nancy Um and Matthew Westerby introduce findings from the Scholars Data Project, hosted by the Association of Research Institutes in Art History, on residential fellowships spo…

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Whitney Trettien @whitneytrettien.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I'm always looking for new videos to introduce digital humanities at the beginning of the semester. Most are usually too specialist or lecture-y. But this video essay by @tesstess.bsky.social, "Digital Humanities, or: The Broken Record of Everything," nails it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Nn...

youtube.com

Digital Humanities, or: The Broken Record of Everything

YouTube video by DH Cologne

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

I went over just to peek at the comments. Yikes.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Would love to chat more on and offline too!

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Kay Wells touched on something similar in a 2021 paper (which I didn't get to attend) titled “Inventing Digital Humanities through the Index of American Design”. And Distant Viewing Lab created an experimental site to search Index of 🇺🇸 Design watercolors. distant-viewing.github.io/iad-demo/

distant-viewing.github.io

DV Lab + Index of American Design

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Two years later, I’ll just drop this here: “Reflections on the Suger Chalice: New Observations and Technical Analysis” by Dylan Smith and Therese Martin www.nga.gov/research/pub...

nga.gov

Reflections on the Suger Chalice | National Gallery of Art

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Amanda Watson @amndw2.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

"Literary style is not a puzzle you solve to get a little information treat" is my new motto.

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Rainer Simon @aboutgeo.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

I'll be speaking on IIIF Community Call *this Wednesday*. Drop by if you want to hear about (and play with!) liiive.now!

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

This is awful. I’m sorry, Carrie, and for all Sferisti.

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Your input needed! ℹ️ 🎨🚨 The National Gallery of Art wants to hear from you about visual arts research. Please take the survey – it's 10 minutes or less! www.surveymonkey.com/r/nga-schola... #arthistory #architecturalhistory #digitalarthistory #artmuseums #GLAMS #GLAMresearch

surveymonkey.com

Visual Arts Research Survey

Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

"Why not build [public interest tech] from the communities that exist around our public institutions, such as schools, colleges, community centres?... Platforms designed for communities are much more likely to hold to social values than platforms built for profit" (See also... [1/2])

newpublic.substack.com

🙋🏾‍♂️🤳 Exploring new concepts for a people-powered internet

An excerpt of Nick Couldry’s new book, The Space of the World

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Matt Westerby @qwesterby.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Maybe I'll see you at Costco tomorrow while panic buying imported goods?

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