Jonathan HoggJust been doing kite-design workshops with two classes of 9/10 year olds locally – equal parts exhausting and brilliant, as ever. Some of the designs are incredibly sophisticated.
Here's the kids' work from today's illuminated mushroom-making workshop; this was a class of year 6 pupils
Oh yay! New problem to deal with: we've gone from about 500 DNS queries a day on the #OutputArts domain earlier in the year to an average of about 4000 per day over the last couple of months, and an extraordinary 24,000 queries in one day last week
Our work is absolutely not that popular, so there's some commercial-strength bullshit going on here. Imma gonna guess fucking AI web crawlers
In more serious news, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the beginning of the UN's 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence
https://www.unwomen.org/en/get-involved/16-days-of-activism
#OutputArts recently worked with survivors to produce a booklet giving practical advice on how you can be a good friend to someone experiencing abuse. You can download a copy to read or print at our website:
16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence
Women and girls around the world are exposed to online violence and digital abuse every day. AI is powering new and more sophisticated forms of digital violence. The crisis of gender-based violence is urgent. There is #NoExcuse for online abuse against women and girls. The 16 Days of Activism is an opportunity to revitalize commitments and to call for accountability and action from decision-makers, the tech sector, and users of digital services.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, the time when we put the stars back up anyway
The #OutputArts website consists of a few dozen pages in total. It changes only when we publish info on a new art project every few months or so. So why are the same AI crawlers hoovering up the website *multiple times per day*!
Honestly, I don't even care if you train your AI on my meanderings and I certainly can't be bothered fighting an arms race with your crawler. But, more than anything, it is the STAGGERING WASTE that irritates me.
Been installing today! New work Shatter is now in place at Dunham Massey in Altrincham ready for the Xmas light trail. You don’t get any proper pictures of it until the show opens cos of embargo!
Don't tell anyone I showed you this, but here's a sneaky peek at the new thing…
Experiments in bat-friendly baubles
Reading a conservation report on the impacts of artificial lighting on bats this morning in preparation for making a set of our baubles bat-friendly…