sabotabby (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sabotabby) wrote2025-10-31 07:17 am
sabotabby) wrote2025-10-31 07:17 am
Entry tags:
podcast friday
HAPPY SPOOOOKY DAY and blessed Samhain if that's your thing.
This week's podcast episode sure is spooooooky! It's It Could Happen Here's "Occulture, William S. Burroughs, and Generative AI," and the moment that title popped up in my feed, I knew I'd be talking about it (even though I Don't Speak German covered Mother Night, this week, which is my favourite Vonnegut book. Maybe I'll talk about that one next week).
I had never heard of the Occulture conference, which is...what you think it is. As a good little Marxist materialist, I am not a chaos magick practitioner or believer as such except that definitely magic and the occult are a terrain we should not cede to the enemy so I am not not a chaos magick believer, y'know? At the very least as a philosophical and narrative system it's something that I'm quite interested in.
And of course for all his being one of the most Problematic Faves of all my Problematic Faves—he killed his wife ffs—I never really got over my teenage obsession with William S. Burroughs. As the episode points out, he's lumped in with the Beats but more properly belongs with the Surrealists (and the Dadaists) in terms of what he was doing. And y'all know how I feel about the Surrealists and the Dadaists. So there's an unexpected amount of discussion of Burroughs as a magickian at the the conference and his techniques (some of which were extremely funny, such as cursing a restaurant that took his favourite thing off the menu) and particularly his use of technology to channel the non-human.
Which brings me to the argument that I get into way too fucking much, which is "well isn't GenAI basically the same as cut-up poetry," and that's apparently something that was asked repeatedly at this conference. Spoiler: No it is not. Like, neither artistically nor magickically, which is a relief as that wasn't necessarily where the discussion might have gone. The short version has to do with Third Mind theory, which is quite interesting, and again, I feel there's a much more materialist explanation for why it's not the same but I also appreciate the occultist explanation.
Anyway it's a big meaty feast for my special interests and apparently there will be a second part dropping this weekend, so yay!
This week's podcast episode sure is spooooooky! It's It Could Happen Here's "Occulture, William S. Burroughs, and Generative AI," and the moment that title popped up in my feed, I knew I'd be talking about it (even though I Don't Speak German covered Mother Night, this week, which is my favourite Vonnegut book. Maybe I'll talk about that one next week).
I had never heard of the Occulture conference, which is...what you think it is. As a good little Marxist materialist, I am not a chaos magick practitioner or believer as such except that definitely magic and the occult are a terrain we should not cede to the enemy so I am not not a chaos magick believer, y'know? At the very least as a philosophical and narrative system it's something that I'm quite interested in.
And of course for all his being one of the most Problematic Faves of all my Problematic Faves—he killed his wife ffs—I never really got over my teenage obsession with William S. Burroughs. As the episode points out, he's lumped in with the Beats but more properly belongs with the Surrealists (and the Dadaists) in terms of what he was doing. And y'all know how I feel about the Surrealists and the Dadaists. So there's an unexpected amount of discussion of Burroughs as a magickian at the the conference and his techniques (some of which were extremely funny, such as cursing a restaurant that took his favourite thing off the menu) and particularly his use of technology to channel the non-human.
Which brings me to the argument that I get into way too fucking much, which is "well isn't GenAI basically the same as cut-up poetry," and that's apparently something that was asked repeatedly at this conference. Spoiler: No it is not. Like, neither artistically nor magickically, which is a relief as that wasn't necessarily where the discussion might have gone. The short version has to do with Third Mind theory, which is quite interesting, and again, I feel there's a much more materialist explanation for why it's not the same but I also appreciate the occultist explanation.
Anyway it's a big meaty feast for my special interests and apparently there will be a second part dropping this weekend, so yay!
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