Off Center

Did you know slop was a problem long before AI? This episode of Off Center takes us all the way back to the 18th century as today’s host, Jill Walker Rettberg, discuss the precursors to AI slop with Hazel Wilkinson, Associate Professor of English at the University of Birmingham. Hazel’s specialty is 18th century literature, a time when paper and printing became much cheaper and it became possible to make a living by selling your writing. That also led to a lot of “bad literature”, to the development of copyright laws and to many discussions about the differences between originality and even “genius” and imitative “bad” writing that are surprisingly similar to today’s debates about AI slop and the threat LLMs pose to “good” literature.   Hazel’s previous research has been on book history and printer’s ornaments, and we begin the discussion by looking at an ornament often used in books that weren’t highly appreciated for their literary quality, showing an ape copying out a text by candlelight. Our discussion ranges from Pope’s The Dunciad, which parodies hack writers, to automatons that wrote out poems in carefully automated handwriting, to “it-narratives” told from the perspective of writing instruments like quills and paper that are outraged at the banal writing the humans use them for.   Hazel Wilkinson’s university profile page: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/english/wilkinson-hazel  Compositor is a database of eighteenth century printers’ ornaments. https://compositor.bham.ac.uk/ 

Following Universal Music Groups' settlement and partnership of Udio, Scott and Jhave sit down to discuss the potential future of music in a world with AI.

We celebrate Christmas and 2025, the year that was, at the Center for Digital Narrative with music, conversation, and holiday merriment with our friends.

In episode four of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta welcomes Nick Seaver, Associate Professor in Anthropology and Director of the Science, Technology & Society program at Tufts University, to catch up on his recent ethnographic research on algorithms, computing and automation.

Scott and Jhave are back talking billions of dollars and discussing whether the new AI economy truly is "too big to fail".

On this episode Scott talks to author and media theorist Roberto Simanowski about digital media, AI, art and hypertext.  

Scott and Jhave are here to talk about a major class-action lawsuit... but not just any major class-action lawsuit: the largest publicly reported settlement in human history. References: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/ My Book Was Stolen by an AI Company. Why Does Suing Them Feel Wrong? Thea Lim https://thewalrus.ca/suing-ai-company/

In episode three of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta visits Minna Ruckenstein, a Professor in Emerging Technologies in Society at the University of Helsinki's Consumer Society Research Center, for a deep dive into her work on algorithmic folklore.

On this episode Scott talks to Espen Aarseth, Dean of Game Studies at City University of Hong Kong, about how his groundbreaking work “Cybertext” contributed to thefounding of video games studies in academia.  

In episode two of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Guro Flinterud, a folklorist and cultural studies researcher, about her research on social media and digital platforms as an interface between the police and the public.

On this episode we talk about our upcoming exhibition "An Eye for AI Cinema" at the Bergen International Film Festival, running October 15th-23rd. Is artificial intelligence destroying cinema as we know it? Are we entering the age of the computer-generated DIY film? AI brings tumultuous changes to the established film industry, at the same time as it is creating new opportunities for independent filmmakers, and perhaps even birthing new genres of moving image art.  Works Laurent Basset AFFAIR IN MARSEILLE, 2025 Seif Abdalla HANAA, 2025 Micol Hebron Study of animals in motion in the style of Eadweard Muybridge, 2025  Simon M. Valentine One Last Wish, 2024 REDACTED Optimals, 2025 Sachiko Hayashi, Nina Sobell Echoes Unseen, 2024 Lina Ruth Harder & Colin Robinson Wherever I go, you’re always with me, 2025 Scott Rettberg Riverrun (fascistchic ascistquick), 2025 David Jhave Johnston Brain-knot Altar, 2025

On this episode, author, data scientist, and journalist Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talks to Jill Walker Rettberg about his relationship with AI in producing his Salvage Crew Trilogy of novels.  Yudhanjaya Wijeratne: “The Machine as Provocateur” Keynote at CDN Summer School 2025 -   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ZdWvzk2JE StarMap – galaxy generator code on GitHub: https://github.com/yudhanjaya/Starmap  Find out more at Yudhanjaya.com  Photo by Dirk Skiba Fotografie.

It’s been a while since the last AI update, and with the field evolving so quickly, Scott and Jhave have plenty to catch up on. In this episode, they explore AI and writing - but who is prompting whom? Can AI serve as “steroids for creativity”? And if so, what are the unintended side effects?

After our summer break, Off Center returns with episode 2 of season 4. This episode features an interview with Samya Brata Roy, recorded during the 2025 CDN Digital Narrative PhD Summer School. Samya discusses his academic journey and the founding of Electronic Literature India. 

In the first episode of ALGOpod, Gabriele de Seta is joined by Joan Mukogosi, where they talk about her essay "Strategic Knowledge. Teens use 'algorithmic folklore' to crack TikTok’s black box", which she co-authored with Ireti Akinrinade.

In the final AI Update of the season, Scott and Jhave talk about some of the ways in which AI is finding itself involved in research. They talk about some of the AI models that have been developed with research in mind as well as some of their own experiments with these models. References: Brain2Qwerty https://ai.meta.com/research/publications/brain-to-text-decoding-a-non-invasive-approach-via-typing/ Accessed March 11, 2025. Claude https://claude.ai/ Accessed March 11, 2025. Deep research. https://openai.com/index/introducing-deep-research/ Accessed March 11, 2025. Eliot, George. 1879. “Impressions of Theophrastus Such” William Blackwood and Sons. Perplexity deep research https://www.perplexity.ai/?model_id=deep_research Accessed March 11, 2025. Rettberg, Scott. 2020. “Republicans In Love” https://eloconference2023exhibitions.wordpress.com/exhibition2_resistance/republicans-in-love/

On this episode Scott joins David Bithell overseas, at Southern Oregon University's Digital Media Center. They talk about digital performance, collaborative online music and digital puppetry. References: Bithell, David. Followers. 2017. http://www.davidbithell.com/followers.html Bithell, David. Matters Dark and Luminous. 2023-Present. http://www.davidbithell.com/mattersdarkandluminous.htmlBithell, David. Subterranean. 2020. http://www.davidbithell.com/subterranean.html Bithell, David. Windward. 2018. http://www.davidbithell.com/windward.html

In this week's AI Update, Scott and Jhave discuss some of the ways in which fascism reproduces itself, how AI could be used as a tool to facilitate it, and how those leading AI development have found themselves in positions of political power. References: Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle. 2009-2011. Watkins, Gareth. AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism. 2025. New Socialist. https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/

In this episode, Scott travels to Australia to talk with Tama Leaver at the Center of Excellence for the Digital Child. They discuss Tama's involvement with the Center, his research regarding generative AI, the ways in which children interact with AI and how they can be affected by them, as well as a recent ban to social media for all children under 16 in Australia. References Haidt, Jonathan. The anxious generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. 2024. New York, Penguin Press. Leaver, Tama, and Suzanne Srdarov. 2025. "Generative AI and Children's Digital Futures: New Research Challenges." Journal of Children and Media. 19 (1): 65-70. doi:10.1080/17482798.2024.2438679. Ritchie, Hannah. Australia approves social media ban on under-16s. BBC News, Sydney. November 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89vjj0lxx9o

Jhave and Scott talk about simulated worlds or environments created with AI, considering what are the boundaries for artifical life.