#2026-W09
### Who is the host and who is the guest?
This week there was *Media Art Café* at V2_Lab for Unstable Media in Rotterdam, for which I put together a short video from the process of making *Host.* For a long time I wasn't sure how to approach it, and in the end, despite some resistance, I leaned toward adding a small narrative. The story works on two levels: visually, the robot emerges from a dark enclosed space into light, and a voiceover traces the context of the project. I'd love to know what you think. [See it here.](https://vimeo.com/kindl/host-guest?fl=ip&fe=ec)
I am aware that sometimes those videos narrated by a generated voice can sound a bit trashy, so I also made a version *without the voiceover,* leaving the story to the image alone. What surprised me was that it holds up without the narration. And also that I would never have edited it this way without the voiceover as a guide first. [See here.](https://vimeo.com/1168421755/9c1a93358b?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci) Which do you think works better?
<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1168418917?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" title="Host / Guest"></iframe></div><script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>
---
Since I'm still in the Balkans, I've been enjoying traveling and finding specific places. The entire intro was filmed inside [Cetinjska Cave](https://mapy.com/s/cotomosuso) in Montenegro. A large cave system under the Karst hills near Cetinje, the country's old royal capital, stretching over a kilometer underground. Cold, dark, humid, with the sound of water somewhere out of sight. This environment suited me very well for the scene where the robot crawls out the darkness and slowly comes into the daylight.
What I didn't know beforehand: a species of *blind cave spider* lives in there. *[Typhlonesticus absoloni](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typhlonesticus-absoloni-male-Cetinjska-pecina-cave_fig5_345260230?__cf_chl_tk=OA9DCb0wOjg0v8XZRUYGry_lwGfmOZDIlhI9OAUt.Jk-1772221413-1.0.1.1-QySwnz8c4W87anNj00LX2omA_jFrVv6ybDp6c500mN8)*. No eyes, no pigment, fully adapted to permanent darkness. My robot suddenly seemed quite ordinary by comparison. Not sure I'd go there if I knew that, haha.
![[host-scene_2.jpg]]
![[host-scene_1.jpg]]
Another special location was the [Tjentište Memorial](https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/tjentiste) in Bosnia. It stands in Sutjeska National Park and commemorates the 1943 Battle of Sutjeska, one of the largest and bloodiest Partisan battles of WWII. It's a pair of enormous wing-shaped concrete forms rising from the valley floor. Up close it feels genuinely overwhelming in scale.
![[host-scene_4.jpg]]
A few days later I stumbled across another one near Podgorica entirely by accident. [Barutana](https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/barutana) is a memorial to the fallen of the Lješanska Nahija region. It consists of eight tall concrete pillars that break sharply into angled "C" shapes near the top, somewhere between a bud and a pair of raised hands. There's a large amphitheatre next to it, now largely unused. Since the fall of Yugoslavia the whole complex has been left to decay, which you can feel the moment you get there.
![[host-scene_5.jpg]]
---
### Glypher
Some time ago I shared a small tool for converting photos into dithered, zine-like aesthetics. I've been working on an update, adding glyphs and letters as a rendering layer, and playing with multiple passes on the same image. Also trying to animate it.
![[newglyphs.jpg]]
---
### Predictive Mind
Coming back to some thoughts on the predictive mind. I've been mapping texts and researchers, trying to understand where the lines of disagreement actually fall. Diagrams like these help me hold the territory.
```
QUESTION 1: How accurately do we perceive reality?
├─ Accurately (naive realism) .............. almost nobody today
├─ Structurally (Clark) .................... a sufficient model
├─ Controlled hallucination (Seth) ......... a model that need not resemble the original
└─ Not at all (Hoffman) .................... pure interface, no resemblance
QUESTION 2: Where does mind/intelligence live?
├─ In the brain (classical) ................ outdated
├─ In the brain + body (Seth) .............. embodied
├─ In the brain + body + environment (Clark) extended
└─ In every living system (Levin) .......... everywhere
QUESTION 3: What is consciousness?
├─ Emergent from complexity (mainstream) ... unconvincing "how"
├─ Interoceptive prediction (Seth) ......... biologically grounded
├─ (Clark avoids it) ....................... pragmatically sidestepped
└─ Fundamental property of reality (Hoffman) panpsychism
```
### Claude Blacklisted ?
A few days ago the US government designated Anthropic a national security "supply chain risk" and banned it from government contracts, as Anthropic refused the Pentagon's demand to remove safety guardrails from Claude, specifically protections against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. *(scary future, hah?)*
I still think Claude is probably the right choice with the right values if you're considering a subscription. They have this interesting, [publicly available document](https://www.anthropic.com/constitution) *("soul document")* written by a philosopher, Amanda Askell, that describes not just what Claude should do but who it should be. That a philosopher wrote this rather than an engineer is a good sign that alignment is quite an important ethical question, not just a technical problem.