ANTILOG_16May26a

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ANTILOG_16May26a

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2026-05-16 01:47:52

- I was working recently to figure out exactly what my reading and research method was like and came across the idea of a kind of NONLINEAR, DISTRIBUTED POLYTEXTUAL methodology;

- For instance, yesterday I was sitting at the kitchen table, reading from books as well as notes that I had printed earlier in the day and the week as well; I was copying out or transcribing passages from the text - in a notebook on the table - and then writing down the salient points and keywords, etc., onto index cards;

- Then I took the index cards, what I call Refcards, and brought them to one of my two computer workstations, after which point I copied notes I had also taken at that table, but on a note-taking app on the way, I took those notes and copied them into a text file which I then backed up on the cloud; I printed out some more materials, then took those back to the kitchen table, and starting the process all over again;

- In my readings in this context, I was reading maybe between 4-5 books at a time, plus another 3-4 documents that I had previously printed out earlier in the day and week; I kept iterating like this for what seemed like hours;

- THIS OF NOTE: "Instead of burning out one pathway, I create a rhythmic wave where one faculty rests and regenerates while another fires. This keeps my brain in a state of high-amplitude creative tension, preventing the flatlining or mental fatigue common in mono-disciplinary work."

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2026-05-16 02:43:07

- Part of my polytextual method is my way of working at the computer stations, of which there are two in my workspace, and which are switched to in an oscillatory pattern throughout the WORKDAY;

- Researching on the web: I open up a web resource / asset and copy highlights from the text into a .txt file on my computer, also copying and pasting certain more salient passages into the Google Keep app on my computer; then I do searches on Google Search + I prompt Gemini; I reiterate the process;

- This nonlinear, zigzagging path is my natural mode of being when working on my art production or else doing my research; I find that switching from app-to-app, from tab-to-tab, copying and pasting highlights in various places, then oftentimes transcribing video content by hand, this, I find, maximizes the creativity that I have access to, that is, it PROMPTS ME and helps me access a deeper, more creative and therefore consequently more productive state of being;

- I will then either go to my other computer workstation or else return to the kitchen table to continue my work, alternating from medium-to-medium and from discipline-to-discipline, continuing in my essentially distributed, nonlinear manner;

- I also interrupt myself in the middle of a process, like while I'm copying and pasting something from one web resource/asset, instead of going straight back to that web page, I take a different path and either search for something else, or else visit an other page otherwise, or else I also open up a different document on my desktop; Essentially, I am going from resource-to-resource (asset-to-asset), from document-to-document, from window-to-window; I am tentatively calling this READING-WITHOUT-READING because I'm not reading in a traditional manner, but in a nonlinear one; I also copy what I call TabSets which are a list of the tabs I currently have open in my browser ("OpenTabs"), which I then copy onto a .txt file on my computer as well as on the web as a GitHub Gist; this back-and-forth creates a distinct rhythm which again helps me access this much deeper, greater level of creativity;

- That's it for now; as always, I reserve the right to come back to this at any time and add a new entry into the ledger.

ANTILOG_13May26a

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ANTILOG_13May26a

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2026-05-13 22:10:30

* I have been working very hard on a lot of different things;

* I have been working on the systematic abstract formalization of all my systems, adding redundancy, sometimes purposely deleting content in the archives that either contain errors that aren't useful or signals that didn't degrade gracefully;

* When I find good content in the archives, though, I like to put it in display, which is part of my ongoing interdisciplinary art-research project, The Archives-Project;

* Here is something from over a decade ago which caught my eye and deserves to be mentioned here. I quote:

02:04 2015-09-14

* The "ArtOps" circles represent what I call "Art Operations" in a system I am developing (I'm only developing the theory for now). Basically, they represent "art practises", except that in this model, they are modelled as DAOs or "distributed autonomous organizations".

* The "broker_ops" are also DAOs, a.k.a. "Broker Operations". And it's the same for the "Art Exchange" which is just a kind of "Art Market", modelled as a kind of "Financial Exchange" if you will, also a DAO.

* Basically, you can just imagine each circle as an "automaton" or "finite state machine" or "abstract machine", if you want. The "ArtOps" machines need the "broker_ops" machines to interact with the "Exchange" machine.

* Many ArtOps interact with many brokers who interact with a single Art Exchange, at least that's as far as I've gotten for now.

* It's mostly a system I am modelling for a series of novels I'm writing. It's something that characters in the novel will be building, these interconnected systems of Distributed Autonomous Organizations.

* This is relevant because I'm really working hard, working overtime, double-time, to formalize my practice as i said earlier;

* This is what this is all supposed to lead to, in all earnestness and truth;

* The Art-Ops-in-a--Box Concept; I have been working diligently on this and with great work ethic for at least over a decade; the image is something that I truly believe will become possible, and remember, this was all designed long before the types of LLMs that people are using today, and agentic AI or AI agents, the kind that can be orchestrated or that will orchestrate and coordinate themselves, among each other;

* I said in the text that I cited above from September, 2015, that I was only "I'm only developing the theory for now." I have now actually been building out the scaffolding for the system, which has many moving parts, many "subprojects", large-scale complex conceptual schemes, a boat-load of techniques, technologies, and processes/practices that I collectively often refer to as the ALX-system; 

* I started a project probably last year or maybe a little farther back called "Noise in The Workspace"; I made some first experiments in the First Series and published them online; I have been continuously documenting everything on my computer, in the cloud, and on web assets/resources;

* I have had my own website for the longest time now (alexgagnon.com), and again at some point in the last few years, I purchased another domain name, historiotheque.ca, which had content about my art studio, called, as many of you know, the Historiotheque;

* I also realize I have been using machine intelligence for the longest time now; in any case, I've been documenting all my processes and practices, realizing that my practice is a nonlinear practice; I have been investigating what all of this means;

* I have been doing countless experiments with Generative AI; I find I have had much success with my experimental method of interacting with Large Language Models, as a contemporary, interdisciplinary artist-researcher;

* To go back to the ArtOps, iit really is an abstract machine, possibly even something more advanced, now that I have taken a step back and am observing it; everything is sytematized in my practice, and nonlinear; I run on a tight schedule, which essentially is a simple job scheduling algorithm, with one machine and one worker, through and in a WORKSPACE;

* I used a randomized dynamic task assignment algorithm, done manually, operated manually, like most of my art-research practice; anyway I've been busy logging and documenting as I have already said;

* THE TAKEAWAY: The Art Operation ("ArtOps") and broker_ops ("Broker Operations"), the Art Exchange ("Art Exchange Ops"), the whole thing being an ART OPERATIONS ECOSYSTEM;

* The system is pretty simple for modern agentic AI / AI agents frameworks; just a simple coordination problem with n number of each Op-type;

* Lastly, the Art Operations@Historiotheque, a name I gave it at least as far back as 2015, is really a mature art-research practice, and the space has lived up to its name; I talk about the randomized task assignment + scheduling task whose nonlinearity, I think, allows me to be much more productive than i would otherwise be; I have been publishing what I call Official Releases of Semantic Version X.Y.Z. of The Historiotheque, the Historiotheque in this case being treated as a unique kind of software I call "Cultural Software"); My Release cycle launches and shuts down and relaunches in a rapid cycle, with sequenes exhibiting a lot of bursty behavior with high-creativity, high-productivity, and then at other times I have more fallow periods, where I am somewhat less prolific, and are like my downtime with the Art Operation "shut down until further notice"; I also call the art I do "Field Art", and probably should write a manifesto about it; I should probably publish a manifesto compiling all of my techniques, technologies, methods/methodologies, processes, and practices;

ANTILOG_06May26a

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ANTILOG_06May26a

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2026-05-06 22:36:36

* I just used my old “documentary_method.py” Python script that I created back in 2014 to document my experiments in painting and in other domains.

* Here is an instance of what came to be called “labnotes” that pertained precisely to this practice.

* In essence, this was the first iteration of what I now call “The New Documentation” (with the studio/laboratory treated as “cultural software” based on principles of continuous delivery and other related fields/practices).

* Here is another instance of the labnote format. I am having problems with the interface to this blogging platform, so I will return to this at a later date. Stay tuned...

All the projects are the same anyway. Some notes from earlier, in another format, but still the same underlying documentary method:

- I just was oscillating for one of my "15-minute workdays" or "work sessions" from two separate Gemini tabs, one tab for sending an email to myself, but I worked on the two Gemini tabs in conjunction with a document I was creating of the chat I had just had with the AI;

- Then I was also trying to find a reference in my archives of the concept of "delta-workspace" and "historiotopia" originally from a GitHub repository readme.md file, but which I was searching trying to find in another instance where I had posted the same content but in a Medium article;

- I keep switching from thing to thing, "tab-to-tab", "tab-to-editor", it's the translations and transitions from one to the other;

- I was also in the process of planning to send an email to myself with copies of documents I had been working on one of my computers, the Ubuntu machine;

- Then I'm already planning retrieving the documents in my email on my Windows laptop, after which I was going to print out a dozen pages on that computer;

- Then I was planning on going to read the documents at the kitchen table;

- Except I'm following a random, nonlinear trajectory/path through the workspace;

- I go from workspace to workspace, from device to device, media to media, always in "transition / interval / contact";

- There was more to it but that's it for now, this has been a data log, a snapshot of the workspace as it was in the previous hour or so.

- In conclusion, here is something also from that period around 2014, which I had already added in a previous iteration of this post, but which somehow was irretrievably lost.
- I wanted to include it to show how I have been thinking and working with surfaces, flat surfaces in this case, in my painting practice.
- It means that I have been working on my delta-workspace theory and documentation method for over a decade. Now it is the study of workflow management methodologies in their own right, as part of what I not call "The New Documentation". I will be posting on here more often, about the "nonlinear practice" of "nonlinear practices and methodologies of hyperreflexive design science". more soon...

ANTILOG_31Dec14a

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ANTILOG_31Dec14a

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07:43 2014-12-31

* I've made several new attempts at creating a visual art ("design") that could eventually be done entirely by computer, in an automated manner.
* I'm also looking closely at my documentation methods, trying to improve my record-keeping in general. The goal of that is to have a body of work of documented methods, processes, techniques, methodologies, etc.
* The goal in that is to make my work "reproducible". Since my work is mostly "experimental", I want others to be able to reproduce the "experiments".

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16:50 2014-12-31

* So I made several other ventures into the realm of Generative Art / Procedural Generation. I'm not sure where I'm going with this right now, but I know it is amazing work that I am doing. Let me lead you directly to my latest entry into the Laboratory Notebook: