Exhibit: Ken Jacobs - wager any umbrella
Tue, Nov 3 · 10:00 AM Rhizome DC · Takoma
Exhibit runs November 3 - December 6 Opening reception: Saturday November 7, 3-6pm Closing reception: Sunday December 6, 4-6pm Open during all events, or email us to schedule a different time to view wager any umbrella began as a software development project collapsing the phonological field of scanned text and finding words across word boundaries: near-oronyms. The title phrase, which yields geranium with the slightest wiggle, originated in a poem built out of phonemic constraints, Sooner (2009). The software development work branched into a serial poem, word boundary , currently over one hundred segments, rendered here as scrolls, drapes, and panels. The original software project used AI help on the mechanics of detecting and compiling near-oronyms but I found that AI engagement caused significant architectural drift. In parallel, I engaged AI to interrogate how the tool presented personalities or alters. Using alters, social constructs and strict memory compartmentalization I developed a rudimentary zero-trust agentic framework to solve unmanageable problems with alignment and governance (getting the tool to solve the problems as defined). But despite a successful implementation of this framework, my enthusiasm fell flat and my concerns about the technical integrity of the code grew. My confidence in AI collapsed. This installation collects oblique artifacts of that software project: poems, scrolls, panels. A digital visualization mapping output from the word boundary scanner, will be available.



