Author Archives: brogan

Creative applications of AI indicate an important truth that we rarely acknowledge: aesthetics is not about some simple, sensibly based pleasurable response to phenomena.  At the risk of sounding critically antiquated in this age of ‘affect’ and ‘sensible distribution’, it … Continue reading →

I wrote this semi-poem thing, Ship to Crete, in 1982. Let’s see if Claude can produce something roughly similar: …that we might catalog with a systematic arrangement of the actual volumes anticipated would appear certainly to encompass a spectrum of … Continue reading →

After having written some reservations about Wang’s (2013) differentiation of Western and Chinese attitudes to technology, I decided to explore a bit further through a conversation with Claude. Now, I’m wondering whether my arguments are roughly credible or whether it … Continue reading →

I couldn’t resist continuing the dialogue between Thales, Socrates and Aristotle. Me to Claude: Imagine that this dialogue is returned to on another occasion, one that links to a relevant Athenian festival, and Thales, Socrates and Aristotle each consider the … Continue reading →

So, I offered the following prompt to Claude: Create an imaginary Platonic dialogue that involves Thales, Socrates and Aristotle and concerns Thales’ thesis that magnets have a soul (life force). On the Soul of the Magnet: A Dialogue The setting: … Continue reading →

Just a thought… Imagine that I’m too lazy or busy to read, so I set AI to the task of reading for me.  Then I find myself equally averse to writing, so I prompt AI to write for me.  Then … Continue reading →

Yuk Hui’s notion of ‘cosmotechnics’ (2020) represents a critique of Western theories of technology that represent their own attitudes to technology as universal. Contemporary Western theories argue, for example, that responses to technology are characterised by ambivalence. Technology conveys a … Continue reading →

I am dumbstruck. I am impersonated. I’m cloned. Having worked for so many months to read, take notes and comment on Plato’s dialogues, I find that I could actually complete the project in a matter of 30 minutes or few … Continue reading →

Since I’m not sure that I will ever get a chance to finish this, I should probably post this in its unfinished form. It is a book length set of notes and observations on the first 16 dialogues in J.M. … Continue reading →

After some testing, I discovered that my software has a significant issue. Despite many efforts by Claude to fix, the ‘chords’ command in Finish That Song is still calculating the notes incorrectly – displaying non-diatonic notes as though they were … Continue reading →

Check the previous post for details on this evolution of this Python music composition software. I was trying to test the 4th iteration and was having trouble figuring out how to name the more complex chords in a way that … Continue reading →

Reading the entire corpus of Plato’s work over 100 days, with brief summaries and comments. Was on Instagram but no longer.

Essay on the relevance of Plato’s conception of justice to contemporary environmental debates.

On an initial reading of Plato’s Republic, three major areas of contradiction were apparent to me. The first two linked to Plato’s overall strategies of philosophical argumentation while the third related to the conception of just social identity developed in … Continue reading →

Plato’s Republic is typically read as a largely serious study of the notion of justice, both as a social and individual virtue. It is often criticised in this light for promoting a model of social order characterised by inequity, repression … Continue reading →

Draft for a flawed book. An effort to conceive alternatives to capitalism becomes caught up in the question of justice – and the relation between justice and aesthetics. https://broganbunt.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SCREED_12.pdf

https://broganbunt.bandcamp.com/album/generally-descending I’ve been playing piano more seriously for the last couple of years, making an effort to learn music theory, practice scales, etc. This is a collection of short semi-improvised pieces that I recorded over the last few months. Fairly … Continue reading →

For the past few months I have been helping develop Antarctic Futures – an exhibition, public seminar series and program of children’s learning workshops. The event is a collaboration between artists and scientists that aims to mobilise public reflection about … Continue reading →

What if we were to approach Kant’s theory of the beautiful empirically rather than philosophically? What if we were to consider his concrete examples rather than his categorical distinctions and logic? This would enable us to recognise the beautiful as … Continue reading →

Squid Game is a Netflix Korean television series about a perverse organisation that runs deadly versions of kids games. The participants are financially struggling Koreans who sign their rights away to the organisation in the faint hope of winning the … Continue reading →

Many years ago when I was around 15 year old and trying to make a head start with my HSC art studies, I found myself sitting beneath a North Queensland house reading Erle Loran’s Cezanne’s Composition (1943). It may have … Continue reading →

Aesthetics with a capital ‘A’ refers to a slightly marginal field of philosophy – one that has seen better days, but that prattles along regardless and may even be making some kind of return. It sits forlornly alongside the major … Continue reading →