This masterclass will explore a little history of narrative machines in relation to narrative environments, exploring how artificial intelligence opens up the legacies of narrative production in unprecedented ways. The lecture speculates on the spatial and temporal orientation of narrative machines in hardware and software, considering how devices, denotation, designation and derivatives in AI systems form wholly new ways to externalize cognition, and collective knowledge.

The masterclass will invite participants to co-construct entries for the Little Book of Narrative Machines, which explores the history and future of narrative machines as narrative environments.

Stephanie Sherman is a director, strategist, writer and producer working across design, technology, architecture, and culture. She develops projects and organizations that reprogram and reorganize outmoded systems as collaborative platforms. Her research focuses on the history and futures of automation, and she is currently working on transforming her PhD “Auto: Fordian Parables of Platform Automation” into a book. She currently directs the MA Narrative Environments at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London and is the Associate Director of Antikythera, a program at the Berggruen Institute on the future of planetary computation. She is also a researcher at Autonomy (a think tank on the future of work) and runs Radioee.net (a nomadic translingual radio station).

She has published essays in Strelka Magazine, AI & Society, Frontiers in Computer Science, and Cabinet Magazine. She holds a BA in Literature from University of Pennsylvania, an MA in Philosophy from Duke, and a Phd in Design from the University of California San Diego.

Two full days, one as an instructed tutorial workshop, the other as self-guided project work.

Day 1

• Workshop: Narrative Machines
10-11 Welcome & Intro, Scenarios & Overview Discussion
• Sourcing & Scenarios
11-12 Hardware & Histories
12-1 Report Out & Conversation
1-2 Lunch
2-3 Software & Scenarios
3-4 Report Out & Conversation
4-5 Preliminary Entries Drafting