Creative technology beyond AI hype – Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker

Nyungar artist and technologist Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker joined SLV LAB to discuss why the future of technology should not be treated as inevitable, particularly amid pressure to embed AI into every system and workflow. In conversation with Ana Tiquia, Kathryn reflects on leaving parts of the tech sector behind to focus on creative practice, speculative fiction, game making, First Peoples knowledges, repair culture and community-owned tools. The episode invites us to consider how cultural institutions might approach digital futures with greater care, agency and responsibility.

Transcript

0:00:01 - 0:00:54
Ana Tiquia
We're living through a moment when advanced technologies like AI are often framed as unavoidable, as if the future has already been decided and all that remains is for the rest of us to adapt. But what if, instead of rushing to retrofit every part of our lives, we took a sideways step towards story, towards play, towards repair, towards First People's ways of understanding?In this episode, Kathryn Gledhill Tucker invites us into that possibility.I'm Ana Tiquia, Head of Innovation and Research at State Library Victoria, and you're listening to an SLV Lab podcast, part of our conversation series exploring emerging technology, digital experimentation and library futures with artists, technologists and workers in the cultural sector.0:00:54 - 0:01:31
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
The thing that pains me the most is this narrative of inevitability. It's here. We just need to learn how to live with it. I don't think that any technology is inevitable. I don't think that innovation is linear or predetermined. The more that we can build our own small computers or small machines, or having self-hosted large language models, being able to play with these tools in a way that we have a little bit more control over, a little bit more understanding over how they're working.I still like hold on to those kind of practices in ways of working as a locus of empowerment.0:01:31 - 0:03:17
Ana Tiquia
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker is a Nyungar artist and creative technologist living on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar. Their work moves across coding, sound, fiction, games and immersive media, exploring custodial approaches to data systems of surveillance and technology. As a site of both critique and creative liberation. Kathryn's currently developing their first science fiction novel as part of the Wheeler Centre's Next Chapter Fellowship, as well as building independent videogame projects that bring together narrative, sound and code.In this conversation, we speak about stepping away from the extractive logics of the tech industry and the insistence that AI belongs everywhere. We talk about the value of slowing down and building small, sovereign, community minded technological futures. We also explore science fiction as a way of imagining technologies outside of colonial and military industrial inheritances, and ask what a good future might look like if it were shaped more by agency and repair.The following conversation was recorded on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We acknowledge the traditional lands of all the Victorian Aboriginal clans and their cultural practices and knowledge systems. We'd also like to acknowledge and pay our respects to any First Nations listeners joining us for this conversation.I really love to start these conversations just by asking about what practitioners consider to be their practice. And I'm aware that you're someone who has a number of different strands to your practice. And I was wondering if you could start by just asking you how you would describe what it is that you do.0:03:17 - 0:04:33
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
So at the moment, I'm a full time creative person, and part of that is writing science fiction. And I've been writing for a little while, but then a lot of my time is working in videogames. So I'm working with a small studio here in Narrm called Wali Studios on their first game, Wyrmspace Tactics. So I do a bit of audio engineering and a bit of narrative design, and then I'm also spending a big chunk of my time working on my first solo project as well.A solo videogame project. And that's very early days, but that's the direction in which my creative practice is evolving, is trying to do like a little bit of sound, a little bit of writing, a little bit of coding, a little bit of like just whatever makes sense at the time. But then I also really enjoy things like, I love modular synthesis, I love 3D printing, and this kind of whatever collections and institutions are calling immersive or emerging practices, tends to be the collecting vessel of things that I enjoy.So yeah, so there's lots of different things at the moment, but they're all just like creative and interesting practices to me.0:04:33 - 0:04:45
Ana Tiquia
Can you tell us a bit more about how you came to these practices? I've also been aware that you've had a background working more in technology or as a technologist, and that you've had a bit of a move away, but tell us more about that.0:04:45 - 0:06:04
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah. I guess I worked in tech for a long time, and I worked in tech because I just really enjoyed technology. I enjoyed computers, and in working in the tech industry, I didn't get to do a lot of the things that I loved, which was, how do I get more creative control of the machines that I'm working with, and how do I help other people have more agency over the machines that we interact with every day?And so I think that kind of creative outlet was just how that manifested, because I didn't have a lot of control day to day in whatever job that I was doing. But I think that's what I keep returning to, is that belief that we should be able to understand how the things we use are built, how we can modify them to suit our needs, how we can repair them as well.And I think as the years have gone on, that's become more and more difficult and deliberately difficult. So that's I think where the creative practice has emerged is what would the tools in my life look like if I created them to look exactly how I wanted them to look? And I think that's a really creative avenue and a very creative well to tap.0:06:04 - 0:06:35
Ana Tiquia
One of the questions that we had when we started up SLV Lab was this question of, well, if we're an innovation lab and we're located here at the State Library, but we're also a publicly funded lab, what does that look like in terms of where do we locate innovation, exactly? And I was curious, I know that some of your work has been focused around, well, you have a very strong futures slant to your work.And I was wondering about your idea around technological futures and what good futures for technology had looked like as well to you.0:06:35 - 0:08:19
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
That's a it's a great question. I think that's where a lot of my thinking has come through in my fiction, because I found that writing science fiction stories is a lot quicker than building a machine. So, a lot of my practice will through this process of just brainstorming, imagining both interrogating what are the inflection points in history that have created the scenarios and the technologies that we're embedded in now.And then imagining, okay, so what if that looked differently? What if there were a different mix of people in the room, say, when the first computers were born or when the first technologies emerged? How might today look different? And it's a lot faster to write a story about that than to create a new computer from scratch. So that's where a lot of my futures comes through.So I have a lot of science fiction that is set in alternate futures that imagine, like these kind of different inflection points that imagine groups of people that are creating computers, that are imagining these kind of cultural protocols of like, well, what does it mean to build something that is mined from country? And what is our responsibility to the the kind of scar tissue left behind, but also the continuing country that still lives inside machines, and then,Yeah. Eventually I do create these kind of prototypes of what would this look like as a physical object, but a lot of it just comes out in stories.0:08:19 - 0:08:34
Ana Tiquia
That’s amazing. I know that you're currently one of the Wheeler Centre's Next Chapter Fellows, and that you're over here in Narrm for this very fellowship and project. Can you share a little bit more about the project that you're working on at this stage?0:08:34 - 0:10:06
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah. So I'm currently yeah, as you say, I'm one of the Next Chapter fellows with the Wheeler Centre. And I have been working on my first science fiction novel, which is set on an interplanetary spaceship. And the the conceit, I suppose, of this project was I wanted to imagine what would it look like for blackfellas to be in space?And I'm a huge science fiction fan. I love science fiction in all its forms, but so much of the canon is very Western and have these principles of frontier exploration and first contact and colonialism and mining embedded within them. So it's very unusual to read science fiction that isn't about how can we go to another planet and conquer it in some way.So I wanted to reimagine these kind of exploration stories from a perspective of, well, what does that actually mean to return home and to be respectful in our exploration? And is that even possible in this kind of canon of science fiction? And what does that mean to disrupt that canon? So, that's the project, but it's basically, what does it mean for blackfellas to be in space in a spaceship in the shape of a whale shark.So that's the that's the pitch.0:10:06 - 0:10:16
Ana Tiquia
That sounds amazing. I know you're in the finishing stages of this, but I'm like, I'm wanting to hurry you up. So we get to read it faster.0:10:16 - 0:10:41
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Look. Same here. Yeah, I really underestimated how long it takes to not only write, but, like, let a novel bake. That's been a real lesson of patience, this project, which has been nice. But yeah, I have so much respect for anyone that has finished and published a novel at this point.0:10:41 - 0:10:56
Ana Tiquia
As someone who's never published a novel, and I'm not sure if I ever will. I have utmost respect. That's interesting that the time component and that process thing around letting, letting novel letting, writing bake, does that feel quite different from other practices that you engage with?0:10:57 - 0:13:09
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Definitely. And so I really had to unlearn the move fast and break things mentality, I think, of working in the tech industry. And also because I'm, you know, I come from the, the school of thought of agile development, which is all about building really quickly and learning very quickly. I think I've had to both just physically teach my body how to slow down and like, pace myself a bit, because that way of working, I know, was one of many factors that kind of led me to burn out from working in the industry.It’s still, you know, a practice that I apply to even building games. But I've had to find a way to apply that way of working in a way that's still kind of fit and accommodated my nervous system. But yeah, like books are very different, or at least my approach to writing this novel has been really different, which is I’ll write when it feels right.And I will take long stretches of time where writing won't just look like sitting in a laptop and typing out words. Writing will look like going out for a long walk and having big ideas and letting them bake, or letting them marinate or whatever culinary metaphor fits. But yeah, it's definitely a process of patience. And some of that is very solitary work.But a lot of it is talking to other writers and bouncing ideas around and getting recommendations for books, and also expanding your brain in other ways. I like that my practice is cross-disciplinary or anti disciplinary because it means that I will get ideas at a music gig or at a gallery or reading other people's poetry.And I think that creates a very rich creative practice rather than if I was just writing science fiction and reading science fiction.0:13:09 - 0:13:37
Ana Tiquia
When we were discussing what we might talk about today, you mentioned that you had this big move away from the tech sector and working in technology, and that you're really much more engaged in creative practices. I'd love to hear more about the game that you're developing as well, but it seems like narrative practices have really taken a forefront as well for you.Can you tell me a bit more about this move away and this move towards and what you're moving towards and why it's exciting for you, I guess. Yeah.0:13:37 - 0:16:10
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
So yeah, I worked in tech for over a decade, and I found myself in the industry kind of by accident, and I loved it while I was working there. But I think as I was getting further into my career, I wanted to have a measurable social impact. And I thought I had found that in a few roles where at least on paper, it looked like, oh, this is really good for the world.But then if I tried to measure that impact, I really couldn't. So that was one factor that kind of started to feed that disillusionment with the tech industry. The roles that exist in the industry, or at least the kind of roles that I used to do, which was around like product management and product development are all suffixed with AI now; it’s impossible to avoid.I've dipped my toe here and there, back into working in tech and doing a few contract roles here and there, but the voracity with which everyone is encouraged to find ways to embed AI, quote unquote, into any kind of practice or product or way of working, I found completely untenable both as a critic of this kind of movement, but also as a person who, in my professional practice, I'm so dedicated to building products that are good for people and are solving problems.And this pursuit really feels like the the death throes of a dying industry for one thing. But the command that comes from CEOs or other professionals just to find somewhere to put AI is such a painful mandate and a painful way of working. I found it really impossible to maintain a career in the tech industry with that kind of underlying mandate.So I'm taking a break, ostensibly to see if this wave of AI and LLMs finds its natural conclusion. But I've also really enjoyed making videogames, so maybe this is just the direction in which my my career is going. For the time being.0:16:10 - 0:17:46
Ana Tiquia
Yeah, I hear you there.I feel like a lot of AI technologies, particularly LLM based generative AI, have been often presented to us as things that we need to retrofit into processes. And it's interesting hearing you feel that you know your values around social like positive social impact no longer align necessarily with what you're being asked to do in in the tech industry. We've been having a conversation here lately about AI ethics within the library, helped by staff held by the organisation and and how that might influence an approach to the design of policy.And one of the things I've been reflecting on quite a lot is that it really feels like after having worked in digital technology, in the cultural space, cultural sector for a number of, you know, for a couple of decades that earlier waves of digital technology, particularly around the open web, were very aligned to the idea of libraries or museums or collections as key players in an open knowledge society.So open data or open data sets, collections online, those kind of things all felt like they were broadly in alignment with the direction things are going in. It's been really interesting to kind of think about, I guess the development of these proprietary LLMs as really often the capture of a lot of public public value, or you could say digital commons into sort of proprietary products that are increasingly expensive and at the same time being embedded into so many different systems.0:17:46 - 0:20:27
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
The thing that pains me the most is this narrative of inevitability as well. Even very smart people that I respect, I will hear them say oh the Pandora's box has been opened, or the cat's out of the bag or whatever, like it's here. We just need to learn how to live with that.I don't think that any technology is inevitable. I don't think that technology or innovation is linear or predetermined. I think that's really important to hang on to. I do really believe in resistance. I mean, my post-grad was in marketing, so I can see spin. And this really feels like a marketing beat. And I think if we're going to be, yeah, anyone is going to be repeating narratives, I think you should really check in with yourself and and think, do I believe this or have I just been told this by people with a lot of money and a lot of vested capital into the thing that they'reselling being a reality to. Yeah. Which I guess is all coming back to the kinds of creative practices that I like to engage in, which is around the right to repair and the maker movement and building tools and small gadgets that improve your life. I think that even those small practices, the more that we can build our own small computers or small machines or having self-hosted, even if they are large language models, being able to play with these tools in a way that we have a little bit more control over, a little bit more understanding over how they're working, can bring power back to individuals.I still like hold on to those kind of like practices in ways of working as a locus of empowerment. The other thing I try to be careful about. Yeah, AI is an umbrella term, is also a marketing thing. So I try to extricate it a little bit. If we're talking about LLMs, then we're talking about LLMs, or if we're talking about machine learning, then it's machine learning.But this the way that, you know, AI has been used as relative term serves this narrative of inevitability as well. And this kind of nebulous definition because it encourages people to say oh, but there are good applications of AI. And then there's that. We just need to be careful about some other applications.0:20:27 - 0:21:20
Ana Tiquia
Similarly, the lack of specificity really makes it slippery. One of the interesting things here at the library is that we've got lots of people working in really specialist areas, doing everything from kind of collections description to working with members of the public. And it's really interesting when you have conversations here around AI. One of the things we've also tried to do is from the outset, get really specific about what we're talking about when we're talking about AI, because it's so different.We've got staff members on the floor who, when they're talking about AI, are talking about prompt results that members of the public might be coming to them with, looking for material that may or may not exist in the collection, you know, in their research versus someone who's using a very kind of specialist, kind of even just the use of OCR in kind of collections has been in use for so long and it's well, we're not talking about the same thing.0:21:20 - 0:21:43
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah, definitely be able to find a common language I think is so important so that you're like critiquing the same things or that you're like engaging a bit more deliberately with these tools as well.0:21:43 - 0:21:46
Ana Tiquia
I wanted to ask you as well about the game that you have in development.0:21:47 - 0:24:20
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Oh yeah, this is very early days, but I've been working in games for a couple of years now, in a few different roles. So I think as I mentioned, doing a bit of audio engineering and narrative design and I have been... I taught myself how to, you know, code. A few years ago I started in web development, and I have, you know, a few years of experience in product development, too.So I feel like I've been collecting all these different skills. And I, I got to a point last year where I kind of figured, I think I have enough skills to make a game on my own. And that was like a really exciting challenge. So I started making just microgames, teaching myself how to use the platform Godot, which is an open source videogame development software.And then, like I managed to pull something together. I was making a game a week, every week for, I think ten weeks late last year and then publishing them on it. Just small, silly, often microgames, but just being able to build something and be like, oh, I finished that. I did the thing that I wanted to do and something came out of it is really very addictive.So one of those microgames I've now spun into, what's going to become like a proper, like commercialised game. And so that's been the project for the last few months. It's a rhythm game, heavily inspired by, I don't know if you did you ever play Skyroads which is like an old MS-DOS game, which is incredibly like simple if you look at it now. You're a spaceshipIt's a platformer. So it's heavily inspired by games like Skyroads and Starfox. That kind of third person spaceship, low poly but very beautiful environment crossed with, yeah, a rhythm game. So the the environment that you're flying through responds to your movements and the sounds that you make and the things that you pick up and you're yeah, you're flying through space, you're flying through a very liminal, futuristic space inspired by our seasons.So that's that's the game. It's very early days, but it's so satisfying. I think for me personally to have all of these disparate kind of creative professions coalescing into one project.0:24:20 - 0:24:45
Ana Tiquia
The game sounds amazing. And also I'm a bit like, hurry up and finish so we can play it, but no, no, we'll let it simmer, let it bake. Yeah. I'm curious about the process of making a game on your own. I know we've got a big indie game scene, but we often think about videogame production. We're often thinking about really big production houses or large involved productions.Yeah. What's it like to be doing this purely independently?0:24:45 - 0:27:23
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
I feel like it's never been easier to make a solo game, but that might just be... I might just be arrogant. I've also spent years and years collecting skills to be able to do all this stuff, but I truly believe it has never been easier, especially with some of these platforms. Godot’s so easy to use and spin up a project and get something working.I'm fortunately a very self-directed and determined person, so I'm quite good at creating a schedule and breaking a project down into atomised parts and doing that job development thing, and also being really ruthless about scope, which I think is maybe one of the biggest challenges of indie development is that your ambitions can be much bigger than your capacity, even if your technical capacity.But just like the amount of hours that you have in a day. So I'm being very... I'd rather have a smaller scoped game that gets finished and that people can play, than one that is in development hell forever. So I'm trying really hard. But yeah, it's been wonderful. I do, I have like a lot of friends in and around this industry.I think it's been really interesting. Like we were just talking about large language models. All of the people that I work with like don't use LLMs, that don't use Claude, don't use ChatGPT to write code for them, even though I know it's become very, very common in tech. There's this... Maybe it's just the bubble that I live and operate in, but I think the concerns around intellectual property and but also especially for me in my project because I'm building a rhythm game, latency is such a big consideration for me that bloat is my enemy.And these large language models are very good at generating a volume of code to solve a problem. But I need efficiency, so it's really important for me to like find the most efficient way to, to build this project. So yes, I've really not been to to use LLMs in, in this kind of project, which it might take me a lot longer than it would take someone else.But yeah, that's been it's been important to me to keep this project really lean.0:27:23 - 0:27:41
Ana Tiquia
Yes, I’m imaging, as coming from a background in making and DIY and right to repair as well. Would I be writing assuming that like actually knowledge of how to, you know, knowledge of how your code functions and things like that is actually important to you?0:27:41 - 0:29:09
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah, precisely. It is, I think I have a real fear of getting to a point where I no longer know what my code is doing, and I’m a self-taught developer. I'm not an expert by any means, so being able to solve coding problems like one line at a time means that I can hold the code in my head and I can read it, I can understand it.But yeah, it is a real fear that if I get a tool to generate code, even if it runs fine, if it gets to the point where I no longer understand it, I can no longer read it, then I've... I feel like I've lost control and that is a real I mean, I think that's a real risk to the project because if it suddenly stops compiling or it stops running, or I've introduced a security vulnerability or I've introduced bugs, if I can't fix them myself, then I'm like, okay, this is this project is dead, or it's a real risk to me.And yeah, as I say, like I'd rather take my time a little bit and ship something that I'm confident about than I have too many risks, I suppose, or vulnerabilities.0:29:09 - 0:29:30
Ana Tiquia
I was also curious to ask about your practices around collections and archives advisory, and also indigenous data sovereignty. I was wondering what you were saying in the interplay in emergency space, particularly with cultural organizations and collecting organizations making moves to integrate AI into their systems.0:29:30 - 0:32:11
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
I've done a bit of work with Angie Abdilla and her organisation with indigenous protocols in artificial intelligence, and those have been some really just like, fruitful and nourishing and very culturally grounded conversations. I think we often come to I speak for the whole group, but we often come to this point of, like so many of the tools, especially off the shelf tools, are created by companies whose interests are in extraction and generating capital, in stealing material from people, in tapping sacred knowledges and turning them into into products in the pursuit of capital.And that's so much of the machinations of these companies and these technologies are at odds with cultural protocol. There are ways for communities to perhaps create their own large language models or tools that serve community and that are sovereignly owned and maintained. But it certainly doesn't look like taking open AI or taking Claude and feeding it more sacred knowledges.And then if we're going to be kind of going back to First principles and even asking, what do communities need? I don't think the answer would ever be large language models. I think if we're going to be spending the time and thinking about the way that we can build tools or build machines to help community, it doesn't mean... I don't think we'd ever land on, oh, let's get a chat bot that we can talk to.And I've been doing a little bit more work with collections, institutions and archives. And the one big question that I keep coming back to is what does it look like to, I guess, like have a bit more ownership and agency and self-determination over these tools. And this is all happening inside, I suppose, a colonial system that is still kind of perpetuating colonial violence.And so asking questions of what would what to self-determination mean in this environment or in this scenario? What does it look like to strengthen, let's say keeping places in community and building skills to be able to maintain our own archives? I mean, it's a long and evolving and ongoing conversation.0:32:11 - 0:32:39
Ana Tiquia
Yeah, it’s a huge conversation. I don't know how you conceive of it, but I always think of technology as a subset of of cultural artifact, really, and all the technologies we encounter and work with as a product of some kind of culture. And I think it really is instructive to see so many of the advanced technologies that we work with in this space as emerging out of extractive, Euro-Western colonialist cultures.0:32:39 - 0:33:29
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah, everything comes back to a military industrial complex too, I think that once you start looking at the history of technology, and yeah, as I say, looking at those inflection points, I suppose it shouldn't be shocking, but there's always some Cold War or other world war or other conflict in which an emergence of technology comes and that DNA persists through time.I think. So the computers that we use today, the DNA of the military industrial complex is still within them. It'd be nice to think about, what does technology look like outside of that paradigm? But it does feel very science fictive to to be able to even imagine that technology that's abstracted from that particular cultural DNA.0:33:29 - 0:33:36
Ana Tiquia
Has that been one of the things that's really, you know, drawn you towards your speculative fiction and science fiction practice?0:33:36 - 0:33:48
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah, definitely. Which is hard to do, because once you start looking at technology and imagining a world outside of the military industrial complex is a challenging.0:33:48 - 0:33:53
Ana Tiquia
It sounds like you're doing some good work in that space. So with this, with the work on this recent novel.0:33:54 - 0:33:54
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
I’m doing my best.0:33:54 - 0:34:12
Ana Tiquia
Yeah. I guess just to finish off, I wanted to ask you your work because you're working across so many practices, whether there is anything that's really energising you at the moment that you're coming across, whether it's from writing, whether it's from games design and development, whether it's from something else.0:34:12 - 0:35:31
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
Yeah. I think the things that are making me so energised and excited are more artists picking up technical or experimental practices, like, there's a great live coding scene that's building up here in Narrm. Artists working with immersive and emerging technologies and bringing those into collections and archives spaces. I’ve started learning touch designer and other kind of like audio reactive tools.Anything that connects these different media together and introduces a sense of play or a responsiveness to the body, I think is so interesting. And especially seeing artists step outside of maybe their traditional discipline and pulling all these threads together. So interesting. Like, yeah, you and I both have been on the body advisory board and seeing April Phillips and Friends with Computers Commission at PICA was one of those examples of just bringing in 3D modeling and this immersive like physical space and sound and body reactivity, anything like that.I think that's where I get really excited. I love to see more of that.0:35:32 - 0:35:34
Ana Tiquia
That's where the liberatory practice is for you today?0:35:34 - 0:35:36
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
I think so, yeah, that's it.0:35:37 - 0:35:41
Ana Tiquia
And lastly, what does what does a good future look like to you?0:35:41 - 0:37:04
Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker
I mean, it's a great question. I think I don't know if you've picked up on this as well. There's been a real wave of mostly like femme girlies on the internet building cyber decks. I think that's such a great example of what I want futures to look like, which is like people introducing play and craft and a little bit of like education and learning and understanding of technologies in a way that's like, how do we build something?That's just for me and it's very bespoke and it's serving a very single purpose. But I'm also learning about how tools work and how to work. I think that's a really exciting space. It's been so wonderful to see more people that aren't traditionally involved in tech or electronics learn and make things that are like not only useful, but also very cute and exciting. And I think I want to see whatever the next proliferation of that is. And maybe in a more communal sense, I want to see more community mesh systems and home grown handcrafted computers and networks.That's the kind of stuff I want.