Hello fellow human, welcome back to another issue of oio news. Leaves turn yellow and days get shorter, and we’re all going to die eventually. But not today! Stay with us, for another peek into the oioverse. 🔮

PSA - welcome substack

You probably noticed something different, and that’s because we moved from Beehiiv to Substack. It’s the third migration our newsletter is doing (hopefully the last). Just like the universe, our number of subscribers keeps expanding, so we’re in need of bigger homes that can support our growth, and for now, Substack seems to be the right place for us. Things are slightly different here, the layout editor is a bit more constrained, so bear with us for these first few issues, we’ll get around it eventually.

In this issue, we look at the many ways our friends have created their own mur mur speaker! Oh and we’ll be a Kikk festival this weekend, so give us a shout, if you’re around. Then we continue by welcoming new faces to the oio team, a throwback to the oio drinks in Barcelona, and another entry to our team corner, featuring Bjørn Karmann. Finally we end with the usual bundle of handpicked links from our Discord community. So let’s dive in! 🤿

mur mur keeps murmuring

It’s been a while since we released our DIY mur mur kit, and we’ve seen some really cool builds out there! Whether it’s hacking the electronics, or printing with florescent plastic, we hope mur mur brings you some good energy to your space. Keep us updated on your work in our mur mur’s Discord channel!

see you at KIKK

This Friday and Saturday (Oct 23–24), our co-founder Matteo will be attending KIKK Festival in Namur, Belgium. Kikk is an international festival of digital & creative cultures exploring the crossovers between art, science & technology.

Earlier in February, Matteo hosted a workshop with the students of Media Design at HEAD Geneva and the final results will be presented at KIKK Festival this year. If you happen to be there as well, let us know by replying to this email and we can meet up!

new oios!

Just like our subscribers, also the oio team is expanding! In the last couple months we welcomed two new members to the group, Luca and Andrea. Luca is our interaction design intern based in Como, Italy, and Andrea is our new project manager, joining from Zagreb, Croatia. Keep an eye out for the upcoming oio team corners to get to know more about them!

thank you all! 🫂

Thank you for sharing the night with us in our new home in Barcelona last month. The office is now officiallywarm™, and we think it passed the vibe test. It’s now ready for future events and gatherings. Stay tuned! 👀

team corner • bjørn

Hello again from the oio team corner™, where you get to meet them oios one by one 🎙️ In this issue, we’d like to welcome Bjørn!

Meet Bjørn Karmann, senior designer at oio 🧙 Germany-born, Denmark-raised, Amsterdam-based yet winter-hibernating in Barcelona, Bjørn migrates and prefers to call the continent of Europe his home.

Early interests in mechatronics, creative coding and art installations had led Bjørn to study at CIID, developing his love for tangible, intelligent interfaces and speculative design. He then spent some time at Tellart as design lead, working on immersive, interactive exhibitions, while also teaching. After an intense two-year project at the Dubai World Expo, Bjørn left the exhibition world to reconnect with his initial design curiosity, joining oio in 2021.

For someone dealing with prototyping and physical computing on a daily basis, having your own lab is really important. And Bjørn has many machines to keep him company: plotter and 3D printers, all the way to a fully customized work station! 😮

Bjørn feels proud that the group relationship is built on trust and that everyone feels open to speak their mind. Through collaborative exchanges and hands-on tinkering, the team allows the best ideas to rise naturally, and celebrates when someone finds a new golden nugget or a perfect solution. With everyone taking ownership over their specific tracks and goals, the team manages to pull off projects that would normally require a lot more people, tackling briefs and challenges at the absolute edge of what is possible with technology.

As a huge nature lover, one of the greatest challenges in Bjørn’s work is finding the balance between tech development and nature preservation. “Whether it's making drawing machines, writing code that mimics nature, or growing mushrooms to hack a smart home device, nature is an extremely important antidote when working with emerging technology” he shares. The key is to “design with nature, creating experiences that make humans less machine, and more human.”

💅 cool links

Another tasty load of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

🕹️ google labs latest experiment_{(AI / gaming)}
🤔 clef is an open source decision model_(AI)
💀 reverse engineer anything_(AI)
🚦 LED synthesizer played with fingertips_(product)
🌱 for communities that seek to put down roots_(thoughts)
🛋️ a lamp as your companion_{(product / AI)}
🪀 katamari objects_(3D)
🕹️ agents at your fingertips_{(product / AI)}
👾 pixel drawing_(www)
🪦 the extinction of humanity according to AI builders_{(AI / thoughts)}
🤧 a chatgpt flyer pandemic_{(AI / visual)}
📺 infinite TV_(www)
👔 the worst onboarding ever_(UX)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 www: museum of the human web
🕹 game: into the unwell
📁 arena: poetic web
📚 wiki: chernoff face
🔧 tool: ponytail

stay lazy
Matteo & Norman

you may have noticed that on desktop, this gif is not left aligned. that is odd, isn’t it? and that’s because there’s no way to left-align images in substack, allegedly. so we’re left with a few options: we could create a long gif with empty space on the right, and make it full width, but that wouldn’t scale on mobile and other screens. we either scale the whole gif to be full-width, but that would make it way too big, or we just stick with this pseudo-centred gif with left-align text above, as we did, which clearly look like a mistake, so that’s why we had to write this paragraph to explain this odd layout decision. fuckthank you substack for not allowing such simple option. great editor 10/10 bye see you next month

Greetings friends, how are things? Feels like autumn’s slowly creeping in, get those last bits of sunshine!

In this issue, we have a look at some updates on our beloved mur mur: the promised DIY kit, and some press links. We’re also opening a new space in Barcelona, some highlights from a workshop in Pune, India, and finally one more entry to the oio team corner! And don’t forget the cool links at the end of the newsletter. So let’s dive in! 🤿

🔊 mur mur • one month update

🛠️ build your own

It has been a month since the release of mur mur, the speaker with a world inside, and we are still quite overwhelmed by the love we have received. People have asked how they could own, or purchase, or even build their own mur mur. While the little speaker is currently still in its prototype stage, we’ve been working hard on a DIY kit so that you can have a taste of it in the setting of your own room. Now, the kit is finally ready for you to build.

build your mur mur

On mur mur’s GitHub page, you will find step-by-step instructions on how to assemble your own speaker, including a list of hardware materials to order and software that will run on your local computer. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot us a message on our discord!

🗞️ press update

The project was featured in a few places, such as It’s Nice That, Creative Applications, Design Boom and Yanko Design, culture and trend platforms Hype Beast and Trend Hunter(Future Festival), and music technology communities Sonic Field and YouBeat.

We couldn’t have done this alone. It was great pleasure to be working along with Mattering, exploring live ambient sounds within simulated ecologies. As our friends from Mattering said, it was a journey of “sowing seeds rather than drawing blueprints.” Also, a big shoutout to Morgan Whitney for helping us create the sound mix for our feature reel!

🍻 oio drinks

oio drinks is back!

We’ve got exciting news • oio Barcelona is having its grand opening! Join us for drinks in our new office, close to Tetuan station. Mark your calendars:

📆 Sep 18th, around 6-7pm
📍oio bcn (feel free to leave some reviews on Google Maps 👀)

Sign up and join us below ↓

sign up here!

🇮🇳 pune summer school

Last month, oio’s creative technologist Marta Fioravanti visited Pune, India and joined fellow colleague Shamik Ray to give a course on Designing Agentic Experiences, a summer school pop-up by CIID and FLAME University 🔥. During the week-long workshop, participants explored interactive systems that have agency, examining how communication, timing, and behaviour influence trust, transparency, and user control.

Through both theory and hands-on prototyping, the program gave participants a chance to rethink AI systems that are not simply functional, but also meaningful, responsible, and aligned with human needs and contexts.

🗣️ athens’ creative agency meetup

Any readers in Greece? Mark your calendars, because our co-founder Simone will be speaking at BAUTOPIA, a three-day culture & creativity festival hosted in Athens, Greece from October 7–9. Come see Simone present some of our latest work, or just drop by to say hi!

Check out BAUTOPIA’s website for further information on the event.

oio team corner • normz

Welcome back to another oio team corner™ where, once again, you get to meet one of the bright souls behind the work of oio. Next up, please say hi to… Norman 🎩

Everything extraordinary the oio team does, Norman tells the world about it. Norman (or normz, as his friends like to call him) is oio’s communications guy, in charge of all things public, including social media, the newsletter (yes he’s cringing writing in 3rd person) and the occasional Discord community engagement. 🌐 Born in Hsinchu, a northern city in Taiwan, normz has travelled between countries and cities, before finally setting foot on the costal land of Barcelona. Normz joined the team in the fall of 2024 after finishing his studies in design and branding, and has ever since been blowing life into the legacy of oio’s story.

One of the greatest challenges running comms for oio, normz describes, is finding the perfect balance between information and storytelling. As oio’s work often stems from the latest technology and it’s relationship to the current social context, presentation of the work can easily get dull if the narrative focuses too much on the “how” instead of the “why.” Before each project launch, the whole team sits down to brainstorm narrative angles, while analyzing current trends and relating them to the themes we’re tackling. Then, thanks to the talented team of designers and visual storytellers, we are able to bring the stories to life through engaging graphics, videos and posts.

Serving as the bridge between oio and the public, normz’s position provides an opportunity for him to observe the team from a distance. Spread across Europe, the remote working team has found ways to connect and engage on a daily basis. From the morning standups to the oio open mics, from the 1-on-1 coffee chats to the occasional lunch and learn, the oio nerds find pleasure through simple acts like telling a horrible dad joke or sharing the latest updates on their van renovation. A fun anecdote that still stays on normz’s mind is the time when a couple colleagues were “flushed” out of their meeting room to join the main group for the EoD check-in. It was a long Friday afternoon, and we were getting tired of waiting for the other guys in our virtual meeting room on Discord. Instead of texting, the moderator simply made a few clicks and removed the other meeting room as a whole. Till this day, the lore of the disappearing room still circulates. Who says a little mischief can't make a good story.

um… okay

Outside of his 9–5, normz also enjoys design, photography and drawing, among other art making practices. He is also a dancer of dancehall, a vibrant dance and music style that originated from Jamaica. If you’d like to connect, give him a follow on Instagram 🙌

💅 cool links

Another tasty load of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

🧱 your room as a canvas _(lk)
🔐 every private key _(www)
📟 buddy up _(ig)
🚬 life accelerator _{(maker world)}
👉 do it_(www)
🏎️ mario kart but on youtube _(yt)
💾 tiny emulators _(www)
🌴 pikuniku 2 _(yt)
🏟️ highjacking fifa _(www)
📅 local ai meetup stockholm _(www)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 www: ant transport
🕹 game: into the unwell
📁 arena: time riddles
📚 wiki: chiva bus
🔧 tool: caffeine

drink up!
~ M+N

Hello friends, welcome to another issue of oio news! This one's a special one, and for many, the first one. That's right, plenty of new faces around here, and if you are one of them: welcome! and thank you for subscribing. Take a look at the previous issues, to find out more about oio!

This issue is all about mur mur, our most recent launch, but don't worry, we didn't forget about your favourite section: cool links and oio stonks!

mur mur

A few days ago, we launched something special • a little experiment we've been cooking for a while called “mur mur.” Like a murmur, it is a feeble sound from within. We’ve been creating a series of worlds: tiny simulations, similar to video games, that live inside the small speaker. The best part is that you can actually look inside to see their lives unfold and listen to the sounds they make in real time.

how it all started

We couldn't come up with something this cool on our own, this was the result of a collaboration between many people. We started working with our friends at Mattering studio a few months ago, and then collaboratively built a bunch of little experiments and prototypes, that eventually culminated into mur mur. Their work is really great, go and check their website.

We started exploring the idea of creating small worlds inside simple objects to produce something other than work.

We initially thought of a small film crew inside a TV, or a band living inside an MP3 player, but we became hooked on the idea of creating an actual ecosystem • something capable of generating those soothing soundscapes of nature or office spaces that people often use as background companionship for their daily lives.

Instead of generating an infinite stream of ambient audio, we decided to build an actual simulation of a small world. We created tiny environments with weather patterns and agents, such as animals or objects, that inhabit these spaces to produce ambient sounds.

We used these to create a sort of world sound engine. The weather and time influence the ambient and noise layers. The interactions and storylines between the agents in the world are heard as sound effects and ghostly melodies. Everything is accompanied by a melody layer that is influenced by the overall vibe of the world at that moment. Essentially, we created an infinite world that you primarily hear, rather than playing it like a video game.

a tiny speaker that you can look into

After creating these worlds and designing music around them, we developed a new type of device: a speaker that allows you to look inside to see what is happening.

We created three different worlds, each with its own dedicated speaker, so people can choose the vibe they want to experience:

There's the Pond, a marine ecosystem where soothing waves come alive with fish, ducks, and occasional boats. Then there is the Plot: a lively forest full of chirping birds, crackling leaves, and the occasional lost hiker. Finally, there is the Block, a tiny city and its society, complete with morning rush hours, street musicians, delivery robots, and pigeons.

the prototype

This could have been just a render or an AI-generated image, but that would have been boring and is something everyone does nowadays. We actually enjoy making things, so we decided to build one.

We modelled the actual speaker and 3D printed it. After purchasing all the necessary components": the speakers, the screen, and the microcontroller, we wrote the software and assembled the unit. Currently, it consists of an ESP32 with a round display and an SD card containing many hours of pre-generated worlds. This is only version one; we are already exploring a V2 with more powerful hardware capable of simulating worlds and music in real time.

This project is undergoing heavy iteration. As we speak, our lead designer, Bjørn, is preparing a GitHub repository with instructions for you to build your own. This will be a simplified version that does not run worlds in real time, but allows you to upload hours of pre-recorded world sounds. While true generative capabilities are possible and part of our future plans with more advanced hardware, we are taking this one step at a time.

In the meantime, you can listen to an infinitely simulated world directly in your browser:

all sounds great, but how can I buy it?

Well, you can't. Or at least not yet. We did not expect such a positive reaction to it, and so many people interested in actually buying this. So we're exploring the idea of making a small production run, and send out a few prototypes. In the meantime, you can also try to build one. Next week, we will publish a DIY GitHub repository for you to follow. Most of the components can be purchased from Amazon and other retailers, and the shell can be 3D printed. If you are interested, we will send updates here, on our Discord, and on Instagram.

beyond productive AI

The little creatures living inside mur mur are effectively autonomous agents. They live lives of their own, constrained by the rules of the simulation we have created for them. This is not far removed from the agent simulations seen in popular frameworks like Claw3D or pioneered years ago in OpenBMB’s ChatDev.

The problem with these visions of AI and agents is skeuo-human-morphism. We project our capitalistic logic onto creatures that should set us free, locking them into dystopian cubicle offices and forcing them to work for us.

However, having one or multiple agents, each with their own role and knowledge, living inside a piece of software or a device raises interesting new questions:

Like who are those agents? Do they have some form or organisation? Where and how do they actually work? And maybe even what do they do when they don’t churn out code? Consequently, designing software or devices feels less like traditional information architecture and more like world-building: designing a place or a small ecosystem.

This is not our first experiment with this approach. A few years ago, we created Walkcast, an endlessly generated podcast produced by a team of agents. We also have Roby, our locally hosted AI agent, which lives in its own world on a Mac Mini under our desk. Last year, we built the Hot Air Factory: a small house for AI agents designed for your living room, running entirely locally.

From Matrix to Rick and Morty, all the way to Plato, the idea of us just being fish in a bowl is nothing really new. Popular culture plays and entertain us with these simulations ideas, and forces us all to think about a fundamental question, well expressed by one of the comments under our reel:

let's stay in touch!

It has not even been a full week since this project launched, and we have already surpassed one million views, thousands of likes, and hundreds of messages from people interested in what we are doing. We would love to stay in touch with you all. The best way to do so is by keeping an eye on this newsletter, joining our Discord, and following us on Instagram. Lastly, creating cool products is just one of the many things we do here at oio. We also run a summer school, where we work on these wild projects together in a beautiful Italian location, and we organise various events and product launches. If you like mur mur, you will love the rest of oio.

💅 cool links

Another tasty load of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

🐟 salmon on cocaine _(wired)
🙆 the human alphabet _{(public domain review)}
🤑 how to survive the information crisis _{(the guardian)}
🦍 bare metal programming _(youtube)
🌈 focus now _(youtube)
🐬 flipper one _(www)
🎮 steam controller is out _(www)
🧠 becoming a physical intelligence _(paper)
🤖 a robot for everyone _(www)
🌱 pikmin 2001 _(www)
📟 90's cursor effects _(www)
🛞 three.js conf paris _(www)
💥 dadabots _(www)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 www: zweikommasieben
🕹 game: need for seat
📁 arena: false planets
📚 wiki: 52-hertz whale
🔧 tool: mole

stay warm

~ M+S+N

Hello friends, and welcome back to oionews! Thanks for allowing us to slide into your inbox every month 💛

This issue is a light and quick. We’ll be sharing the “who starts“ challenge, our attempt to conquer virtual-meeting awkwardness, the most recent oio-open-mic™, where the team exchanges new monthly finds, and introducing Léane, our very own visual designer, in the oio team corner. Then the usual links, handpicked by humans in our Discord community.

Hold my hand, let’s get lost together at the intersection of art and technology 🪐

who starts? 🎯

If you work remote, you know how awkward it gets during morning stand-ups, when the coffee hasn’t kicked in and everyone’s blanked-eyed, just staring into the void of each other’s pupils. 👀

So, we came up with an internal challenge ↓

Each month, one oio is in charge of a game that selects who kicks off our morning stand-ups. The person has complete freedom over the experiment: you can go full tech and vibe-code something, or go analog and throw dice, flip a book, steal a dog, anything really as long as the selection process is short and a name comes out of it.

First in line is oiocade, by our co-founder Simone — a bundle of mini games compiled into a virtual arcade machine. 🕹️️

Each morning we had to play a game of chance to see who would have been the lucky person chosen by the LLM.

oio open mic 🎤

Our monthly hang-out where we talk life and passion — shows, tech, fun facts, life hacks, often times also food. 🫦 Join the fun:

🌐 cool links

every noise at once

🤖 vibe-coding

marta’s knowledge repository

AI reads and reorganizes the info into explorable “encyclopedias” of connected items. With the content left almost untouched, Marta explored ways of navigating the content and showing implicit connections between pieces of information.

🎥 culture

BEEF S2 (and beef)

Mindgame

Turist (Force Majeure)

📦 misc

new office coming soon ✨

oio team corner • léane

Well, glad to see you again in the corner, the oio team corner™. Want to know more about the souls and brains behind oio? You are in the right place. Grab a chair, sit back, get comfy, and say hi to Léane 🤹‍♀️

For the ideas that oio conjures up, Léane gives them a face. Léane is our graphic/visual designer, bringing new ideas to life everyday through visual means. Originating from a small village located in the French Alps (just across the border from our creative technologist Marta), Léane currently resides in Paris (France, not Texas). Léane has been with oio for more than 2 years now, hopping between internal and external projects, crafting identities, designing interfaces and creating motion pieces.

When it comes to her own design process, Léane often begins with a wide range of experimentations, whether it’s coming from a design need, or more a personal exploration sparked by various inspirations: be it a cool motion principle, a new tool, a strange creature seen on socials, an interesting fabric or even a curious color palette. When asked to comment on oio’s own visual branding, Léane puts it perfectly: a great balance of playfulness and being “serious enough.” Tiny details build up a whole engaging narrative, and if you look closely enough, you might find some easter eggs that we’ve dropped.

On references, Léane finds inspiration from the multidisciplinary creations of Wang & Söderström. She also shares with us the graphic novel La couleur des choses/Die Farbe der Dinge, written by Martin Panchaud (”If you ever wanted to learn french or german, this is your chance”). Besides visuals, Léane enjoys all sorts of craft: you can catch her sewing, making jewelry, 3D-printing house accessories or making wonderfully ugly and colorful cakes while listening to her friend eliasadvance’s music.

💅 cool links

Another tasty load of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

🎷 jazz band covers nirvana on the spot _(youtube)
📓 design niche, niche design _(book)
🤖 make the AI agents pay _(reddit)
📖 Collapsed Mythologies: A Geofinancial Atlas _(book)
🔫 combat simulator but in real time _(ig)
🧱 lego’s new smart brick _(ig)
📘 contemplating slow tech _(book)
🗽 isometric nyc, in pixels _(www)
🎮 play DOOM in pdf _(github)
🐦 finally we can speak with birds _(youtube)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 www: ll x tldraw
🕹 game: eastward
📁 arena: 256 Images
📚 wiki: stochastic terrorism
🔧 tool: pica

stay fruity

~ M+N

Morning friends, greetings from the depths of the oioverse. Birds are chirping and plants are sprouting, seems like spring is slowly uploading.

This newsletter is all about workshops and schools. You know, learning new things, forgetting others. Some pictures and reports from the oio teaching season, updates about our summer program. Some talks, also in schools, and finally this month’s oio corner special guest - Marta!

🌞 oio school is taking a year off

We know we know, and we’re sorry if you were planning to join oio school this year, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer. After two years non stop, we had to take a break, coming back even more powerful next year. We’re taking a sabbatical to plan, regroup and update our swimming pool operations. If you want to be the first to know about the next one, this is the right place. Keep an eye on our newsletter and socials.

Want to relive those moments? Not sure what we’re talking about? Take a look at some highlights below, and hope to see you next year!

see you in amsterdam 🇳🇱🍻

Amsterdam! Tulips, canals and all that, but also where our dear Bjørn lives. If you’re in town next week, your next drink is on us.

📅 20th March, 7pm → 9pm
📍 studio____space | Hembrugstraat 11H, Amsterdam

No reservation required, but you can sign up for the Discord event to receive a notification. Hope to see you there! 🍺

📚 education season recap

As part of our mission to make technology simple, accessible, and fun, we're proud to collaborate with a select circle of educational institutions in design, art, and creativity, where we can bring some expertise and fresh perspectives. We actually started last year, with some workshops in Turin at IED, and more recently at MAInD in Mendrisio, and the Master in Media design at HEAD, in Geneva.

large language objects @ MAInD

It seems like everyone is only talking about agents and automation, and how we'll all be out of a job in a couple of years. I would really hope for machines to take over my job, but we all know that unfortunately it's not going to happen. So instead, we're going into schools, teaching young malleable minds to please our algorithmic overlords through creative exercises.

A few weeks ago, our co-founder Matteo was at MAInD to run a workshop called "Large Language Objects." We all know LLMs: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and probably use them every day. Cool, but what if we could take all that power and pack it into the ordinary objects around us? And I don't mean slapping a chatbot into things, but actually embedding their "intelligence" into the very objects we use daily. Like your shower, a couch, or a fridge. These "intelligences" should transcend language, hence the "Object" part of the brief.

The best part? Just like our very own Roby, many of the students explored local models running directly into their devices, so skipping the AI overlords altogether. Open models are having a moment, and even getting optimized for low power devices too!

If you’re tired of reading or need a dopamine boost, check out the video recap here, or by clicking the GIF below.

AI and Society

Our creative technologist Marta has been teaching AI and Society at IED, Torino, teaching how AI agents work and how AI can be integrated in the design process in a conscious way. Marta discusses with the students how technology has influenced society since the beginning of history, and how AI in particular is changing our lives, with an emphasis on its ethical matters.

🗣️ not only workshops

Another day another school, this time for a round table for “AI for Design: Beyond the Instrument”, at Politecnico di Milano, where oio’s co-founder Simone joined to discuss AI not only as a support technology, but as a new design material and a creative partner.

📍oio team corner • marta

Welcome to the oio team corner, meeting the humans and machines behind the magic. Meet Marta 🖖

and that’s smilace

Marta Fioravanti (she/they) is oio’s code and data architect, the Actual Intelligence behind the Artificial Intelligence 💆 Born in Aosta, a small town in the Italian Alps, she hopped between several Italian cities throughout her life before making her home in Torino, Italy. Marta joined us in January 2022, while this data-mining nerd was working on her MA thesis on mobility data representation through tree-like structures. As our AI/agents artisan, she crafts code architectures, visualizes concepts through diagrams, and brings our visions to life through working prototypes.

Marta enters her “zone” while working: a silent, comfy place with her Ditto Pokémon card and a few surrounding plants. Often, at a certain point each week, she gets hooked on a particular song and puts it on replay for three days straight. “So I guess it’s better for my colleagues that I’m not with them (physically),” she laughs.

Her creative process is non-linear: notes, diagrams, preferably on paper, and sometimes unintentional reflections while strolling, before jumping into implementation.

marta’s actual corner

At oio, Marta enjoys how every project is different, yet the discoveries we make gradually connect into an entangled knowledge system that shapes how we think about technology. She explores these ideas with her students at IED Torino, discussing how tech and AI are reshaping society and how designers can engage with these tools without becoming subjected to them.

She also reflects on the relationship between users and chatbots in her article Artificial Attachment (in Inactual’s Medial Disorder II mag), examining how bots are often designed as understanding companions, sometimes even “therapists.” As she puts it: “The goal is not to judge, but to observe what happens during a conversation with an LLM, and how some people’s needs are satisfied, even if not in the most functional way.”

Among Marta’s inspirations are A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway and Gender Tech by Laura Tripaldi. If you like comics, she recommends Crawl Space by Jesse Jacobs, a psychedelic graphic novel exploring perception, identity and altered states of reality. As for music, 070 Shake’s album You Can’t Kill Me will definitely transport you to another world.

💅 cool links

One big chunk of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

🚨 my homework is due in 10 minutes _(ig)
🚢 navigating waters project files _(www)
💭 Anthropic’s philosopher answers your questions _(youtube)
🌱 no internet no problem _(www)
🪪 soul.md _(www)
🤖 bmo from adventure time now your local ai agent _(youtube)
🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 six agents, one company _(www)
🌬️ a display powered by air _(youtube)
🧠 karpathy’s autoresearch _(github)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 www: ryan haigh
🕹 game: antivirus survivors 
📁 arena: @sTonEs
📚 wiki: Computer (occupation)
🔧 tool: skills.sh

[ REDACTED ]

Hey friend! New year, new you, new everything. Year of the fire horse they say, but is it a new horse? We don’t know. One thing we know: 2026 is the opposite of 6202. What? Anyway, here’s some actual content.

Last year it’s been quite hectic. Many project launches, a school to organize, shooting videos, public projects, not-so-public projects, new people. It’s been a year of growth, we definitely feel taller. In this issue, we briefly throwback to our adventures of 2025, coding a new brain for our creative director Roby, hosting the second edition of oio school, rolling out our very own energy-conscious AI, the Hot Air Factory, along with other secret services we’ve been providing behind the scenes. Meet our project manager Mara in another oio team corner entry, then some public talks. If you stay until the end of this nonsense, you can enjoy a special winter gift uniquely crafted by oio just for you.

But before all of that, we have a very special project to share with you.

↓

pomelli • can AI do branding?

A while ago, Google DeepMind approached us with the task of exploring how AI could enhance the process of brand marketing. We helped them create a vision and prototype; and now, the project is out there on Google Labs for anyone to use! Well, only if you live in the US for now, or use a VPN. It’s rolling out in other parts of the world too later this year, including Greenland. Anyway take a look at the launch video below.

click here to try pomelli (US only for now)

Here’s what the Deep Mind team says about Pomelli, from Google’s official blog:

Creating impactful, on-brand content can often require significant investment in time, budget, and design expertise. For small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this can be a major obstacle. That’s where Pomelli, our newest experiment from Google Labs in partnership with Google DeepMind, comes in. Pomelli is an AI marketing tool designed to help SMBs more easily generate scalable, on-brand social media campaigns to help grow their businesses.

Google Blog

We helped the DeepMind team in the early days of the project, a few months ago. They came to us with an idea, and we helped them to shape it into a design vision and actual prototype, that the team later developed further into what Pomelli is now.

Pomelli is a classic oio project™ • take something that sounds really cool, but you are not really sure it’s possible with today’s technology. We turn that simple idea into a product, design it from the ground up with our stellar design team, AND make it actually work. Everyone can dream, but we actually turn fantasy into reality. Do you have a dream? Get in touch! Our 6202 is starting to fill up quickly already.

oio team corner • mara

Back again with another corner, where you get the chance to meet one of oio’s brilliant minds and souls, in a corner. Please welcome… Mara!

Marijana Janković • Mara for friends and family, is our project manager at oio. Mara comes from Belgrade, where she’s currently based. After joining the oio team in October 2024, she’s been the driving force behind the good shape of our daily routines, removing noise from the work process so that we can focus on our creative nonsense. As the person in charge of timings, structure, feedbacks and everything-operations, Mara thinks her role could be be better described as “Fate Orchestrator”. Mara works from her cozy home in Belgrade with her loyal coworker Sreda.

We are a complicated bunch, and one of Mara’s greatest abilities is to actually understand each one of us delicate flowers. “I try to avoid assuming too much. I don’t feel bad about asking”. Which is very good advice to all sorts of relationships, isn’t it.

When not working on oio’s projects, she is an artist herself. Working with the textile medium at the moment, Mara is exploring the feelings of nostalgia and fairytale symbolism. You can find more about her personal work here: @nightmara_.

push UX

In October, my friend and co-founder Simone Rebaudengo gave a talk at Push, a UX conference in Munich, exploring the future of the UX practice. The talk is titled “Of Futures, Products and Burritos“. The actual talk is even tastier than an actual burrito, but at the moment the only way to see it is to become a member, link here.

one year of local intelligence

In March, we brought our AI creative director Roby home, from the far-away server clouds back into a very grounded MacMini, right underneath our desk. Roby received a full upgrade: it talks, it thinks, it even tracks its own energy usage by benchmarking it to the energy cost of making coffee. Roby was our first attempt at exploring a truly open, domestic AI. If you haven’t yet, be sure to try the new Roby on our Discord.

At the end of summer, we rolled out the Hot Air Factory, a small, domestic AI with a pinwheel that shows the hidden energy cost of every prompt. Clouds are heavier than you think, and we often overlook the cost of energy consumption regarding tech and AI. The Hot Air Factory makes that cost visible and tangible, with a small device that thinks locally, warms up, and spins a pinwheel with every answer. Every prompt comes with its own little energy bill, so you are aware of your actions. You can read more about the process here. The Hot Air Factory is still in its experimental phase, so reach out if you’d like to join the quest!

💅 cool links

One big chunk of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

💻 stickers and laptops _(www)
☠️ the cursed project manager _(www)
👨‍💻 integrated coding with gaming, scrolling, and dating _(www)
⏰ AI world clocks _(www)
🔡 a lively font specimen _(www)
🔴 this is pokemon _(ig)
🏖️ your endless summer _(app)
🤖 LLMs can get brain rot too _(github)
💫 token-oriented object notation (TOON) _(github)
👔 AI finally learns to fold laundry _(www)
🌅 paradise _(youtube)
🧹 the helpful home robot _(www)
📺 soft electronics _(cosmos)
🧪 insanely cool science websites _(www)
🎸 female muslim punk band _(imdb)
⏰ non-objective times _(www)
🕶️ ban rays _(github)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 www: laxspace
🕹 game: a very sheep game
📁 arena: if i were a snail
📚 wiki: list of places referred to as the center of the universe
🔧 tool: immich

wait!

before you close this window, we’ve prepared a little something for you…the oio-curated-one-of-a-kind winter mixtape 2025 💿🔥

once unhinged • always unhinged

~ M+N

Hello friends of friends! Welcome to the 35th issue of your favorite bundle of nonsense from the oioverse!

It’s been a while, we know. Hopefully you haven’t missed us too much, but we’ve been busy! Working on a few things we hope to share soon, and rolling and spinning our very own Hot Air Factory. We’ve been holding workshops, giving talks, hopping on and off planes… but now we’re here, live from your inbox. As the winter season approaches, we’re trying some new things, so take a deep breath and let it roll.

oio team corner

Introducing a new corner of oio news: the oio Team Corner™, where we highlight each of oio’s team members, in a corner. Take a sneak peak of the brilliant minds of oio, their roles and missions, as well as fun facts and personal inspirations.

First off, please welcome our latest addition to the team: ᴘɪᴇᴛʀᴏ!

Meet Pietro Martina, UI/UX designer at oio 🧑‍💻 Pietro originated from Olgiate Molgora, a very small country town near lake Como in Italy. After traveling far and wide across Europe for work and studies, he set base in his hometown, back to his roots. Pietro joined us in March 2025 (yes this intro is very long overdue) and brings his fresh design perspectives and Figma wizardry to the team, defining user experiences, designing interfaces and making them functional in a solid, complex system.

As a remote working team, everyone has their own tricks and routines. Pietro likes to start his day munching on a good breakfast while daydreaming of what to cook for lunch. (Have we mentioned that he loves cooking? He even had his own cooking show debut in our first oio Bite Club 🍳) Currently set up in his living room, Pietro will soon be moving to a co-working space in Milan. “One of the best things about working remotely is the freedom to change your environment and let it shape your mood. Co-working spaces are great when you want to feel the energy of others, while working from your bedroom can be perfect for long, focused sessions.” he shares.

Pietro provides us a positive testimony on our team dynamics. 🫂 Being able to build bonds while working remotely has been comforting, the team always finding ways to have fun on Discord and making screenshots as little keepsakes of moments worth remembering. Nothing feels more rewarding than delivering the final files to a client and walking them through the work together. Those kinds of moments really feel good.

When asked where he draws inspiration from, Pietro mentions a few different sources: from old catalogues and zines to retro tech or even knowledge from his old IT school days. “I like it when a reference seems distant from a project, it keeps things fresh and surprising.” His particular go-to when it comes to graphics and branding would be Asian mini-markets and small shops, simply the best places to find wild, unexpected references. (check out his instant noodles package reviews on his Insta highlights! 🥢)

the factory keeps spinning 🍃

It has been a little over a month since we released our very own Hot Air Factory into the wild (remember the small, domestic AI with a pinwheel that shows the hidden energy cost of every prompt?), with features on It’s Nice That, then Creative Applications and a mention in Caffè Design. Our wish to inform more people about the excessive use of AI has resonated with some, while others have raised the concern of whether or not such a fun, friendly looking device would actually encourage more use of prompting (and thus, more energy consumption). No matter the perspective, our project has definitely helped stir up the conversation on the conscious and transparent use of AI.

Missing out? Find out more about the project on the website.

hot travels ✈️

Fall season has been travel season ✈️ touchdown France, Italy, the UK, doing projects, teaching workshops, giving talks.... Stay tuned! Open lectures going live very soon.

We need your fridge

We need your help!

We are working on a project, not for profit and open source, and we need images of fridges. Lots of them. So please be generous. Snap a picture of your fridge and

Could Should Might Don’t

Nick Foster, celebrated futurist and designer, just released his new book Could Should Might Don’t, inviting us on a thoughtful journey through how we think — and don’t think — about the future.

Nick is also a good friend, and he’s been supporting and helping us for a while, and when he told us about his new book, we were super excited. Here’s what they say about it:

“With over twenty-five years of experience helping shape the world’s most innovative companies including Apple, Nokia, Sony, Dyson and Google, Foster now steps out from behind the scenes to ask a deceptively simple question: how should we approach what’s next?

Rather than offering bold predictions, the book traces four dominant mindsets — Could, Should, Might, and Don’t — that define how we imagine what lies ahead. Foster examines their histories, their strengths, their blindspots and cultures, inviting us all to refine how we approach the unknown.

Ultimately, this is not just a book about future-thinking — it is a call to sharpen how we think about the future, so that what we build, plan, and leave behind matters.”

Have a taste yourself: couldshouldmightdont.com

oio open mic 🎤

The oio open mic™ is our monthly gathering where we share everything but work — shows, talks, fun facts, life hacks, sometimes even pizza. 🍕 Get a glimpse of what fuels our passion:

🌐 www – SuperSplat

🎬 Culture – The Cure (1997)

💪 Life hacks – how to escape a drone if it attacks you

☁️ Thoughts – best practice for eating pizza

and finally, from our dearest community…

🍬 Cool links!

Your monthly supply of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

🦆 a glimpse into extreme birdwatching _(youtube)
💼 the big promotion _(youtube)
🕖 a clock is vibe coded each minute _(www)
📺 this is definitely ai _(youtube)
🧊 build your isometric world _(x)
📝 keep thinking by claude _(x)
↔️ impossible captchas _(youtube)
🧠 llms can brain rot too _(github)
🚭 website hosting through disposable vape _(github)
🤖 new AI minister? _(www)
📦 the future of internet memory _(substack)
🤑 50 cent adjusted for inflation _(www)

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 website: t-ko design
🕹 game: hatoful boyfriend
📁 arena: what color do you see when you close your eyes and press your palms gently to your face?
📚 wiki: stick figure / tadpole person / headless men
🔧 tool: opencut (yes it’s capcut, but free and open)

be unc - M+N

Hello oio friends! Welcome back to the thirty-fourth issue of oio news, the ever-growing dataset of first-class human slop from the depths of the interweb.

With all these GIFs, this newsletter is significantly larger than the 1997 PC game Need for Speed II. Since your browser has already downloaded it, you now have to read it to the end, unless you want to waste an all-time classic PC game.

It’s been a few months since our latest update, and a lot has happened. Another oio school wrapped up (yes, it was magical). We’ve been working alongside a company on a wild new music app, more workshops and public talks are piling up, and our little Roby’s growing up too.

But wait! We’re not going to talk about any of that today. That’s right, we’re saving these for the next newsletter, as something else has been quietly taking shape. Something we’ve been building in the background. Something special we really want to share…

… meet …

The Hot Air Factory!

The Hot Air Factory is our latest experiment! Have a look at the video here below, or just keep scrolling.

The cloudless cloud

Artificial intelligence surely feels like magic, but it’s not free. And we’re not talking money-free, but rather planet-entropy, energy free. Sure, we know it definitely heats up lots of air, but do you actually know exactly how much? Well, we didn’t. So we did what we typically do — we started prototyping!

If you’ve been following oio for a while, you’re well familiar with Roby, our AI creative director, forged in our Discord server, and recently moved from the cloud to a very real MacMini under our desk. Well Roby has recently been updated with an energy-tracking feature, where it tells you how much energy it used after each generation, in very simple human-readable terms: the amount of energy required, converted in espresso cups.

If you’re curious to look under the hood, have a look at the repo we cooked to make this work. Together with our creative technology Marta, we basically wrote a wrapper around MFLUX, with macmon tracking the energy.

but this was only the beginning…

The blinking box

The MacMini was just the first proof of concept, as we had one lying around in our studio, and it’s still powering Roby and all its little apps, but there are many baddies out there much more performant AND cheaper, and we can run all sorts of models on them.

In the end we went for an Nvidia Jetson Orin, the new family of boards, which for a few hundred bucks is an actual full-blown AI machine. Check out seeed studio, they sell a full line of fully assembled machines.

But you know we didn’t want just another blinking gray box… we’re a creative company on a mission to make technology less boring after all. So we started sketching.

In the end we explored cranks, dials, virtual grids, virtual factories, homes for Roby, it went WILD! But one day, looking at one of these car dealer inflatable guys, we had a spark—what if we could actually hook one of these up to our little server? wouldn’t it be funny? Oh wait! even better, what if we could hook up … a pinwheel?

and so it started…

The pinwheel

Remember Bjørn? He’s a design lead here at oio, and for a few weeks he became obsessed with pinwheels. Imagine mid summer July / August, asphalt was melting, most people were on holidays, not much work to do — the perfect time to embark on a side quest — design the perfect pinwheel. Something 3d printable but lightweight enough to spin, and most importantly that it would actually spin. And so it began. Together with our graphic designer Léane we all started brainstorming pinwheels, while 3D printing, sketching, modeling.

After many failed experiments, wheels not wheeling and pins not pinning, we finally got there: the perfect pinwheel ✨

The factory

So now we have this AI box puffing out hot air, but we needed something to tie everything together. A big, beautiful story, a metaphor. It was a fine line to walk, because we didn’t want to distract from the core issue: energy consumption.

We started hallucinating wild ideas, like a power grid simulator or a village of NPC peasants literally farming energy for the AI overlords. In the end, we settled on something simple, lightweight, airy, and cloudy.

But most of the credit goes to our superstar graphic designer Léane, who turned our messy thinking into a beautiful design, full of motion and illustration. Here some of the early tests, and check out the YouTube video below for the final thing.

But the pinwheel also needed a place to stay, and thanks to Bjørn again, we managed to create the perfect tiny factory to host our little AI engine:

How it works

The Hot Air Factory app connects to the AI computer inside the factory, and every time you prompt it it starts thinking. As the computer starts to think, it warms up and the internal cooling fan starts spinning. As the fan pulls cool air from the outside, the warm air is expelled through the top, making the pinwheel spin.

Energy consumption

The coolest feature of the factory is that it just shows you how much energy it consumes for every prompt, and it doesn’t share it in scientific measurements, but it converts it in everyday actions. For example:

A small image generation → ~0.06–0.07 kWh → An espresso cup

So you can now actually compare your daily AI usage with all your other daily actions, but most importantly you can now make informed decisions. It’s a way to make AI usage real and concrete by bringin it into the real world.

The Night Shift

One of our favorite features of the Hot Air Factory is the ability to run your prompts at night. For tasks that aren’t urgent or may require a lot of power, you can simply postpone them until nighttime, when the grid is less stressed and energy is cheaper. Just press the button in the app, and your prompt will bubble up into the ether. When night comes, the factory will light up and run it.

Is AI actually intelligent?

If you’ve been following big tech’s announcements about AI, you’ve probably heard something like: “this model has 7 billion parameters…” But if you’re human, that number likely means nothing at all.

In simple terms, parameters are what encode the model’s knowledge. The more parameters a model has, the longer it takes to train, and the larger and more computationally demanding it becomes. That’s why bigger models are associated with larger energy footprints. Not only during training and storage, but also during inference (when you ask them questions).

We thought it would be good for users to have a direct choice in which model to use in the Hot Air Factory. That’s why we picked three open-source models of different sizes and energy consumption. You can decide which one to run your prompts on — use less intelligence, save some energy, or turn it up, if you want a deeper thought.

The video, again

As promised at the beginning of this post, here’s the video again. If you watched it once, you can watch it twice. Maybe it’s not even the same video, is it? Only one way to find out.

How can i get one

Good question, you can’t. At least for now. We’ve only made a few, and the 3d design and BOM are still heavily work in progress, We don’t want to share something that may not work as expected yet. But we hope to put out something in the next few weeks / months! So be sure to join our discord and sign up to this newsletter.

And finally, why?

Another great question! And as design travelers, we all know too well that the answer to this question usually shows up late in the journey, in the dark woods, forcing design’s most sheepish soldiers to stumble through the forest of design iterations™. (this sentence makes no sense)

So the other side of the question: “why not?“ Why are we not doing something about this? Why are we just doom-prompting at every minor inconvenience in life?

We all use AI everyday, and we kind of know that it uses some energy, but we really have no way of knowing how much. And this is important, because without knowing we can’t make informed decisions, and environmental choices are actually important in these times we live in.

And you know, all of this adds up. In order to keep up with demand, we need more power. And to get more power, we need more data centers. And that’s how we got here. AI companies are running an arms race to build ever-larger models, which require more power, more electricity, more land. But the scale of these operations it’s nothing we’ve ever seen before. This is getting quite messy: grok’s data centers for example, had to run on methane, as they can’t get enough electricity. Fun! Paul Virilio, you would’ve loved this.

Cool! (hot?) now that the dystopia is out of the way — why are we actually doing these projects? Because that’s what we do here at oio. We make products with technology that embody a different vision, beyond the dominating capital-driven, efficience-ridden, speed-powered future visions. We make everyday products and tools for a less-boring future, and the Hot Air Factory is just one of many.

Take something that is far, obscure and incomprehensible and make it fun, local and accessible. That’s the oio’s playbook in a nutshell, and we are becoming quite good at it! Remember Updatables? (if you don’t, don’t bother clicking, SPACE10’s website links to a Peruvian betting company now (or lock in to some peruvian blackjack)).

If we did a good job, now you should feel more awake and aware about these issues. And if you actually read until here, it’s time to touch grass my friend.

oh wait, it’s time for some…

🍬 Cool links!

Your monthly supply of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

👨‍💻 dating according to browser history _{(social platform)}
🔠 funky letters _(www)
📥 a social network open only 3 hours per day _{(social platform)}
🐦 birds can save data _(YouTube)
👾 pioneers of computer graphics _(YouTube)
🖼️ reliving ancient times _(x)
🕹️ infinite mini games, vibe-coded _(x)
🪰 time flies, literally _(www)
🌈 queer AI _(www)
⛰️ NLP for indigenous language _(www)
☁️ the illusion of thinking _(apple.com)
👃 giving computers a sense of smell _(www)
📊 LLM running a Business _{(anthropic.com)}
🔗 LLM embeddings explained _{(huggingface.co)}
🚦 real-time interactive video _(www)
🎬 be a showrunner _(www)
📟 digital plastic _(www)
👁️‍🗨️ digital doppelgänger _(www)
🤳🏽 the year twitter died _(www)
🪶 how 2 poem _{(docs.google)}

Want to share your cool links? Join us on Discord!

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 website: spiralgetty
🕹 game: admin
📁 arena: cubist google earth
📚 wiki: kamon
🔧 tool: packcad

A note on writing machines

I know the future will punish me for this (they already did) but I noticed how many people started equating the use of em dashes to the usage of LLMs, as these clankers tend to overuse them in their slop. So as you’ve probably seen — there are many em dashes in this newsletter, just like in all of oio’s previous newsletters, way before LLMs were a thing. Thing is — I love em dashes. but now that LLMs also started using ‘em recklessly, I don’t want you — our most valuable reader — to think that we’re using machines to write. We don’t. All of this garbage you are reading, is preem, uncut, often unedited, meatbag slop. So don’t get fooled by the em dashes, thanks for reading (hopefully human) friend. M

be cloud - M+N

Welcome to another fresh issue of oio news—from the depths of the oioverse, straight into your inbox. As we get ready for the second edition of the oio school, we’re excited to share some of the wildest entries we received for the Golden Ticket competition. Read until the end to find a fine selection of tasty links, hand-picked by our Discord community.

oio news

peek into the oioverse

🎫 Golden Ticket

The oio school season is approaching, and as per tradition, to support and encourage creativity, we reward a free ticket to the winner of our Golden Ticket Competition.

This year’s brief was: send us an apple.

So we actually received a ton of apples (who would have thought?), including an actual Pink Lady in the mail 🤯. While we’re not able to present all of them due to space and length, we’d like to share some of our favorite entries.

Thank you to everyone who submitted their creations!

File System Poetry

Shivangi’s “Apple Experience“ is, with her own words in fact, “not an apple.“ It is an actual poem exploring life and identity from an apple’s point of view, completely built upon the naming convention of a file system, all of which packed into a .dmg. As the viewer navigates through the layered folders, they experience the ponderings of existence, understanding that the journey towards being is becoming.

We were touched by the seemingly simple yet profound approach to the storytelling that we decided to reward Shivangi the Golden Ticket. Welcome to oio school, Shivangi!

The Apple Search

Kenwyn hid her red apple away amongst a gigantic pile of pears — and requires our assistance to seek and dig it up. Written with p5, Kenwyn’s Apple Search uses your computer’s webcam to locate and track the movement of your “snout“ as you search through the field of fruits.

Try it out yourself here.

The Growing Applet

Aleksandra took a rain check with us on her apple, explaining that apples don’t ripen till October from where she is at. However, she did create a “cellular progress bar of sorts“ to track her applet’s growth (one from an old tree in her backyard). With images of tissue samples taken with a toy microscope, Aleksandra’s generated “cells“ stimulate the progress of the becoming of an apple — as time passes, the cells slowly gravitate towards the center, turning redder and redder by the day, the colour showing on the applet's skin.

Join us in the anticipation as we wait patiently for Aleksandra’s applet to ripen.

A Star Is Born?

Sabrina introduces us to Mela: a young, ambitious Cosmic Crisp apple on the journey towards becoming the Best Apple of 2025. Traveling all the way across Italy, she finds herself at a CONAD market in Milan, hitting the big stage. During the competition period, Mela hosted live streamings of her life events, where fans would log in and send love. Though just a few steps from reaching to become the champion, Mela is definitely one apple to keep your eyes on.

Apple for oio

Our friend Ilse literally sent us an apple. Thank you, it was delicious!

Last call for early birds 🪽

oio school is opening its doors in less than two months, and if you missed the chance to submit your entry for the Golden Ticket, fret not: we still have a few early bird tickets left! Head over to oio.school to recieve your juicy discount (up to 25% 😱).

Get your discounted ticket!

// 👀 Want to save even more? Get in touch directly at [email protected] for other payment options, payment plans, and other ways to save!

🍱 cool links

Your monthly supply of handpicked 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ fine goods from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now 🏃‍♂️).

👾 Tamagotchi Vape/Smoke it or it dies _(ig)
🎞️ Poetry Camera _(www)
👎 No As A Service _(github)
🦄 CSS Styles for Pokémon Cards _(www)
🧶 Softbodies with Three.js _(x)
🎛️ Book of Hardware _(www)
💆‍♂️ Rick Rubin, Vibe Coding and Zen _(www) 
🎰 Making AI Think Harder _(github)
💻 AI Studio by Google DM _(google)
🧩 FlowTV _(google)
💾 Entrance to Early Web _(www)
🫵 Just Use HTML _(www)
🦝 How To Do Things With Memes _(substack)
🗺️ A Pattern Language _(www)
🎠 A library of thiings _(www)

Want to share your cool links? Join our Discord!

📈 monthly stonks

🌐 website: Basement Studio
🕹 game: Promise Mascot Agency
📁 arena: Parallel Projection
📚 wiki: Another River
🔧 tool: Wakami Fondue 

✏️ words by matlo & normz

stay unpacked

Exciting news! This month, we are officially announcing the re-opening of oio school, our annual summer workshop set in a magnificent seaside villa in Italy. Find out how to sign up and participate in the Golden Ticket challenge for a chance to win a free spot! Also, a throwback to our offsite in Milan in March and a few more updates, so get ready as we dive into the oioverse ☄️

Not your ordinary school

school is cool at oio school

oio school is our annual summer school, a week of intensive ideation, designing and prototyping. Participants from all over the world join in and work alongside the oio team, tackling a custom design brief that we prepare. All levels and backgrounds are welcome, from professional designers and creatives, all the way to students and fresh graduates. You’ll be living together, working together, partying together, making lifelong connections and friends.

the actual villa 💫

But it’s not just work—the summer school takes place in a fully renovated 18th century factory, with plenty of rooms, a large workshop area, and, of course, a swimming pool. It’s located in the deep south of Italy, almost at the end of it, in the Salento region, a short trip from the seaside.

The brief

By joining the school, you’ll be working alongside the oio team, who will be sharing their behind-the-scenes work and processes, as well as some tricks and tools used in the real world with our very real clients. We’ll be sharing case studies and methodologies before actually jumping into a design brief.

Last year, the brief was called “Hot Things for a Hot Planet,” and participants worked on a series of artifacts to follow along with the brief. Each participant interpreted it in their own way—from a video game about animal extinction to a storytelling object, all the way to an AI tool to redesign the future of food. Projects were wild and really cool. None of the participants had previous experience with the tools we presented, and we guided them through each step of the process.

Why a school?

Education is a topic very dear to us. Together with my co-founder Simone, our lead designer Bjørn and our creative technologist Marta, collectively we all teach in some of the most prestigious design programs around the world, and we’ll probably keep doing it for a while. I personally started teaching very young at Central Saint Martins, in London, and from there I never stopped.

❝

The subject of our work is intangible and rare and niche and volatile — perhaps teaching is our way of making it real, preserving it in time and in the minds of the participants.

What oio does, is not taught in schools. Some of them try (by calling us to teach), but it’s the nature of our practice that makes it un-teachable in a traditional format. And that’s why we concentrate them in weekly workshops, such as the oio school. We’re not trying to teach you a subject, it’s more like showing you how we solve problems that nobody has ever solved before. Sharing a mindset that transcends tools and the latest cool technology, to equip participants with an open mind, and most importantly, without taking ourselves too seriously. In fact, only a fool would believe anything we say.

Last year

Still not convinced? Check out some highlights from last year below 👇

See You At School!

Applications for this year just opened, together with the release of Early Bird tickets (they are going FAST💨). So what are you waiting for? Get yours at: oio.school.

oio.school

one week of interaction design, creative technology and italian aperitivos.

www.oio.school

Also, we’re offering one free ticket to one lucky participant. Interested? Find out more here. Quick! The deadline is in just a few days.

oio party 2025

A few weeks ago, the oio team flew to Milan and reunited in person! Nothing beats sharing a pineapple pizza IRL. Some of us even met for the first time!

We’ve also enjoyed meeting you all at the party, sharing laughs, drinks and good music. If you want to re-live that night, here are some goodies.

🗣️ Never not lecturing

A few weeks ago I’ve been invited to lecture at the London College of Fashion, in the Master of Fashion Media & Communication, with Daniel Felstead. After sharing some oio process insights™, we also did a prototyping session to help students come up with ways to bring their projects to life. Thanks for having us! ✌️

❄️ Cool Links

Your monthly supply of fine goods, carefully handpicked from our Discord community (missing out? Join now🪽)

🌱 welcome to the data garden _(www)
🈴 everything japan graphic _(www)
📺 UIs in anime _(tumblr)
📍 new idea saver _(www)
🏢 fantano meets citarella _(youtube)
🎶 a new AI music editor _(www)
🎧 better 3D audio _(youtube)
🦾 claude has news arms _(www)
🤖 meet apollo _(youtube)
🪐 particles and patterns _(www)
👾 small tech = web0 _(www)

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 www: lusion
🕹 game: bionic bay
📁 arena: the art of the youtube crate dig
📚 wiki: octupus wrestling
🔧 tool: FScanEdit

✏️ words by matlo & normz

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👽 just the 2 of us

Today, we’re launching something. It’s not a big thing; in fact, it’s a very small one—a tiny intelligence. Remember Roby? Our AI creative director, born in our Discord server, once ran its own Instagram account and even made it into Wallpaper* magazine—way before the AI hype. Roby was a little outdated, and while we never upgraded it to a mainstream cloud AI model, we always liked its primitive intelligence.

That was until recently. After playing around with local AI tools—Ollama, LMStudio, llamafile, open-webui (so many of them!)—we realized that open-source AI models are making massive leaps forward. So, we decided it was time for Roby to step up.

Over the past few weeks, we built our own local AI machine—a Mac Mini—to power its artificial brain. Now, Roby can think, talk, write, see, generate images, and even track its own energy consumption—all without ever leaving our studio. That’s right—no cloud services, no subscriptions. Everything runs locally on a computer under our desk. Roby came home!

Throughout the process, we vibe-coded our own tools (as we often do) and learned so much about running a self-hosted AI setup. It was too good to keep to ourselves, so we decided to share part of our journey.

Stay tuned! Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out the tools we created—for anyone to use, for free.

A new family

Roby got a new haircut. Because, you know, you can’t upgrade your tech stack and keep the same old look. So, we’re also releasing these new cute fellas into the world!

With the help of our friend Matheus, we designed a 3D graphics system that can support an ever-growing family of AI agents—starting with the new Roby. So don’t be surprised if you see more of these 3D creatures popping up across our platforms.

🫡 Goodbye old friend

We’re a nostalgic bunch, so it’s with a bit of sadness that we say goodbye to old Roby’s appearance—the one that has accompanied us on the oio journey since the very beginning. Originally designed by our very first design intern—Elliott. We miss you Elliott. Anyway, goodbye old Roby, we’ll miss you too.

Small, domestic AI

A few months ago, we started experimenting with local AI models, using Ollama to test them out. They’ve been particularly useful in some of the workshops I’ve been running lately (more on that below 👀). Many students don’t have paid accounts for cloud-based AI models, and beyond that, I strongly believe that we shouldn’t rely on private companies for essential educational tools. The more open we can teach, the better. Let me write it again.

❝

The more open we can teach, the better.

Ideally, schools should have their own open AI infrastructure for students. That’s something we’re exploring with MAInD, an Interaction Design Master’s program in Switzerland, where we teach every year. More details coming soon!

After these initial experiments, we realized we needed a dedicated machine—something that could always stay on. Luckily, we had an M2 Mac Mini lying around, so we put it to work. Not the best machine for AI, I know, but it’s a start.

For now, this is it: we’ve built an AI stack from scratch that can replace most cloud-based large language models. We’re using Llama 3.2 for most tasks and experimenting with DeepSeek R1 for deeper thinking. We’ve also built an image generator using Flux, which runs locally on the Mac Mini.

Check out this arena board we started called “🏡 domestic intelligences”, to follow our progress.

❝

All the AI models are saved locally on the MacMini—it can chat, think, generate images, and even track its own energy consumption. All without sending anything to the cloud, or paying any kind of subscriptions. It all runs there under your desk.

Energy consumption

The big conversation around machine learning models often centers on energy consumption. We’ve heard from many people who are on the fence about using AI, worried about contributing to the high energy demands typically associated with these models. We’ve been wondering the same thing—how much energy do these models actually use? So, we ran a little experiment: we benchmarked the energy consumption of image generation—one of the most power-hungry AI tasks—against something familiar: brewing a cup of espresso on a home machine. ☕

Wait, how do you even benchmark the energy used by a cup of espresso? Well… we didn’t. We asked Roby, and it estimated roughly 6–12Wh for a cup brewed on an average domestic espresso machine, which seems wild.

But when we compared this with energy usage estimates from various AI models, the results were wildly inconsistent. For now, we’re rolling with the lowest estimate we found—10.5Wh from Claude—but we’re not stopping there. We’re committed to running real tests using a Wattmeter 🤓. Watch this space!

Why?

Well, because that’s what we do here at oio. We’re on a mission to make technology more human, less boring, and truly accessible to the many.

We always hear about the latest 100-billion-parameter models being released, and it’s easy to feel detached—to think that AI requires ultra-giga power-hungry computers in the cloud or a $200 OpenAI subscription just to use. But that’s not the case! Local AI is here, and our personal computers are already getting pretty good at running these models. And if not today, then in one, three, or five years, they definitely will be. So we’re doing this to prove that an alternative isn’t just possible—it’s already within reach.

If you have a modern laptop, then you can run AI models locally, without writing a single line of code.

The best outcome for this experiment? For it to be shared, broken, taken apart, and reimagined. So come join us down this rabbit hole.

I think Marta’s words capture this feeling better than I ever could:

Free as in free guide!

Starting in April, we’ll be slowly releasing guides and tutorials on how to get started with your own local AI. From GitHub to YouTube, all the way to lives on our Discord, so make sure to follow!

🏫 Teaching season wrap up

It’s been a hectic season on the teaching front!

We kicked things off in December with Invisible Frictions at CIID—The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (now in Bergamo… should it be renamed BIID? 🤔). There, our lead designer Bjørn Karmann and I led a course on designing and prototyping new kinds of LLM-powered interactions—all running locally! Check out the video recap here.

Then, we headed to Switzerland, where I ran two workshops—one at MAInD Mendrisio and another at HEAD Genève.

At MAInD, we ran Things That Think, a workshop co-led with the amazing Marta Fioravanti, oio’s creative technologist. We worked with Interaction Design Master’s students to design and prototype objects and experiences that could “think”—kind of like Roby, but in physical form instead of Discord.

Lastly, at HEAD Genève, I helped Media Design Master’s students develop ideas for installations inside Plaza Cinema in Geneva. They’ll be working on these for a while, so follow their Insta for the latest updates! 🎥✨

🍎 Next stop—oio school!

🗣️ Founders corner

Your favourite pair of yappers, Simone and I, are back for another round:

📦 Thingscon!

oio’s co-founder Simone Rebaudengo did a presentation at Thingscon, last year, and it’s finally online on YouTube! Watch it here!

🧠 Beautiful Minds

The other half of the oio founders universe, Matteo Loglio, was interviewed by newspaper Repubblica, in the Italian Tech section “Beautiful Minds”. Read it here!

❄️ Cool Links

Your monthly supply of fine goods, carefully handpicked from our Discord community (missing out? Join now🪽)

🏓 pong in browser tabs _{(by nolan royalty)}
😗 emoji encoder _(website)
🅰️ Wordle, but only vowels _(playdate)
🎮 Gameboy camera _(site)
🍃 thinking with moss _(site)
🌐 nomic altas _(site)
⚛️ quantum computing is here? _(youtube)
🐶 sacchan the fat dog _(youtube)
🤖 agents in convo _(x.com)
👾 new ways of vibe coding _{(youtube.com)}
👙 modern beachwear _{(perimeterbooks.com)}
🎧 music not from your algorithm _(site)
🧢 the rap board _{(therapboard.com)}
🎛️ grove machine _{(tahti.studio)}
🧔 guess my accent _{(boldvoice.com)}

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 www: digital upcycling
🕹 game: longvinter
📁 arena: groceries
📚 wiki: soviet stamps
🔧 tool: decker

✏️ words by matlo & normz

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🐊 💣 BOMBARDINO CROCODILO

Hey friends! It’s 2025—long time no see! Many things have happened, and even more are happening, so get ready to jump into the oioverse. Big news ahead! We’re launching a long video documenting the latest oio school, and to celebrate, we’re also offering discount coupons for the next oio school. Keep reading to get yours. Then more education highlights with throwbacks to our CIID workshop, together with a new mudac video documenting our latest project ARCHIVIVES. Curious to know more about Walkcast and how we used agents to generate infinite content? Don’t miss the talk I gave back in September at the Hatch Conference, now freshly published on YouTube. And of course, the usual treats of cøøl links and ↗market stonks—let’s gooo! 🧃

oio news™

a peek into the oioverse.

oio school is coming back!

That’s right, our beloved oio school is making a comeback soon! Join us for a week-long workshop with the oio team, crafting future products and interactions with AI and emerging technologies, all set in the beautiful surroundings of an Italian seaside mansion. While we’re still in the planning stages, make sure to follow our socials for the big announcement. In the meantime, we cooked a nice documentary about the previous edition below ↓↓↓

oio school 2024 • documentary

click ⁙ click ⁙ click

Is this technically a “documentary”? Probably not, but it definitely documents the first oio school edition, which we did back in summer 2024. Click on the video above, or watch it on YouTube. And if it gives you an irresistible desire to sign up for the next one, we totally get it. This next section is for you.

oio school 2025 • sign-ups and discounts

we’re all a bit freezing and a bit farming

There’s no official announcement yet about the 2025 edition, but in the meantime, you can head over to the oio.school website and leave your email to get the latest updates before anyone else. On top of that, you’ll receive a uniquely generated €30 discount code to use on the ticket for the next summer school. It’s free as in “free oio school coupons”, so what are you waiting for.

Invisible Frictions @ CIID Bergamo

Interaction design is coming to Bergamo, and we’re at the center of it. The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, or CIID, recently opened its doors in the Italian city, and last month we were invited to run an interaction design workshop. So we went there, oio’s legendary lead designer Bjørn Karmann and myself, to run a workshop called Invisible Frictions.

🤔 Invisible Frictions? Well, our world is changing quite fast. Everything is increasingly AI-assisted, and the risk is to lose the habits and rituals that make life meaningful in the pursuit of efficiency. We invited students to explore friction as a design material, challenging them to design and prototype a series of objects that flip this concept around. The outcome was a collection of design projects that reimagine how we engage with AI technology in our daily lives. Check out our highlights video!

Archives never die

Remember ARCHIVIVES? It’s the project we developed at the end of our one-year residency at mudac — the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts of Lausanne. We created two interactive objects that investigate the fleeting nature of design heritage. What makes an object, a design object? How can we harvest, and eventually archive, the tacit knowledge that surrounds these artifacts? We covered all this in detail in our latest newsletter, so feel free to have a look there if you want to dig deeper. In the meantime, our friends at mudac have just released a video about ARCHIVIVES. Take a look below and let us know your thoughts!

🗣️ More yapping

The keynote I gave back in September at Hatch Conference is finally online. Curious to know more about some of the oio process behind the scenes, our infinite podcast Walkcast, and how we used agents to generate infinite content? Then watch it on YouTube or click the link below!

❄️ Cool Links

Your monthly supply of fine goods, carefully handpicked from our Discord community (not there yet? join us)

🟧 1985 algorithms in p5 _(github)
🤌 let AI haggle for you _{(AI haggler)}
⚡ building my dream device _(YouTube)
🪐 CosmOS AI operating system _(humane)
👀 Interfaces for the future _(mainframe)
📕 death design data _(book)
🎵 tunetracker _(www)
🦾 AI robotics in your browser _(MuJoCo)
🎤 standup, drama and spambots _{(NY times)}

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 www: ifeelsomuchshame
🕹 game: stonemachia
📁 are.na: grading
📚 wiki: friendship paradox
🔧 tool: warp

✏️ words by matlo & normz

share this newsletter!

₍ᐢ. ̫.ᐢ₎ you’ve been visited by yuki the fortune rabbit! reply “thank you fortune rabbit” to this email for great luck in 2025.

Cold season is back oio friends, I hope you’re all getting cozy 🧦. On the warmer side, welcome to a toasty new issue of oio news. This month we’ve got some highlights from our recent project — ARCHIVIVES, then a week packed with lectures and talks, a few updates from Walkcast (remember the never-ending podcast?) and finally to wrap-up, all the usual goodies — oio stonks™ and ©ool links. Here we go ↓

oio news™

a peek into the oioverse.

ARCHIVIVES

If you missed it on our social media, in the past year we’ve been working closely with mudac — the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne, as part of a one-year residency that started with former Museum directress Beatrice Leanza, and continued with curator Scott Longfellow.

The focus of the residency was to investigate the fleeting nature of design heritage: what makes an object, a design object? How can we harvest, and eventually archive, the tacit knowledge that surrounds these artifacts? How can we explore the potential Museum archiving practices, even by using technology? We had so many questions when we started, and we ended with even more questions. But in the process, we created two machines (they prefer to be called “robots”, but here we go).

❝

Objects decay, but their stories last forever.

Curieux and Rêveur

this is not a render, it’s an actual thing, made of sheet metal

Born out of a desire to explore human narratives, Le Curieux (“The Curious”) thrives on designers’ knowledge and their designed objects. It is used during live interviews to gather context, recording everything while also interrupting and asking additional questions alongside our human curator, Scott Longfellow. Its purpose is to extract as much knowledge as possible, record it, and save it into an AI model that represents each designer.

❝

Some people use AI to get answers, we used it to ask more questions.

the swiss designers who participated in the project

The AI model is then passed to the second machine, Le Rêveur (“The Dreamer”). As its name suggests, its sole purpose is to constantly imagine possible exhibitions and future objects that will never exist. It takes the AI model created by Le Curieux, along with other data from the Museum’s collection, to dream up fantastical exhibitions, brought to life through the most iconic artifact of an exhibition—the poster.

this may be a render who knows

some of the generated posters

🤔 Why?

Getting to Curieux and Rêveur was a long process that took us more than a year, and with dozens of people involved. During this time we researched the Museum’s archiving practices, talked to knowledge workers, archivist, educators, curators, directors, pencil makers, artisans, humans and less-human, in an attempt to understand why we do what we do, on a fundamental level. We imagined a world where museums could find ways to capture the invisible network of context and tacit knowledge surrounding the collected objects, beyond the physical nature of design. But these are all just words. At the end of the day we just needed an excuse to make AI objects with heavy metal bodies.

this is a real picture

👀 Come and see it!

The ARCHIVIVES project is still on! It’s part of the Archives du Design Romand exhibition at MUDAC, retracing the history of design in French-speaking Switzerland. Open until February 09, 2025 — come and see it if you’re in Lausanne!

👏 Thank you!

This project was the result of an intense collaboration among fantastic individuals:

Designers: Adrien Rovero, Ligia Dias, Dimitri Bähler, Laure Gremion, Frédéric Dedelley, Big Game, Fragmentin, Panter et Tourron, Bertille Laguet, Fabien Roy, Werner Jeker, Multiple Design, Raphaël Lutz, Atelier Oï, André-William Blandenier, Antoine Cahen, Christophe Guberan and Carole Guinard
Mudac: Marco Costantini, Scott Longfellow, Amélie Bannwart, Anaïs Devaux, Jolanthe Kugler, Sylvie Niederer, Magali Conus and Beatrice Leanza.
oio: Bjørn Karmann, Marta Fioravanti, Léane Beauquis, Norman Chen, Marijana Jankovic, Octavian Husoschi, James Mackenzie, Simone Rebaudengo and Matteo Loglio.

👟 Keep walking

the turning WHAT

🫡 We salute the thousands of Walkcast walkers out there! (how many?). Since we launched our self-walking podcast one month ago, we’ve heard a lot of feedback from you. From praises to critics, blog posts, newsletters, and angry mobs, our project made the rounds in our small niche of the internet. Looking back, it’s been a hectic month, and we can’t wait to walk the path ahead.

❝

Keep walking.

this quote feature is wild

🗣️ A week of yapping

Next week is going to be a pineapple avalanche of public speaking. If you’re in any of these three cities, come and say hi!

🇷🇸 If you’re in Belgrade: come to Made in Platform on Monday 9th, where oio’s co-founder Simone Rebaudengo will be doing a presentation, more info here.

🇳🇱 If you’re in Amsterdam: come to Thingscon, either on Thursday 12th or Friday 13th, where oio’s co-founder Simone again will be doing a panel and a talk. Can’t get enough of this guy.

🇮🇹 If you’re in Bergamo (Milan): come to CIID on Friday 13th, where the not-Simone founder of oio, Matteo Loglio, will be giving an open lecture as part of a workshop led by our very own Bjørn Karmann. More info and sign up here.
NB: i’m from bergamo so i know it’s not milan, but it’s ok.

❄️ Cool Links

Your monthly supply of fine goods, carefully handpicked from our Discord community (missing out? Join now🪽)

💨 trash as performance art _(tiktok.com)
🔅 svelte 5 is here _(svelte.dev)
📊 painting with numbers and formulae _{(thanks danilo)}
🤖 smile, zuck _(github)
📕 facebook’s red book _(map.cv)
🎮 nintendo64, reinvented _{(analogue.co)}
🌎 spatial intelligence company _{(worldlabs.ai)}
🤷 AI characters doing weird stuff _{(tech review)}
🗄️ conceptless competentless collective _{(the bomb.com)}
💠 brandOS _(brand.ai)

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 www: filetypes = airports
🕹 game: jelly Mario
📁 are.na: fall of the simulacrum
📚 wiki: Gävle goat
🔧 tool: pageboy

✏️ words by matlo & normz

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🍞 stay toasty, freakbob

Hello oio friends! Still catching the last of this year’s warmth? Don’t get too cozy, as this is a VERY SPECIAL ISSUE™ of oio news. In facts, we celebrate the launch of a little experiment we’ve been cooking for the past few months. It’s called Walkcast — an ever-changing podcast, constantly generated as you walk. The best part? It’s actually working. Or it should be. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s not just all about the generative coolness! In this issue you’ll find more stuff, like a throwback to sunny days at the recently-concluded oio school 🏝️, and most importantly — welcoming our newest member to the oio team 👽.
 Don’t skip until the end, where you can find the usual cool links at the bottom. Number 7 will shock you! 😱

oio news™

a peek into the oioverse.
btw did you know you can find oio news on oio.news?

💫 Launching Walkcast

try it here!

When was the last time you truly lost yourself in the simple act of walking? No destination, no urgency — just the curiosity of letting your feet lead you. We don’t remember either, and that’s why we created Walkcast!

Walkcast is an ever-changing podcast generated as you walk, revealing the hidden layers that surround you. Each step might unlock a new fact about the street you’re on, or sometimes, it just makes stuff up. But does it matter if it’s real, as long as it’s a good story?

You can watch the launch video here, or embark on a visual journey on our Instagram highlights, but most importantly, try it on walkcast.fm! A couple caveats—it’s a web app, so on iOS you may have to add it to your home screen to use it properly, but it’s all explained in the app.

How does it work?

Well, this is where things get interesting. You see in order to create an ever-changing experience, generated on the spot, we couldn’t just make a traditional app. Also that would be too easy, and boring. So we spiced things up and created what we called “A storytelling engine”.

But in order to keep it running consistently, we created a series of “agents”. Agents are intelligent entities, powered by language models (like chatGPT, or Gemini), and they can have different attributes, skills, and even personalities! Imagine Walkcast being run by a virtual team, a series of intelligent agents—Curator, Editor, and Host—each with a distinct role in the creation of every story.

The Curator digs deep into your surroundings, finding facts and points of interest. The Editor weaves these into a dynamic script, sometimes adding creative tangents and surprising twists. Finally, the Host delivers the story, always in the perfect tone. This loop continues as long as you keep walking, transforming every step into a surprising moment.

Why Walkcast?

If you've been following oio for some time, you'll know that our core focus is experimenting with future interactions, and lately, that involved a lot of artificial intelligence design work. From last year’s experiment the malleable web, to our most recent collaboration with Google Gemini on Ad-hoc UIs, much of our recent projects were about redefining how we engage with AI, exploring new metaphors and mental models beyond the familiar chat interface.

Extract from Google Gemini’s Ad Hoc UI

While most of this work remains under wraps, lately we’ve been collaborating on products used by millions globally, reimagining how people can radically engage with AI. But we're not alone—from OpenBMB’searly tests with virtual offices (or full-scale simulations) to the concept of a simulated web, many are working to reinvent AI collaboration from the ground up. Everyone is trying to answer the same questions—what does the next interaction look like? What's the right metaphor?"

OpenBMB AgentVerse

We've been working on this topics for white a while now, and Walkcast, with its Storytelling Engine, is just one of the many experiments we're about to launch in this space. I did a talk at Hatch Conference last month where I tried to explore this space a bit more in depth. It's currently behind a paywall here, but hopefully it will be available on YouTube soon. WATCH THIS SPACE! 👀

 📸  Indigo Lewisohn

But as someone said, the best way to steal a dog is to invent it, and that’s why we’re launching Walkcast today. After all, we are on a mission to make products and tools for a less-boring future, but let's face it, the world’s gotten a bit too predictable. Same routines, same headlines, same old paths. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The stories are out there, hidden just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered—or, sometimes, invented.

🍎 oio school highlights

sunshine, aperitivos and international talent

A week-long of tech, design and collaborative learning ended with a blast! Participants flew from all over the world to spend a week building AI products and interactions with machine learning, together with the oio team, in the beautiful setting of an Italian villa in Southern Italy. Work hard and play hard they say. Now with a pool, on the seaside, and Italian aperitivos.

We’ve put together some quick highlights, you can find them here on Instagram. We are also working on a longer-form documentary that will go more in details, so stay tuned!

oio school oio school oio school oio school oio school oio school oio school

👋 Welcome Normz!

no questions allowed 🫢

This month, we welcome Norman to the oio family, who is joining as a Content Creator. Normz is a Taiwanese visual designer who enjoys cooking, dancing, and snoring 💤. He will be bringing you the latest content, project launches, and exclusive moments behind the scenes, along with the occasional marvel of the internet.

🍧 Cool links

Your monthly supply of fine goods, carefully handpicked from our beloved Discord community (missing out? Join now💨)

🌐 Free, public pics (public.work)
☎️ Final call for the Internet Phonebook (https://internetphonebook.net/)
🧑🏽‍💻 Morse code by slamming your laptop (github.com)
⛰️ Monument Valley returns this winter (polygon.com)
🔮 “Imagine” what you can buy (arcade.ai)
🤳🏽 Selfie with a traffic cam (trafficcamphotobooth.com)
⌨️ Google Tokyo’s gboard update (google.co.jp)
🚙 Waymo’s famous parking lot (youtube.com)
🧟 No, I’m not a human (youtube.com)

Want to share your cool links? Hop on the train and join our Discord!

📈 Monthly stonks

🌐 www: world wide web of windows
🕹 game: squirrel with a Gun
📁 are.na: corporate fetish
📚 wiki: acoustic kitty
🔧 tool: keka

✏️ words by matlo & normz

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keep walking

🌸 new look!

Hello oio friends! Hope you’re having a good summer, but most importantly: 🚰 a hydrated one. It's been a scorcher, but that hasn't stopped us from juggling a whole bunch of exciting things, including:

💅 A full reboot of our newsletter (let us know what you think!)
🇮🇳 A week-long workshop in India
🍎 Putting the finishing touches on the first oio school
🗄️ Finalizing our 1-year residency at mudac Lausanne
🥙 Dreaming about the falafel we'll eat in Berlin during Hatch Conference
🤝 And last but not least—hiring new people!

It's a packed update, so grab a cool drink and dive into this fresh issue of oio news 🗞️

📰 oio news

peek into the oioverse

📣 content creators wanted!

We’re on the hunt for a new content creator to join the oio team! Could it be you? If you’ve got a knack for storytelling and a passion for building vibrant communities, we want to hear from you. As our content creator, you'll be the mastermind behind our communication strategies, spanning social media, Discord, newsletters, and beyond. This means you'll take the lead on everything from brainstorming creative concepts to crafting and executing killer content that resonates with our audience. This is a remote role with the option to work from one of our physical offices, depending on your location. You’ll be working within CET hours, but the impact you make will be felt far and wide.

Ready to write the next chapter of oio’s story?

apply now!

🇮🇳 back from india

bjørn in pune, india

We’re back from Pune, India, where oio’s senior designer Bjørn Karmann led an inspiring workshop, “AI for Everyday Life,” in collaboration with the CIID Summer School! Bjørn worked with a group of ambitious students and industry professionals, guiding them through the process of using AI as a medium for storytelling. By the end of the workshop, the participants had brought a series of objects to life, using cutting-edge AI tools and prototyping hardware.

Stay tuned on our instagram for updates on our future workshops.

🍎 oio school is FULL!

tiny worm is happy

We’re thrilled to announce that all tickets for the oio school have sold out! 🎉 But don’t worry—if you still want to join 14 creative minds and the oio team for a week of hands-on tinkering and Italian aperitivos, we’ve got good news: tickets for the School Only tier are still available. Grab yours before they’re gone!

Check out all the info about the experience at oio.school. 🍎

💾 archivives

As some of you might recall, oio’s one-year residency at mudac—the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne—is drawing to a close. It’s been a lot of work, but also a ton of fun! In the coming weeks, we’ll be unveiling all the work we’ve done during this residency through a series of videos and posts on our socials. The highlight will be an installation at mudac, part of the larger exhibition Archives du Design Romand. Quels récits?, impeccably curated by Scott Longfellow. This exhibition at mudac offers an evolving platform that delves into the history and future of design in Switzerland's Romandy region. It features interactive elements and contributions from designers, historians, and AI, with a special focus on archiving, memory politics, and representing marginalized voices in the design world.

Our contribution to the exhibition is an installation called archivives, the culmination of a year-long residency where we explored the museum's archiving practices and the fleeting nature of design heritage.

join us for the vernissage:

📆 12/09/2024
🕕 6:00pm
📍 mudac, Lausanne

The opening vernissage will be on Thursday the 12th of September at 6pm, at the mudac in Lausanne. The oio team will be there!
If you can’t make it, no worries—the exhibition will be open until February 9th, 2025.

🌯 see you in berlin!

New conference alert! If you’re in Berlin on September 5-7, don’t miss the Hatch Conference, where Matteo, oio’s co-founder, will be speaking about "Intelligence as a Material."

Thinking of attending? Use code MATTEO10 for 10% off your ticket!

check it out!

🌸 new look!

You guessed it—we've given our newsletter a major makeover! After much thought, we’ve decided to migrate from Buttondown, a platform we've held close to our hearts since our very first newsletter back in January 2021. Feeling nostalgic? Read it here. You can still browse all our old emails here.

Buttondown has been the perfect partner to kick off our journey, and we only have good things to say about it. But as our needs have grown, we’ve started to bump up against its limits. That’s why we’ve chosen to move to the slightly-more-structured Beehiiv.

We could geek out for hours about newsletter services, so if you’re curious to hear more, just DM us on Discord.

time to move on old friend

🧊 cool links

Everyone's favourite section! A handpicked selection of 𝕠𝕚𝕠 𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕥𝕚𝕗𝕚𝕖𝕕™ cool content from our Discord community (not there yet? Join now).

🏔️ neurosurgeon now unemployed and alone in the mountains (youtube.com)

⚛️ build your own react from scratch (pomb.us)

8️⃣ DON'T use 7-segment displays (harold.thimbleby.net)

💸 anatomy of a cryptocurrency scam (substack.com)

🪦 dead internet theory: A.I. killed the internet (youtube.com)

🔠 the wall-e type (typesetinthefuture.com)

💎 this crystal is a revolutionary tool for artists (yankodesign.com)

💿 get the DVD logo into the corner (immersivemath.com)

🏋️ was your fav youtube channel used to train AI? (proofnews.org)

🍀 nature of code - revamped! (natureofcode.com)

🤖 ml5js - updated! (ml5js.org)

Want to share your cool links? Sell your cats and join our Discord!

join our discord!

📈 monthly stonks

new gif just dropped. DM for NFT

🌐 Website: quentinhocde
🕹 Game: Risk of Rain Returns
📁 are.na channel: ✧ resource – ungatekeeping design
📚 Wikipedia page: Taki Pona
🔧 Cool tool: Crocotile3D

🐌 stay alfresco ~ M