Your monthly non-spammy-gif-heavy newsletter from your friends at oio.

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!

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!

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! 🍺

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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