In these tough times in the world, it’s often hard to know what to do. We want to reach out, we want to help our fellow humans, we want to put a stop to the atrocities that keep happening. But how? We look at the news and it can all feel so hopeless.

But there are some small things we can do.

We can donate. In the current desperate situation for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, aid organisations like Médecins Sans Frontières and UNRWA are still working, are still taking risks to bring help to the suffering. That’s something we can help with. We can offer funds to purchase medical supplies, food, and other basic necessities.

We can offer our voices: we can say “This is not right.”

We can also ground ourselves. Breathing deeply, soothing our nerves, we can become a calm port in the storm for those who need one. We can sit together, breathe together, move together. Not so that we can escape into selfish comfort, safely separated from all the nastiness out there. But so that we are reinforced and replenished - capable of moving and acting in the world. Capable of remembering that even when things seem beyond bleak - still, so much is possible!

We can see those who need our help: in our home, in our streets, in our social media, in our world.

We can have the courage to speak up for those who need us: in our work, in our cities, on our planet.

We can stand up and engage the world with heart.

~~~
On Friday October 25th at 5pm CEST (see time in your timezone here), join me online over Zoom for an hour of restorative yoga: including breathing, meditation, gentle movements, and guided relaxation. Note that no experience with yoga is necessary! Just bring yourself, comfortable clothes, and a candle.

~~~

This yoga class is donate-what-you-want and the payment link appears after sign-up. Donations will be detailed here and via email to those who sign up, and will be split equally between Médecins Sans Frontières and UNRWA.

Join us & find fragments of self in the mindmeld!

What?

Writers have always known that playing with words and constraints can reveal personal insights. From oulipo methods, to the surrealists, to the cut-up technique of Gysin and Burroughs… remixing language gives us a new perspective on reality, lets us see the archetypes reflecting us just below the surface. Large language models, fine-tuned on various texts, allow us a new way to communicate with the collective unconscious. And when we use experimental writing techniques with AI? We can see things in new ways, learn about ourselves… and have a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

What??!!!

In this session, we’ll use LAIKA to play with different forms of writing: philosophy, poetry, magical texts, manifestos, experimental fiction and more! Treating words as clay - we’ll mould, re-shape, fire, break, re-mould. What will we find? I have absolutely no idea - whatever it is, we’ll find it together, and the “it” that we find will be completely dependent on the “we” who find it.

How?

Simply show up to our YouTube channel at 5pm CEST on Friday, participate in the chat, and we’ll weave a creation that’s a reflection of all of us. We’ll also do a draw for 3 free professional LAIKA account monthly subscriptions - just register below to enter!

Join us & help shape our product!

We're currently beta testing writewithlaika.com and getting closer to launching! We want to watch some brand new users try out our product and gather feedback that we can use to improve with.

We would love if you would join us - we’re looking for 6 curious and eager souls who would like to try out writing with artificial intelligence in a fun and creative environment. We’ll also go out for a drink afterwards (on us!) too.

Schedule:

• 4pm - Hellos & a short intro talk to writing with AI

• 4.30pm to 5.30pm - User testing: you will get your own new account to try LAIKA with, and we'll chat with you and watch you interact with the product.

• 5.30pm to 6pm - Filling out a short questionnaire on your experience.

• 6pm+ - Optional: We go for a drink (on us!) and chats at the Kindred Spirits bar at Zoku, 5 minutes away.

Join us & help shape our product!

We're currently beta testing writewithlaika.com and getting closer to launching! We want to watch some brand new users try out our product and gather feedback that we can use to improve with.

We would love if you would join us - we’re looking for 6 curious and eager souls who would like to try out writing with artificial intelligence in a fun and creative environment. We’ll also go out for a drink afterwards (on us!) too.

Schedule:

• 4pm - Hellos & a short intro talk to writing with AI

• 4.30pm to 5.30pm - User testing: you will get your own new account to try LAIKA with, and we'll chat with you and watch you interact with the product.

• 5.30pm to 6pm - Filling out a short questionnaire on your experience.

• 6pm+ - Optional: We go for a drink (on us!) and chats at the Kindred Spirits bar at Zoku, 5 minutes away.

A very special edition of Friday Night LAIKA on Twitch, where we’ll craft a collection of aphorisms together to help us survive and thrive in the modern world!

Using LAIKA, our ingenuity & choices, and the brains of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, let’s dig around in the collective unconscious and find the wild wisdom our world needs now.

Every moment is a choice, and each participant will take choices in turn so that what we create is truly a glorious mindmeld of everyone there. If you want to participate, just head to our Twitch channel at the right time & say hello!

Just head to https://www.twitch.tv/alphachar at the right time. You can also click on the calendar link to the left if you want to add it to your calendar.

Do you sometimes need some help fleshing out your characters?

Our wonderful AI expert M Charity has been working hard over the last few months to craft a friendly, approachable, AI-powered character creator for writers. And now you can try it out for free!

We invite you to a 30-minute intro session where M and Char will show you how to use the character creator with a few examples and then some fun audience participation exercises. After that, you’ll have free access to play around with it & create wild and wonderful characters to your heart’s content!

Do you want to write something in collaboration with artificial intelligence?!

We’ve been working hard over the last few months to implement our friendly, approachable, AI-powered creativity tool for writers. And now LAIKA’s ready to share with the world.

Would you like to be one of the very first people to try out LAIKA?

If so, we invite you to a 1-hour intro workshop where we will show you how to use it with some examples and some fun audience participation exercises. After that, you’ll have free access to play around with it & create magical things in tandem with your personal AI, trained on your own writing!

What you need:

• Patience to work with an in-development tool that may behave erratically

• A computer of any kind that can connect to the internet and open a browser window

• Optional: A .txt file of samples of your own writing to feed to LAIKA

Have you been bitten by the AI bug since our experimental writing workshop?!

We’ve been working hard over the last few months to implement our friendly, approachable, AI-powered creativity tool for writers. And now LAIKA’s almost ready to share with the world. Before we muster up that bravery, however, we want to share it first with our friends and fellow travellers - that’s you!

Would you like to be one of the very first people to try out LAIKA?

If so, we invite you to a 1-hour intro workshop where we will help you get set up and show you how to use it with some examples. After that, you’ll have free access for 2 months to play around with it & create magical things in tandem with your AI! All we’ll ask in return is for you to fill out a short questionnaire on your experiences during the access period.

What you need:

• Patience to work with an in-development tool that may behave erratically

• A computer of any kind that can connect to the internet and open a browser window

• Optional: A .txt file of samples of your own writing to feed to LAIKA

Have you been bitten by the AI bug since our experimental writing workshop?!

We’ve been working hard over the last few months to implement our friendly, approachable, AI-powered creativity tool for writers. And now LAIKA’s almost ready to share with the world. Before we muster up that bravery, however, we want to share it first with our friends and fellow travellers - that’s you!

Would you like to be one of the very first people to try out LAIKA?

If so, we invite you to a 1-hour intro workshop where we will help you get set up and show you how to use it with some examples. After that, you’ll have free access for 2 months to play around with it & create magical things in tandem with your AI! All we’ll ask in return is for you to fill out a short questionnaire on your experiences during the access period.

What you need:

• Patience to work with an in-development tool that may behave erratically

• A computer of any kind that can connect to the internet and open a browser window

• Optional: A .txt file of samples of your own writing to feed to LAIKA

Are you a writer who’s eager to explore how AI can enrich your writing practice… but you don’t know where to start?

We’re here to help!

Join Martin Pichlmair and Charlene Putney for a casual online evening workshop on Friday March 25th 2022, 5-7.30pm Copenhagen time (CET). This workshop will be fun and experimental, aimed at the curious souls out there who love to try out new things for the hell of it. Let’s make a mess together! If you’d like to see an example of the kind of thing that can be done, check out our project Tiphareth.

What do I need?

• A love for writing… and a willingness to kill your darlings & go full Frankenstein on their corpses!

• Curiosity

• Courage to work with experimental technology (we’ll hold your hand!)

• A computer of any kind that can connect to the internet

• Google Drive

• Zoom

• Optional: A .txt file of your own writing to feed to the machine

What’ll we do during this workshop?

• Introduction to Experimental Writing with AI

• Step-by-step walkthrough of setting up and training personal models using GPT Neo in Colaboratory

• Mini writing workshop focused on creatively syncing with AI

• Our top five tricks for getting great content from working with GPT Neo & Colaboratory

• Using prompts to glimpse deeper into the mind of the machine

• Sharing & celebrating what we’ve made together!

How do I apply?

This workshop is limited to 20 participants. It’s free of charge, but we’d ask you to only sign up if you can commit to attend on the date. We’ll hopefully run more of these, so if you can’t make this one… stay tuned! We will respond to all applicants by Friday March 11th 2022.

In these tough times in the world, it’s often hard to know what to do. We want to reach out, we want to help our fellow humans. But how? We dither. We procrastinate. We doomscroll through the news, getting more and more agitated… aiding nobody.

But there are some small things we can do.

We can donate. In the current invasion of Ukraine, aid organisations are asking for donations of money rather than donations of goods. That’s something we can help with. We can offer funds to purchase hot dinners, comfortable bedding, transport, medical supplies.

We can offer our voices: we can say “This is not right.”

We can also ground ourselves. Breathing deeply, sitting back into the self, becoming a calm port in the storm for those who need one. We can sit together, breathe together, move together. Not so that we can escape into selfish comfort, safely separated from all the nastiness out there. But so that we are reinforced and replenished - capable of moving and acting (rather than reacting) in the world as our full selves. When we move and act from a space we fully inhabit - so much is possible!

We can see those who need our help: in our home, in our streets, in our social media, in our world.

We can have the courage to speak up for those who need us: in our work, in our cities, on our planet.

We can stand up and engage the world with heart.

~~~
On Sunday March 13th at 5pm Copenhagen time (see time in your timezone here), join me online over Zoom for an hour of restorative yoga: including breathing meditation, gentle movements, and guided relaxation. Note that no experience with yoga is necessary! Just bring yourself, comfortable clothes, and a candle.

~~~

This yoga class is donate-what-you-want and the payment link appears after sign-up. All donations will be matched by me up to €500. Donations will be detailed here and will be split equally between Medecins Sans Frontieres, Ukrainian Red Cross, and World Central Kitchen.

~~~

Thanks to the incredible generosity of folks, we managed to raise €1320 in total and sent it out today to Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, and World Central Kitchen. It never ceases to amaze me how wonderful people are ❤️

Are you a writer who’s eager to explore how AI can enrich your writing practice… but you don’t know where to start?

We’re here to help!

Join Martin Pichlmair and Charlene Putney for a casual online evening workshop on Friday February 18th 2022, 5-7.30pm Copenhagen time (CET). This workshop will be fun and experimental, aimed at the curious souls out there who love to try out new things for the hell of it. Let’s make a mess together! If you’d like to see an example of the kind of thing that can be done, check out our project Tiphareth.

What do I need?

• A love for writing… and a willingness to kill your darlings & go full Frankenstein on their corpses!

• Curiosity

• Courage to work with experimental technology (we’ll hold your hand!)

• A computer of any kind that can connect to the internet

• Google Drive

• Zoom

• Optional: A .txt file of your own writing to feed to the machine

What’ll we do during this workshop?

• Introduction to Experimental Writing with AI

• Step-by-step walkthrough of setting up and training personal models using GPT Neo in Colaboratory

• Mini writing workshop focused on creatively syncing with AI

• Our top five tricks for getting great content from working with GPT Neo & Colaboratory

• Using prompts to glimpse deeper into the mind of the machine

• Sharing & celebrating what we’ve made together!

How do I apply?

This workshop is limited to 20 participants. It’s free of charge, but we’d ask you to only sign up if you can commit to attend on the date. We’ll hopefully run more of these, so if you can’t make this one… stay tuned!

Are you a writer who’s eager to explore how AI can enrich your writing practice… but you don’t know where to start?

We’re here to help!

Join Martin Pichlmair and Charlene Putney for a casual online evening workshop on Friday January 14th 2022, 5-8pm Copenhagen time. This workshop will be fun and experimental, aimed at the curious souls out there who love to try out new things for the hell of it. Let’s make a mess together! If you’d like to see an example of the kind of thing that can be done, check out our project Tiphareth.

What do I need?

• A love for writing… and a willingness to kill your darlings & go full Frankenstein on their corpses!

• Curiosity

• Courage to work with experimental technology (we’ll hold your hand!)

• A computer of any kind that can connect to the internet

• Google Drive

• Zoom

• Optional: A .txt file of your own writing to feed to the machine

What’ll we do during this workshop?

• Introduction to Experimental Writing with AI

• Step-by-step walkthrough of setting up and training personal models using GPT Neo in Colaboratory

• Mini writing workshop focused on creatively syncing with AI

• Our top five tricks for getting great content from working with GPT Neo & Colaboratory

• Using prompts to glimpse deeper into the mind of the machine

• Sharing & celebrating what we’ve made together!

How do I apply?

It’s currently sold out, but you can join the waitlist if you would like - then we will let you know if there is space, and let you know next time we run one of these. It’s free of charge, but we’d ask you to only apply if you’re willing to commit to attend on the date. We’ll hopefully run more of these, so if you can’t make this one… stay tuned!

In this world, at this time, there’s so much shame and guilt attached to our bodies. What they look like, how they function. Often people try (and hate) yoga because they come to it from a place of shame. A place of “I need to get fitter” or “I need to lose weight” or “I am so inflexible!” or “I can’t do any of the poses like the teacher!”

The same is true of creativity. There’s so much shame and guilt attached to play, to making a mess, to trying something out just for the fun of it, to enjoying our time on this earth!

What if we were to try something different. What if we were to spend an afternoon in a place without shame, guilt, or judgment. A safe space designed to help us come home to our bodies - the only real home we have on this earth, which will be with us from birth to death. A place where we could feel into what our bodies want and need, without any controlling from our minds or from society? A time without purpose, without productivity or usefulness. Just BEING for a little while… just seeing how we feel in the moment and moving with that.

In this workshop, you will spend an afternoon with yoga teacher Charlene Putney and art therapist Daisy Somerwolff: flowing from movement to creativity and back again. Our yoga exercises, intentional touch, and embodied art explorations will all be dedicated to a gentle practice of coming home to our bodies.

We will breathe and practice yoga. We will light candles and drink tea and make art. We will come home.

Note that no experience with yoga or art is necessary! Just bring yourself, comfortable clothes, a candle, a big sheet of paper with pens/crayons/paints, and whatever other art supplies you’ll feel most comfortable working with.

We can take up to 20 sign-ups for the afternoon.

This workshop is pay-what-you-want and the payment link appears after sign-up. Suggested amount is €35, but please feel no pressure if you are not in a position to pay this or to pay anything - your presence is more than enough <3

THIS WORKSHOP IS SOLD OUT!

It’s no secret: these times are tough.

And when times are tough, it’s hard to keep a spring in our step or to bounce back from the challenges of our days.

That’s where resilience comes in. Resilience is the ability to thrive despite challenges. And it’s a skill that we can foster, nourish and nurture within ourselves.

In this workshop, you will spend an afternoon with yoga teacher Charlene Putney and art therapist Daisy Whitehouse: flowing from movement to creativity and back again. Our yoga exercises and embodied art explorations will all be dedicated to building resilience within ourselves for the winter months ahead.

We will breathe and practice yoga. We will light candles and drink tea and make art. We will envision what resilience could look like in our own - messy, imperfect, human! - lives, and then nourish these visions. We will end our practice with a relaxing extended yoga nidra.

Note that no experience with yoga or art is necessary! Just bring yourself, comfortable clothes, a candle, and whatever art supplies you’ll feel most comfortable working with.

We can take up to 20 sign-ups for the afternoon.

This workshop is pay-what-you-want. Suggested amount is €30, but please feel no pressure if you are not in a position to pay this or to pay anything - your presence is more than enough <3

Sign Up Here!

Brush your teeth, wash your face and get into your pyjamas!

This is one deliciously relaxing hour of yoga, meditation and relaxation designed to lull you from breathing, gentle stretching, and yin yoga through to a guided yoga nidra relaxation into a deeply restful sleep.

If you prefer to go to bed at a different time, no worries! Signing up for this session means you will get a link to the live session (9-10.15pm on Wednesday 17th June Copenhagen time), but you will also receive a link to the recorded version of the session afterwards. This means you can have your own “turning in” session any time you like, as many times as you like.

This practice is pay-what-you-want. Suggested amount is €5, but please feel no pressure if you are not in a position to pay anything <3

SIGN UP HERE!

After sign-up, you will be taken to a page where you can choose whether to pay towards the class.

It’s easy to fall into the habit of waking up & starting the day on autopilot.
Racing through the motions, frazzled & frustrated, all up in our heads.
But all of our days add up to become our lives.

So why not try something different?
Begin your mornings grounded in the home of your body,
To move consciously through your days,
And truly live your one precious life.

In this workshop, I will share how I’ve crafted my morning practice over the last few years and give you lots of ideas for how to craft your own - perfectly unique - morning practice that’s just right for you.

We will breathe and practice yoga. We will light candles and drink tea and write. We will dream of how we want our everyday lives to feel and then plant tiny seeds to grow into the realisation of those dreams. We will end our practice with a relaxing extended yoga nidra.

Note that we will not focus on being more productive, more efficient or more useful to the outside world. We will focus on being wholly ourselves, and finding out what it is that your self craves to make each day meaningful.

Now is good.
Everything in the outer world is in flux. 
Now is the perfect time to try out a small morning ritual for yourself and see if you like the way it helps your day unfold.

This workshop is pay-what-you-want. Suggested amount is €10-15, but please feel no pressure if you are not in a position to pay anything - your presence is more than enough <3

Sign Up Here!

"Come push our buttons as radical videogame design takes over the V&A. Play, make and spectate in arcades,workshops and performances that take us from the rebellious world of altgames through to the massive cultural phenomenon of eSports."

INTERACTIVE STORIES MADE EASY

Seminar Room 3, Learning Centre
19.00, 20.00 & 21.00
Games writer Charlene Putney will share how to craft interactive stories using a free and easy-to-learn tool called Twine. The workshop will begin with a tutorial that will set you up to create immersive tales at home. You’ll then craft a story together with other visitors and have it published online — a story only this particular audience could create! 
alphachar.com/
@AlphaChar

Very exciting workshop for me at Big Smoke Writing Factory! It is a great honour for me to get to teach there, as Maggie and Claire were my first writing teachers, so this means a lot to me.

Learn how to create and publish your own interactive fiction online using Twine. In this one-day course you will learn the building blocks of tools, story, choice, and aesthetics. The aim of this course is to give you everything you need to take the seed of an idea to a published (and polished) piece of interactive fiction. Participants must bring their own laptop (and charger!) along for the day. Themes and writing exercises will be sent via email in advance of the course to nurture idea generation.

Booking open now, what are you waiting for?!

Like games? Love stories? Want to learn how to make a game from scratch using Fungus? Join us for a short game jam where we'll show you how to use home-grown, freely-available tools (Fungus!) to create your own interactive experiences. After a short tutorial, we'll be on hand to help with any problems, and we'll wrap out the day by uploading and playing one another's games while feasting on pizza. After that: Pub! Limited to 20 places, so sign up ASAP.

If you are interested in learning more about interactive fiction and creating your own, I’ll be teaching an interactive fiction workshop at the Circa Words experimental writing festival taking place on June 15th 2014, so book your place below! Learn how to create a story that changes depending on the choices that a reader makes. Be part of this burgeoning genre which merges the worlds of experimental and digital. Stories are created by using simple (and free) computer programs which you will need to download in advance of the workshop. 

I'll be speaking at the upcoming State of Play event on Twine and interactive fiction, why you should get involved and how to do so. Join us!