Allen
@allenriley.bsky.social
100 followers 43 following 330 posts
Mostly commenting on songs overheard in the coffee shop http://allen-riley.com
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allenriley.bsky.social
Allen’s semi-utopian internet manifesto (from November 2010 zine “Things Must Happen”):
allenriley.bsky.social
“It’s about the history and future of socially interactive video”
allenriley.bsky.social
I have advanced to candidacy and my dissertation is titled “The Imagination Synthesizer”
allenriley.bsky.social
Have you seen every possible time on the clock? Are there rare times?
allenriley.bsky.social
"Rats are rhizomes. Burrows are too, in all of their function shelter, supply, movement, evasion, and breakout[...] You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed." - Deleuze and Guatarri, A Thousand Plateaus
allenriley.bsky.social
ISM Festival, Olympia WA
September 14, 2025
Thanks to Ben Kapp for the photos and Katy for the video clip !
allenriley.bsky.social
I performed scenes from my as-yet-unproduced science fiction film Earth’s Basement with my collaborator Shannon Kerrigan as a video synthesis performance that also utilized a live musical scoring system I made that uses an LLM and MaxMSP to categorize dialogue and select musical cues
allenriley.bsky.social
My favorite film at Telluride was “It Was Just An Accident” by Jafar Panahi
allenriley.bsky.social
Weirdly, language/writing is being positioned as “surface” and coaching/performance is where the interior of the film is detected
allenriley.bsky.social
Dream work and meditation is very hip; the unconscious is Hollywood’s answer to AI
allenriley.bsky.social
Noticing the word “align” or “alignment” newly all over the place ways that seem transferred over from AI jargon
Reposted by Allen
andymakes.itch.io
Hypnogenesis is at Video Sync in Portland right now!

Come say hi to @allenriley.bsky.social who is showing it off and try your hand at our arcade game / interactive video feedback system!

#indiegames #videofeedback
Hypnogenesis game on a CRT with a wooden arcade console
allenriley.bsky.social
I was surprised to learn that the film majors in my media class have neither read or seen Lord of the Rings and seemingly have zero interest in it
allenriley.bsky.social
One of my least favorite teaching moments is getting flustered about how to transition between concepts and either leaving out key information or accidentally saying the opposite of what I mean
allenriley.bsky.social
One of my students used "stop trying to make fetch happen" to explain language games 🥲
allenriley.bsky.social
Don't let him know that The Logic of Sensation by Deleuze was on David Lynch's bookshelf!
allenriley.bsky.social
I also played them this 1996 news coverage of Steve Mann making mobile video calls from the grocery store to illustrate my point that the roots of the present reach deep into the past, but the world also became the way it is very recently
From 1996: Meet the man who invented a wearable computer
YouTube video by TODAY
youtu.be
allenriley.bsky.social
We’ll discuss on Thursday but my hunch is that they dug the film’s treatment of artificial intelligence and systemic oppression and its fulfillment of y2k nostalgia
allenriley.bsky.social
I screened The Matrix for my media art class today and remembering how I first saw this in the theater in 1999 without having seen a trailer or knowing anything about it at all, so I was completely shocked when Neo’s mouth seals shut
Reposted by Allen
andymakes.itch.io
A bit more Hypnogenesis footage. Another level with feedback & level design by @allenriley.bsky.social

Peering through the noise is a key game mechanic. This might look completely impossible to parse, but it's easier than you might think while still remaining challenging.

#gamedev #generativeart
allenriley.bsky.social
Hulk’s autobiography is very interesting because he explains kayfabe and then seamlessly shifts into kayfabe
Reposted by Allen
andymakes.itch.io
A vision of video feedback hell appearing at the end of Hypnogenesis.

@allenriley.bsky.social deigned all of the video art and levels (which are synonyms in this game!) & I worked on the engine.

We had an amazing week working on the project, which uses Video Waaaves to emulate feedback.

#gamedev
Reposted by Allen
andymakes.itch.io
Out in California with @allenriley.bsky.social working on our feedback game, Hypnogenesis!
Two wonderful and alluring men sitting on either side of a CRT that says "HYPNOGENESIS"
allenriley.bsky.social
Actual conversation just overheard:

“I’m John”
“I’m Jim”
“Joe?
“Jim”