I.06 · Active · 2023 — Present
TheCycles
Symbolic systems, storytelling, AI.
- Status
- Active
- Timeline
- 2023 — Present
- Ref
- I.06
Project overview
What this is, and why it exists.
Symbolic systems — zodiacs, calendars, divinatory schemes — are some of the oldest computational structures humans have built. They are not decoration.
Can contemporary AI systems carry meaning forward from these traditions, instead of flattening them into aesthetic surface?
TheCycles is an investigation into how generative systems can be trained, structured, and presented in a way that honours the symbolic logic of the source material. The work moves between scholarship, code, and design.
Background
Context, origins, problem space.
Context
Generative AI is excellent at surface and clumsy at structure. Symbolic traditions are the opposite: every element is positional, relational, and carries weight against the whole.
Research origins
The inquiry began with a small set of personal astrological studies and grew into a more general question about computational symbolism.
Problem space
Most AI-driven symbolic content treats meaning as ornament. The challenge is to design systems where the symbol's place in the wheel matters as much as its image.
Methods
The vocabulary of the work.
Research
- Comparative symbolism
- Tradition-specific scholarship
- Prompt-archaeology
Design
- Generative composition
- Symbolic constraint design
- Interactive prototypes
Documentation
- Essays
- Annotated outputs
- Working notebooks
Process
Timeline, fieldwork, iteration.
The work alternates between reading and making. Each generative experiment is annotated against the tradition it draws on.
- 2023.05
First wheel
Generative zodiac with positional constraints; private release.
- 2024.02
Tradition-specific studies
Side-by-side studies in Hindu, Hellenistic, and Mayan calendrical schemes.
- 2024.10
Public artefact
First published piece — annotated, with method notes.
Documentation
Images, field notes, recordings.
Outputs
What the work produces.
- ArtefactTheCycles — published wheel
- EssaySymbol, computation, and the place of meaning
- Site
Related work
Where this connects.
Projects
Writings