23 FEB 2026

Day 54

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Susan Sontag · On Photography

A small rectangular box carved from pale whalebone, with densely incised low-relief scenes covering all visible surfaces and runic inscriptions running along the borders and within the panels.

I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM

The Franks Casket

Anglo-Saxon · 8th century · whalebone

Four thought-worlds meet on one small chest: Roman emperors, the Magi, Germanic smiths, and runic riddles that shift language and alphabet mid-inscription.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

II · THE IDEA · ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

What Goes Into the Corpus

Training and alignment · The Pile, 800GB across 22 sources · Deduplication at document and substring level

A corpus is never raw internet. It has been filtered, deduplicated and weighted, often by heuristics the lab does not publish. Those choices shape what the model knows.

Enter lesson 7 MIN

A fired clay figure of a person kneeling on one knee. Their head is tilted back and their arms are wrapped around their legs. The surface is textured, with serpents modelled as if coiling up the figure's back.

III · THE WORK · ART HISTORY

The Terracottas of Djenné-Djeno

Djenné-Djeno · c. 250 BC – 1400 AD · Terracotta

Fired clay figures from a forgotten city in Mali, some kneeling, some wrapped in serpents. Their unearthing revealed a history far older than expected, and sparked a crisis of cultural looting.

Enter lesson 5 MIN