I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
M-H
As a kiwi I have heard of Len Lye, although I’ve never seen much of his work. You know he used to paint directly onto the film? Thanks for posting the film.
KDS
Thanks for sharing this movie. Although modern music videos boomed around the eighties, he history of the combination of movie projection with sound performances started in fact in MDCLIX with the invention of the “magic lantern” by the Dutch genius Christian Huygens. An astonishing number of tricks were used with this forerunner of cinematography to project a visual story with somewhat coarse movement, but with great artistic effect to accompany a tale or song. (In the early 1990s I was lucky enough to work in the same department as Prof. W. Wagenaar, who attained fame for demonstrating these magic lantern techniques.) Len Lye is an important figure in the long history of music videos. Lye was very much ‘avant garde’ in the sense that he used seemingly primitive techniques, but he applied these with great skill and artistic feeling, producing stunning results that are perhaps unrivaled in its genre.