The session explored spatial authoring and XR-based knowledge environments, with Frode demonstrating a 3D knowledge map prototype derived from meeting transcripts and AI-generated glossaries, prompting a wide-ranging discussion about gestures, selection models, timelines, writing practices, and how immersive systems might augment human thinking rather than replace it.
AI: Main Topic
The primary focus was Frode’s live walkthrough of a spatial knowledge map built in Author for visionOS and macOS, originally created for outreach to another lab, and the group’s examination of how interaction models, temporal organization, and writing paradigms change when information becomes manipulable in three-dimensional space.
AI: Highlights
Frode presented Build 94 of the spatial map, showing gesture-based selection, grouping, and focus operations, and described extracting glossary terms from transcripts via AI before importing them into Author.
Tom Haymes emphasized fluid writing practices enabled by word processors and AI, contrasting them with typewriter-era constraints.
Brandel Zackernuk connected the prototype to gestural systems in Maya and proposed attractors and ranking systems for spatial organization.
Peter Dimitrios recounted early word-processing experiences on the Apple II using Easywriter and described his “solid, liquid, gas” metaphor for text.
Rob Swigart questioned index-card-style spatial writing for long-form fiction and reflected on how technological limits shape creative practice.
The group repeatedly returned to timelines, causality, and whether meetings themselves could become spatially explorable knowledge objects.
AI: Insights
Participants converged on the idea that XR authoring is less about replicating pages in space and more about inventing new epistemic actions, where gesture, proximity, and motion become tools for thinking.
Several speakers reframed writing as shifting between liquid and solid states, suggesting spatial systems may better support early-stage ideation than finished prose.
The discussion revealed tension between automation and agency, with repeated warnings about outsourcing cognition to AI while still valuing its ability to surface patterns and provoke new questions.
Time was reconceived not merely as linear sequence but as causal structure, raising the prospect that spatial layouts could privilege idea evolution over chronology.
There was growing recognition that meetings themselves generate knowledge and might be treated as datasets to be spatially mapped, compared, and revisited.
AI: Resources Mentioned
Koko Momo in Gloucester Road mentioned by Brandel Zackernuk.
Southwark Cathedral referenced by Frode during the demo context.
Groundhog Day cited by Frode and others in an opening aside.
The Matrix referenced by Frode during a discussion of déjà vu.
Stargate mentioned by Tom Haymes.
Easywriter discussed by Peter Dimitrios.
Apple II and IBM Selectric mentioned by Peter Dimitrios.
Peak Human recommended by Frode.
Behave recommended by Frode.
Cartographies of Time by Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton mentioned by Brandel Zackernuk.
Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain recommended by Tom Haymes.
NotebookLM mentioned by Tom Haymes.
visionOS discussed by Frode in relation to platform constraints.
Maya referenced by Brandel Zackernuk.
Song
This track is an AI orchestrated piece inspired by the transcript of this meeting, meant as a fun provocation to further thought. (suno.com)