Today, Google has announced “Suncatcher”—its plan for a space-based, highly scalable AI infrastructure system. Advanced Projects Group collaborated with Google’s Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi) team to create the physically accurate interactive visualizations that helped green-light the project internally.

Advanced Projects Group—led by myself (Stewart Smith) and Robert Gerard Pietrusko—worked directly with Pi co-founder Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Pi Senior Director Travis Beals, and their incredibly talented colleagues to create materials for pitching “Suncatcher” to Google / Alphabet executives—including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Our effort was a success.

Earlier this evening indie-rockers Grandaddy delighted longtime fans and latter devotees alike with a live performance of their “Sophtware Slump” (2000) record in its entirety to mark the breakthrough album’s 25th anniversary. The crowded silver jubilee show at Brooklyn Steel comes near the close of a reunion tour that has spanned the width of America over the past two months, wrapping in Philadelphia this Saturday.

Grandaddy’s performance consisted of three sets: Every single track off The Sophtware Slump in order, followed by a first encore heavy with Sumday (2003) tunes, and a second encore closing with the raucous career-early hit A.M. 180. After the show I headed backstage to say hello to the band. (It’d been several years since last chatting with them in person as part of an impromptu interview for my music and politics rag, Tweed Magazine.) I sheepishly passed Jason a little handwritten “thank you” note for all the countless hours of enjoyment his music has given me—and for not suing me when I made my fan video for Jed’s Other Poem.

I don’t often receive personal whiteboard lectures on quantum mechanics. But when I do, I make sure it’s from a Nobel-Prize-winning Yale professor 😆 Congratulations, Dr. Michel Devoret! 🍾🥂🎉

From the the Nobel Foundation’s official announcement: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.” The photo above was snapped by Dr. Florian Carle, Managing Director of Yale University’s Quantum Institute (YQI), during my 2022–2023 artist residency at YQI. Dr. Devoret (on the left) was patiently explaining to me (on the right, back to camera) the graphical power of Feynman diagrams as a logical reasoning device. I am not a physicist, and had little business receiving such focussed attention—exactly one of the joys of participating in Florian’s residency program.

The Webbys are now accepting submissions for their 30th annual awards show, to be held in Spring 2026. Early birds can take advantage of lower entry fees by submitting work on or before Friday, October 24th. Enter your work here: www.webbyawards.com.

For the second year in a row I’m participating as a Webbys judge—and I’m excited to boost the latest and greatest creative uses of the Web in particular. Our celebrity judge this year is actor Walton Goggins. He wants to see the cool things you’ve made, so submit your work ASAP.

Last Thursday I joined the “Beyond the Frontier” conference here in New York, speaking on the discussion panel, “Inventive by Nature: Creative Entrepreneurship in Times of Change.” And then I ripped my shirt off.

With less than ten minutes until our scheduled group appearance, our gang of four huddled in a corner of Microsoft’s Soho office “garage” to introduce ourselves to one another. Our panel consisted of Amy Peck (Founder & CEO, EndeavorXR), Sam Hunter Magee (Director on Creativity and Entrepreneurship for the Lemann Program at Harvard), Tiya Gordon (Co-founder & COO, It’s Electric), and myself. I was happily outclassed. I had a good feeling about our panel.

Our short film, “Planetary Vision”, is on view at the Palazzo Diedo in the exhibition “The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology”—part of the 2025 Venice Biennale. Director Peter Galison narrates this meditation on the creation of an Earth-scale radio telescope to observe unimaginably distant blackholes.

Peter Galison, Robert Gerard Pietrusko, and myself have collaborated on a short film specifically for the Venice Biennale that meditates on the coordination of multiple radio telescopes around the world to create an Earth-sized “camera”—a transformation of our planet into an instrument for “seeing” far beyond our own Milky Way galaxy. Our film serves as a preview for our entry in the inaugural edition of the interactive Antikythera journal, an MIT Press publication.

Today I’m serving as guest critic at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for Robert Gerard Pietrusko’s “Conspiracy as Method” final review. Past work from this popular Landscape Architecture course has been experimental, fun, and insightful—“serious play” as it were.

Meeting in the Weitzman School of Design, we’ll review each group’s short film; the culmination of their semester’s efforts. Each film is composed of three chapters: An investigation of a chosen “natural” disaster, a resultant conspiracy theory (either existing or fabricated for the purposes of this course), and a speculative design proposal for a future institution arising from the group’s constructed context.

Today I’m in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a guest speaker for the annual HarvardXR conference hosted by Harvard University. This year’s theme, “Extended Intelligence”, focuses on the convergence of AI and XR at Harvard and beyond.

HarvardXR’s goal is to provide a platform for students, researchers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs to discuss how XR is shaping the future across different industries. I will be speaking at 2:20pm this afernoon in Room A: 1.321 as part of the Immersive Reality session, anchored by the legendary creative technologist, Bradley Munkowitz (AKA “GMUNK”). See the complete Speakers list.