All of the things currently on my mind begin with P: poems, PhD, process, printers, plotters, pillows, polarizers…
Important: if you are a friend in London I may need assistance setting up an exhibit (this will be paid) in June!
Update: I am now in SF for the foreseeable future. I’d love to try to set up some sort of creative co-working sessions with friends!
Pillow Printer
“Once I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering here and there, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awoke, and there I was, truly myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.” - Zhuangzi
Briefly, Butterfly Dreams is a soft computational object that holds fragments of dreams. Instead of following the person, dreams are embedded within the pillow. Each visitor who lies down continues the dream from the point where the previous one left off. By turning an intimate and personal object into a collective experience, the work imagines dreams not as private possessions, but as atmospheres that linger in places and materials. The pillow invites visitors to pause and rest and briefly inhabit the suspended space between waking and dreaming, opening up the possibility that the world around them may simply be the dream their butterfly selves are having.
I just finished up a term with the DXARTS department in their intro to mechatronics class, and while I made it to perhaps a total of 10% of actual class time, I was often in the studio at night or working at home. I had a bit of Arduino experience before and what this class gave me was the permission to assemble tiny prototypes and ugly proof-of-concepts. I am once again a beginner, and failing quite often. I wish I could bottle up this feeling to sprinkle around forever. In an attempt to use myself as a case-study for process, I’ll try to articulate the thought process of this entire project:
A while ago I was making these mini pots, and wondering what else I could do with them. Curious about vessels for sound, I wondered if I could fit tiny speakers into them, then thought about what else I could put speakers in. And a speaker in a pillow would be even more wonderful.
My absolute favorite item when I was 8 was part of the Bobby Jack bubble gum bedding set that included this monkey shaped pillow with a speaker in one of its ears. You would connect the audio jack from a CD player and then could listen to music from the pillow while lying down. I would often use this to secretly listen to audiobooks while pretending to sleep.
So a pillow speaker would be everything I would want, especially one that forces you to lie down in order to hear the music or the sounds. Every time I am resting I remember that this is where I am meant to be, and every time I am up and about it is impossible to remember that fact.
My first idea for class had to do with a receipt printer out in the wild, something with sounds and birds. But my printer was broken, and I had to pivot.
I was at Goodwill looking for old electronics to replace the printer idea, and instead became enamored by the throw pillows, remembering my Bobby Jack dreams. Acquired a huge throw pillow with zipper case for $2.
I had these little sound modules that they stick in toys to record and play back audio, so I hacked one of these, trying a FSR as the activating mechanism. When pressed, the module would record, when released, it would play back the audio. It didn’t really work inside the pillow, but I brought it for the concept anyway. The audio I used to demo it was the opening lines from Rebecca: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…” (Hitchcock’s 1940 version). The fact that every time I touched it would re-record and erase the old audio made it difficult to test/demo.
The next assignment was more speculative, so I tried conductive thread as the mechanism and got a new tiny printer to print a hardcoded dream. Something something idea of the bedroom and intimate sleep objects being monitored, and sleep, the last pocket of time untouched by capitalism being mined for ads. I really didn’t want to lug the pillow back to campus so instead commandeered my crochet hook pocket to add 2 lines of conductive thread, connected to the Arduino, which was connected to the printer. Embarrassingly simple?
With one week left the rest of it came together. Conductive thread underneath the pillow cover would still work if it was thin enough, and I wanted to sew my own cover with fabric I had gotten long ago in the Joann’s shutdown. Butterfly motif, for butterfly dreams.
I’ve always loved that story from Zhuangzi, which my dad would tell me as a kid. On days that I am asleep for longer than 12 hours, I am more the self of my dreams than I am the me in this body.
Two days before, I finished the pillow cover and tested the individual parts, replacing the toy module with an actual speaker. The day before I went in to solder everything. That night I tried to finish the code and had a bad time debugging…
Bless little Ramses for staying up with me throughout this process, sleepy as he was. The majority of this project came together two days before the final exhibition, but required the steps that I only gave myself the time to test because they were homework assignments. Seeing just how sprinty this work was (mainly 3 sessions) makes me wonder how to arrange my projects, which ones would benefit from bursts and which ones have been harmed by this pattern.
Plotters
One of the “failed” (attempted and unable to finish or get working within a certain unreasonable deadline) projects was trying to get a rolling scroll of paper to pass by my plotter. Before that I was looking at paper marbling. I’d like to continue this project a more reasonable pace than the previous one week deadline. In case anyone is in interested in jamming on this!
Process videos
I made removable feet for my goose :D and a video to accompany it. Thus far I’ve made 6? videos for social media, and it has served the purpose of making me no longer afraid of making videos, but rather now annoyed by them. It’s a different type of task to love, and I do wonder how I got here, where I do feel like I’m a rather private person somehow excavating my processes to share online. There’s almost a fascination of wanting to give back to a community that has shown me so much, but also to be witnessed in what is ultimately quite a lonely act.
Thesis
After three years of research and percolation, the first bit of my thesis thread has come to light, encapsulated in this image:
This image is me in every single project I have ever attempted, and now shows up in every slide deck that I present for my research.
Alicia Guo, moved
I’ve moved to a new temporary home (website). The old website was 5 years old and 3 years outdated, so this was much needed, like an emotional haircut and dye job. I originally said this new website would only last a few months, because I was desperate for any change but didn’t have too much time to think about the design, but it’s starting to grow on me? Check out the roof and basement!
shared
Process as Poetic Provenance: work that I will present at a workshop at CHI later this year. Progress on this project has been slow going but I’m really loving the shape it’s taking.
wip
digitizing… all of my talks from 2024/2025 on computational poetry.. into one huge version of them all — I’m often asked what computational poetry is and where to start.. perhaps it’s a good time to start gathering resources/documenting my tutorials?
dress? top? clothes? display? made of polarizers - I’ll be working on this for a hackathon in a week !!! six years in percolation !!
perhaps showing living poem in London in June? If there is anyone that can help with in person setup (which will be paid!) as I’m not sure I can fly out on those specific dates :(
BOOK!!?!?!?!? goal is to get a basic system for organizing my fragments up this weekend
love the roof and basement on your updated website, so cool!! and the pillow speaker is such a fun idea :)
1- what's happening to your poor laptop keyboard; 2- the plotter project is really cool!!; 3- you definitely should make a computational poetry 101 thing :)