Hey [wake word]!
This is Daniel. Together with Matt, we are building Inanimate - devices and a platform to transform any room into an agentic environment.
New here? Welcome - thanks for subscribing to Lab Notes, where we share just enough to make us uncomfortable.
Previously…
Here’s what’s been happening since the last note.
People Building With Resident
In May, we open-sourced Resident (our sandbox for devices) and Courier (our device messaging library).
People have been building things!
Matt Jones made a way of light-painting with emojis (with a lovely write-up)
Jeff Veen made a solar panel monitor using Resident and an M5Stick hooked into HomeAssistant
Jon Heslop made a bot for GitHub that plays a fanfare when someone asks him to review their PR.
We’ve been experimenting too!
Matt made a micro-beach with fish, a multi-use clock with lots of faces, and used a real-time model to demo simultaneous transcription and tool calling.
I made some Intention Beads to create a daily focus ritual.
These were all built with Inanimate. It’s helping shape our thinking about personal hardware. What sticks, what doesn’t.
Wanna play around?
Get an M5Stick from Amazon, install our Claude skills, and follow the Resident guide.
Hanging out w/ Betaworks in London
John Borthwick was in town, and gathered Betaworks companies in London at the Granola office.
Nice to meet Nim from Dessn (of “Nim’s Law”, now commonly called tokenmaxxing), hangout with our mates at Sky Valley (sign-up for early access to Differ), and meet founders from Marker, Pinnacle, TabTabTab, Geometric, C Proof, and TweetDeck!
Thinking about AI devices
Fragments and frameworks of how we are thinking about AI devices.
Promptable products vs. products for human-agent loops
The “Cone of Possibilities” created by a device with a core use case that is also infinitely programmable
Design systems for generative UI - this is needed and wide open for innovation
How the form of objects instructs (and limits) what they are for, and what they can do
The point of things - just because you can, should you? And now you have, who cares?
What else?
Workshopping, ranging, and exploring with Approach Studio
Bringing up the complete on-device UI for Inanimate - wake words done.
Adding new devices to Inanimate - a Dial and a Stopwatch.
Playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors” using a vision AI module running an off-the-shelf gesture model.
Submitting VAT Returns.
That’s the short bit. Now for the long bit.
Yes, and…
Here’s what’s been influencing and inspiring me since the last note.
Looking with Two Eyes w/ David
This week, a master left us.
David Hockney “was known for his vivid, stylised realism and championed figurative work, often in a bold style, during a period when abstract art predominated.”
He was a towering giant in our culture. He was Britain’s best known artist. He defined the 1960s Pop Art movement. His art broke records at auction.
Hockney was also an incredible human being. A no nonsense man from the North. A lifetime smoker. A relentless innovator, he worked across every medium - paint, fabric, stained glass, photography, video, and digital.
He wore Crocs to the palace. He was an incredible, wise communicator. Listening to him talk about art, nature, and the importance of “looking with two eyes” is to sit at the feet of a Master.
Personally, I particularly loved his iPad work, his study in Normandy, his painting of landscapes in Yorkshire, his massive trees, and his moving seasonal video montage. He leaves one of art’s great legacies behind. RIP.
Counting Rice w/ Marina
In 2019, while visiting Belgrade, I saw a retrospective of performance artist Marina Abramović. One piece stayed with me.
Inside the gallery, in a large room off to one side, was a long table. Along the centre of the table were piles of lentils and millions of grains of rice. Sat at the table were people, like me, who were visiting the gallery. They had pens and paper, and were all silently separating and counting the lentils and rice.
Why were they doing this? What was the point? Was this work? Were they happy? And why did I join them and sit there for 45 minutes counting the lentils and rice?
This is not exactly art, but it’s a practice that Abramović developed to help her focus and calm the mind. It says something profound about work.
We work for money, to express ourselves, and to find meaning in the world as an act of social connection with others.
But work doesn’t have to have a purpose other than the act itself and the feeling or state it generates in you. Working can just be about being.
Gardening w/ Monty
For the first 30 seconds of the programme, there is no music or dialogue; only ambient sound.
Birds chirp. Trees rustle. Insects buzz across flowers. The creek of an old wheelbarrow. The squeak of trusty work boots, followed by the padding paws of a dog.
Now running for 58 years, this iconic show is adored by millions.
During the Pandemic, trapped inside my apartment in central London, I stumbled across it one evening. This was not the TV show I remembered as a child - stuffy, boring, Blue Peter for grown-ups. It had become something else entirely. I fell in love with it.
The almost subversive opening segment. The world-class nature photography, applied to our humble backyards. The practical science. The cottagecore aesthetic. The supportive philosophy of learning through doing.
This is Reithian programming at its best. But it’s also calm, mindful, nice telly.
Most of all, I love following the presenters - Adam, Francis, and Monty - and their journey through the year in their own gardens.
It has rekindled in me a love of gardens and nature.
UK viewers can stream on the iPlayer. Here’s a recent episode on YouTube for everyone else.
Just watch the first 30 seconds. It’s a treat.
Thanks for reading. See you soon.