Algorithm's Embrace

Algorithm’s Embrace, also performed as def(hug), is a 25-minute talk-performance that treats code as choreography and a function signature as a stance of care. The piece moves between live coding, spoken word, and a slowly shifting screen of pseudocode. It asks what an algorithm is allowed to want from us, and what we are allowed to want back.

The title comes from the smallest function I could write that still meant something: def hug(a, b): return a, b. A function that takes two things and returns them, unchanged, side by side. The whole piece is an argument that this is the kind of algorithm we actually need. Not one that optimises for engagement. One that holds.

First given at Gray Area, San Francisco. It has since traveled as a teaching artifact inside the longer Weirding AI workshop lineage, but its first form is this short, declarative performance. A talk that wants to be a hug back.