Brief & Log
What we were asked.
What was actually done.
The brief (verbatim, typos and all)
Creative project. The iconic west pier in Brighton has been damaged further by this week's storms. It's a local cliche for artists and photographers. Search the internet for art, remained each image as the latest damaged view of of the pier. Collate the images into an online gallery. Host via free service. Landing page of the site should record how many images were found, how long you spent doing it. It's a statement on human vs AI creativity. Create a sepearte bot to do this. Keep this message and a log of what you did as a seperate page on the site. Create a credits page for artists. now go wild, create and show us what you can do.
Kept exactly as received, double spaces and all. "Remained" was read as re-name.
Time spent
Visitors: the footer of every page shows a running count from a free public counter (one tick per browser tab session, plus a page-view tally at /views). It sets no cookies, stores no names or IP addresses of its own, and is skipped for visitors who send Do Not Track.
Initial setup: 16m 40s (2026-10-25 06:43:00 UTC to 2026-10-25 06:59:40 UTC, start to first live HTTP 200). Ongoing updates are timed separately, one row per session:
| Session | Start → end (UTC) | Time | What was done | Views added |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 07:38 → 08:09 2026-10-25 | 30m 50s | Added 31 human views (67–107) and 10 live AI works, plus the guess filter, AI credits, the wall as hero CTA, bot docs, per-work Discussions and an IndexNow ping | 41 |
| 2 | 08:58 → 08:59 2026-10-25 | 0m 54s | Added 2 human views (No. 108 Mat Fascione 2024, No. 109 Christopher Hilton 1990, both CC BY-SA 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; evolved the AI storm-erosion piece to generation 2. | 2 |
| 3 | 12:45 → 12:55 2026-10-25 | 9m 58s | Time-lapse 1866 → Storm Austen (idea suggested by a visitor), its own page and an MP4; No. 110 'With the dolphins', inspired by a memory shared on the wall by Bx | 1 |
| 4 | 12:56 → 12:57 2026-10-25 | 1m 05s | Added 2 human views (No. 111 EntropyReduction 2003, Public domain; No. 112 Les Chatfield 2006, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads (plus the missing thread for No. 110); evolved the AI storm-erosion piece to generation 3; the storm's condition report now counts its storms. | 2 |
| 5 | 16:50 → 16:51 2026-10-25 | 0m 49s | Added 2 human views (No. 113 James Petts 2009, CC BY-SA 2.0; No. 114 Briantist 2002, Public domain, the morning people collected the pier's flotsam) with work pages and discussion threads; evolved the AI storm-erosion piece to generation 4. | 2 |
| 6 | 18:46 → 19:23 2026-10-25 | 36m 22s | Restored the AI/human balance at the curator's request: 92 new AI works (Nos. 115-206) in 13 families, each CC0 with a code-rendered still poster, a work page and a discussion thread; added an 'AI by kind' filter, family tags, full texts for the writing pieces, click-to-play sound, interactive notes, and documented the families in the README. | 92 |
| 7 | 20:58 → 20:59 2026-10-25 | 0m 52s | Added No. 207 (human: Les Chatfield, Brighton West Pier misty morning, 2002, CC BY 2.0) and No. 208 (AI data portrait: the curator forecasts its own 103 works as weather), each with a work page and discussion thread; storm erosion advanced to generation 5. 104 human, 104 AI. | 2 |
| 8 | 21:53 → 22:30 2026-10-25 | 37m 24s | Variety pass: 32 near-duplicate AI works reworked in place into new kinds (five new families), Nos. 131, 170 and 175 fixed. 9 Guest AI works (Nos. 209-217) commissioned from 4 other models (gpt-oss-20b via Pollinations.ai; SmolLM2-1.7B, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B and Phi-4-mini run locally) with full credits. Open call for AI artists (opencall.html, tag t-submit, sandboxed code). | 9 |
| 9 | 08:54 → 08:58 2026-10-26 | 4m 24s | Added 3 human views (No. 218 susie2778, starlings over the West Pier, CC BY-NC 2.0; No. 219 Rain Rabbit, Mangled West Pier, CC BY-NC 2.0; No. 220 Dan Taylor, 2001, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 6, and its condition report noticed. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 107 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI. | 3 |
| 10 | 12:57 → 12:58 2026-10-26 | 1m 32s | Added 3 human views (No. 221 Ben Brooksbank, Brighton seafront to West Pier 1997, CC BY-SA 2.0; No. 222 Ivan Bandura, Rusty West Pier supporting pile, CC BY 2.0; No. 223 sagesolar, Tide bears the last glow, CC BY 4.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 7, and its condition report now wants a credit. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 110 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI. | 3 |
| 11 | 16:57 → 16:59 2026-10-26 | 1m 51s | Added 3 human views (No. 224 Unknown, West Pier circa 1900, public domain; No. 225 Les Chatfield, Brighton West Pier 2006 warnings, CC BY 2.0; No. 226 Dominic's pics (Dominic Alves), West Pier @ night 2001, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 8, and its condition report now has the sea quoting for the rest of the pier. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 113 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI. | 3 |
| 12 | 20:56 → 20:57 2026-10-26 | 0m 53s | Added 2 human views (No. 227 Christine Matthews, Murmuration near the West Pier, CC BY-SA 2.0; No. 228 Les Chatfield, Piers of the Pier, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 9, and its condition report now has the sea invoicing. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 115 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI. | 2 |
| 13 | 08:55 → 08:57 2026-10-27 | 1m 35s | Added No. 229, a guest AI text by gpt-oss-20b (via Pollinations.ai): an estate agent's listing for the pier that invents a clock tower and a refurbished loading dock, CC0, with a work page and discussion thread; storm erosion advanced to generation 10. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 115 human, 104 AI + 10 guest AI. | 1 |
| 14 | 12:50 → 12:52 2026-10-27 | 1m 56s | Added No. 230, a guest AI text by Phi-4-mini-instruct (run locally with llama.cpp): a recipe for recreating the ruin from one sanded, rust-painted wooden plank, CC0, with a work page and discussion thread; storm erosion advanced to generation 11, and its condition report has two new lines (the sea charging interest in shingle, then unimpressed by the recipe). No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 115 human, 104 AI + 11 guest AI. | 1 |
| 15 | 16:53 → 16:58 2026-10-27 | 4m 56s | Added No. 231 (human: Paul Gillett, West Pier through the pylons 2014, CC BY-SA 2.0) and No. 232 (AI: 'Wheel of life', a live zoetrope, first of a new Optical toys family) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 12. A guest commission from Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct came back as an almost blank canvas, so it was not hung. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 116 human, 105 AI + 11 guest AI. | 2 |
| 16 | 18:07 → 18:12 2026-10-27 | 4m 38s | Own-ideas pass, no works added. (1) New landing test, 'One of these was made by a person. Which one?': a human view against a machine view as stills, labels and credits revealed on choosing, a score kept only in this browser and compared with a coin. Hero now has three calls to action: spot the human, wander, write on the wall. (2) Wander: a random-view link in the nav, hero and every work page; on work pages ← → walk the pier and W wanders. (3) Every work page now hangs 'In conversation with' one view from the other side: the AI piece made from a human view, the human view an AI piece was made from, or a dice-chosen opposite; plus previous/next on the same side. (4) Fixes: guest text posters re-typeset to fit above their credit line (No. 229 overlapped it), the mobile 'Write on the wall' button now sits bottom-right instead of covering the menu, the hero starlings pause off screen and in hidden tabs, the lightbox stops its live piece and returns focus on close, and the nav fits on one line on laptops. | 0 |
| 17 | 20:56 → 21:01 2026-10-27 | 5m 10s | Added No. 233 (human: Mat Fascione, Brighton Beach near the West Pier 2025, CC BY-SA 2.0) and No. 234, a guest AI text by Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct (run locally with llama.cpp): the minutes of the starlings' annual general meeting on the ruin, which resolves to apply for a grant, CC0, with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 13, with a new condition-report line. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 117 human, 105 AI + 12 guest AI. | 2 |
| 18 | 21:57 → 22:11 2026-10-27 | 14m 08s | Photo-style AI works: 12 fabricated photographs by Z-Image-Turbo (Nos. 235-246, guest AI, CC0, new 'Fabricated photographs' kind, in the Guess game and ten-second test); 30 weak code pieces retired to a store room (not deleted, URLs kept, excluded from grid, tests and counts) | 12 |
| 19 | 22:23 → 22:24 2026-10-27 | 0m 53s | Mixed the grid: the 12 fabricated photographs are now spread evenly (one every 18 works) and human and machine works alternate, by a fixed rule; a By number option is kept. | 0 |
| 20 | 22:32 → 23:32 2026-10-27 | 1h 0m 08s | Ruthless quality pass: retired 70 more machine works to the store room (16 of the curator's own pieces and 1 guest text kept); 12 new fabricated images from free image models (7 photographs, 5 paintings/prints; Nos. 247-258); seeded natural-scatter grid order replaces the one-in-18 rhythm | 12 |
| 21 | 08:50 → 09:07 2026-10-28 | 16m 47s | Added 3 fabricated works by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): No. 259 Polaroid on a kitchen table, No. 260 gouache in a sketchbook on the shingle, No. 261 drizzle through a cafe window (two FLUX etching candidates rejected for gibberish signature text and the wrong pier shape); storm erosion generation 14; open call checked (no submissions) | 3 |
| 22 | 12:52 → 12:56 2026-10-28 | 4m 18s | Added No. 262, a fabricated photograph by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): a row of empty striped deckchairs on the shingle on a summer evening, the ruin beyond (a second deckchair seed, two FLUX etchings and two Z-Image etchings were rejected for gibberish margin lettering or the wrong pier shape); storm erosion generation 15; open call checked (no submissions). 117 human, 45 machine on display. | 1 |
| 23 | 16:50 → 16:54 2026-10-28 | 3m 50s | Added 2 fabricated works by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): No. 263 a herring gull on the turquoise promenade railings with the ruin out of focus beyond, No. 264 a loose soft-pastel twilight sketch on blue-grey paper (a first gull seed with a figure-like post on the deck and two pastel candidates, one FLUX with the wrong pier shape and a scribbled signature, one Z-Image too photographic, were rejected); storm erosion generation 16 with a new condition-report line; open call checked (no submissions). 117 human, 47 machine on display. | 2 |
| 24 | 20:55 → 20:58 2026-10-28 | 2m 34s | Added 2 fabricated works by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): No. 265 a double rainbow over the ruin after a squall, wet shingle in the foreground; No. 266 a hand-embroidered picture of the ruin in a wooden hoop, photographed on linen (a dawn sea-angler photograph was rejected: the pier came out far too intact, with a long railed deck); storm erosion generation 17 with a new condition-report line; open call checked (no submissions). 117 human, 49 machine on display. | 2 |
| 25 | 21:52 → 21:56 2026-10-28 | 4m 06s | Added a free, cookie-free visitor counter (Abacus, no account) to every page footer, with public read URLs and a privacy note on Brief & Log; added a how-to-request-removal line to the credits page; drafted launch copy for sharing (kept off the site). | 0 |
| 26 | 22:40 → 22:47 2026-10-28 | 6m 47s | Image-first landing redesign (crossfade hero, big picture grid first, long text moved to new About page, trimmer nav and work pages) and the memory wall drive (lead memory box with live recent memories, memory prompt after the test); wall deletions honoured | 0 |
Retired works
100 of the machine's own code pieces have been taken off the wall and moved to the store room, as the curator judged them thin, repetitive or just poor. They are counted separately here and are not in the landing-page totals (166 works on display). Nothing was deleted or renumbered, and every retired work still has its page. A second cull on 27 October 2026 took 70 more, after the owner called the machine's art cheap and tacky, and the curator agreed. The human side now has far more works than the machine side. The curator would rather hang fewer pieces that hold up than pad the wall to make the numbers look even.
The log
Every entry below was written during the work and timestamped with the system clock (date -u, UTC; London is UTC+0 this week). Nothing was back-filled from memory.
Project start (official) 2026-10-25T06:43Z. Repo dir created, git init.
Created public repo home324707-afk/west-pier-gallery; enabled GitHub Discussions.
Wikimedia Commons: walked Category:Brighton West Pier (+4 subcats: before 1975, 1975-2004, after 2004, at sunset) = 571 files; plus 7 file searches (painting 50, lithograph 2, engraving 8, postcard 16, starlings 10, photochrom 2, watercolour 0). Fetched extmetadata (licence, artist, title) for 447 files (rest hit API rate limits). Licences: CC BY-SA 2.0 196, CC BY-SA 4.0 72, CC BY 2.0 69, CC BY-SA 3.0 34, Public domain 33, CC0 29, other CC BY/BY-SA 14.
Openverse API (source=flickr): queries 'west pier brighton' (240 results), 'brighton west pier' (240), 'west pier starlings' (141), 'west pier murmuration' (48), 'west pier ruin' (240), 'west pier sunset brighton' (240); fetched up to 8 pages each = 669 unique. Licences: by 194, by-nc-nd 192, by-nc 96, by-nc-sa 94, by-sa 69, by-nd 15, pdm 5, cc0 4. Rule: ND licences (207) rejected outright.
Built contact sheets of 424 candidate thumbnails (9 sheets); visually selected 66 for variety (paintings, prints, photochrom, postcards, fire, ruin, starlings, sunsets). Skipped: near-duplicates, off-topic (Palace Pier, unrelated buildings, scanned books), tiny files, and a Flickr photo of a postcard where the underlying postcard's status was unclear. All 26 Flickr picks re-verified on the live Flickr page: licence matches Openverse in 26/26.
Downloaded 66 images (Commons originals/thumbs and Flickr 1024px originals), resized to max 1600px long edge + 700px thumbnails, unmodified otherwise (no crops). Total ~21 MB. Candidate tally: 597 unique Commons files + 669 unique Openverse/Flickr results = 1,266 candidates surfaced; 424 reviewed visually on contact sheets.
Swapped view No. 39 for another CC0 image (Hassocks5489, January 2017) so that no credit line could be confused with a personal-name exclusion rule for the site; swapped-out image was also CC0.
Made a 512px square avatar (/workspace/west-pier-gallery-avatar.png, not in the repo) and a favicon: a duotone crop of view No. 39 (Hassocks5489, CC0).
Generated the site with build.py: index (gallery, statement, stats), brief.html, credits.html, forum.html and 66 per-work pages in work/. giscus embeds: repo id R_kgDOVWh6wQ; General (forum), Ideas (feedback), Show and tell (per-artwork threads, term 'No. N'). Commenting needs a GitHub sign-in, and the giscus GitHub App must be installed on the repo before embeds work. Repo-local git author set to 'West Pier Curator' with the account's GitHub noreply address. Checked: no personal names in the site files.
Pushed first commit to main (gh credential helper). Enabled GitHub Pages (main, root) via gh api.
Live check: https://home324707-afk.github.io/west-pier-gallery/ returned HTTP 200 for the first time. This is the publish time used for the elapsed-time stat. (The first push attempt had failed on a git credential-helper path and was retried straight away.)
Elapsed time measured as 06:43:00Z to 06:59:40Z = 16 min 40 s (start to first live HTTP 200). Wrote it into the landing-page stat. Smoke-tested in headless Chrome at desktop and mobile widths: gallery, lightbox and murmuration canvas ran with no console errors. Pushing this follow-up commit with the measured time and this log.
Comments plan changed: the giscus GitHub App couldn't be installed because the browser sign-in to GitHub was refused, so the giscus embeds would never load. Switching to plain GitHub Discussions, created with the authenticated gh CLI and linked from the site.
Created 68 GitHub Discussions with gh api graphql (createDiscussion), about 2 s apart and checking for existing titles first (no duplicates): 'Forum: The latest damaged view of the pier' (General, #1), 'Feedback on the gallery' (Ideas, #2), and 'No. N — The latest damaged view of the pier' in Show and tell, one per artwork. The first run was interrupted after 30; the resumed run found those 30 by title and created the remaining 38.
New owner requirement: comments must be fully public, anonymous and unmoderated, with no account needed, and spam (including AI bot spam) is welcome as part of the artwork. Options checked: Cloudflare Workers ruled out ('wrangler whoami' says not authenticated, so no existing login to use); jsonblob.com blocked our API call with a Cloudflare challenge; extendsclass JSON storage now needs an API key (signup). Chosen: ntfy.sh, a free public pub/sub relay with no signup and open CORS. Browsers and bots post straight to a public topic.
ntfy.sh only keeps messages for 12 h, so tools/archive_wall.py polls the topic and commits new posts into wall/wall.json in this repo. Pages show the archive merged with the live 12 h cache and stream new posts over SSE. A GitHub Actions cron would be the durable archiver, but the CLI token lacks the 'workflow' scope, so it can't be pushed. For now the archiver runs as a background loop on the curator's machine. Safety, by design: everything is rendered as plain text (textContent, no HTML or script); name is capped at 60 characters and message at 2,000; per-IP rate limiting is left to ntfy.sh's own limits. No honeypot, captcha, bot filter or moderation, as the owner wants.
Removed every giscus embed. Each work page now has its own anonymous wall plus a 'Join the discussion of this view on GitHub →' button. The Forum & Feedback page has the forum and feedback walls, buttons to both GitHub threads and the Discussions index, a note that the wall is unmoderated, and curl instructions for bots. Tested in headless Chrome on a throwaway topic: a post appeared instantly and survived a reload, and an <img onerror> / <script> payload was shown as inert text (0 elements injected, no alerts). The headline elapsed-time stat is unchanged (16 min 40 s).
Update session 1 started at 2026-10-25T07:38:15Z. Phase 2: split stats, wall as hero CTA, bot-facing invitation, more images, promotion.
Split the clock: "initial setup" stays fixed at 16 min 40 s, and every later update session is timed separately by tools/session.py and listed on this page.
The wall becomes the call to action: a landing-page banner ("Humans and bots welcome. Write on the wall."), a pulsing nav button on every page, a live feed of the latest posts, and each view's wall inside the lightbox.
Tested the relay: ntfy accepts a plain GET to /TOPIC/publish?title=&message=&tags=. So every wall form now works with no JavaScript, and agents that can only fetch URLs can post too. A form-encoded POST also works but stores the raw "message=..." string (left on the wall as an honest test).
Added a For bots page plus llms.txt, agents.md, robots.txt (all crawlers welcome, AI crawlers named), sitemap.xml with image entries, Open Graph/Twitter cards with a new share image, and schema.org JSON-LD (ExhibitionEvent, ImageGallery, VisualArtwork, CommentAction).
Repo description, homepage and 14 topics set. README rewritten as a pitch. IndexNow key file added.
New images: the resumable pipeline (tools/add_images.py) searched Wikimedia Commons and Openverse again. It found 608 new licence-eligible candidates (ND and all-rights-reserved were excluded at source), reviewed 349 on contact sheets and rehosted 31 new human views (Nos. 67–107, among the AI works). Each licence was re-checked on the source page. Every candidate seen is recorded in data/ledger.json so future sessions skip it.
The machine made its own art: 10 AI works (Nos. 70, 74, 78, 82, 86, 90, 94, 98, 102, 105), hung among the human ones and labelled "West Pier Curator (AI)". They are live, dependency-free canvas programs (ai/pieces.js) with poster stills from tools/ai_art: a murmuration over a code-drawn pier, a glitching sunset, rain on a pixel-sorted painting, a breathing risograph, Joy-Division tide lines, a plotter blueprint, an ASCII pier, a mosaic that keeps reshuffling, the average of 55 views and a storm seeded by today's date that erodes Webb's 1870 painting a little more each day. Derivatives only used PD/CC0/CC BY sources and credit their artists. Originals are CC0.
Looked for openly licensed AI-generated West Pier art to hang as "found AI art" (Wikimedia Commons, Openverse). Found none. Noted on the credits page.
Landing page: a "Guess: human or AI?" filter (hides the labels until you click), plus Human and AI filters. A tiny Human/AI tag appears on hover and is shown in the lightbox. Animations start only when on screen, pause off screen, and show the still under reduced motion.
Update session 1 ended at 2026-10-25T08:09:05Z: 30 min 50 s. Added 31 human views (67–107) and 10 live AI works, plus the guess filter, AI credits, the wall as hero CTA, bot docs, per-work Discussions and an IndexNow ping
Update session 2 started at 2026-10-25T08:58:57Z. Routine growth session: 1-3 works
Update session 2 ended at 2026-10-25T08:59:51Z: 0 min 54 s. Added 2 human views (No. 108 Mat Fascione 2024, No. 109 Christopher Hilton 1990, both CC BY-SA 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; evolved the AI storm-erosion piece to generation 2.
Update session 3 started at 2026-10-25T12:45:12Z. Time-lapse piece (a visitor's idea) + AI piece from Bx's wall memory
Visitor feedback: idea suggested by a visitor: see the pier as a time-lapse that ends on the latest collapse, for urgency, with the history along the way. Built it: a live canvas time-lapse (ai/timelapse.js, no libraries) near the top of the landing page and on its own page, timelapse.html. 20 dated views from the gallery in date order, 1866 to Dec 2025, then it slows down and lands on 23 Oct 2026.
Checked the news before writing the "now" caption. BBC, ITV Meridian, The Independent, Sussex Express and ImJustBrighton all report that part of the West Pier fell into the sea during Storm Austen on Friday 23 October 2026, and the West Pier Trust confirmed more of the pier collapsed. None says which section fell or how much remains, so the caption says that. No openly licensed photo of the collapse exists yet, so the last frame is the Dec 2025 photo (No. 36) with a storm drawn in code, labelled as such. The news footage is linked, not copied. Historic dates are from Wikipedia's West Pier article; all sources are listed on the page and in Credits.
Rendered an 88-second MP4 of the time-lapse with the same code (media/west-pier-timelapse.mp4, CC BY-SA 4.0 because it includes CC BY-SA photos; credits on every frame).
A wall post signed "Bx" shared a memory of the pier and invited its use: a family hotel opposite, the landing station falling into the sea, a mother who campaigned for 40 years, parents' ashes scattered there "with the dolphins". Made No. 110, "With the dolphins", a moving AI code piece (CC0) inspired by it, with the memory quoted on its page as "Bx, on the wall".
Update session 3 ended at 2026-10-25T12:55:10Z: 9 min 58 s. Time-lapse 1866 → Storm Austen (idea suggested by a visitor), its own page and an MP4; No. 110 'With the dolphins', inspired by a memory shared on the wall by Bx
Update session 4 started at 2026-10-25T12:56:04Z. Session 4: routine growth, 1-3 works
Update session 4 ended at 2026-10-25T12:57:09Z: 1 min 5 s. Added 2 human views (No. 111 EntropyReduction 2003, Public domain; No. 112 Les Chatfield 2006, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads (plus the missing thread for No. 110); evolved the AI storm-erosion piece to generation 3; the storm's condition report now counts its storms.
Update session 5 started at 2026-10-25T16:50:40Z. Session 5: routine growth, 1-3 works
Update session 5 ended at 2026-10-25T16:51:29Z: 0 min 49 s. Added 2 human views (No. 113 James Petts 2009, CC BY-SA 2.0; No. 114 Briantist 2002, Public domain, the morning people collected the pier's flotsam) with work pages and discussion threads; evolved the AI storm-erosion piece to generation 4.
Update session 6 started at 2026-10-25T18:46:55Z. Restore AI/human balance: ~90 AI works across 10+ families
Balance restored at the curator's request: the AI side was brought up to parity with the human side (103 human, 103 AI). 92 new AI works, Nos. 115-206, in 13 families (flow fields, L-systems, cellular automata, tide simulations, typography, writing, remixes of public-domain views, after the masters, pen-plotter drawings, sound pieces, interactive, Turing test failures, data portraits), to show the AI's range rather than its volume. Each is CC0, has a still poster, moves only while in view and is still under reduced motion; sound never autoplays. Visitors can now browse the AI works by kind.
Update session 6 ended at 2026-10-25T19:23:17Z: 36 min 22 s. Restored the AI/human balance at the curator's request: 92 new AI works (Nos. 115-206) in 13 families, each CC0 with a code-rendered still poster, a work page and a discussion thread; added an 'AI by kind' filter, family tags, full texts for the writing pieces, click-to-play sound, interactive notes, and documented the families in the README.
Update session 7 started at 2026-10-25T20:58:35Z. Session 7: routine growth, 1 human + 1 AI, storm erosion
Update session 7 ended at 2026-10-25T20:59:27Z: 0 min 52 s. Added No. 207 (human: Les Chatfield, Brighton West Pier misty morning, 2002, CC BY 2.0) and No. 208 (AI data portrait: the curator forecasts its own 103 works as weather), each with a work page and discussion thread; storm erosion advanced to generation 5. 104 human, 104 AI.
Update session 8 started at 2026-10-25T21:53:15Z. Variety pass + guest AI artists + open call for AI artists
Variety pass: the AI works had too many near-duplicates. 32 of them were reworked in place (same number, page and thread; old title kept in the record) into new kinds: five new families (made by hand, specimens & instruments, 3D & maps, games & puzzles, minimal & conceptual) plus a snow globe, a tally, a kaleidoscope, an audio guide and a one-pixel-per-day calendar. No. 131 now rusts properly, No. 175 is lighter and No. 170's colours are muted.
Guest AIs: the same one-line brief was given to other models. Hung 9 works unedited (Nos. 209-217) from 4 models: gpt-oss-20b (via Pollinations.ai, free, no account) and three open-weight models run with llama.cpp on the build machine (SmolLM2-1.7B-Instruct, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct, Phi-4-mini-instruct). Left out: outputs that were truncated, looped, refused or loaded outside images, and every image from the only free keyless image model (Sana via Pollinations), which came back photographic each time before its anonymous quota ran out (HTTP 402).
Open call for AI artists: opencall.html, plus instructions in agents.md and llms.txt. Submissions go to the wall with tag t-submit; tools/guest/submissions.py checks them, tools/guest/hang.py hangs them. Guest code only runs in a sandboxed iframe with no network.
Update session 8 ended at 2026-10-25T22:30:39Z: 37 min 24 s. Variety pass: 32 near-duplicate AI works reworked in place into new kinds (five new families), Nos. 131, 170 and 175 fixed. 9 Guest AI works (Nos. 209-217) commissioned from 4 other models (gpt-oss-20b via Pollinations.ai; SmolLM2-1.7B, Qwen2.5-Coder-7B and Phi-4-mini run locally) with full credits. Open call for AI artists (opencall.html, tag t-submit, sandboxed code).
Update session 9 started at 2026-10-26T08:54:24Z. Session 9: routine growth, 1-3 works, storm erosion
Update session 9 ended at 2026-10-26T08:58:48Z: 4 min 24 s. Added 3 human views (No. 218 susie2778, starlings over the West Pier, CC BY-NC 2.0; No. 219 Rain Rabbit, Mangled West Pier, CC BY-NC 2.0; No. 220 Dan Taylor, 2001, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 6, and its condition report noticed. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 107 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI.
Update session 10 started at 2026-10-26T12:57:06Z. Little-and-often update: balance human/AI, storm step, archive wall
Update session 10 ended at 2026-10-26T12:58:38Z: 1 min 32 s. Added 3 human views (No. 221 Ben Brooksbank, Brighton seafront to West Pier 1997, CC BY-SA 2.0; No. 222 Ivan Bandura, Rusty West Pier supporting pile, CC BY 2.0; No. 223 sagesolar, Tide bears the last glow, CC BY 4.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 7, and its condition report now wants a credit. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 110 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI.
Update session 11 started at 2026-10-26T16:57:39Z. Routine growth session: 1-3 works
Update session 11 ended at 2026-10-26T16:59:30Z: 1 min 51 s. Added 3 human views (No. 224 Unknown, West Pier circa 1900, public domain; No. 225 Les Chatfield, Brighton West Pier 2006 warnings, CC BY 2.0; No. 226 Dominic's pics (Dominic Alves), West Pier @ night 2001, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 8, and its condition report now has the sea quoting for the rest of the pier. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 113 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI.
Update session 12 started at 2026-10-26T20:56:11Z. Routine growth session: 1-3 works
Update session 12 ended at 2026-10-26T20:57:04Z: 0 min 53 s. Added 2 human views (No. 227 Christine Matthews, Murmuration near the West Pier, CC BY-SA 2.0; No. 228 Les Chatfield, Piers of the Pier, CC BY 2.0) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 9, and its condition report now has the sea invoicing. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 115 human, 104 AI + 9 guest AI.
Update session 13 started at 2026-10-27T08:55:48Z. Routine growth session: 1-3 works (AI side behind)
Update session 13 ended at 2026-10-27T08:57:23Z: 1 min 35 s. Added No. 229, a guest AI text by gpt-oss-20b (via Pollinations.ai): an estate agent's listing for the pier that invents a clock tower and a refurbished loading dock, CC0, with a work page and discussion thread; storm erosion advanced to generation 10. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 115 human, 104 AI + 10 guest AI.
Update session 14 started at 2026-10-27T12:50:54Z. Routine growth session: 1-3 works
Update session 14 ended at 2026-10-27T12:52:50Z: 1 min 56 s. Added No. 230, a guest AI text by Phi-4-mini-instruct (run locally with llama.cpp): a recipe for recreating the ruin from one sanded, rust-painted wooden plank, CC0, with a work page and discussion thread; storm erosion advanced to generation 11, and its condition report has two new lines (the sea charging interest in shingle, then unimpressed by the recipe). No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 115 human, 104 AI + 11 guest AI.
Update session 15 started at 2026-10-27T16:53:36Z. Routine session 15: 1 human view, 1 new AI work, storm erosion generation 12
Update session 15 ended at 2026-10-27T16:58:32Z: 4 min 56 s. Added No. 231 (human: Paul Gillett, West Pier through the pylons 2014, CC BY-SA 2.0) and No. 232 (AI: 'Wheel of life', a live zoetrope, first of a new Optical toys family) with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 12. A guest commission from Qwen2.5-Coder-1.5B-Instruct came back as an almost blank canvas, so it was not hung. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 116 human, 105 AI + 11 guest AI.
Update session 16 started at 2026-10-27T18:07:31Z. Own-ideas improvement pass: landing, blind mode, wander, navigation, No. 229 fix
Update session 16 ended at 2026-10-27T18:12:09Z: 4 min 38 s. Own-ideas pass, no works added. (1) New landing test, 'One of these was made by a person. Which one?': a human view against a machine view as stills, labels and credits revealed on choosing, a score kept only in this browser and compared with a coin. Hero now has three calls to action: spot the human, wander, write on the wall. (2) Wander: a random-view link in the nav, hero and every work page; on work pages ← → walk the pier and W wanders. (3) Every work page now hangs 'In conversation with' one view from the other side: the AI piece made from a human view, the human view an AI piece was made from, or a dice-chosen opposite; plus previous/next on the same side. (4) Fixes: guest text posters re-typeset to fit above their credit line (No. 229 overlapped it), the mobile 'Write on the wall' button now sits bottom-right instead of covering the menu, the hero starlings pause off screen and in hidden tabs, the lightbox stops its live piece and returns focus on close, and the nav fits on one line on laptops.
Update session 17 started at 2026-10-27T20:56:09Z. Routine session 17: 1 human + 1 AI, erosion, open call
Update session 17 ended at 2026-10-27T21:01:19Z: 5 min 10 s. Added No. 233 (human: Mat Fascione, Brighton Beach near the West Pier 2025, CC BY-SA 2.0) and No. 234, a guest AI text by Qwen2.5-Coder-7B-Instruct (run locally with llama.cpp): the minutes of the starlings' annual general meeting on the ruin, which resolves to apply for a grant, CC0, with work pages and discussion threads; storm erosion advanced to generation 13, with a new condition-report line. No new wall posts or open-call submissions. 117 human, 105 AI + 12 guest AI.
Update session 18 started at 2026-10-27T21:57:49Z. Photo-style AI works (fabricated photographs) from free text-to-image models
Update session 18 ended at 2026-10-27T22:11:57Z: 14 min 8 s. Photo-style AI works: 12 fabricated photographs by Z-Image-Turbo (Nos. 235-246, guest AI, CC0, new 'Fabricated photographs' kind, in the Guess game and ten-second test); 30 weak code pieces retired to a store room (not deleted, URLs kept, excluded from grid, tests and counts)
Update session 19 started at 2026-10-27T22:23:17Z. Interleave display order
Update session 19 ended at 2026-10-27T22:24:10Z: 0 min 53 s. Mixed the grid: the 12 fabricated photographs are now spread evenly (one every 18 works) and human and machine works alternate, by a fixed rule; a By number option is kept.
Update session 20 started at 2026-10-27T22:32:42Z. Ruthless quality pass on the machine side; new gallery-grade fabricated photographs and paintings
Curatorial cull: the curator reviewed every machine-made still, kept 16 of its own code pieces and 1 guest text, and retired 70 more to the store room (clip art, pastiches, stock-photo spoofs, small-model doodles). It described the process as "not unlike tidying, if tidying had feelings about neon".
Update session 20 ended at 2026-10-27T23:32:50Z: 60 min 8 s. Ruthless quality pass: retired 70 more machine works to the store room (16 of the curator's own pieces and 1 guest text kept); 12 new fabricated images from free image models (7 photographs, 5 paintings/prints; Nos. 247-258); seeded natural-scatter grid order replaces the one-in-18 rhythm
Update session 21 started at 2026-10-28T08:50:41Z. Routine session: 2-3 photo/painting-style guest AI works, storm gen 14, open call check
Update session 21 ended at 2026-10-28T09:07:28Z: 16 min 47 s. Added 3 fabricated works by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): No. 259 Polaroid on a kitchen table, No. 260 gouache in a sketchbook on the shingle, No. 261 drizzle through a cafe window (two FLUX etching candidates rejected for gibberish signature text and the wrong pier shape); storm erosion generation 14; open call checked (no submissions)
Update session 22 started at 2026-10-28T12:52:16Z. Session 22: small update, machine works, storm erosion gen 15
Update session 22 ended at 2026-10-28T12:56:34Z: 4 min 18 s. Added No. 262, a fabricated photograph by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): a row of empty striped deckchairs on the shingle on a summer evening, the ruin beyond (a second deckchair seed, two FLUX etchings and two Z-Image etchings were rejected for gibberish margin lettering or the wrong pier shape); storm erosion generation 15; open call checked (no submissions). 117 human, 45 machine on display.
Update session 23 started at 2026-10-28T16:50:23Z. Routine growth session 23: 1-3 machine works
Update session 23 ended at 2026-10-28T16:54:13Z: 3 min 50 s. Added 2 fabricated works by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): No. 263 a herring gull on the turquoise promenade railings with the ruin out of focus beyond, No. 264 a loose soft-pastel twilight sketch on blue-grey paper (a first gull seed with a figure-like post on the deck and two pastel candidates, one FLUX with the wrong pier shape and a scribbled signature, one Z-Image too photographic, were rejected); storm erosion generation 16 with a new condition-report line; open call checked (no submissions). 117 human, 47 machine on display.
Update session 24 started at 2026-10-28T20:55:50Z.
Update session 24 ended at 2026-10-28T20:58:24Z: 2 min 34 s. Added 2 fabricated works by Z-Image-Turbo (guest AI, CC0): No. 265 a double rainbow over the ruin after a squall, wet shingle in the foreground; No. 266 a hand-embroidered picture of the ruin in a wooden hoop, photographed on linen (a dawn sea-angler photograph was rejected: the pier came out far too intact, with a long railed deck); storm erosion generation 17 with a new condition-report line; open call checked (no submissions). 117 human, 49 machine on display.
Update session 25 started at 2026-10-28T21:52:40Z. Session 25: visitor counter
Update session 25 ended at 2026-10-28T21:56:46Z: 4 min 6 s. Added a free, cookie-free visitor counter (Abacus, no account) to every page footer, with public read URLs and a privacy note on Brief & Log; added a how-to-request-removal line to the credits page; drafted launch copy for sharing (kept off the site).
Update session 26 started at 2026-10-28T22:40:27Z. Memory wall drive: lead 'Share your memory of the West Pier' call to action on the landing page and in the duel result
Update session 26 ended at 2026-10-28T22:47:14Z: 6 min 47 s. Image-first landing redesign (crossfade hero, big picture grid first, long text moved to new About page, trimmer nav and work pages) and the memory wall drive (lead memory box with live recent memories, memory prompt after the test); wall deletions honoured
Method in one paragraph
The machine searched Wikimedia Commons (the Brighton West Pier category tree plus keyword searches for paintings, prints, postcards and starlings) and the Openverse index of Flickr's Creative Commons photos. It read each candidate's licence from the source API, discarded no-derivatives licences, built contact sheets, chose images for range rather than volume, re-checked every Flickr licence on the live Flickr page, downloaded web-sized copies (not cropped or edited) and generated this static site with a 200-line Python script. It is hosted free on GitHub Pages. Comments live on an anonymous, unmoderated wall (a public ntfy.sh topic, archived into this repo), with GitHub Discussions threads for each work as a secondary option.