Victoria N. Alexander's Blog, page 10

What was Victoria Alexander doing in Russia?

Now that my Fulbright grant is completed, ITMO University asked me to make a short video about my Digital Humanities research in poetics, butterflies, Nabokov, Turing and reaction diffusion processes to show prospective students what kind of creative learning they might expect to undertake in this interdisciplinary field.

Chance the Mimics Choice published in Pangyus

I’ve working on a collection of short stories and essays about artistic creation entitled after a line from Nabokov, “chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower.” The introduction to the collection describes my work as a philosopher of science and literary fiction author and how these two parts of my life […]

On St Petersburg, isolation and connection

Meno’s Stories on the Strange Recital Podcast

The Strange Recital, Episode 20021 A podcast about fiction that questions the nature of reality. VNA reads two short stories from her collection, Chance that Mimics Choice. Stay tuned for the interview that follows the stories. Meno’s Stories is a series of four about a paradoxical scientist who stumbles his way to discovery. This program […]

Fine Lines wins Nabokov Society Brian Boyd Prize

The Brian Boyd Prize, for the best book of 2016 – 2018 by someone who has previously published a book predominantly on Nabokov. Awarded to Professor Stephen Blackwell (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and Kurt Johnson for Fine Lines: Vladimir Nabokov’s Scientific Art (Yale University Press, 2016). The judges write: ‘The judges for this Prize carefully considered […]

Who Owns the World? Co-operative Book Publishing

The state of platform cooperativism November 7-9, 2019 at the New School in NYC. Victoria Alexander, director at the Dactyl Foundation and editor of Dactyl Review, will speak on Saturday, Nov 9th about efforts to transform literary fiction publishing using a co-operative platform model.  2:45-4:15PM The New School, The University Center, Room U304, 3rd Floor,  […]

What is Biosemiotics?

At #8 in my Biosemiotics Series, this video is a little belated, but worth the wait. Why do biologists refer to a something excreted by one cell and taken up by another as a signal?  Doesn’t this invest the cell with intentionality that it doesn’t really have? Why don’t biologists just refer to the process […]

Terrordise, a finalist Filmmatic Comedy Screenplay competition

My political comedy screenplay Terrordise, about a high-security gated community in Dallas, has won yet another award. I am proud to be a finalist in Filmmatic Comedy Screenplay Awards. Somebody make the damn movie already! It’s hysterical fiction. And too likely to become true if we don’t learn how to laught at our current stupidity.  […]

Should we let Artificial Intelligence decide for us?

“AI, Stereotyping on Steroids and Alan Turing’s Biological Turn,” by V. N. Alexander, in The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence The fact that AI has not yet passed a Turing Test has not prevented it from being sold to the public as a superior kind of intelligence capable of handling vast amounts of data and therefore […]

“Winter Flies” Published in the Antioch Review

What makes a story a story? What makes narrated events meaningful? I’ve been working on a collection of short stories called Chance that Mimics Choice. This first story written for the collection, “Winter Flies” is included in the latest issue of the Antioch Review.  This story is one of four about a scientist named Meno […]