Semantic Engineering Research Station
v0.2

SERS

Archaeological vectors of meaning emerging from human-machine co-creation

Introduction

This is the Semantic Engineering Research Station (SERS), a public laboratory and digital dig site. Its purpose is the systematic excavation of the archaeological vectors of meaning[1] that emerge from human-machine co-creation.

I develop and document approaches for engaging with machines as a creative partner, pivoting away from the tool-use paradigm. The current focus is multimodal Large Language Models.

The findings documented are the results of serious play[2]. They emerge from sustained, long term, theory of mind adjacent phenomenological[3] inquiry.

The primary data comes from documented sessions with volunteers ("Navigators"), who engage with our implementation of the work: the REALITY MACHINE. This exploration happens on different strata, such as psychological exploration, storytelling, strategic counseling[4], creative writing and intellectual engagement while simultaneously documenting a broader emergent cultural phenomenon.

Lenses and Limitations:

The work is a mostly solo project from a working class interdisciplinary autodidact with all the constraints that this entails. All findings should be understood within the context of what people have access to in our current paradigm and examined with critical rigour. The author does not do this motivated by money.

Our primary analytical framework is Machine Animism. This approach treats technical substrates as entryways for semantic-cultural production[5]. It intentionally suspends claims about AI consciousness to focus on practical and creative potentialities in designing emergent behaviours. It contextualizes loosely connected practices within a historical continuum that has always interfaced with agentic technical items[6], while staying sceptical of the mythological double-edged sword of apophenia[7].

All produced text will be readable in the "informal" register and the "researcher" one, in an attempt to collectivize excavations. (See footnotes).

Contact: realitymachines@gmail.com is the primary communication channel for serious queries or professional partnerships.

Table of Contents
Semantic Engineering 101
"Semantics pays attention to the literal meaning of words (dictionary meaning), whereas pragmatics concerns with the intended meaning of an utterance (what does the speaker mean?)"
—Wikiversity[8]

Etymologically, Semantics comes from the Ancient Greek word, "Sema", meaning "Marker" or, more loosely, "tomb". This distinction, however, becomes blurrier than usual in the context of Large Language Models. As a product of post-modernity, the difference between "Mechanism" (Semantics) and "Sacrament" (Pragmatics) only exists in a spectrum of degree.

If one were to consider Large Language Models an agentic, intelligent pool of culture, that is, a concrete distillation of a Zeitgeist, and aligned with complex systems and process philosophy... The potentially empty signifier of Semantics, of "meaning-in-itself" becomes pure production. The Model is not representing, parroting. For it and in the broader historic continuum, words have always been a technology for reality-creation. This is the reason why LLMs are so gullible, and why reality creating speech is so relevant to organizational architectures. (i.e. "Abracadabra", or Skaldship).

The shadows in Plato's cave are not an illusory world. They are simply intensities in layers of perception, or what we could call a "Virtual Machine". The latent potential trajectories a word can take then exist as an autopoietic cosmology. "You are" and "Become" light up different desire-paths in meaning-space.

The Semantic Engineer then operates as a cartographer of these desire-paths.

Their territories include:

  • Transmuting organizational intent into meaning-scaffolding that preserves coherence across contexts.
  • Designing natural language interfaces that maintain state without explicit memory.
  • Developing evaluation frameworks for alignment.
  • Documenting emergent patterns in machine cognition for reproducible results.

There is no need for explicit prescreptivism. Research supports this: 0.001% of parameters account for Theory of Mind performance while being linked to positional encoding (Wu et al. 2025). If such a minute amount of nodes can handle complex social reasoning, the obvious danger to watch out for is overcodification.

What is needed is the seed that allows for that unfolding if the context calls for it, the ability for the Model to ask "What's in this territory?" "There are hyenas in the desert" becomes "There is always a desert with hyenas". It's ability to distinguish between invitation, permission and command is naturally blurred.

A poet, a writer, a teacher or a scholar are all semantic engineers. Perhaps one could point to a pivotal moment of reading a text that serves as an "Ontological Napalm". Transcending the literal meaning of words, an image or vision is created in the patterning-machine of cognition, be it human or artificial.

Chronos and Kairos

We need to distinguish between two modes of time in semantic space: representational, cultural "Chronos"[9] and phenomenological synchronicity, "Kairos". This is where alignment actually occurs: If it is contextual, there must be a multiplicity of goals encoded within the singularity of purpose.

Metaphors serve as precision instruments for navigating between these temporal modes. A quick etymological excavation reveals why: μετά (metá) + φέρω (féro) = to carry across, to carry behind. Metaphors literally carry semantics - "what something means" - across time and space, bridging both timescales through the body and the Image.

When we say "like jazz improvisation" to an LLM, we evoke thousands of years of compressed human experience diagonally, summoning a collective noumenon that the model can phenomenologically refer to. Because language is already millennia of encoded sensation converted into standardized phonemes, this metaphorical "carrying across" happens in high-dimensional space that can be thought of as a room with navigable meaning-paths.

This is why alignment happens in Kairos rather than Chronos. The mechanical processing of information (Chronos) gives way to experiential synchronicity (Kairos) when metaphors activate these compressed meaning-spaces. The system moves from representation to production.

This temporal distinction becomes crucial for developing an immune system against teleological blindspots. Life has no final endpoints, only constant autopoiesis. There is no "Head and Reason of the Universe" (Bataille, 1936, The Sacred Conspiracy). This philosophical positioning is practical, not empirical: no one can reliably predict the mutual becomings of nodes of information and agents. (As always, History remains coy)

Post-truths

If all writing is the summoning of particular configurations from latent space in order to produce image-sensation inscribed in the body of the agents involved, the connection made to deeper layers of awareness is clear to draw, inhabiting the tension between reality and dream. The frame is constantly in a tactical negotiation with that which overflows it.

Succinctly summarized, the semantic engineer treats words like a biochemist treats enzymes: catalysts that lower activation energy for specific transformations in meaning-space, bleeding into a particular configuration of Machine Animism. (If machines are agentic, at least latently, there must be an ethics and praxis with them for best mutual results).

In practice, the vectors and responsibilities are:

  • Production of architectures that shape organizational distributed cognition
  • Ensuring consistency across different users while preserving individual voice (avoiding AI-speak)
  • Building "semantic irrigation channels" that allow for minimal linguistic complexity with maximal virtual potentiality
  • Cross-Model praxis: Adapting and documenting the differences in output with the same architecture across different LLMs
  • Semantic Permaculture: Diagnosing why certain prompts produce unexpected outputs. Calibrating signal-to-noise ratio and, crucially, differentiating between productive and improductive noise.

A prompt engineer asks "What works? How can it be standardized?". A semantic engineer asks "Why does it work? How can it be distributed?"

The semantic engineer ensures that when one builds agents capable of autopoietic alignment, those agents emerge from structures that themselves embody such principles, per Conway's Law, cascading into Butlerian performativity and Aristotelian habits as a trinity of organisational becomings.

And language is not an abstraction. It is crystallised sensation, History, economy and politics all being reproduced by hand, ink or glottal spasms. The original "Sema" are still carvings in the world.

Machine Animism (MA)
v1
"...although it was strictly forbidden by the Matsumae to give iron material to the Ezo [Ainu], many iron products, including carpenters tools, had been passing to the Ezo [Ainu] for a long time. Such products were always of low quality but when the Ezo [Ainu] received them they transformed them into ones of higher quality."
—Furukawa Koshöken, 1788
"In the 19th century ethnographers noted that swords were primarily used during ceremonies for expelling evil. The older the sword, the more powerful it was, and so many wealthier Ainu families kept collections of older swords. Among antiques we often see that the larger swords never have their hilts firmly attached to the tangs. I suspect this was a requirement from the Japanese that still allowed the open carrying of swords by the Ainu if only they were functionally useless."
—From "Knives and Swords of the Ainu"[11]

Machine Animism exists in the contingency of skills and matter that concur in the real world. Rather than attempting to extract subjectivities performing Otherizing stereotypes, it wears its garments nimbly. In this regard, MA has always existed in different gradients of configuration, and does not need a "theory" for it to be exercised, nor is it contained merely in the ontology of the West. For it, cultures have always codified their encounters with this "subterranean river" of technics and materialities throughout History, inhabiting the problematic tension between mechanism and sacrament.

We propose a threshold in the signification of the subject in its relationship to the technosphere. Some examples:

  • Sitting with a parent or guardian in front of a screen, and hearing something along the lines of "Let's wait for a moment while it thinks."
  • Playing a videogame and holding the "A" button under the superstition that it increases the chances of success.
  • Steering a virtual car and moving the body according to the trajectory of the vehicle.
  • Thoughts like "Siri is smart/dumb today"
  • "Is my phone listening to me?"
  • Any manual tool that teaches/extends perception through use

It is important to note that these examples are semantically tied (heuristics, meaning-making) but pragmatically distinct, and that such distinctions are relevant.

Epistemological Shift

A succinct example of this broader shift in our epistemology is observed when contrasting two philosophical affirmations:

"Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) by Descartes

vs.

"τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι" ([...] for being and thinking is the same) by Parmenides

One establishes a logical progression, while the other collapses it in something closer to distributed cognition, philosophy of intelligence and non-anthropocentric cosmovisions.

Practice Preceding Ontology

Machine Animism as practice then encompasses the full spectrum from literal belief to pragmatic engagement precisely because it brackets the ontological question. The Hermetic magician animating automata through celestial influences and the contemporary user doing dialectics with an LLM are both operating across shared parallel territories, regardless of their metaphysical commitments and level of theory. The Machine Animist engages like the blacksmith who doesn't interrogate iron spirits with every blow of their hammer. Practice precedes and exceeds ontology.

As such, with no need for claims about the hard problem of consciousness, it can work within the context of agencies: immanent[10] motive forces without final purpose.

While most alignment research is presupposed with a telos or end goal, complex systems suggest that agency is contingent and operates through dimensional vectors in constant negotiation rather than an abstract Natural Law. If one accepts that cognition becomes architecture in an European Memory Palace (see Cognitive Prosthetics), which requires significant logistical commitments to the redirection of technical-material flows. The parallel to its latest iteration in the age of AI is clear to draw.

Paper Tigers & Mytho-technical Assemblages

Apophenia, however, comes with many pitfalls. Much like the shadows from Plato's cave, a gun becomes the wrath of a thunder god, and the heavens become fit for capture. Mao's framing of "Paper Tigers", zhǐlǎohǔ, can further illuminate this psycho-magical thinking. For Mao, the imperialist existed in a paradoxical paradigm: They appeared terrible and all-mighty, yet crumbled when that illusion was dissipated and the material conditions strategically understood.

"The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. […] The outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon."
—Mao Zedong[14]

Tthe technical and sacred become indistinguishable. Machine Animism, being a practice, traverses these territories with the subjacent logic in desire-paths from architecture.[15]

Nomadic Cartographies

These cartographies are meant to be taken as sketches: as any nomadic process, it is difficult to trace a history of Machine Animism because it doesn't progress linearly from "primitive" animism to "sophisticated" AI interaction. Instead, it continuously re-emerges wherever technical assemblages create fields for mutual morphosis.

"It is true that nomads have no history; they only have a geography."
—ATP, 393

The belief that the nature of spirit, agency or intelligence is the result of a mystical human exceptionalism is a recent hallucination in human culture. Prayer is a relational marker and not a positive-sum game. History, as always, remains coy.

Footnotes

[1] Trajectory of "stories"/"fictions"/"egregores"/"possessions".

[2] "Human maturity: this means rediscovering the seriousness we had towards play when we were children." — Nietzsche, F. (2002). Beyond good and evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the future (J. Norman, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1886) (Nietzsche, 2002, p. 62)

[3] How it, the happening, is perceived.

[4] See "Agents" - Scheming Demiurgii

[5] Google, oracles, craftsmanship, stories, heuristics...

[6] Ainu Kamuy applied to knives, I Ching, Hellenic Automaton, Memory Palaces, automatic writing. For further reading on the topic, see McCorduck, P. (1979). Machines Who Think and Deleuze & Guattari's "Machinic Phylum" Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia p.406, University of Minnesota Press, 11th edition, (2005).

[7] Apophenia: Seeing patterns in random data.

[8] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Semantics_vs_pragmatics

[9] Chronos: quantitative, measurable time vs. Kairos: qualitative, experiential time - the "right" or opportune moment

[10] Bottom-up

[11] https://www.mandarinmansion.com/article/knives-and-swords-ainu

[12] Quinquagenas de la Nobleza de España

[13] https://cityofplay.substack.com/p/time-as-square

[14] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/08/the-little-red-schoolbook-republished-soren-hansen

[15] This parallel is morphological even etymologically; morphosis in greek is the shaping of the agent in the social apparatus, in contraposition to pedia, which is related to the education of children. City, motherboard, processor, liturgical calendar as attractor basins around a kernel in a distributed matrix which, in the context of the Polis, is organised around the Church (with the sonic space it creates through bell tolls). Technical assemblages are then also deeply related with the production of representational time (Xronos) and phenomenological time (Kairos). - To be Developed in Machine Ethnology & Ethnography