michalove.studio
Cornell University · Information Science

Research

2024 Ethnographic research

Ethnography of Algorithms

Mapping the invisible algorithms that coordinate thousands of e-bike couriers through New York City streets. Rendering visible the temporal cycles of platform labor through Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis. The body as infrastructure, the algorithm as choreographer.

2025 9-chapter manuscript

Synthetic Semiosis

An investigation of infinite semiosis in large language models through post-structuralist theory. Nine chapters: Synthetic Semiosis, Tracing Association, Machine Semiosis, Cognitive Radiation, Cognitive Decline, Societal Effects, Speculative Futures, Policy Recommendations, Design Implications.

2024 Collaborative research

Epistemic Engines

How knowledge is created and validated in human-machine systems. Applying cybernetic theory to the problem of remote group collaboration — examining feedback loops, information metabolism, and the conditions under which collective intelligence emerges.

Cornell Information Science
2026 Bilingual triptych — Design

The Little Match Girl

Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 story rendered as bilingual triptych with parallel English and Danish text and historical illustrations.

2024 Mobile application — React Native, Firebase

Resonet

A social media platform modeled on neural network topology rather than follower graphs. Connections form through resonance — shared attention, not mutual subscription.

2024 Book — MIT Press

What is Intelligence?

Editorial coordinator for a book on intelligence by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, published by MIT Press. Editing, data curation, archival research, copyright permissions, reference management.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas
2022 Book — Hat & Beard Press

Who Are We Now?

Editorial coordinator for a print and web book. Editing, data curation, archival research, copyright permissions, reference management, and back-end infrastructure for web and print-based text assets.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas
2024 Web, image, and text

Constellations

A web, image, and text-based project exploring Walter Benjamin's notion of spielraum — room for play. An experiment in non-linear reading and associative thought.

johan.pages.dev
2022 Speculative design, exhibition

Productive City Hair Care

A speculative design project for the Speculative Metabolics program at the 6th Tallinn Architecture Biennale. Examining urban metabolism through the unlikely lens of hair care infrastructure.

2024 Web application — Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Semioscape.org

An interactive concept cartographer powered by Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Enter a concept; the system generates a map of associations, visualizing the semiotic neighborhood of any idea.

semioscape.org
2024 LLM-powered analysis tool

People's Voice

An LLM-powered tool to analyze New York Times reader comments related to the 2024 election. Mining the public discourse for patterns invisible to human reading at scale.

2019 Computational research

Auditing a Feral Recommendation System

An algorithmic auditing methodology applied to YouTube's recommendation system. Over 5 million videos and 12 million recommendations analyzed, revealing the structural biases of a platform that teaches itself what to show next.

2018 Open-source robotics platform

MuSHR

Co-founded the Multi-Agent System for Non-Holonomic Racing — a low-cost, open-source robotic racecar for education and research. Built with Prof. Siddhartha Srinivasa and Dr. Sanjiban Choudhury at the University of Washington. Used by students, researchers, and makers internationally. Published at arXiv.

Siddhartha Srinivasa, Sanjiban Choudhury, University of Washington Personal Robotics Lab
mushr.io
2019 Undergraduate course — University of Washington

Ethical Automation

Designed and taught a senior-division undergraduate course on ethics and automation at the University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

2017 Autonomous vehicle prototype

DubCar

An autonomous RC car built on the Nvidia Jetson TX1 platform. Predecessor to the MuSHR project. Overseen by Prof. Dieter Fox at the University of Washington Robotics and State Estimation Lab.

Dieter Fox, University of Washington
2016 Educational software — Node.js, SageMath

Induction Tutor

Built the first automated feedback system for inductive proofs at the University of Washington. Components adopted by UW and Caltech. Node.js front-end with SageMath symbolic computation backend.

2017 Test framework — AWS, Docker

NASA JPL

Summer intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Designed and developed the test framework for Robot Operational and Computational Service (ROCS) to support Mars 2020 rover surface operations. AWS and Docker infrastructure.