1,549 days, 2,379 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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“Duckweed doubles its weight in just two days, is harvested continually, and is high in protein, nutrients, antioxidants, and vitamins. Only a few essential elements are missing that could make it a reliable base source for complete human nutrition.”
– Life sciences researcher
Kim Johnsons , on how the
Lemnoideae plant subfamily (aka duckweed) is stellar space food. Bonus: human urine is acceptable plant food for duckweed.
German artist and designer Philipp Schmitt publishes Blueprints for Intelligence , a “visual history of artificial neural networks from 1943 to 2020.” Compiling 56 diagrams sourced from machine learning research papers, the web project invites visitors to trace key tendencies in AI evolution. “It draws connections between the visual representations of neural networks and the researchers’ conception of cognition,” Schmitt writes in his introduction.
“Consider how we think of AI as a black box and thus in accounting for its harms demand transparency or explainability of algorithms rather than of the institutions that create and maintain them.”
– Cultural scientist and AI researcher
Maya Indira Ganesh , contemplating the “performative force of AI imaginaries” with a thorough “metaphorology” published in
ACM Interactions and as part of Philipp Schmitt’s
Blueprints for Intelligence visual history
Probing for human qualities that escape capture in AI training datasets, Lauren Lee McCarthy and Kyle McDonald ’s new collaboration Unlearning Language (2022) opens at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM), Japan. Both an experiential performance—“a one-act play for four,” as described by McDonald —and an interactive installation, the American artists (with support from Rhizomatiks ) conjure a “futuristic AI that tries to help us become more human.”
“DATA STREAMING,” featuring late Luxembourgish artist Michel Majerus , opens at Kunstverein in Hamburg. Lost to a 2002 plane crash , Majerus made waves in the dotcom era for playfully integrating digital images—videogames, animation, desktop publishing—into his paintings. Now, a major retrospective sees Kunstverein and 12 German museums mounting exhibitions reviewing the artist’s work “with the hindsight of artistic and technological developments of the past twenty years.”
“The hermit crab is, unlike its name suggests, a social creature. They live in groups and are probably much more comfortable in the wild than in an exhibition space.”
DAM Projects Berlin (formerly DAM Gallery) opens Mark Wilson ’s solo exhibition “Moveto Lineto,” surveying essential plotter drawings and canvas prints the American digital art veteran has produced over more than three decades. Wilson, a painter who turned to generative software in the 1980s, is known for his recognisable style of layered, densly-meshed geometries. “Indeed, it is hard to imagine creating these works with any other medium,” says Wilson.
“This foundation, which I won’t mention, sent me back a letter saying no, we do not fund computer art, we do not want to have anything to do with computer art. So I applied for grants as a painter, because that’s ultimately what my work is.”
–
Mark Wilson , on the rejection he and other digital artists faced even in the 1980s
“Timefall,” a solo exhibition by Spanish artist Karlos Gil , opens at The Hague’s 1646. Designed to evoke the archetypal image of the cave, the exhibition centres Hollow Ghost (2022, image), video depicting the vernacular of contemporary caves—data farms, seed vaults, doomsday bunkers—in all their liminal (and terminal) glory. More mythos: also featured is a Jacquard loom -woven tapestry series, each depicting the sonic frequencies of a “fantastic” animal (cyclops, mermaid, etc.).
“What Fukushima revealed is that we are also living in an age of climato-politics in which we must confront the chaos of planetary flows that trespass the borders of nation states and evade their attempts at control.”
Swiss artist and designer Jürg Lehni celebrates the 20th anniversary of his seminal robotic drawing machine, Hektor (2002), in a commemorative Twitter thread. “Imperfect and full of character,” the hanging computer-controlled spray-paint plotter drew at transmediale, Design Museum London, and the MoMA , and remains a DIY marvel for its time: “edged circuit boards, assembly-programmed microcontrollers—we did everything by hand,” Lehni notes about making in the pre-fab era.
“Moments when pop culture and politics collide are about regressive, puritanical control over women’s bodies, over culture, over challenges to the status quo or perceived progressive shifts.”
– Feminist media critic
Anita Sarkeesian , on mapping media culture wars in her new series,
That Time When , that concludes with
Gamergate , the 2014 harassment campaign she was at the center of and that is now “part of our understanding of how internet culture exists, how communities form and what they form around”
Trevor Paglen ’s solo exhibition “A Color Notation” opens at Pace’s recently expanded arts complex in Seoul. The show presents new and recent landscape photography (image: Near Bodega Bay Deep Semantic Image Segments , 2022) the American artist interpreted through custom-built computer vision systems and AI. “Through his masterful manipulation of these technologies, Paglen brings questions of perception to the fore of his image making practice,” Pace notes.
As the lacklustre presentation of NFTs even at major exhibitions and conferences continues to disappoint , Swiss software artist Andreas Gysin shares an “opinionated” mini-guide for newly-minted curators and organizers. Works that use the popular square aspect ratio, for example, suffer in particular on standard 16:9 screens, Gysin notes and offers three simple tricks that improve the overall composition. “The important thing is to NOT put it in the center!” (example on left).
“These cycles of boom and bust are incredibly destructive within organizations because people employed there feel like they don’t know where they stand.”
– Harvard Business School Professor
Sandra J. Sucher , commenting on Meta laying off 11,000 employees, the latest in a series of major Big Tech cutbacks
The V&A launches an online resource to explore their 3,000+ item Digital Art & Design collection. Thus far 574 items are posted, with initial highlights including Vera Molnar’s plotter drawing Structure of Squares (1974) and Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s Radical Love (2016), a 3D-printed mask of Chelsea Manning’s face. Additional tools for researchers include two ‘selection boxes’ of noteworthy items, an incisive history of digital art, and a glossary of technical nomenclature.
“The rumours for this blowup seem so egregious and unnecessary to me. I can’t imagine running an exchange that makes mid-8 figures per day in revenue and thinking ‘how can we leverage this for more?’”
Artists Vladan Joler , Gordan Savičić , and scholar Felix Stalder launch Infrastructures of a Migratory Bird (2022), a data visualization of rewilding efforts of the Northern Bald Ibis in the European Alps. The iconic bird, regionally extinct since 1621, was reintroduced into its historic habitat in 2013. Hatched within ZHdK’s Latent Spaces research project, the map reveals the extent of the conservation infrastructure, from GPS satellite tracking, to data analysis, to cost.
“Big social media reduces interface friction to increase user engagement. The smoother your experience the more likely you’re the product. Celebrate moments of friction as opportunities to see, feel, grasp what the system is, who it works for, and who it makes most vulnerable.”
– American software artist
Ben Grosser , on the platform capitalism game plan—and how to navigate it
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