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
Year 2023 2022 2021 2020 Show All
Month January February March April May June July August September October November December Show All
Debuting as part of the 8th Gherdeina Biennale in Northern Italy, Greek artist Kyriaki Goni ’s installation, The Mountain Islands Shall Mourn us Eternally , invites a rare regional flower to address humanity. ‘Speaking’ through CGI video, a wooden sculpture, and silkscreen prints, Saxifraga depressa reveals its upward migration due to climate change and how secret, decentralized Data Gardens store threatened species’ digital memory.
“I’m a licensed crypto trauma counselor and I’m here to help you process any feelings of grief, trauma, anxiety, and depression that you may be feeling at this time.”
OUT NOW :
Karen Archey
After Institutions
An analysis of the waning influence of institutions in the art world, and reflection on needed rehabilitation
“Earth Indices: Processing the Anthropocene,” a show by Giulia Bruno & Armin Linke working in consultation with the Anthropocene Working Group , opens at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). Foregrounding imagery that translates evidence of the earth’s transformation into “data that can be interpreted” (image: Line Scans of Antarctica Ice Core , 2022), the show reveals the “instruments, procedures, and practices” that produce geological knowledge, write the curators.
“It’s a way of not only conflating space—like the real landscape of Los Angeles with a fictional landscape of Robledo—but also the sense of time, because you don’t really know what time period you’re existing in.”
–
American Artist , on his upcoming exhibition “
Shaper of God ” that is “like a road map through Southern California locales inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s
Parable of the Sower .”
“I think of this as a monument that has been purpose-built to be torn down. It shouldn’t be the job of artists to save the planet, but sometimes we can create social and conceptual infrastructure to guide attention and action.”
– American artist
Kyle McDonald , on his new cryptoart piece
Amends , that seeks to offset the climate footprint of three major Ethereum-based NFT marketplaces once—if ever—the cryptocurrency switches to the less energy-intensive proof-of-stake consensum mechanism
DOSSIER :
In her latest entry to “Weaving Variations,” HOLO’s dossier on generative art pioneer Vera Molnar, art historian Zsofi Valyi-Nagy examines Hommage à Barbaud , a 1974 tribute to the French founder of algorithmic music, Pierre Barbaud. “By dedicating a work to Barbaud, Molnar immortalizes the impact of algorithmic music on her work, and on early computer art more broadly,” writes Valyi-Nagy.
“I’m starting to accept that the 1995-2020 period didn’t happen, and that generative art emerged out of nothingness in 2020 after being dormant for 40-50 years. People keep telling me, so it must be true.”
– Digital artist
Marius Watz , decrying widespread amnesia in this current moment of generative (crypto) art. A big reason is “very bad discoverability,”
notes fellow aughties innovator
Karsten Schmidt . Due to link rot and software obsolescence, most works done in Director, Flash, Processing, and Java in that era are “GONE.”
Kyle McDonald announces Amends (2022), a project mitigating NFT marketplace emissions. When Ethereum abandons the proof-of-work consensus mechanism later this year, three digital sculptures (CGI by Robert Hodgkin ) will be auctioned on Open Sea , Rarible , and Foundation . Priced at $17 million total (and rising), proceeds will go to air and ocean carbon capture projects. Owners can exchange their digital sculpture for a physical one—if they burn their NFT.
“Le Pain Symbiotique is like a synthetic gut: in constant motion, it ferments in the literal and allegorical sense. Maybe that’s why the structure is off-limits: to avoid the release of intestinal gases.”
– Curator and critic
Régine Debatty , parsing
Anicka Yi ’s inflatable PVC dome currently installed at
Pirelli HangarBicocca , Milan, as part of Yi’s solo show “
Metaspore .” The 2014
piece harbours an eco-system of bread dough, ochre pigment, and resin sculptures, highlighting the critical ”work performed by invisible bacteria and yeasts.”
The U.S. debut of Neural Swamp (2021), a multi-channel video installation by American artist Martine Syms made for The Future Fields Commission , opens at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the work, three characters trained on Syms’ voice engage in awkward, disjointed dialogue in a narrative ostensibly about golf (bolstered by related videogame footage), demonstrating the frustrating isolation of communication where “neither listening nor comprehension is possible.”
“Until all energies used to extract and process these four indispensable materials come from renewable conversions, modern civilization will remain fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.”
– Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst
Vaclav Smil , on how cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia—the “four pillars of modern civilization”—are (largely) incompatible with a
net-zero emission future
“If a Token Could Speak,” a show of video works by Sophie Auger that “put the NFT and the traditional art world in perspective,” opens at Montreal’s ELEKTRA Gallery. In Catalog (2022), the Quebec artist gets meta, tokenizing 3D models of the exhibition press release, archive, and making-of documentation—and puts everything up for sale on the blockchain; while an eponymous work (2022, image) demonstrates how even a ‘poor ’ image can attain “the same value as a rare work of art.”
“The evidence now suggests a 3 to 4 degree warming by mid-century, not accounting for tipping points—which could easily be 5 or 6 degrees.”
–
Benjamin Sovacool , University of Sussex energy researcher and one of the lead authors of the recent IPCC
Working Group III report , on the damning implications of current climate legislation implementation gaps. “Even if we were to meet 100% of the 2015
Paris accord , we’d still be pretty far off from 2 degrees,” says Sovacool.
“Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul,” a whitepaper by researchers E. Glen Weyl and Puja Ohlhaver , and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is published. In it, the trio describe a web3 where tokens denoting “commitments, credentials, and affiliations” are “soulbound” to individuals, and these non-transferable identity markers are used to govern more efficiently (e.g. DAO vote-weighting based on expertise) and to generate more equitable datasets (opt-in with privacy controls). Moving beyond ‘trustless’ DeFI frameworks, they propose decentralized sociality (DeSoc) “which encodes trust networks that underpin the real economy today.” Drawing on the community and infosec foibles in crypto over the last decade, they extend the model to prevent concentrations of power, and propose checks and balances to protect its decentralization.
“It takes at least 10 hours to produce 1 kWh on a bike generator. The electricity price in France is roughly €0.20 per kWh, so that’s what you would earn that day!”
OUT NOW :
Manouach & Engelhardt
Chimeras
An “inventory of synthetic cognition” featuring 150 artists, writers, and researchers that disassemble—broaden—the definition of AI to include non-human perspectives and anticipate modes of symbiosis
With a market capitalization of $2.4 trillion, Saudi Aramco replaces Apple as the world’s most valuable company. Meta, Netflix, Robinhood—tech stocks are tanking right now and Apple is down 20% this year. There is more at play here than investors exhibiting a newfound skepticism towards Big Tech’s bottom line—or optimism that the oil sector will clean up its act. The Russian incursion into Ukraine has sent oil prices—commodities—soaring, further exasperating supply chain woes brought on by the pandemic. “There’s panic selling in a lot of tech and other high-multiple names, and the money coming out of there seems headed for energy in particular,” notes Tower Bridge Advisors ’ James Meyer on the cynical flow of capital back to fossil fuel.
“It stopped being something that resided only within the skull, only within the individual, and became something that mattered when it emerged between bodies, between species, between beings. Something that’s active in the world.”
– British artist and writer
James Bridle , discussing broader definitions of intelligence laid out in their newest book
Ways of Being with musician and
5×15 interlocutor
Brian Eno
Load More
To dive deeper into Stream, please
Log-In or become a
HOLO Reader .
Daily discoveries at the nexus of art, science, technology, and culture: Get full access by becoming a HOLO Reader !
Perspective : research, long-form analysis, and critical commentaryEncounters : in-depth artist profiles and studio visits of pioneers and key innovatorsStream : a timeline and news archive with 1,200+ entries and countingEdition : HOLO’s annual collector’s edition that captures the calendar year in print
Become a HOLO Reader