1,548 days, 2,378 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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A window into the Jonas Lund Token (JLT) universe, ”On This Day ” opens in König Galerie’s virtual showroom on Decentraland. JLT (2018–) is a distributed autonomous artistic practice where shareholders get to invest and participate in the Swedish artist’s career. 50 chairs are reserved for selected JLT shareholders (meetings to be announced!), while 3D animals—JLT collectibles—watch Lund’s avatar reminisce over photo memory tokens on the wall.
Authorities in the city of Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia seized 1,069 rigs from Bitcoin miners alleged to have stolen $2 million USD worth of electricity. “The electricity theft for mining Bitcoin activities has caused frequent power outages, and in 2021, three houses were razed due to illegal electricity supply connections,” explains Miri police chief ACP Hakemal Hawari. Six individuals were arrested, fined, and jailed in the sting; the police then proceeded to crush the hardware, worth an estimated $1.25 million USD, with a steamroller.
“In the art world it was quite shambolic—the worst and most monopolistic actors immediately colonized the space and started extracting labour from precarious workers. For me, NFTs are the equivalent of toxic masculinity as a medium, because they take up way too much attention and use up all the oxygen in the room.”
Instigated by artist Rosa Menkman and featuring works by Memo Akten , Sophie Dyer & Sasha Engelmann , Susan Schuppli , UCNV , Alan Warburton , and others, “im/possible images” opens at Lothringer 13 Halle , Munich. The exhibition extends out of Menkman’s research into digital image infrastructures and kicks off a two-month summer school exploring the conditions of image making today: “How do resolutions shape images? How has the field of computer simulation expanded the rules and functioning of our imagery? Can one listen to an image?”
“In a world of computer simulations and deepfakes, a dead man’s voice speaking his own words of despair is hardly the most dystopian application of the technology. But the seamlessness of the effect is eerie. ”
– Writer
Helen Rosner , on the computer-generated voice of Anthony Bourdain in the new documentary
Roadrunner . “There were three quotes there I wanted his voice for that there were no recordings of,” the film’s director Morgan Neville tells Rosner. So “I created an AI model of his voice.”
Developed by researchers at Italy’s new-technologies agency ENEA to determine the “attraction value” for specific works of art, project ShareArt begins a trial period at the reopened Istituzione Bologna Musei . 14 camera devices (image) have been positioned near artworks to soak up data on the number of observers and their behavior as they look at a painting, sculpture, or artifact. “Thanks to AI and big data applications,” the system could help improve museum layouts and exhibit scheduling, state the researchers.
“Collapse does not mean that humanity will cease to exist, but rather that economic and industrial growth will stop, and then decline. In terms of timing, the business-as-usual scenario shows a steep decline to set in around 2040.”
– Gaya Herrington, Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG, on her
re-examination of the the 1972 MIT report
Limits to Growth that shows we are on track for the predicted worst-case scenario
Artist and composer Holly Herndon launches Holly+ , her own AI twin that will interpret any polyphonic audio uploaded to holly.plus . Problematizing voice ownership and artist compensation, Holly+ and subsequent AI voice tools are owned by a DAO cooperative, and any income generated will go toward new developments. “Vocal deepfakes are here to stay,” states Herndon. “A balance needs to be found between protecting artists, and encouraging people to experiment with a new and exciting technology.”
“After starting an entire field of kinetic sculpture, his ideas have been remixed, taught, and copied into countless flagship installations, the world’s largest products, and many many artists’ work. I absolutely admire Joachim, and appreciate being in the wake of his influence.”
Damien Hirst releases his first NFT collection. In The Currency , the British artist riffs on artist multiple and NFT conventions with a physical-digital hybrid drop. Taking place through the Palm platform, NFTs representing 10,000 20 x 30 cm polka dot paintings (authenticated with custom paper, a hologram, and Hirst’s signature) are on (pre)sale for $2,000 USD; buyers ultimately choose to keep the NFT or receive the original painting—the remaining tokens and paintings will be burned.
“After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight, and artificially enforced scarcity.”
–
Dogecoin creator
Jackson Palmer , doubling down on his crypto exit in a rare public Twitter thread that ‘burns’ an industry “controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures, bought influencers, and pay-for-play media outlets”
“For all the things that we could use it for—astronomy, earth sciences, climate research—the fact that we have chosen to deploy planetary-scale computation for the modelling and prediction of consumer behaviour is one of the world-historical misuses of a technology.”
– Theorist, author, and educator
Benjamin Bratton , in coversation with
Politics Theory Other podcast host Alex Doherty [quote edited]
As California’s Salton Sea emerges as a hotspot for U.S. lithium mining, Vice ’s Audrey Carleton digs into the pros and cons of turning the toxic lake into “Lithium Valley.” Whereas General Motors argues it could supply “a significant portion ” of the lithium needed for its electric cars, helping curb climate change, locals fear the impacts. “I’m a huge advocate for doing things right,” states environmental justice organizer Miguel Hernandez. “Let’s assume it’s gonna be part of our communities. Then, let’s make lithium a good neighbor.”
“To witness rich boys using space travel for touristic amusement shows how much the modernist project of limitless expansion has come to a clownish end. Time to land.”
– French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist
Bruno Latour , on Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson beating fellow space race billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to orbit
Joachim Sauter (1959-2021)
German media art pioneer and
ART+COM co-founder
Joachim Sauter dies at the age of 62 in Berlin. Innovating kinetic sculpture and new media architecture for over 30 years, Sauter helped set the stage for the today’s immersive installations and interdisciplinary practice as ART+COM’s Head of Design and Professor for New Media Art at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
“Founders, investors, futurists and executives have all tried to stake their claim in the metaverse, expounding on its potential for social connection, experimentation, entertainment and, crucially, profit.”
– Technology journalists
John Herrman &
Kellen Browning , in “What is the Metaverse?,” a general audience friendly primer on that most nebulous of terms
A computational resurrection of Berlin’s swampy origins, Jakob Kudsk Steensen ’s “Berl-Berl”—‘Berl’ being the ancient Slavic word for swamp—turns Halle am Berghain into a luminous wetland. Large-scale projections invite visitors into an “immersive, absolute landscape” composed of macro photogrammetry of the region’s remaining wetlands. “Berl-Berl is a song for the swamp, a place for the undefinable—morphing, liminal and mystical,” says the Danish CGI artist. “Berl-Berl mourns what is lost and embraces what is new.”
OUT NOW :
New Models
NM CODEX Y2K20
Editors
Caroline Busta , Daniel Keller, and
LIL INTERNET marshal the New Models community yielding a “collective distillation” of the madness of 2020
“The Phillipines are a great test market for games, because there is a high level of English knowledge and the cost of labour is quite cheap.”
–
Sky Mavis co-founder Aleksander Larsen, on how
Axie Infinity was rolled out and tested in Southeast Asia. With its governance token surging 400% (to $18 USD) in recent weeks alongside the game’s expontential growth, Filipino workers are
capitalizing on its increasingly lucurative “play to earn” NFT economy, echoing
World of Warcraft -era
gold farming in the Global South.
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