1,578 days, 2,409 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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“Current mining operations have now become their own geological force, scraping, sorting and collecting more dirt, rock and sediment than the world’s rivers, wind, rain and glaciers every year.”
– Canadian journalist
Andrew Nikiforuk , citing British geologist and
Extraction to Extinction (2021) author David Howe in a scathing critique of the extractivism-powered “green techno-dream.” If continued, he writes, “the pile of human mined materials on this groaning planet will triple global biomass by 2040.”
“If you’re possessed by one, there is that trouble—the horror—of interruption of flow, of being in your life. It’s almost like they’re hacking into a system. Maybe, jinn are a kind of hacker.”
– Iranian-American artist
Morehshin Allahyari , on her obsession with West Asian spirits and their cyborgian nature. In her work
She Who Sees the Unknown (2017–2021), Allahyari used 3D modelling to visualize female and/or queer demons as avatars for hysteria, gendered morality, and the experience of “living in a female body in the Middle East.”
“Grand Bal,” a retrospective of works by Ann Veronica Janssens , opens at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca. Presenting works from the last three decades, the British artist offers a “visual and sonic choreography” of glass, fog, light, and video for visitors to traverse. Featured works include Golden Section (2009), suspended mirror foil and wrinkled PVC made with Belgian artist Michel François (image), and Blue Glass Roll 405 (2019), a series of cast glass sculptural forms (image foreground).
“ChatGPT needs to ‘drink’ a 500ml bottle of water for a simple conversation of 20-50 questions and answers, depending on when and where ChatGPT is deployed.”
– University of California researchers, on the “thirstiness” of AI. In their new paper, Pengfei Li, Jianyi Yang, Mohammad A. Islam, and Shaolei Ren offer a “principled methodology to estimate fine-grained water footprint of AI models” and highlight the need for a “truly sustainable AI.”
OUT NOW :
James E. Dobson
The Birth of Computer Vision
Providing a “genealogy of image-recognition techniques and technologies,” cultural critic
Dobson reveals the Cold War origins and enduring biases that continue to shape automated perception.
Berlin-based generative artist and prolific Twitch streamer Raphaël de Courville releases a Chrome browser extension that rids Twitter of ‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk’s latest attempt at humour. “DogeBeGone saves your precious eyes from the scourge of Doge,” writes de Courville about undoing the platform’s sudden logo swap for the Dogecoin mascot dog on April 3 (that may be related to a $258-billion racketeering lawsuit against Musk). Thanks to de Courville’s hack, the bird is back—“just like nature intended.”
OUT NOW :
Katie Holten
The Language of Trees
Inspired by forests, trees, leaves, and seeds,
Holten compiles an illustrated “Rewilding of Literature and Landscape” featuring writings from over 50 contributors including Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, and Elizabeth Kolbert.
“The food banks in New York were in serious trouble due to food scarcity. And then all the while, people were focusing on this super rare digital object.”
– Automation artist
Dmitri Cherniak , on the furor around
Dead Ringers (2022), which sent NFTs to random Ethereum addresses rather than making them available to rabid collectors. Chatting with
Jason Bailey , the Canadian artist shares that (some of) his works are a “a response to people treating me like an object or a way to make money.”
What Just Happened :
Akil Kumarasamy Parses Quantum Plotlines and Large Language Models
The American writer provides insight into the (messy) collision of AI and the human condition in her deeply affecting debut novel
Curated by Kyle Duffield and Terry Anastasiadis, “IA 360° Showcase” opens, debuting the new surround projection system installed in the gallery of Toronto’s InterAccess. Éric Filion & Michael Trommer , Tori Foster , Adrienne Matheuszik , Silvia Ruzanka , and 16 other local and international artists contribute to a program of immersive CGI and video (and accompanying spatial audio) that brings “real and synthesized realms, cosmic awe, the microscopic made monolithic” into focus.
“There are many reasons to be skeptical of the PhD-in-fine-art boom. One is that it exacerbates hierarchies of economic privilege already endemic to art education. Another is that art, under the pressure of academicization, becomes tame, systematic, and professional.”
–
Artforum Contributing Editor
Claire Bishop , (warily) setting up a survey of the types of knowledge production that occur in research-based art
Basel’s House of Electronic Arts (HEK) premieres new works by Pe Lang , Johanna Bruckner , and Jennifer Merlyn Scherler —three Swiss media artists and winners of the 2022 Pax Art Awards—in parallel solo exhibitions. Veteran Lang translated a scene from his forthcoming sci-fi novel into a kinetic light installation, whereas emerging talents Bruckner and Scherler authored CGI video and sculptural works that explore techno-bodies (image: Body Obfuscations , 2023) and climate anxiety.
OUT NOW :
Andrés Burbano
Different Machines
In his investigation of the emergence of Latin American media technologies, the Colombian
artist and scholar constructs a “historiographical and theoretical framework for understanding the work of creators who have been geographically and historically marginalized.”
“Oversight boards and ethics teams at big tech companies have always been a fig leaf. Their purpose is to convince regulators that the companies can regulate themselves. That’s it.”
– American writer
Joanne McNeil , critiquing Silicon Valley’s ethics shell game, as tech leaders call for an
AI moratorium . “Good work can be done and good people can be hired,” McNeil continues. “Doesn’t change the purpose and ultimate goals of these departments.”
Completing the NFT-release-to-exhibition trajectory in just six months, Tyler Hobbs ’ “QQL: Analogs” opens at Pace New York. The American artist describes his solo show as “an examination of ways to integrate the hand and the machine in painting,” and explores the texture and imperfections introduced when using oil and acrylic paint to plot selected outputs of his eponymous circle packing algorithm. Closing the loop, each of the 12 large paintings on sale are bundled with the NFT used to generate it (e.g. )
“We should not be using AI to generate more ‘diverse’ models. Use the AI to invent new races, new genders, new forms that transcend the body! Like everyone’s trying to make the perfect plant-based salmon—JUST INVENT A NEW FUCKING FISH.”
Named after a line of predictive text poetry, Travess Smalley ’s solo exhibition “Number colors burn randomly” opens at Foxy Production, New York. Comprising new textile works (literal pixel rugs ), plotter drawings, silk screen prints, and videos, the show expands upon the American artist’s use of code and scripts to plant “seeds of chance” for visual production. “It might not be the mark of my hand that is interesting,” notes Smalley, “but the exact inverse, the absence, the ghost, the memory.”
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