AI art and biohacks that ponder post-humanism, CGI fever dreams that (further) distort reality, software that speaks truth to power: HOLO Readers enjoy full access to our weird and wonderful discoveries at the nexus of art, science, technology, and culture. Join us and support indie publishing in the process.
“Starting April 15th, only white nationalists with 30 followers will be in ‘For You’ recommendations.”
Eve 6 band leader and Buzzfeed columnist Max Collins, responding to Elon Musk’s announcement of Twitter Blue favouritism. Cited in Mashable reporter Max Binder’s analysis of the social media company’s flailing subscription game, Collin’s tweet rings true: Half of Twitter Blue users have less than a 1,000 followers and comprise “most often far right wing accounts, cryptocurrency scammers, and hardcore Elon Musk supporters.”
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Resurfacing fabled 18th century partially-dissected wax figures used in the study of anatomy, “Cere Anatomiche” opens at Fondazione Prada Milan, presenting four anatomical venuses and 72 drawings from the La Specola collection alongside a companion film by David Cronenberg. Entitled Four Unloved Women, Adrift on a Purposeless Sea, Experience the Ecstasy of Dissection, the Canadian director’s short dwells on how the figures’ uncanny “body language and facial expressions do not display pain or agony.”

Foregrounding daylight and circadian rhythms in an era of deleterious screen time, “Lighten Up! On Biology and Time” opens at EPFL Pavillions in Lausanne (CH). Featured are works both evocative and therapeutic, “to remind us of the necessity of regular light exposure for a healthy life,” from artists including Kirell Benzi, Olafur Eliasson, and Anna Ridler. Helga Schmid presents a full-on sleep pod (image: Circadian Dreams, 2022), in which visitors laze and soak up LED lighting calibrated to optimize natural body phases.

“If TurboTax is Dark UI, Tax Heaven 3000 is Pink UI, the nightcore of tax software.”
MSCHF co-founder Dan Greenberg, on Tax Heaven 3000 (image, 2023), a forthcoming dating simulator that allows Americans to court Iris, “a cheerful and easygoing girl who is oddly interested in your personal finances,” while doing their taxes
“Wanna talk about ‘PC music?’ It’s one cello sample and a computer, baby.”
100 gecs’ Dylan Brady and Laura Les, enthusing about the origins of the THX deep note, the characterful chord that sounds before many motion pictures. Gushing about getting clearance to use it to kickoff their new album, Les describes the soundmark as “beautiful and terrifying.”
Serials
Wade Wallerstein Decodes Digital Art’s Myriad “Distant Early Warnings”
Maarten Vanden Eynde Encapsulates Human Fallibility for the Ages
Miriam Arbus Cultivates “Seed Systems” That Nurture New XR Ecologies
Martin Bricelj Baraga Builds Monuments to the Sky’s 53 Shades of Blue
Claire L. Evans Assembles Fifty Key Sci-Fi Voices to “Terraform” Futurity
Kyriaki Goni Weaves Counter-Narratives to Colonial Cosmologies and Space Expansionism
Yuri Suzuki Broadcasts the “Sound of the Earth” at Triennale Milano and in Your Headphones
Megan MacLaurin Foregrounds “The Air We Share” by Taking GIF Art to the Streets
Jeremy Bolen Casts Haunting Artifacts That Capture the Future-History of the Climate Crisis
Mindy Seu Forges Deep Links Between Cyberfeminism, Net Art, and Web3
Dossiers
General
A new HOLO format, Dossiers are web-based research publications that contextualize and expand upon cultural initiatives in real-time

Dossiers are dedicated HOLO folios that augment and complement exhibitions, residencies, conferences, and educational initiatives. Realised in collaboration with artists, writers, curators, and cultural partners, they are designed to document process and disseminate knowledge through a variety of engaging formats—essays, interviews, artwork—all within a focused online magazine. If you’re interested in working with us on a Dossier, please get in touch via our Contact page.

Encounters
AI art and biohacks, CGI fever dreams, software that speaks truth to power—join us and receive full access to HOLO’s daily discoveries in critical creative practice.
$40 / $75 / $350
Questioning our problematic faith in AI, Nora N. Khan and fifteen luminaries measure the gap between machine learning hypotheticals and the mess of lived experience.
$40
An inquiry into the nature of randomness—how science explains it and how culture (and art) emerges from it
$45
Parsing emerging representational and perceptual paradigms in the wake of the Snowden revelations and nascent computer vision technologies
$75
An illustrated field guide on plastiglomerates, robot dogs, antenna trees and other hybrid creatures (and objects) of our time
$35
The first three instalments of ‘anticipatory’ designers N O R M A L S eponymous graphic novel series delineate a dark and unsettling world of hyper-mediated futures.
$65

Emerging trajectories in art, science, and technology (since 2012)

As an editorial and curatorial platform, HOLO explores disciplinary interstices and entangled knowledge as epicentres of critical creative practice, radical imagination, research, and activism

“I feel the language and concepts I’m working with don’t comfortably fit within the normal discourse about art and aesthetics. CERN’s physicists and engineers understood the tools I was using and I was able to talk about my goals. I just couldn’t have that kind of dialogue in an art context.”—sound artist Bill Fontana on his CERN residency (HOLO 2, p.206)

There is a space between a computer’s command line interface and the contemporary art museum, the legalese of Silicon Valley’s terms and conditions and the social contract, the whoosh of a particle accelerator and the romanticized “a ha” of artistic inspiration. For much of the twentieth century these gaps were chasms, separating science and engineering from the humanities and siloing them off; today, these gaps are narrowing and disciplinary interstices are the spaces to watch. Increasingly aware of how much technology governs not only entrenched fields of study but every aspect of modern life, we’ve come to realise that things are deeply intertwined.

HOLO emerged in 2012 to explore these entanglements—first with a periodical, now across an expanded platform. Set up in the grey zones between art, science, and technology, it frames scientific research and emerging technologies as being more than sites of invention and innovation—as epicentres of critical creative practice, radical imagination, and activism. The artists and designers working with related materials—algorithms and microcontrollers, meteoroids and fungi, data and archives—aren’t just updating notions of craft for the twenty-first century, they are researchers and cultural critics.

As an editorial and curatorial platform, HOLO occupies the same eccentric vantage points as these hybrid creative practices and puts them into perspective. Working across multiple avenues—print and online, events and production—HOLO collaborates with contributors and cultural partners to facilitate fruitful dialogue between domains and bring new voices into the conversation.

Selected collaborators:

© 2022 HOLO V2.5.1 (beta)
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We produce:

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Over the last decade HOLO has curated more than 500 cultural initiatives worldwide

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