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Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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 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
“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.”
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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.

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New Art City Virtualizes The Gallery, Abolishes Gatekeepers, and Increases Access
Burak Arikan Maps Power Structures, Financial Flows, and Networks of Influence
Total Refusal Collective Casts NPC Workers in Critique of Contemporary Labour
Akil Kumarasamy Parses Quantum Plotlines and Large Language Models
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
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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.

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.
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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.
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An inquiry into the nature of randomness—how science explains it and how culture (and art) emerges from it
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Parsing emerging representational and perceptual paradigms in the wake of the Snowden revelations and nascent computer vision technologies
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An illustrated field guide on plastiglomerates, robot dogs, antenna trees and other hybrid creatures (and objects) of our time
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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.
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