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Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
February 2022
“The Terraforming was convened on behalf of new foundations for a viable planetary future. This takes on critical urgency when that future is put in direct peril. To ensure that the future is not canceled is a fight we cannot lose.”
Benjamin Bratton, theorist and Strelka Institute program director, on the Moscow non-profit suspending activities in protest of Russian aggression. “We join the urgent calls for peace and for refusal and resistance to the present violence,” writes Bratton.
Charles Csuri
(1922-2022)
American artist and “father of digital art and computer animation” (Smithsonian) Charles ‘Chuck’ Csuri dies aged 99 in Florida. Active since the 1960s, the widely recognized pioneer and educator’s legacy includes establishing several graphics research centers and founding one of the first CGI production companies.

The final chapter in Meriem Bennani’s CGI film trilogy Life on the CAPS debuts at the University of Chicago’s The Renaissance Society as a video installation. A co-commission with Nottingham Contemporary, UK, the film returns to the series’ dystopian island world the artist based on research into island societies, biotechnology, and vernacular music. Protagonist Kamal gets a new body to fight for CAPS’ liberation—a cause impossible to solve within a single lifetime.

“I think the obsession with immutability and stable identity, which is being imposed on commercial blockchain projects, is very un-cyberfeminist and it’s very un-Satoshi Nakamoto. So that’s definitely a site of a struggle.”
– Blockchain artist Rhea Myers, on tensions between ‘forever’ ledgers and fluid trans identities, during a conversation with McKenzie Wark
“The way you position your antenna and even your body are recorded in the image as signal and noise. This means each image is unique to the person and place that created it.”
Open Weather’s Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer, on setting up your own “DIY satellite ground station.” Using a basic V-shaped antenna, a dongle, and free software, anyone can receive images from the public data broadcast of the orbiting NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites, they write.
Z

“KINETISMUS: 100 Years of Electricity in Art,” Kunsthalle Praha’s inaugural exhibition opens. A multi-generational affair, its scope spans Bauhaus to teamLab, bundling work as computer art, film, cybernetics, and kinetic art. Cleverly, 20th century pioneers like Vladimir Bonačić (image: Random 63, 1969), László Moholy-Nagy, and Lillian F. Schwartz are matched up with contemporaries including Refik Anadol, Shilpa Gupta, and Olafur Eliasson.

“In a way, a peatland is less a land than a memory of what has existed on it—where life is not lost but preserved in muddy murk.”
– Science and health journalist Sabrina Imbler, ruminating on peatlands, a long misunderstood ecosystem. Beyond sharing anecdotes about peat’s ability to preserve ancient cheese and corpses, they outline the increasing recognition that peatlands—occupying only 3% of the earth’s landmass—are nature’s (near) perfect carbon sink.

“Nature × Humanity,” a celebration of Oxman Architects’ biomorphic forms, opens at SFMOMA. Focused on the pressing question “what is the role of an architect in the age of climate change?,” Neri Oxman and collaborators present recent work exploring new materials and manufacturing techniques. Featured projects include a malformed chaise lounge and the Vespers masks (2018), through building- (image: Model for Gemini Cinema, 2021) and city-scale proposals.

“Sadly, I report that 51 Lifeforms have died.”
– Software artist Sarah Friend, announcing the current death toll of her NFT-based entities. Hatched on the Polygon blockchain on Nov 14, 2021, Friend’s Lifeforms only survive—and thrive—when passed on to another caretaker within 90 days. “A lifeform that has died will no longer appear in wallets, is not transferable, and cannot be brought back to life in any way,” states the project website.

“Oceanic Thinking,” featuring Monira Al Qadiri, Sancintya Mohini Simpson, SUPERFLEX (image: Dive-In, 2019), and others, opens at The University of Queensland Art Museum in Australia. The kickoff of the multi-year Blue Assembly project (which connects marine scientists and artists, as part of an UN initiative), the show invites viewers to “think together with these liquid, vast, biodiverse, and non-binary spaces to speculate our collective future.”

The world’s first NFT vending machine opens in New York’s Financial District. A PR stunt slash proof of concept, it sells QR codes denoting ownership of NFTs from the Neon marketplace. Purchases are made via credit or debit card, and two collections are available: Project Color and Party Pigeons. “[A vending machine] means we can engage the widest possible audience. NFT buying and selling doesn’t need to be a mystery,” says Neon’s Jordan Birnholtz.

“Independent game design and independent publishing have similar end goals: fostering creativity, making money, finding community, and avoiding institutional pressure.”
– TXTbooks’ Nichole Shinn, speaking about Book Fell Into Ocean (2022), their browser-based “search-and-rescue game“ where the player pilots a risograph drone and surveys flotsam after an art fair-bound container ship explodes off the coast of Miami [quote edited]

“Formulations as Texture, Horizontal and Vertical Crossings,” a solo exhibition by Florian Hecker opens at Simian in Ørestad, Copenhagen. The show’s single spatial audio piece deploys two variants of Formulations (2015), an algorithmically-generated composition, into a new 3-channel version that capitalizes on distinctions between the two versions producing “a maze of different resolutions, gradations, scales, similarities, and differences.”

“Working with quantum physics can subvert the endless categorizations and control of humans and non-humans alike in pursuit of never-ending profits, causing accelerating alienation.”
– British artist and physicist Libby Heaney, on the positive potential of ‘thinking quantum.’ In the wake of her new quantum-coded immersive installation Ent- (2022), Heaney argues for new pluralities to “break down binary thinking and political polarisation, engendering community thought that might solve global problems.”

Libby Heaney’s Light Art Space (LAS) commission Ent- (2022) premieres at Schering Stiftung, Berlin, taking quantum computing as both medium and subject matter. Inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s iconic triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1490–1510), the British artist and physicist used quantum code to manipulate and animate her own paintings, creating “hybrid organisms, breathing landscapes, and exploding structures” inside the metaphorical black box of a 360° immersive installation.

“I hope y’all see this show, but to clarify, it features the smallest pieces I have ever made, including engravings that are only 150 atoms thick.”
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, responding to Pace Gallery highlighting the large-scale installations on view at the Mexican-Canadian media artist’s SFMOMA solo show “Unstable Presence.” The microscopic piece in question, Babbage Nanopamphlets (2015), comprises 2 million nanopamphlets, each 150 atoms thick, printed in elemental gold.

Berlin-based artists Kat Austen and Fara Peluso are announced winners of a six-month residency at the S+T+ARTS Center Upper Austria to work on “Circular Records”—a low-carbon alternative to vinyl. “We will develop a record production process that uses sustainable biomaterials,” says Austen. The goal is to create a high-fidelity reproduction of This Land is Not Mine, Austen’s 2020 experimental music album that explores futures after fossil fuel.

“Enough people purchased the preservative to attempt suicide that the company’s algorithm began suggesting other products that customers frequently bought along with it to aid in such efforts.”
Megan Twohey & Gabriel J.X. Dance, on a dark twist of Amazon’s ‘frequently bought together’ recommendation engine. The journalists reveal that while eBay and Etsy have stopped carrying a chemical compound linked to scores of suicides, Amazon has dragged its heels.
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