1,182 days, 1,854 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 dreamy Edisonian wonderland awaits, where a rolling landscape of electrical conduits and vintage-style lightbulbs undulates like waves, or like gentle hills or playground jungle gyms.”
– Art critic
Shana Nys Dambrot , describing
Nancy Holt ’s
Electrical Systems (1982) at
Sprüth Magers Los Angeles. “It feels good to see this erasure being corrected,” Dambrot says of the inclusion of 1960s photo series by the land artist, noting similar work by Holt’s male peers has (historically) received more attention.
OUT NOW :
Metalabel x co—matter
After the Creator Economy
A physical and digital zine with contributors including
Amber Case ,
Kei Kreutler , and
Mat Dryhurst exploring new ways to produce, distribute, and monetize creative work online
“Remember when your teacher showed super old films in art class? Showing students digital art from 15 years ago feels exactly like that. In my memory these pieces are giants but you only find tiny JPGs or 360p YouTube videos.”
– Artist and educator
Aram Bartholl , lamenting the poor documentation of much of digital art’s history
“Abstain from romanticized post-rationalizations.”
– Software artist
Karsten Schmidt , in “Personal Considerations for Creating Generative Art,” an itemized collection of methods and models to aid algorithmic creativity.
Not a dogmatist, he notes his suggestions are “fluid, incomplete, and highly subjective.”
The Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI) Gallery opens “Hylozoism,” a group exhibition of five “neo-nature” ecologies. The included works by Philip Beesley , Keith Lam , Ellen Pau , Ryuichi Sakamoto & Daito Manabe , and fuse* propose a state of techno-symbiosis—“an endless cycle of mutual benefits and coexistence.” Lam’s newly commissioned TTTV Garden TV Garden
“…I am prone to circumnavigate video installations. Are monitors curved or flat, LED or liquid crystal? Power cords—are they a tangle, discreetly bundled, altogether hidden?”
– Artist and educator
Sowon Kwon , sharing her rubric for evaluating the installation of video-based work, in an attentive review of Paul Pfeiffer’s
Red Green Blue (2022) at Paula Cooper Gallery
“Chronos/Synthesis,” a solo show by Canadian artist Oliver Pauk , opens at Toronto’s J Spot Gallery . For the window gallery show, Pauk presents an array of 3D printed, CNC milled, and hand carved sculptures alongside video and AR works. The selection underscores two driving interests: rendering pure digital form, and his efforts “to replicate the patterns and aesthetics of automated, computerized processes” in more traditional mediums (image: Object #90 , 2017).
“Handles like ‘Gorgon Horror,’ ‘The Wizard,’ and ‘Einstein’ were common. My brother’s name was ‘Blue Dragon,’ and his favourite colour was blue. My favourite colour was red, so I picked ‘Red Wolf.’ I liked wolves.”
– Journalist and tech historian
Benji Edwards , on the 1992 kickoff of his “secret life as an 11-year-old
BBS sysop ,” in a memoir about his (pre-World Wide Web) introduction to online culture
“One thing I like about this approach is that, because it never goes inside the neural net and tries to change anything, but just places a sort of wrapper over the neural net.”
– Computer scientist Scott Aaronson, discussing cryptographic watermarks he’s developing for
OpenAI ’s GPT language model. “We want there to be an otherwise unnoticeable secret signal in its choices of words,” he says of encoding specific vocabulary and syntax patterns that will make AI-generated texts instantly detectable, protecting against both plagiarism and propaganda.
“I’m worried. I could see people signing away contracts right now that could have really detrimental impacts on their future ability to make work as themselves.”
– American composer and “computer musician”
Holly Herndon , on how AI complicates intellectual property. “I want people to understand how powerful these systems are and how having sovereignty over training data is really important,” Herndon says, encouraging artists to experiment with her vocal model
Holly+ .
After exploring “Water ” as a major exhibition theme in 2019-20, the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) opens “Air,” featuring more than 30 artists including Dora Budor , Nancy Holt , and Katie Paterson that probe the cultural, ecological, and political dimensions of Earth’s atmosphere. “Air” is anchored by Tomás Saraceno ’s Drift: A cosmic web of thermodynamic rhythms (2022, image), a new commission that suspends 13 partially mirrored spheres in GOMA’s central atrium.
“I needed to train myself to cry in order to continue feeding those tiny marine ecosystems.”
– Polish artist and designer
Kasia Molga , on gathering enough tears for her installation
How to Make an Ocean (2021), a set of 12 miniature marine worlds that ‘bottled’ climate grief at the COP27 WHO
Health Pavilion . Molga’s secret: a special “tearspoon” and her
Moirologist Bot , an AI-driven video piece that serves alarming environmental news.
OUT NOW :
Jonas Lund
By Opening This Book
An edition of 100 sealed books, each key to a unique web experience. By opening the book, readers agree to contractual terms that, much like the often ignored internet fineprint, remain the
Swedish artist ’s secret.
“We can keep suppressing the wages of Uber drivers—keep them below the cost of living—because they can always supplement by renting out their apartment on Airbnb.”
– Technology studies scholar
Aaron Shapiro , describing the circular logic of worker exploitation under platform capitalism. Chatting about his
latest article on dark stores and ghost kitchens, he describes the recent failure of several post-Amazon “flimsy logistical companies.” [quote edited]
“ON AIR: The Sound of the Material in the Art of the 1950s to 1970s,” an exhibition excavating the pre-history of contemporary sound art, opens at Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld, Germany. Assemblies, experiments, and media by Joseph Beuys , Bruce Nauman , David Tudor , and co-presenter Museum Tinguely ’s namesake Jean Tinguley , demonstrate how “sounds, tones, noises, signals, and voices became ‘substantial’ sculptural material” in the second half of the 20th century.
“She represents us—an idealized us—with all of our body dysmorphia and best and worst qualities, warts and all. That’s who we are as consumerists, which is filled with those contradictions.”
– Sculptor
Tom Sachs , discussing Barbie, whom he interprets as “a spaceship, because she’s a vessel for genetic code.“ Beyond his recreation of the iconic blonde, other ‘spaceships’ in his
eponymous current exhibition include the
Titanic and the Technics 1200 turntable.
A project of Wm (Bill) Perry , “LOST & FOUND Telidon art of the early ’80s,” opens at Toronto’s Cameron House . Presenting limited edition prints of videotex art made on Telidon (1978-85, Canada’s precursor to the world wide web), Perry resurfaces both an overlooked early digital art movement—predating net.art by a decade—and the burgeoning creative networks that founded Canada’s first media and electronic art-focused artist run centres (image: Robin Collyer Cameraman , 1981).
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