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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“One of my co-workers described it as ‘like hack week, but with a gun to your head.’”
– Anonymous Twitter Employee, on the intense pressure of (unachievable) 3-4 day software engineering deadlines imposed by Elon Musk as part of the billionaire’s frenzied shake-up of his newly acquired social media platform
The first-ever solo exhibition of Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF opens at Perrotin, New York, presenting elaborate interventions that leverage the absurdity of late-stage capitalism. Transforming the gallery into an interactive strip mall, “No More Tears, I’m Lovin’ It” showcases the group’s art as merchandize. Spot’s Revenge (2022, image), for example, trolls Boston Dynamics with a heavily armed robot dog, after the manufacturer disabled the legally purchased unit remotely.
“When you hit corporate America, it hits back—MSCHF have been subject to innumerable cease and desist decrees and being de-platformed from social media and online payment services.”
“The Flipper Zero is not going to turn a legion of IT guys into Watch Dogs protagonists.”
– Tech journalist Chris Person, joking the wireless, NFC, and RFID-capable
Flipper Zero multi-tool (aka ‘Tamagotchi for hackers’) will
not transform its users into
clichéd cyberpunks
The New Angel , a digital image by Cao Fei and the latest edition of the “Safety Curtain” series, debuts in Vienna. Yearly since 1998, artists including Tauba Auerbach , Matthew Barney , and Joan Jonas have turned the Vienna State Opera house safety curtain into a temporary exhibition space—Fei shared her CGI avatar. “She silently observes the real world through the heavy layer of the stage curtain, without giving any answer,” says the Chinese artist.
“These works consisted of painted boxes and floppy disks describing the imaginary software, which was so hypothetical that it could only be suggested by invented titles and handmade images.”
“SIREN,” a solo exhibition by Canadian-German-Jamaican artist nichola feldman-kiss , opens at Toronto’s Koffler Gallery. Extending her ongoing critique of colonialism, it presents eponymous Siren III vocal ululations to capture the migratory flows across the “geo-cultural corridor that is the north Atlantic,” and Siren IV
Central London live music venue Outernet debuts a new kinetic identity designed by type and motion studios NaN and DBLG . Dense and dynamic, a grid of animated wordmarks and mutating colourful 3D forms scroll across the venue’s prominent 200 m media façade. NaN describes their contributed custom tilted display monospace typeface as drawing inspiration from “coding vernacular,” a graphic “doubling down on the tech-oriented physical internet identity of the venue.”
“In one of Milan Kundera’s novels, the character of Ludvik says, ‘Now all that is left is the task of laughing because we are too unhappy to cry.’ That’s what I feel these days.”
American singer and composer Holly Herndon releases a cover of Dolly Parton’s 1974s country music hit Jolene using the her AI voice model suite Holly+ . Equally haunting: In the accompanying video, digital artist and animator Sam Rolfes pilots a Herndon 3D model on an XR LED stage using motion capture. “What I like most about Sam’s video is how he captures the fantasy of performing as someone else,” Herndon writes on Twitter . “He performs as me just as I perform as Dolly.”
Media artists and critical engineers Julian Oliver and Gordan Savičić show support for Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists by adding the group’s colours—orange and black—as a Permillion (2022) theme. The web app that doubles as a flashing protest display highlights the dramatic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, from 315 ppm in 1958 to 416 ppm in 2022. Other climate advocacy groups supported with colour themes are Extinction Rebellion , Sunrise , 350 , and Greenpeace .
“Usually I had to sell the idea of digital art to the upper administrative levels. Now trustees are coming to me and asking if the Whitney should be in the metaverse.”
– Stalwart digital art curator
Christiane Paul , on the post-NFT buzz around digital art in American museums. In addition to Paul, curators Michelle Kuo and
Paola Antonelli (MoMA), and
Tina Rivers Ryan (Buffalo AKG Art Museum) comment on the newfound enthusiasm.
Mario Santamaría ’s solo show “Gárgola” opens at Centre d’Art la Panera, Lleida (ES), wedging two metaverses into one exhibition space. An architectural structure marks the exact plot of land the Spanish artist purchased in Next Earth , a virtual 1:1 reproduction of the planet, while suspended screens render a 13,5 billion light-years drop (the fall Voxels Ethereum virtual world. A winding liquid cooling system further reminds viewers of computing’s (very real) materiality.
“Three Parallels,” an exhibition centred on a new site-specific installation by Light and Space movement artist Phillip K. Smith III opens at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA). In it, Smith’s calibrated use of mirrors, translucent panes, and lighting yields a richly hued environment that responds to atmospheric conditions and suggests “a future … [where we enjoy] a more symbiotic relationship with the digital realm,” writes curator Jennifer McCabe.
“Might there be a role that institutions could play if we know that sound and music is healing? Can that open up new possibilities for arts funding, for policy, for what is considered a therapeutic experience or an artistic experience?”
– Writer and musician
K Allado-McDowell , on the questions driving their new AI opera
Song of the Ambassadors . The piece premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center on Oct 25th with the support of composer Derrick Skye, visual artist Refik Anadol, and neuroscientists Ying Choon Wu and Alex Khalil.
“My blindness informs how I hear. And it’s really hyperactive and weird. My ADHD adds to that too. But I would never say I’m doing this to emulate what it sounds like to be blind.”
For the launch of Vertical Atlas exhibition capturing Hivos and Het Nieuwe Instituut’s joint research into digital geopolitics, South African artist Francois Knoetze unleashes the mythical e-waste creature from his 2018 short Core Dump ‘E-Revenant’
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