1,185 days, 1,864 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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“Among Latour’s many contributions, one of the most powerful was his use of the exhibition as a device to probe theories and build useful concepts. From the influential ‘Making Things Public’ to the last one, ‘Critical Zones,’ his work at ZKM Karlsruhe remains a referent.”
Bruno Latour 1947 – 2022
French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist
Bruno Latour dies at the age of 75. In his work, the prescient and prolific thinker argued against the objectivity of scientific fact and, increasingly, for a shift towards more-than-human, “Gaian politics” that acknowledge our deep connection with all things.
“Cyborg cockroaches that find earthquake survivors. A ‘robofly’ that sniffs out gas leaks. Flying lightning bugs that pollinate farms in space. These aren’t just buzzy ideas, they’re becoming reality.”
“Safe Mode: Amplified Realities” opens across three different venues in Athens, Greece, borrowing a computing term for crisis considerations. Curator Foteini Vergidou in collaboration with TILT Platform present works by nearly 20 artists, including Aram Bartholl , Sofia Caesar , Paolo Cirio , Basim Magdy , Elisa Giardina Papa , and Michalis Zacharias (image: Survival Module , 2022) that, in one way or another, “narrate a future where balance is restored.”
“CONTACT ZONES,” an exhibition emerging from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics INHABIT artist-in-residence program, opens at Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst. Murat Adash , Céline Berger , and Syowia Kyambi share work emerging from three months of dialogue with institute researchers that, respectively, explores the politics of bodies, the aesthetics of quantification (image: still from Berger’s film AND I MEASURE , 2022), and colonialism.
“This POV camera was a little creepy, because it didn’t notify others when it was turned on. When I revealed I was recording, people would sometimes shout, ‘she’s a fed!’ and run away.”
– Privacy reporter
Kashmir Hill , describing folks’ cheeky reaction to her recording interactions in the Metaverse. Seriously committing to her story, Hill spent more than 24 hours logged into
Horizon Worlds , Meta’s VR social network, to get a sense of who the early adopters are, and how they feel about virtual reality.
Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg ’s “A Slice of the Pie” platform launches as part of “DYOR ,” a crypto art exhibition at Kunsthalle Zürich curated by Nina Röhrs. For its duration, artists can purchase pie segments on a 16 m2 LED wall to show their work, effectively becoming part of the exhibition. The hustle is broadcast 24/7, inviting remote competition and/or collaboration. Once a day, the pie’s state is frozen and minted as an NFT, starting the cycle anew.
“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
– William Shatner, recounting the
overview effect he experienced during the
orbital flight aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttle in October 2021. Then 90 years old, the
Star Trek actor became the oldest living person to venture into space. “I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us,” he writes about looking down at a planet in peril. “It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered.”
“Long term, I think we will have autonomous vehicles that you and I can buy. But we’re going to be old.”
–
Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey, on the failed promise of an impending driverless future. “You’d be hard-pressed to find another industry that’s invested so many dollars in R&D and that has delivered so little,” notes engineer and industry pioneer
Anthony Levandowski on the persisting tech issues marring the $100 billion sector.
The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (AGGP) in Alberta, Canada opens “Video Games? Art and Technology,” a group exhibition demonstrating the medium’s capacity for social commentary. Curator Manar Abo Touk showcases thoughtful re-interpretations of videogame classics by Canadian artists Pippin Barr , Sandee Moore , Cat Bluemke , and Jonathan Carroll . Moore’s (updated) 2001 installation The Mixer (image), for example, highlights the sexism of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series.
“Reflecting on this artwork over twenty years after I first created it, I became even more painfully aware of the innate sexism of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game series.”
– Canadian artist
Sandee Moore , on updating her
The Mixer (2001) installation for the “Video Games? Art and Technology” exhibition at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (AGGP). In the newest iteration, Moore turned statistics about gender representation in the the videogame series into actual skateable objects.
The 22nd edition of Maintenant festival kicks off across 14 venues in the city of Rennes, France. This year, organizer Electroni[k] brings together 35 artists to showcase the latest in digital art and electronic music. Highlights include Ralf Baecker ’s liquid metal performance A Natural History of Networks (2021), the premiere of Tristan Ménez ’s Pulse (2023) light fountains, and Guillaume Cousin ’s air sculpture Soudain toujours (2022, image).
Dani Ploeger ’s XR installation Line of Contact (2017-22) premieres at the British Film Institute (BFI) within the London Film Festival’s Expanded program. Reprocessing 360° video footage of Ukrainian frontline soldiers waiting for combat that the Dutch artist and activist recorded in 2017, the work captures a “lasting situation of solidified dread.” The tension is amplified by a soundscape triggered by the viewers’ eye movement—“violence could erupt at any time.”
“The line between utility, saving one’s market, and wash trading seems to be blurred.”
“The term ‘meatpacking,’ coined in the 1930s, suggests that the life and death of animals wasn’t part of the industry. It’s like electric cars being sold as ‘zero emission vehicles.’”
From October 13–20, HOLO chronicles the “experiments in study, collective learning, and unlearning” conducted within JUNGE AKADEMIE’s AI Anarchies Autumn School at Akademie der Künste, Berlin. A radical pedagogy primer sets the stage.
“I’m afraid a classical studio practice is becoming more and more cynical and irrelevant.”
– Artist and filmmaker
Oliver Ressler , on how the climate crisis—not the white cube—should be top of mind for artists. In conversation with Régine Debatty, Ressler discusses how artists can seek climate justice by working alongside NGOs, local activists, and Indigenous communities.
OUT NOW :
Karine E. Peschard
Seed Activism
An ethnographic study of the patent wars occurring over genetically modified crops in the Global South
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