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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Fusing virtuality and Persian Lore, the online exhibition “PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES“ opens at Cologne’s Priska Pasquer Gallery. For it, Iranian artist Mohsen Hazrati has created an allegorical space for reflection, over which its titular winged creature hovers; the phoenix also evokes the mythical Simurgh , a virtuous Persian “symbol for self-knowledge.“ Curated by Tina Sauerländer , the show is accompanied by an NFT edition that captures its avian protagonist in flight (image).
“The color pallet and compositions make an implicit argument we understand subconsciously: that looking at the depths of the cosmos is akin to looking into the 19th Century American frontier. Aesthetically, they tap into some intense American self-mythologizing.”
– American artist Trevor Paglen, invoking art historian Elizabeth Kessler’s
Picturing the Cosmos (2012) as the world marvels at the first (heavily edited) images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
“Your integrated circuit is going to come from Taiwan Semiconductor, your memory will come from Korea, and your display will be produced in Indonesia or China—there is no manufacturer for those components anywhere in the Western world.”
– Hardware engineer and OSOM Founder
Jason Keats , when asked if it would be possible to make a smartphone from scratch in North America [quote edited]
OUT NOW :
Calderoni & Sroka (eds)
Martine Syms: Neural Swamp
Expanding on Syms’ 2021 immersive
video installation , curators Irene Calderoni,
Amanda Sroka , and scholar
Christina Sharpe provide deep insight into the American artist’s research on “machine systems that erase Black bodies, voices, and narratives.”
“It’s astounding. It’s the oldest documented light in the history of the universe, from over 13 billion—let me say it again—over 13 billion years ago.”
– U.S. President
Joe Biden , unveiling the first image from the
James Webb Space Telescope during a White House ceremony. A “deep field” observation, the image shows galaxy cluster
SMACS 0723 and offers a rare infrared glimpse of the early universe. “And we’re going back further,” notes NASA Administrator
Bill Nelson . “We’re going back almost to the beginning.”
Showcasing four women-identifying artists whose practices address feminized robots, “Can You Fuck It?” opens at Tokyo’s Ningen Gallery . Curator Elena Knox , Allison de Fren , Mika Kan (image: The Silent Woman , 2017), and Lin Xin ’s contributed works—spanning documentary to digital illustration—demonstrate that “women’s ideas must begin to be acknowledged alongside those that present objectified feminine embodiment as a fait accompli ,” writes Knox in her curatorial essay .
“Ornamental Spaces,” a show featuring vintage works by late computer art pioneer Georg Nees , opens in Berlin. The exhibition showcases Nees’ prescience on two fronts: first, with works from “Bilder Images Digital” (a 1986 exhibition at Munich’s Galerie der Künstler ) generated by a Lisp program in response to user questions; secondly, for context, screenprints related to his PhD research on Generative Computergraphik (shown at “Computer Graphics” in Stuttgart, 1965).
Martin Bricelj Baraga ’s latest Cyanometer (2016–) is unveiled in front of Geneva’s Museum of History of Science , the very institution that keeps Horace Bénédict de Saussure ’s original instrument from 1789. Fourth in a growing network of distributed public sculptures, Baraga’s reflective monolith measures (and archives) the blueness of the sky as well as air pollution, allowing for comparative analysis between the cities of Ljubljana, Wrocław, Dresden, and now Geneva.
“After 5 weeks of vacationing and disconnecting myself from crypto, it is truly amazing how utterly irrelevant crypto is in every day life and how little it matters to most people. Yes we’re early, but also we are clearly caught up in a tiny niche bubble that no one cares about.”
– Web3 enthusiast
Foobazzler , providing a much-needed reality check
“Nature/Code/Drawing,” an exhibition of plotter drawings by Hiromasa Fukaji and Junichiro Horikawa , opens at CUBE 1,2,3 in Tokyo, showing exceedingly natural, but algorithmically generated forms. In joining forces—Horikawa on programming, Fukaji on plotting—the two designers attempt to express nature’s complexity by simulating the delicate interplay of logic and chaos that governs the world. They reveal process too, drawing new forms during the exhibition.
Reddit user Monsur_Ausuhnom points out that Lake Mead in the dystopian videogame Fallout New Vegas
“People were producing galaxy catalogues just from a JPEG.”
– European Space Agency astronomer
Sarah Kendrew , describing how star gazers were stunned by the clarity of
preview images collected by James Webb Space Telescope instruments, eagerly anticipating the
release of many more next week
Ana Prvački ’s Apis Gropius , a new site-specific species of bee, takes over the atrium of Berlin’s Gropius Bau. An AR experience hatched in collaboration with NEEEU during the museum’s residency program, the project draws on Prvački’s long-standing interest in bees, our dependence on them, and the venue’s history in taxonomical research. The goal: playfully explore “the manifold ways in which institutions and nature intersect and co-evolve.”
Presenting a new large-scale eponymous work by installation and media artist Stéphane Thidet , “Bruit rose” (2022, image) opens at LiFE in Saint-Nazaire, France. Extending the elemental engagement with materials from his iconic waterfall façade Rideau
“Another popular hypothesis is that squirrels just flat-out run a better PR operation. In other words, their superior status is not innate but cultural, resulting from a long history of favourable media depictions.”
– Science journalist
Jacob Stern , trying to reconcile why rats elicit disgust from humans but squirrels are viewed as harmless (or even cute)
What Just Happened :
Jeremy Bolen Casts Haunting Artifacts That Capture Climate Crisis Future-History
The American artist and researcher discusses the environmental calamity depicted in his current MOCA GA show
Cryptoheaven3 (2022), a CGI short imagining the “digital afterlife” of disgraced ponzi crypto exchange CEO Gerald Cotton, premieres at Milan Machinima Festival. After defrauding traders for $180 million the QuadrigaCX CEO died in 2018—Ukrainian artist Letta Shtohryn began making shorts about his idyllic posthumous adventures with The Sims 4
“The Stutter of History,” a retrospective of singular German sculptor-photographer Thomas Demand , opens at Shanghai’s Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA). Known for his meticulous cardboard reconstructions of real-world scenes, the show depicts “scenarios from the margins of historical events” including a meditation on the banality of Edward Snowden’s Russian hotel room (2021), and the squalor of the Stasi offices (1995, image), after being ransacked by German citizens.
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