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
Year 2023 2022 2021 2020 Show All
Month January February March April May June July August September October November December Show All
Monira Al Qadiri’s single-channel video Behind the Sun Gulf War , the video juxtaposes amateur VHS footage of burning oil fields with audio of Islamic television program monologues. Qadiri recalls the carnage as the “classic image of a biblical apocalypse … the earth belching fire and the black scorched sky felt like a portrait of hell as it should be.”
“The thing about the Amiga bassline is that it was constant volume, it didn’t waver. So when you pulled it up to the maximum volume that you could press on to vinyl, it made it, well, phat as fuck.”
– UK jungle and drum’n’bass legend
Gavin King , aka Aphrodite, reminiscing about making music with his Commodore
Amiga 1200 home computer in the early ’90s
Tamlin Magee revisits the 16-bit heyday of the early ’90s, when the sound and sampling capabilities of Amiga home computers were central to a burgeoning electronic music scene. “It was the poor man’s studio,” recalls Marlon Sterling , AKA drum’n’bass producer Equinox, whose recently released Early Works 93-94 OctaMED music tracker when he was only 15. (image: Sterling during an Amiga music restoration session with fellow UK producer Bizzy B )
“So, how do you build a metaverse? Rule one: spend twenty years.”
– Media artist
Claudia Hart , chronicling her decades building in virtual space. Speaking at
VR WSPark , an online exhibition space curated by
Snow Yunxue Fu , Hart ruminates on the iterations of her
Dolls (2014-) project, which blends CGI, costume design, and choreography in mixed-reality performance.
“A Sea of Data,” German media artist Hito Steyerl ’s first solo show in Asia, opens at Seoul’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). Named after an e-flux essayAnimal Spirits (2022, image) is a sensor-driven animation of post-pandemic (human) conditions—from remote culture to decentralization.
As part of her eponymous solo exhibition, American software artist Lauren Lee McCarthy performs a new iteration of her 2020 COVID response piece I Heard Talking Is Dangerous at EIGEN+ART Lab , Berlin. Whereas the original performance had McCarthy trigger text-to-speech monologues from her phone, Proceed At Your Own Risk invited the gallery audience to use the same technology (via a custom web app ) to talk back.
“If Tiktaalik is our ancestor, then perhaps our holding it accountable for the chaos it sowed is an expression of love.”
– Science reporter
Sabrina Imbler , on the meme-ification of a 375-million-year-old transitional fossil. “The memes yearn to thwack
Tiktaalik with a rolled-up newspaper or poke it with a stick,” writes Imbler, ”anything to shoo it back into the water and avoid our having to go to work and pay rent.”
“SKIN DEEP,” a Jonas Blume solo show, opens at Scope BLN in Berlin. Curated by Tina Sauerlaender , the exhibition lives up to its name, presenting works by the American artist exploring the “use of skin as medium to reflect on the relationship between reality and image world.” Included is motorized torso Partially True (2022) and creepy diptych Yes. (Double David) (2022, image). Collectively the works present the artist’s body “in an estranged and uncanny haptic beyond resemblance.”
“Tech companies provide isolated, insecure, overworked individuals with a false sense of mastery that replenishes their capacity to provide exploited labor of their own.”
– American author
Grafton Tanner , on the emergence (and history) of the “userverse,” a “customized surrogate world” of “unchallenged mastery” and “concealed labour,” where critique is “downplayed as adjustment difficulties: Give it time, and the technology will eventually work for everyone.”
Putting ecology-focused works by the Dutch and British artists in conversation, “Dialogue: James Bridle and Jonas Staal“ opens at Berlin’s NOME gallery. Stall ’s “Comrades in Deep Future“ marshals a coalition of “extinct plants, neo-constructivist ammonites, and insurgent octopi“ into “a popular front of earth workers,“ while Bridle ’s “Signs of Life,“ showcases a series of sustainable design ‘tributes’ (image: Windmill 03 (for Walter Segal) , 2022).
Are the aesthetics of an immersive installation intellectual property? According to recently surfaced Los Angeles court documents the answer to that question is maybe . Spurned by similarities between a pair of their works and installations at the Museum of Dream Space (MODS) in Beverly Hills, teamLab are suing for copyright infringement. The prolific Japanese studio claims motifs from “Transcending Boundaries ” (2017) and “Crystal” (2015), have been copied by exhibition designers at the American venue. The case may set an interesting legal precedent, as “streams of light and water cascading down the wall onto the ground” is not exactly ingenious—but immersive installations are big business now. Either a summary judgement will be issued in a few weeks, or the case heads to trial this summer.
“Simulating Gestures,” a show in which Jessica Field questions the visibility of the artist’s hand in digital art, opens at Toronto’s Pari Nadimi Gallery. Field’s explorations of emergence are demonstrated here, by works including a simulation pitting artificial agents against one another (to make aesthetic decisions), and a recent drawing series where AI personas sketch “emotionally infused ideas to communicate” (image: Shame is only heavy when it hurts , 2021).
“We still haven’t seen it yet. Maybe the next internet will be mystical and poetic, be ethereal, offer new ways of connecting, and be less capitalist. We don’t know yet.”
– Greek artist
Angelo Plessas , pushing back against cynicism towards future iterations of the internet. In a (refreshingly optimistic) conversation with
Informer ’s Roddy Schrock, Plessas outlines how networks facilitate identity construction and spiritual nourishment. [quote edited]
Showing the “divergent realities generated by the use of fossil fuels” worldwide, “Fossil Experience” opens at Berlin’s Prater Galerie. Participating artists include Marjolijn Dijkman , Monira Al Qadiri , and Rachel O’Reilly . Global North and South are represented, with Kat Austen’s This Land is Not Mine Ogoni Cleanup Niger Delta river.
Rick Silva ’s solo exhibition “PEAKING” opens at Oregon Contemporary, Portland, centering on the Brazilian-American artist’s newest 3D animation. In the piece, myriad variations of a floating mountain peak interact with fluctuating graph lines, echoing the geologic deep-time of the region. “As the frequency of the formations escalate, so does the sentiment of ‘peaking,’ in its sublime quantifications, ecstasies, and precipices,” curator Ashley Stull Meyers writes.
“Part of the ambiguity of large climate change sculptures is that they face outward. They position climate change as a simplified standoff between people and the wilderness, without asking which people are most affected and which people are most responsible.”
Load More
To dive deeper into Stream, please
Log-In or become a
HOLO Reader .
Daily discoveries at the nexus of art, science, technology, and culture: Get full access by becoming a HOLO Reader !
Perspective : research, long-form analysis, and critical commentaryEncounters : in-depth artist profiles and studio visits of pioneers and key innovatorsStream : a timeline and news archive with 1,200+ entries and countingEdition : HOLO’s annual collector’s edition that captures the calendar year in printBecome a HOLO Reader
