1,369 days, 2,175 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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“It shows us how the software structures of social media change not only what we read but how we read. As an aesthetic reductive interface experience, it provides renewed opportunities for agency within the systems we all find ourselves stuck inside.”
–
Ben Grosser , reflecting on “Software, Interface, and
The Endless Doomscroller .” In the paper, the American software artist discusses reactions to his 2020
internet artwork and “reduction as a strategy that shows rather than hides.”
“The economy didn’t burn down, energy prices didn’t soar, the GDP didn’t drop, and unemployment didn’t spike. The economists making these estimates are the true alarmists in the debate.”
– Climate scientist
Andrew Dessler , rejecting cost-benefit analyses when it comes to climate action. The first step towards saving the planet, writes Dessler, is ignoring “economists who have relentlessly downplayed the seriousness of climate change and overstated the costs of solving it.”
Kimchi and Chips co-founder Elliot Woods shares stunning simulation views of Another Moon NEW NOW Festival in Essen, Germany. Created in the 3D software Blender, the technical visualization shows how the architecture of 40 solar-powered laser projectors rendered a perfect sphere into the nights sky—a “second moon” visible from up to 1km away.
“This experiment could, therefore, confirm both information conjectures and the existence of information as the fifth state of matter in the universe.”
–
Melvin M. Vopson , physicist and University of Portsmouth senior lecturer, proposing an experimental protocol for measuring the information content of elementary particles. The method, Vopson claims, validates his 2019
theory that “a bit of information is not only physical, but has a finite and quantifiable mass” with profound implications for the digital data we create on a planetary scale.
Part of a series on AI in everyday life, Steve Lohr explores the quest to end chatbot’s “spiral of misery.” The technology journalist notes that despite the fact that players including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle saw decent growth in their chatbot markets this year, frustrating user experiences—a bot can’t discern or misinterprets commands—continue to mar interactions with AI. Surprisingly, training customer service chatbots is the frontline of making AI more competent, due to the vast number of call centre recordings and text interactions available to data scientists—systems like GM Financial’s chatbot Nanci are moving towards 75 percent query resolution. And where will this newfound efficiency be deployed? Healthcare. AI can “help us move from reactive sick care to proactive, predictive and personalized care,” says Anthem.ai ’s Rajeev Ronanki.
Ełexiìtǫ ; Ehts’ǫǫ̀ / Connected ; Apart From Each Other , Casey Koycan ’s installation about cultural transmission and memory, opens at Toronto’s InterAccess. In the work, speaker-containing logs are suspended from trusses, and pipe a mix of Dene drum, electronic instruments, guitar, and chanting into the gallery. “The resonance of sound and song from within the logs emphasize the steps towards finding the connection to culture,” writes the Tlicho Dene artist.
Exposing the deep links between technocapitalism and ecocide, Joana Moll ’s newest installation Inanimate Species
Findings from “Beyond Matter: Cultural Heritage on the Verge of Virtual Reality,” a project by ZKM , Centre Pompidou , Museum Ludwig , and others, are posted. Hatched during the pandemic, they include research on exhibition web design and commissioning ‘born digital’ content. The initiative also fostered digitization experiments, including a playful AR version of Komar & Melamid ’s Project For Lenin’s Statue (1993).
“The Terraforming was convened on behalf of new foundations for a viable planetary future. This takes on critical urgency when that future is put in direct peril. To ensure that the future is not canceled is a fight we cannot lose.”
–
Benjamin Bratton , theorist and Strelka Institute
program director , on the Moscow non-profit suspending activities in protest of Russian aggression. “We join the urgent calls for peace and for refusal and resistance to the present violence,” writes Bratton.
Charles Csuri
American artist and “father of digital art and computer animation” (Smithsonian)
Charles ‘Chuck’ Csuri dies aged 99 in Florida. Active since the 1960s, the widely recognized pioneer and educator’s legacy includes establishing several graphics research centers and founding one of the first CGI production companies.
The final chapter in Meriem Bennani ’s CGI film trilogy Life on the CAPS debuts at the University of Chicago’s The Renaissance Society as a video installation. A co-commission with Nottingham Contemporary, UK, the film returns to the series’ dystopian island world the artist based on research into island societies, biotechnology, and vernacular music. Protagonist Kamal gets a new body to fight for CAPS’ liberation—a cause impossible to solve within a single lifetime.
“I think the obsession with immutability and stable identity, which is being imposed on commercial blockchain projects, is very un-cyberfeminist and it’s very un-Satoshi Nakamoto. So that’s definitely a site of a struggle.”
– Blockchain artist
Rhea Myers , on tensions between ‘forever’ ledgers and fluid trans identities, during a conversation with
McKenzie Wark
“The way you position your antenna and even your body are recorded in the image as signal and noise. This means each image is unique to the person and place that created it.”
–
Open Weather ’s Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer, on setting up your own “DIY satellite ground station.” Using a basic V-shaped antenna, a dongle, and free software, anyone can receive images from the public data broadcast of the orbiting
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites, they write.
“KINETISMUS: 100 Years of Electricity in Art,” Kunsthalle Praha’s inaugural exhibition opens. A multi-generational affair, its scope spans Bauhaus to teamLab, bundling work as computer art, film, cybernetics, and kinetic art. Cleverly, 20th century pioneers like Vladimir Bonačić (image: Random 63 , 1969), László Moholy-Nagy , and Lillian F. Schwartz are matched up with contemporaries including Refik Anadol , Shilpa Gupta , and Olafur Eliasson .
“In a way, a peatland is less a land than a memory of what has existed on it—where life is not lost but preserved in muddy murk.”
– Science and health journalist
Sabrina Imbler , ruminating on
peatlands , a long misunderstood ecosystem. Beyond sharing anecdotes about peat’s ability to preserve ancient cheese and corpses, they outline the increasing recognition that peatlands—occupying only 3% of the earth’s landmass—are nature’s (near) perfect carbon sink.
“Nature × Humanity,” a celebration of Oxman Architects ’ biomorphic forms, opens at SFMOMA. Focused on the pressing question “what is the role of an architect in the age of climate change?,” Neri Oxman and collaborators present recent work exploring new materials and manufacturing techniques. Featured projects include a malformed chaise lounge and the Vespers Model for Gemini Cinema , 2021) and city-scale proposals.
“Sadly, I report that 51 Lifeforms have died.”
– Software artist
Sarah Friend , announcing the current death toll of her NFT-based entities. Hatched on the Polygon blockchain on Nov 14, 2021, Friend’s
Lifeforms only survive—and thrive—when passed on to another caretaker within 90 days. “A lifeform that has died will no longer appear in wallets, is not transferable, and cannot be brought back to life in any way,” states the project website.
“Oceanic Thinking,” featuring Monira Al Qadiri , Sancintya Mohini Simpson , SUPERFLEX (image: Dive-In Blue Assembly project (which connects marine scientists and artists, as part of an UN initiative ), the show invites viewers to “think together with these liquid, vast, biodiverse, and non-binary spaces to speculate our collective future.”
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