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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Writer Lucy Ives delves into a 1960-70s project by German curator Johannes Cladders to ‘publish’ limited-edition boxes (of objects and ephemera). Instead of the usual staid catalogue essays that accompany shows, these kassettenkataloge expanded exhibitions by Bernd & Hilla Becher , Jasper Johns , and an emerging Joseph Beuys (image, 1967). Prompted by a new monograph on Cladder’s venture, Ives apraises the initiative as democratization, experimental publishing, and relative to the curator’s driving “anti-museum” mandate.
“I was definitely really fascinated with K-pop and its media fandom, especially BTS and ARMY, as an open interpretive framework of visual content and meaning, and also as a model of organizing for curation that was grounded in generosity and care.”
– Curator
Rea McNamara , on how the fact
BTS fandom (aka ARMY) is bolstered by the curious combination of print ephemera and online community dynamics inspired her curatorial approach for “
dis-ease ,” Vector Festival’s flagship exhibition
OUT NOW :
Jacob Gaboury
Image Objects
A prehistory of computer graphics told through examinations of five technical objects: an algorithm, interface, object standard, programming paradigm, and hardware platform
As part of its research into early cybernetics, architecture, and 1960s socialism, Berlin’s Zentrum für Netzkunst looks into Czechoslovakia’s 1967 plans for a “happy city.” Run by computers and featuring an underground delivery system, Etarea was a never-realized vision for a 350,000-strong community near Prague. “Its goal was a more balanced way of life through cybernetics and automation,” writes urbanist Maroš Krivý . “It should provide a sense of home and belonging, otherwise lost in the rapidly transforming socialist society.”
“There is one life and we take everything from it, our business does not harm individuals and is aimed only at companies—and companies always have the ability to pay funds to restore their data.”
– Anonymous representative from the ransomware group BlackMatter, reminding the public that hacking and holding corporate data for ransom is a victimless crime
“Moving Castles: Modular and Portable Multiplayer Miniverses,” a whitepaper by the Trust Berlin hive mind, is published. Activating the chasm between commercial platforms and dark forests and the cozyweb (semi-private enclaves), moving castles are “an organizational metaphor and real-time media type” that are collective, portable, modular, and interoperable. The authors argue convincingly for portable communities (growth without getting trapped on specific platforms), and outline related experiments in game mechanics and governance.
Strategist Patrick Tanguay weighs in on the metaverse , moving beyond stock claims on and critiques of the term. The problem, with ‘the metaverse,’ is it’s whatever you want it to be; VR or videogame developers see problems of interaction and immersion, crypto boosters and the web3 crowd see economic empowerment and decentralization. Here, Tanguay uses the early days of the web to think about open standards and platform capitalism, and his reading is better off for it. Of note: his description of “a full world, at movie quality,” which imagines the blockbuster media property as a new kind of persistent experience. He is spot-on, in stating “the merging of the tools and interim steps are actually much more interesting … and offer much more varied potential than those 4-5-6 futures currently vying for the word metaverse.”
First in a series of new works exploring techno-capitalism and biodiversity loss, Joana Moll ’s 4004 launches at TPG, London, and online . In the piece, the Spanish artist draws parallels between microprocessors and insects, “both small but key components of larger systems.” Over the show’s duration, a generative tapestry of bugs and bees is gradually superseded by microprocessors, echoing the dramatic decline seen since the first commercial CPU, the Intel 4004 the work is named after, was introduced in 1971.
As part of the Dialogfelder initiative, DIY connoisseurs Niklas Roy and Kati Hyyppä take to the streets of Chemnitz, Germany, to engage the public in pop-up machine drawing sessions. As participants wrestle Vektor Kollektor , a crude plotter with a joystick as input device, the drawing’s meta data is collected on a vintage Robotron typewriter. While the Etch A Sketch -style outputs are for the creators to take home, the vector and meta data feed an animated online archive at vektorkollektor.com (image).
“Most plants develop a leaf, and that’s it. This plant can live thousands of years, and it never stops growing. When it does stop growing, it’s dead.”
– Queen Mary University of London plant geneticist
Andrew Leitch , on his research into the improbable longevity of the
Welwitschia , a plant native to the inhospitable Namib Desert in Southern Africa that lives upwards of 3,000 years
Part of an eponymous long-term research project , “Disobedient Devices” opens at the Nairobi National Museum , Kenya, “imagining a technological future that draws from local stories, myths, and memories.” Artists Greenman Muleh Mbillo, Joan Otieno , and project instigator Dani Ploeger present three newly completed science-fiction shorts that feature repurposed obsolete devices developed by Nairobi-based artists, technicians, and academics (image: Joan Otieno’s Medusa’s Coil Concept
“Assessing the damage caused by last weekend’s flash floods to Mitigation of Shock in storage. Worst affected are our fake books with titles like How to Cook in Scarcity , Pets As Proteins and Foraging in Reclaimed Flood Zones . I can’t even.”
– Superflux’s
Anab Jain , mourning the impacts of a rapidly warming globe. Heavy irony:
Mitigation of Shock (2017-19) imagines a London flat adapted to cope with the impacts of climate change in 2050.
The University of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum opens “Don’t Be Evil,” the second iteration of the “Conflict in My Outlook” exhibition series curated by Anna Briers . Named after Google’s former corporate motto (insidiously axed in 2015), the show “materialises the invisible power structures beneath the surface of networked technologies” with works by Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman , Simon Denny , Xanthe Dobbie , Forensic Architecture , Kate Geck , Eugenia Lim (image: ON DEMAND , 2019), Suzanne Treister , and many others.
OUT NOW :
Alex Nathanson
A History of Solar Power Art and Design
A survey of creative applications of photovoltaic power, including sound art, wearable technology, digital media, and industrial design
Commissioned for the annual Arnsberg Kultursommer festivities, German media artist Aram Bartholl invites the visitors of Arnsberg’s historic city hall to a Hypernormalization photo session. After having their portrait taken and analysed by a custom face recognition software (provided by Tom-Lucas Säger ), participants get to chose an emoji, font, and colour to have their face ‘de-recognized.’ The results are then printed on fine art paper for people to take home.
Presenting NFTs by Claudia Hart , Auriea Harvey , Holly Herndon , and nine other artists “whose work embraces our inevitable technological immersion,” Vellum LA opens “Sea Change,” an exhibition and online auction at the LA Art Show . According to Vellum LA, who claim to “meaningfully situate the digital and crypto art communities within the context of art history,” the NFTs are presented on collector-grade Luma Canvas displays—a sign of things to come at their soon-to-open NFT gallery space.
ENCOUNTER :
“I’m interested in using data as a substrate for more abstract visualizations—systems that don’t so much embody the actual data as patterns and trends that might exist hidden within them.”
Canadian data artist
Jer Thorp , on his search for insight, expressed through visualization wizardry on screen and interactive sculpture in public space
ENCOUNTER :
Whether parsing exoplanet candidates, the Okavango Delta, or MoMA’s archives, the Canadian artist has pushed the limits of representing (and living in) data for two decades.
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