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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Hundred Rabbits reveals uxn, an 8-bit virtual computer and new forever home of their eccentric software; a (truly) back to basics approach, it shifts from dependency to “longtermism.” Building on work with 6502 assembly (of NES fame), uxn—new tools built by the duo—is lightweight enough to run on NintendoDS or Rasperry Pi. “Most software is designed to run on disposable electronics and near impossible to maintain, we decided to not participate in this race to the bottom,” they summarize.
DOSSIER :
“Historians of hegemonic U.S. ideologies, from Frederick Douglass to Cedric Robinson, can help us see how the growth imperative is bolstered by racialized theories of human evolution, of capitalism as economy, and of imperialism.”
– Environmental anthropologist
Valerie Olson , on the origins of modern economic dogma and the alternative imaginaries it will take to dislodge them
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An extensive survey of how AI and machine learning are changing art, design, and society at large, featuring the work of
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“Sadly, Christie’s missed the huge opportunity to get this right . However one feels about NFTs, Warhol’s Amiga images are a unique discovery. In their haste to take advantage of the NFT hype, they neglected to do the basic research that these works deserved.”
–
Golan Levin , chiding the auction house for ignoring the “material conditions” of Andy Warhol’s 1985 Amiga works by
selling “altered, 2nd generation near-copies” as NFTs
Bringing together artists Sidsel Meineche Hansen , Rachel Rose , and Jisun Kim , “Host Modded” opens at Seoul’s Art Sonje Center. The trio draw on an eclectic mix of source material including a 3D model of Keanu Reeves (Hansen), Philip Johnson’s iconic Glass House (Rose), and AIBO the robotic dog (Kim) while exploring notions of space and embodiement. In aggregate, the works ask “whether advancements in technology have modded us into people who perceive in disparate ways,” writes curator Hyo Gyoung Jeon.
“I wish people knew that I am not just a random ice ball. I am actually a beautiful planet.”
– Pluto, articulating mild insecurities as formulated by Language Model for Dialogue Applications (
LaMDA ), Google’s new conversation AI, which spoke ‘as’ the dwarf planet during a public demo
Satellite imagery of Gaza is conspicuously low quality compared to other dense cities. For the BBC, Christopher Giles and Jack Goodman detail why this lack of hi-res up-to-date images matters, and how the blurry state of Google and Apple’s satellite photography impedes journalists and human rights activists from keeping tabs on Israeli violence against architecture and infrastructure. “I see no reason why commercial imagery of this area should continue to be deliberately degraded,” comments investigator Nick Waters.
“Light festivals have become popular venues for promoting light art, but in most cases the audience is being misled. Light shows don’t obtain aesthetic, intellectual, or cultural value simply because the tag ‘art’ is assigned to them!”
“The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance” opens at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center. Curators Vincenzo de Bellis and Jadine Collingwood mine the gap between ”still life and the living picture” through works by 60 artists active over a half century—from Joan Jonas to Jordan Wolfson . The strangeness of Haegue Yang ’s Sonic Intermediates (2020, image) captures the lines blurred within the show—interactive, ‘viewers’ turn its eccentric forms, sounding metallic tones and textures.
Marking the 37th birthday of Mark Zuckerberg, The Wrong kicks off a four-week long 24/7 stream of Ben Grosser ’s ORDER OF MAGNITUDE (2019), a 47-minute supercut of every time the Facebook CEO said the words “more,” “grow,” or metrics such as “one billion” between 2004 and 2019. The piece premiered as part of arebyte On Screen and “acts as a lens on what Mark cares about, how he thinks, and what he hopes to attain.” Now you can now subject yourself to 750 minutes of it—it’s “more more than ever before.”
“I really don’t know what’s behind these videos and reports, and I relish that. In this case, that is my bias: I enjoy the spaciousness of mystery.”
– Journalist
Ezra Klein , on the recent wave of declassified videos showing unidentified flying objects that senior military officials admit they can’t explain. “Even if you think all discussion of aliens is ridiculous, it’s fun to let the mind roam over the implications.”
“To consider the history of computing through the lens of computer pain is to center bodies, users, and actions over and above hardware, software, and inventors.”
– Scholar
Laine Nooney , following the “tide of bodily dysfunction that none of us opted into” all the way to the beginning of the information age. “That pain in your neck, the numbness in your fingers, has a history far more widespread and impactful than any individual computer or computing innovator.”
Sarah Friend launches Off , an NFT project that is artist edition, artwork, and multiplayer game all at once. 255 collectibles, each the exact pixel dimension of various computer, smartphone, and tablet screens, contain both a public and a secret image. Hidden across all secret images is an encrypted essay and its key. With a majority of key shards required to decrypt the hidden sentences, the essay is revealed only if enough collectors are willing to share their images. “Will you choose to cooperate or defect?”
DOSSIER :
“That would be the one thing I’d love to leave the audience with: this idea that to be a true anticapitalist you appropriate the means of production. That’s what I’ve always pursued—and queer it, if you can.”
Songs of the Humpback Whale e-flux , Alaina Claire Feldman offers a definitive history—delving into the album’s cold war origins (surveillance for Russian submarines) and its artifice (assembled in an editing suite). Framing whales as “barometers of the traffic and health of our oceans,” she describes the “minor listening” we do, in reconstructing the ocean’s soundscape for human consumption.
DOSSIER :
“What if, instead of focusing on production capacity and economic growth, we started to take attempts to measure internal transformation more seriously? One result might be that more countries adopt universal healthcare, free education, and a higher minimum wage.”
– Writer and critic
Chloe Stead , challenging our obsession with
external growth and the notion that happiness can be measured in GDP
A trail of early and recent cryptoart laid out by curator Kenny Schachter , “Breadcrumbs: Art in the Age of NFTism” opens at Cologne’s Galerie Nagel Draxler. Works by 16 artists including Rhea Myers , Kevin Abosch , Anna Ridler , and Sarah Friend are presented in an eccentric installation—photos, paintings, objects, and screens are augmented with written commentary—and soon as NFTs. “The show will put to rest two demonstrably false assumptions: that this is a fad, and/or not art,” writes Schachter.
“Nakajima said he doesn’t know how long he’ll keep Soya alive. But he said he’s grateful for the way she helped him feel: carefree, adventurous, seen.”
– Reporters
Drew Harwell and Shiori Okazaki, about 50-year-old Japanese man Yasuo Nakajima, who transformed himself into the young female biker
Soya no Sohi using FaceApp. When Nakajima came clean in March, his myriad Twitter followers liked him even more.
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