1,182 days, 1,855 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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“Almost 70,000 bitcoins stored in the account which, like all bitcoin wallets, is visible to the public, had lain untouched since April 2013. The website was shut down by an FBI raid six months after they were deposited, and they have not moved since.”
– Technology reporter Alex Hearn, on how an idle $1B cache of bitcoins linked to the shuttered darknet market Silk Road has suddenly changed hands. An estimated 450,000 bitcoins ($7B) earned on the marketplace still remain unaccounted for.
Adding to the library of free 3d assets from his Oscar-nominated video game Everything David OReilly releases “Furnishings,” a collection of ~300 models of chairs, tables, lights, and other domestic objects. As with the previous batches “Animals,” “Buildings,” and “Consumables,” OReilly encourages people to use the resources in their own projects. “3D has historically been too expensive and technical for independent artists to explore,” he explains on his website. “I would like this library to help more people to have a better place to start from.”
“The more you study humans, the more you see that we’re machines. The more you study machines, the more you see that they evolve and … seem to mimic an organic evolution to a state which eventually has to be sentient.”
– Late electronic artist
Alan Rath , quoted in a recent obituary
“We have seen many projects by art studios, commercial entities, and researchers that continue on from what Light Barrier started, but this is the first time somebody has correctly referenced our work. We really appreciate it!”
– Elliot Woods,
Kimchi and Chips co-founder, on “RayGraphy: Aerial Volumetric Graphics Rendered Using Lasers in Fog,” a
paper published by the University of Tokyo and Japanese mobile phone operator NTT Docomo during this year’s Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (SUI)
OUT NOW :
Lisa Rovner
Sisters with Transistors
Director Lisa Rovner’s documentary on Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Suzanne Ciani, and other “unsung heroines” of electronic music premieres at Sheffield Doc/Fest.
“It feels so utopian to think about a face filter that doesn’t capture data, an interactive mirror that doesn’t use DARPA-funded body tracking, with no governmental or corporate uses. But I have to believe that we could have that.”
Forensic Architecture launches an interactive archive of police brutality cases documented at Black Lives Matter protests across the United States. In examining thousands of videos shared online, the London-based research agency together with Bellingcat investigators managed to verify and analyse more than 400 attacks on civilians using chemical agents, 300 instances of unjustified arrest, detention, and intimidation, 300 physical assaults by officers, and 250 attacks on journalists, medics, and legal observers.
“Virtual influencers, while fake, have real business potential. They are cheaper to work with than humans in the long term, are 100% controllable, can appear in many places at once, and, most importantly, they never age or die.”
– Christopher Travers, founder of
Virtual Humans , on how business is booming “while Covid locks down human stars”
Mexican artist Julieta Gil wins Gold at the 2020 Lumen Prize for Nuestra Victoria, Our Victory (image), a recent series of photogrammetry reconstructions of the defaced Angel of Independence . The Mexico City landmark had been at the centre of the August 2019 protests against violence towards women. Derived from countless photographs, the work constitutes a digital archive of collective memory, as government forces began boarding up the monument only hours after the demonstrations.
After eight years of “promoting artistic innovation and digital creation” in and around Lyon, France, Mirage Festival calls it quits. “Since the beginning, Mirage Festival has encountered structural difficulties that we are not able to overcome anymore,” states artistic director Jean-Emmanuel Rosnet and team. This year, the festival was hit particularly hard: first by the pandemic—the 2020 edition was cut short by lockdown measures—and then by funding cuts. Mirage leaves a legacy of dynamic interdisciplinary programming that brought international talents such as Sabrina Ratté , Herman Kolgen , Quiet Ensemble , and Quadrature to the region.
Alan Rath
Electronic artist Alan Rath dies from multiple sclerosis related complications in San Francisco. For four decades, Rath constructed playful kinetic devices that caricature human expression evoking both strangeness and delight, and reimagined notions of physiological representation for the age of robotics.
Zentrum für Netzkunst’s “OPENCOIL” opens to “explore the impact of micro-mobility services on urban space” by hacking the decentralised infrastructure of dockless sharing vehicles—scooters—for a “roaming speedshow” across Berlin. 11 artists, among them Aram Bartholl , Rosa Menkman , Jonas Lund , Sarah Grant , !Mediengruppe Bitnik , and JODI , each turned a randomly selected e-scooter into a “digital gallery space” via a coil-powered WiFi microcontroller containing work.
“Thus, during mutual gaze, the robot appears to look at you instead of through you.”
– Engineers at
Disney Research , describing “a system for
lifelike gaze in human-robot interactions using a humanoid Audio-Animatronics bust” that was developed with University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and California Institute of Technology robotics researchers
Kyle McDonald and Jonas Jongejan ’s immersive installation Light Leaks (2013) opens at Wonderspaces, Scottsdale, deploying fifty mirror balls as epicenter of profound spectacle. Using computer vision and volumetric capture of projector pixel positions, the two artists control the balls’ myriad reflections into a meditative choreography. “It’s one of the best versions we’ve ever done,” McDonald writes on Twitter , citing updated tools for better calibration.
A database of myriad cyberfeminism(s)—post-binary, feminist servers, cyborg witches—from 1990–2020, Cyberfeminism Index launches. Facilitated and gathered by Mindy Seu and commissioned by Rhizome , the site offers a deep archive of hundreds of critical gender studies texts, manifestos, and inititiatives. To aid in navigating its voluminous collection, its interface includes curated ‘collections’ by key voices including original cyberfeminists VNS Matrix , bio-hacker Mary Maggic , and the xenofeminist collective Laboria Cuboniks .
OUT NOW :
Lev Manovich
Cultural Analytics
Drawing on more than a decade of research at the intersection of data science and media studies, the
Cultural Analytics Lab founder compiles concepts and methods for computational analysis of the vast quantities of cultural data.
DOSSIER :
“After a big storm or fire, fungi and bacteria move in and liberate resources from the destruction so that new growth might emerge. Following COVID-19, how might artists and other creators be recruited into the process of decomposing the debris … to support new models to emerge?”
– Digital Economies Lab resident Jerrold McGrath, on revitalizing the creative sector
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