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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Inspired by children’s book illustrations, Sciuridaes is CMU animation student Lumi Barron’s ingenious use of high-speed photography to capture “anthropomorphic videos of little beasts in my backyard.” An final project for Golan Levin and Nica Ross’s Experimental Capture course, Barron spent eight weeks training local squirrels to eat at a miniature dinette.
“This is a particularly dangerous message to send during a pandemic, when chilling worker speech about health and safety practices could literally be a matter of life and death.”
– New York Attorney General Letitia James, outlining how Amazon may have broken state whistleblower laws for firing a warehouse worker who organized a protest at a Staten Island distribution hub
“By channelling patterns of fluid single-cell forms and the spiritual presence of artificial intelligence, she opens up the possibility of an encounter with other beings who have been ‘in the room’ all along: our cohabitants, symbiotes and other ghosts in the machine.”
–
Gary Zhexi Zhang , on the work of Finish artist
Jenna Sutela who “incorporates shapeshifting slime molds, algae blooms, and machine learning algorithms into her practice to foster a new understanding of the world”
In celebration of the 50th Earth Day , The Atlantic compiles 31 iconic photographs, “each a glimpse into some aspect of our environment, how it affects and sustains us, and how we affect it.” Included are pictures taken during the inaugural Earth Day protests in 1970: “Conceived as a national teach-in, patterned after the Vietnam teach-ins held on hundreds of campuses in the Spring of 1965, Earth Day is a nationwide demonstration of concern for the planet and all forms of life—not only man—who live on it.”
Florian Schneider
Pioneering electronic musician Florian Schneider dies in Düsseldorf, after a battle with cancer. Along with Ralf Hütter, Schneider (and later, a rotating cast of collaborators) formed Kraftwerk, which created the template for electronic music sound design, groove, and mythologizing the future in the 1970-80s. Impacting the sound of everyone from Afrika Bambaataa to LCD Soundsystem, Schneider’s immense influence endures.
“Conway’s LIFE changed mine, I think Conway himself thought it rather trivial, but for a nonmathematician like me, it was a shock to the intuition, a shattering revelation—to watch glorious complexity emerging from staid simplicity.”
– Musician Brian Eno, describing the sizeable impression John Conway’s Game of Life made on him
John Conway
Mathematician John Conway dies from COVID-19 related complications at a New Jersey nursing home. Known for his prolific contributions across number theory, game theory, probability theory, topology, and algebra, his Turing complete
Game of Life endures as a foundational inspiration in both artifical life and computational art.
“I still think COVID-19 sounds like it’s a poorly-supported mid-2000s video codec.”
– Creative coder and Twitch streamer LunaSorcery, tweeting out what we’re all thinking
Operating under the rubric “connect online like it’s 1999,” this Faith Holland, Lorna Mills, and Wade Wallerstein-curated exhibition asks a big existential question of net art in the age of COVID-19: “Well Now WTF?” While it may not provide tangible answers, its 80-plus contributing artists (organizing in sardonically titled rooms including “stay home and masturbate” and “pants optional”) offer community, irreverence, and nostalgia—joyful respite during a moment of unprecedented isolation.
While the Cornavirus has brought the global economy to a halt, it’s a boon for some researchers. Due to the massive drop in transportation network use, scientists are able to monitor seismic and volcanic activity with far greater accuracy than usual.
Shanghai’s Chronus Art Center (CAC) launches “We=Link: Ten Easy Pieces,” a special online exhibition that responds to the unfolding global health crisis with new commissions by aaajiao , Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne (image: Get Well Soon! ), JODI , Weiyi Li , Slime Engine , Ye Funa , Evan Roth and others. “We=Link” is co-commissioned by Rhizome and Art Center Nabi , and co-hosted by 12 international institutions including Arts at CERN , HeK , iMAL , LABORATORIA , and V2_ .
“These messages express care, well wishes, sympathy and generosity in the face of personal adversity and systemic failure. This is an archive of mutual aid in response to a ruthless for-profit health system. It is an archive that should not exist.”
–
Tega Brain and
Sam Lavigne , on gofundme.com medical fundraisers that inspired their poignant online artwork
Get Well Soon! (2020)
Olia Lialina ’s solo exhibition “Best Effort Network” opens (online) at arebyte, London, showcasing new and re-made works including Summer (2013) and the titular Best Effort Network (2015/2020) in which the Russian net art pioneer positions browsers, hyperlinks, and GIFs as spaces for art. Her latest work, Hosted (2020), distributes a 70-frame animation across 70 different hosting services, creating a fully networked flip book experience.
“The egg is a huge cell, and these proteins have to work together to find its center, so that the cell knows where to divide and fold. Without these proteins making waves, there would be no cell division.”
– MIT physicist
Nikta Fakhri , on the quantum fluid-like wave pattern that drives the growth of organisms
OUT NOW :
Wendy Liu
Abolish Silicon Valley
Former Silicon Valley insider
Wendy Liu mounts a blistering criqitue of ‘big tech,’ arguing that corporate interests have no business monopolizing technologies that could be used for the public good.
Known as “2020 CD3” and only discovered in
“When I was twenty, I made friends with an alien.”
– Data artist
Jer Thorp , reminiscing about his encounters with a giant Pacific octopus while working “a minimum wage dream job” at the Vancouver Aquarium early in his career
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