Exhibitions, Research, Criticism, Commentary
A chronology of 3,585 references across art, science, technology, and culture
“Even the word cypherpunk, I think it’s at least two-thirds gentrified at this point.”
“Trump’s ICE Director wants to run mass deportation ‘like Prime, but with human beings.’”
“Are game developers and science fiction artists merely predicting the wars of the future, or are they actually writing those wars into existence?”
“Creating and sharing knowledge are defining traits of humankind, yet copyright law has grown so restrictive that it can require acts of civil disobedience to ensure that students and scholars have the books they need.”
“Consent is an ongoing, enthusiastic social contract that is mutable. You can agree to something, experience it, and then decide you don’t actually like it, and then you change the terms. But all of this needs to be in discussion in perpetuity.”
“The people in these illustrations, silent, anonymous and dissected, were never asked to teach us,” writes anatomist Lucy E. Hyde, excavating the troubling origins of medical images—from atlases drawn from concentration camp victims to bodies acquired through grave robbing. Hyde argues these foundational images built anatomy’s authority by exploiting the imprisoned, poor, and marginalized; she calls for acknowledgment of these origins and new inclusive anatomical libraries reflecting human diversity across gender, race, and disability.
“The most important thing that Jane did was to narrow the gulf that philosophers, theologians, and others have dug between us and animals.”
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s new videogame and immersive multiplayer experience, THE DELUSION (2025), explores themes of polarization, censorship, and social connection at Serpentine North Gallery, London. The British artist invites visitors into a “post-apocalyptic world broken into closed, dogmatic factions” to rehumanize debate through live community play. As Brathwaite-Shirley’s writes: “Let’s have the difficult conversations.”
“The hard-earned money of fans and the creative endeavours of musicians ultimately funds lethal, dystopian technologies.”
“If artists renounce AI completely, it will be worse than if we engage with it and participate in this crucial stage of its development, but this argument is probably flimsy. How could it be worse?”
”However imperfect, messy, or contradictory, they strive to acknowledge ecological loss, develop a sense of ‘response-ability,’ and are moving forward.”
“For us, feminism is a mandate—to work on the world out there and on ourselves. To outsource this work to AI is to shirk responsibility. ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,’ wrote Gil Scott-Heron; nor will our feminism be automated. And that’s a good thing.”
“Ethical portrayals of the Holocaust are not contingent on the accurate representation of sites themselves,” writes researcher Emily-Rose Baker, critiquing the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial’s new digital replica. Using LiDAR and drones, Picture from Auschwitz delivers a “certified 1:1” Unreal Engine model of the concentration camp for filmmakers. Baker argues the project’s myopic emphasis on technical accuracy implies that existing memorial tools—physical remains, survivor testimonies—are insufficient.
“Papers, Please understood that games are about how the player feels about what they do. Most shit that passes for ‘narrative design’ these days is about telling the player how to feel and what to do and it’s a shame.”
Gareth Harris
Towards the Ethical Art Museum
Sarah Fathallah examines the human cost of Israel’s use of advanced AI tools across occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Their analysis reveals a grim paradox: data captured through mass surveillance feeds the tools that generate kill lists and targets for bombardment. The AI ethics researcher chillingly concludes that, under this technocratic regime, “Palestinians are simultaneously living sources of training data and dead prototypes for system optimization.”
Tech reporter Sheera Frenkel chronicles how Google, OpenAI, Meta, and venture capitalists (VCs) have abandoned their anti-war pledges to embrace the military industrial complex. The transformation includes executives being sworn in as Army lieutenant colonels, companies scrubbing AI weapons bans, and VCs investing $31 billion in defense startups last year. Frenkel notes that a decade ago Big Tech companies “brandished mottos such as ‘connecting the world’ and ‘do no evil.’”
“In a world galloping towards the accommodation of questionable regimes such as those seen in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, individuals and institutions are weighing up their priorities and possibly recalibrating their values.”
“Open calls and design briefs tend to come with demands that directly contradict the ethos of regeneration, forcing artists to navigate constant trade-offs between staying true to their values and meeting professional expectations.”
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