1,725 days, 2,676 entries ... Newsticker, link list, time machine: HOLO.mg/stream logs emerging trajectories in art, science, technology, and culture––every day
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Putting ecology-focused works by the Dutch and British artists in conversation, “Dialogue: James Bridle and Jonas Staal“ opens at Berlin’s NOME gallery. Stall ’s “Comrades in Deep Future“ marshals a coalition of “extinct plants, neo-constructivist ammonites, and insurgent octopi“ into “a popular front of earth workers,“ while Bridle ’s “Signs of Life,“ showcases a series of sustainable design ‘tributes’ (image: Windmill 03 (for Walter Segal) , 2022).
Are the aesthetics of an immersive installation intellectual property? According to recently surfaced Los Angeles court documents the answer to that question is maybe . Spurned by similarities between a pair of their works and installations at the Museum of Dream Space (MODS) in Beverly Hills, teamLab are suing for copyright infringement. The prolific Japanese studio claims motifs from “Transcending Boundaries ” (2017) and “Crystal” (2015), have been copied by exhibition designers at the American venue. The case may set an interesting legal precedent, as “streams of light and water cascading down the wall onto the ground” is not exactly ingenious—but immersive installations are big business now. Either a summary judgement will be issued in a few weeks, or the case heads to trial this summer.
“Simulating Gestures,” a show in which Jessica Field questions the visibility of the artist’s hand in digital art, opens at Toronto’s Pari Nadimi Gallery. Field’s explorations of emergence are demonstrated here, by works including a simulation pitting artificial agents against one another (to make aesthetic decisions), and a recent drawing series where AI personas sketch “emotionally infused ideas to communicate” (image: Shame is only heavy when it hurts , 2021).
“We still haven’t seen it yet. Maybe the next internet will be mystical and poetic, be ethereal, offer new ways of connecting, and be less capitalist. We don’t know yet.”
– Greek artist
Angelo Plessas , pushing back against cynicism towards future iterations of the internet. In a (refreshingly optimistic) conversation with
Informer ’s Roddy Schrock, Plessas outlines how networks facilitate identity construction and spiritual nourishment. [quote edited]
Showing the “divergent realities generated by the use of fossil fuels” worldwide, “Fossil Experience” opens at Berlin’s Prater Galerie. Participating artists include Marjolijn Dijkman , Monira Al Qadiri , and Rachel O’Reilly . Global North and South are represented, with Kat Austen’s This Land is Not Mine (2020-) chronicling waning coal production in Western Europe, and Ayọ̀ Akínwándé’s Ogoni Cleanup (image, 2020) resuscitating a Big Oil-ravaged Niger Delta river.
Rick Silva ’s solo exhibition “PEAKING” opens at Oregon Contemporary, Portland, centering on the Brazilian-American artist’s newest 3D animation. In the piece, myriad variations of a floating mountain peak interact with fluctuating graph lines, echoing the geologic deep-time of the region. “As the frequency of the formations escalate, so does the sentiment of ‘peaking,’ in its sublime quantifications, ecstasies, and precipices,” curator Ashley Stull Meyers writes.
“Part of the ambiguity of large climate change sculptures is that they face outward. They position climate change as a simplified standoff between people and the wilderness, without asking which people are most affected and which people are most responsible.”
“Emo Gym,” a show inviting artists to “confront, dissect, and possibly embrace the vulnerability of our times,” opens at Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Contemporary. Participating artists include Chloë Cheuk , Yim Sui Fong , and Eason Tsang ka wai contributing installations and video works. Of note: recent RCA grad Michele Chu ‘s inti-gym (2021, image), a cozy tunnel that offers enclosure and respite for ‘intimacy fitness,’ an affective counterpoint to the physical regime of traditional gyms.
“People are going to be doing their regular work, that’s what’s being recorded and reproduced … every time there’s movement, you know, it’s kind of mirrored in Ireland.”
– Irish artist
Kerry Guinan and Deepa Chikarmane, factory director of Pret Interpret Clothing, about how Guinan’s exhibition “
The Red Thread ” will link six sewing machines in Bangalore, India, with respective counterparts at Dublin’s
The Complex from May 4th to 10th
“Different possibilities are revealed, and others are destroyed. It breaks down the illusion of absolute truth. For me, this is a step forward in understanding ourselves, the world, and our place in it in new plural and relational ways.”
– British scientist-turned-artist
Libby Heaney , on the implications of quantum computing. In her latest immersive installation
Ent- , Heaney explores a “quantum aesthetic” that “reveals the pluralities at the heart of all matter.”
Augmenting “
Variations ,” a major
Vera Molnar retrospective exhibition at the Beall Center for Art + Technology in Irvine, California, art historian
Zsofi Valyi-Nagy unravels the many threads that run through the work of one of generative art’s foundational figures.
“The experience of AI in everyday life renders us default Surrealists, deferring to opaque automatic processes that no longer need be arduously evoked with Ouija-esque analog rituals.”
–
Real Life Editor
Rob Horning , on the parallels between
automatic writing and the artistic exploration of language models like
GPT-3 and
DALL-E . Unimpressed, he characterizes AI-generated prose and images as “estranged from human agency yet nonetheless has some perceivable sense to it that a reader can extract, or project on it.”
Natively Digital 1.3: Generative Art, Sotheby’s third post-NFT auction begins. While earlier editions sprinkled works from talent with contemporary art world bona fides (Addie Wagenknecht , Simon Denny , Casey Reas ) into the mix with figures that emerged during the NFT boom, this auction looks in the rear view mirror. Lots include a 1976 Vera Molnar disorder study , a dot com-era Roman Verostko binary self-portrait , and Charles Csuri’s Sine Curve Man silkscreen (1967, image).
A hotspot in the Tezos NFT ecosystem, generative art marketplace fxhash emerges from beta. Version 1.0 boasts more robust architecture and speedier page updating (latency plagued past popular mints), and the new smart contract allows royalty splits between collaborators and Dutch auctions (which gives collectors better access to the primary market and discourages scalpers). “We’ve applied a global layer of polish across the whole website,” the fxhash team notes.
“Like air, time is both expansive and simultaneously a resource that moves through us. When we embody time, who do we become?”
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Archiving 43
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“Today I’m announcing a new feature for my social platform Minus : no billionaires want to buy it.”
– American software artist
Ben Grosser , plugging his “finite social network” as Elon Musk offers to
buy Twitter for $43 billion.
Minus was commissioned by arebyte Gallery, London, as part of Grosser’s 2021 solo exhibition “
Software for Less ” and grants users no more than 100 posts—
for life .
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