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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“At its best, it tapped into creativity and wit that had lain dormant in the population, showcasing talents that didn’t previously exist because there had been no form or shape for them to take. Live snark became an art.”
– Journalist
Jonathan Goldsbie , mourning the death of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. In his extended monologue, Goldsbie celebrates the early days of the microblogging platform and how it changed the nature of discourse, and laments the rot that ensued when Elon Musk took over.
“Hello, Human!” opens at MoCA Taipei, showcasing works by 16 artists and collectives including Morehshin Allahyari , Blast Theory , Mario Klingemann , Daito Manabe , Lev Manovich , onformative , Anna Ridler , and Winnie Soon that anticipate “the moment AI finally breaks through the black box and snarls at humanity.” In Dimension Plus ’ (Keith Lam & Escher Tsai ) post-humanity arcade machine VS AI Street Fighting (2023, image), for example, two AIs compete in endless content generation and reasoning sessions.
“Decoding the Black Box” opens at Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Germany, exposing the corporate surveillance systems that invade the private sphere. 14 artists and collectives including Aram Bartholl (image: Are you human? , 2017), James Bridle , Adam Harvey , Femke Herregraven , Jonas Lund , !Mediengruppe Bitnik , Metahaven , and Mimi Ọnụọha make transparent the capitalist power structures of the internet and virtual image economy with evocative counter-narratives and provocations.
“I was cosplaying masculinity for years, sometimes pretty well frankly, but the suit literally never fit. So that gives you a different way of thinking, like what’s a better fiction? This is not my true self. This is a better fiction that I would so much rather play.”
– Theorist
McKenzie Wark , on the fluidity of gender and identity. “There’s no such thing as a true self,” says Wark, in conversation with
Jordan Kisner about transitioning and its profound impact on her writing practice.
LaTurbo Avedon ’s “Trust Your Technolust” opens at panke.gallery, marking the avatar artist’s first solo exhibition in Berlin. Examining “the wavering promises of virtual worlds” through AR sculptures and projection, Avedon presents past and present works from Club Rothko (2012-), a “virtual nightclub rendered at the end of the metaverse.” Meanwhile, IRL clubbers get to exlore Avedon’s site-specific AR sculpture Sky Queue (2024) while waiting outside of Berlin’s Tresor .
“For me, it encapsulates the ways we’ve come round to performing and selling ourselves online. How we’re urged to almost embody capitalism!”
– transmediale Artistic Director
Nóra Ó Murchú , on this year’s theme “
you’re doing amazing, sweetie .” Named after a Kim Kardashian meme, the 2024 edition of the Berlin-based media arts festival will focus on “the horrors of content,” Ó Murchú reveals. “It’s warm, feels good, and builds community, “ she says, “but by trapping us in eternal viral loops and precarious economic models, it creates toxic engagements and a sense of meaninglessness.”
“Creating a single artwork on a small website at this point is a kind of Land Art. To view it you have to leave the urban centers of the feed and go to some off-grid locale. Nobody is coming to visit, but everyone says they want to.”
– American software artist
Andrew Benson , on the platform consolidation of the internet—and escaping it. “Out there you can have more freedom, the access to raw material is abundant, and it feels better to feel like you made something real,” Benson muses. “But if you aren’t posting pics [on social media], does it even matter?”
OUT NOW :
Georgina Voss
Systems Ultra
Researcher
Voss examines networked technologies, supply chains, and international regulation in a sweeping analysis of complex systems. Ports, air traffic control, software—pertinent case studies offer insights into “scale, time, materiality, deviance, and breakages.”
“Be very wary of profit-driven corporations using the AGI patina of mysticism to market centralized tech always ultimately developed in service of growth.”
– Signal Foundation president and AI Now Institute co-founder
Meredith Whittaker , on Meta
joining the race for artificial
general intelligence (
AGI ). “AGI is a marketing term overlaid with quasi-religious symbolism,” Whittaker warns, reminding her followers that the term AI, too, was coined in 1956 to attract grant money.
“Academics call it the ‘liar’s dividend.’ It means that, because there is so much falseness in the world, it becomes really easy for bad actors to call ‘deepfake!’ on everything.”
A bold step forward for filmmaker Gary Hustwit , Eno premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City (US). Telling the story of fabled music producer Brian Eno with a twist, Hustwit takes the generative approach beloved by his subject to heart and presents a generative documentary—no two screenings are alike. With the assistance of software artist Brendan Dawes , interviews, unreleased material, and archival clips are mixed into a randomized narrative about the producer’s five-decade career.
Carola Bonfili ’s solo exhibition “Second Order Reality” opens at Aksioma, Ljubljana, exploring states of magical thinking and embodied otherness in virtual worlds. Drawing on the writings of Gustave Flaubert and H.G. Wells as well as videogame metaphors, the Italian artist tells the story of primate protagonist M’ling, The Stone Monkey (2022), across CGI video, an immersive VR experience (entitled Level 1, Illusions That We Should Have, But Don’t ), and concrete sculptures.
“I like to think of the creators of the barcode as the Oppenheimers of capitalism.”
–
Atlantic editor
Saahil Desai , waxing poetic about the ubiquitous zebra-striped
data format that powers retail. “The era of big-box stores and megastores and Costcos the size of medieval European towns is only possible because of the barcode,” he concludes. [quote edited]
OUT NOW :
Kyle Chayka
Filterworld
Drawing on years of reporting,
New Yorker staff writer
Chayka broadly surveys how algorithms shape culture and perception, exploring how they are simultaneously “engineered for seamless consumption” and “a source of pervasive anxiety.”
“Rather than a tool for dominance, akin to practices like data-driven racial profiling by law enforcement, it serves as a repository for quotations from diverse voices, generating a collective feminist intelligence rooted in diversity.”
– Media scholar
Ariana Dongus , describing
#SOPHYGRAY , a feminist chatbot created by German artist
Nadja Verena Marcin . Noting how the bot “gradually reveals and challenges female stereotypes,” Dongus situates it in a broader history of erased labour and gendered computing.
“It is really disheartening to watch artists I respect run to do ordinals. Can’t help but remember the rough convos we had around energy use and carbon load of ETH.”
– Digital artist and prolific collector
Chris Coleman , on fellow creators “loading art onto the most wasteful crypto in existence,” Bitcoin, in the wake of Sotheby’s “
Natively Digital: An Ordinals Curated Sale .” Rather than following the money, Coleman reaffirms his commitment to ‘green NFTs’ (on energy-efficient proof-of-stake chains) and takes a stand: “I don’t want to judge, but no way will I buy or sell on that chain.”
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