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“Leading p5.js is like tending a garden. The p5 garden is the warm gathering space my younger self imagined, where people are welcomed to meet, chat, learn, and exchange ideas.”
–
Qianqian (Q) Ye , artist, technologist, and new
p5.js co-lead at
Processing Foundation , on nurturing the programming language’s community. “I’d love to invite more gardeners to join the p5.garden, no matter how much gardening knowledge they have right now,” Ye writes on Medium. “Bring your seeds, let’s plant together.”
A celebration of “Swiss Media Art,” HeK Basel opens three solo exhibitions presenting new works by Studer/van den Berg , Maria Guta , and Simone C Niquille , all winners of the 2020 Pax Art Award . From Studer/van den Berg’s fictional worlds created in digital space (Palace for an Entity of Unknown Status , image), to Maria Guta’s reflections on identity and self-expression in social media, to Simone C Niquille’s critical engagement with digital datasets, the three artists “address themes that are as diverse as they are essential,” states HeK.
“It’s the ultimate hyperobject. The hyperobject of our age. It’s literally inside us.”
– Philosopher
Timothy Morton , on whether COVID-19 qualifies as one of the ”vast, unknowable things that are bigger than ourselves” he described in
Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World (2013)
“Museum visitors are invited to touch and feel the code.”
“The closer the research started getting to search and ads, the more resistance there was. Those are the oldest and most entrenched organizations with the most power.”
– A Google employee with experience of the company’s research review process on the rejection of
Timnit Gebru ’s critique of natural language models (“
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots ”) that ultimately led to her firing. Writer
Tom Simonite traces the career of the former Google Ethical AI researcher and pieces together what
really happened when the company forced her out.
Sam Durant’s Untitled (drone) goes up at the High Line Plinth , a space for public art in Manhattan’s iconic rail-line park. Sitting atop a 25-foot pole, the life-sized fibreglass sculpture of a Predator drone appears to hover over 10th Avenue, “reminding the public that drones and surveillance are a tragic and pervasive presence in the daily lives of many living outside—and within—the United States,” says Durant. The piece is the second Plinth commission selected from over 50 submissions in 2016. It will be on view through August 2022.
“We aren’t used to thinking about these systems in terms of the environmental costs. But saying, ‘Hey, Alexa, order me some toilet rolls,’ invokes into being this chain of extraction, which goes all around the planet.”
– AI researcher
Kate Crawford , on the very real materiality of AI. “It is made from natural resources,“ she tells interviewer Zoë Corbyn. “We’ve got a long way to go before this is green technology.”
OUT NOW :
Caroline Sinders
Architectures of Violence
A collection of essays, interviews, and projects by the
artist and researcher exploring how digital platforms inflict harm—from YouTube’s algorithms to Gamergate
“A lot of it deals with the calculations of harm—of researching it, experiencing it, and archiving it. It’s unpacking how we navigate digital pain, trauma, and harassment—from the perspective of those that receive it and those that make it legible to larger power structures.”
– Artist and researcher
Caroline Sinders , on
Architectures of Violence , the book that expands upon her eponymous exhibition at Telematic Media Arts, San Francisco
Investigating notions of play and gamification in contemporary image-making, “How to Win at Photography” opens at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. Featuring 40 artistic positions including Cory Arcangel , Aram Bartholl , John Yuyi (image), Akihiko Taniguchi , and Ai Weiwei , the assemblage of multimedia artworks and vernacular images questions the very function of photography today. “Are we playing with the camera or is the camera playing us? Who is playing along? And can this game be won?”
“Vive le cinéma! Art & Film” opens at Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam. A celebration of the venue’s 75th anniversary, the show assembles work by filmmakers from five continents including Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), and Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Lesotho), and Jia Zhangke (China). Beyond films, it includes several instances of space-as-film —a light–colour study by Netherlands-based video installation duo Leopold Emmen (image), and an architecture-scale film reel that the viewer steps into, by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas .
“Within the carefully tended landscape of the mother of all biennials, the role geopolitical conflict plays in ‘living together’ is generally avoided. It seems it is easier to envision a utopian future than come to terms with the dystopias we inhabit.”
– Writer and curator
Barbara Casavecchia , on the misguided optimism of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, “whose model is still based on a geography of nation states”
Built to give seven of his kinetic light works a permanent home, Christopher Bauder ’s 1,000 square meter exhibition space DARK MATTER opens in Berlin. The career-spanning selection also includes Inverse , a choreography of 169 black spheres set against white light (image) the German artist created specifically for this space. “The artworks which have travelled the world over the last 20 years are now coming together in one exhibition in Berlin,” Bauder writes. “Never before have I had the opportunity to show so many of my installations in one place.”
”The Fed is basically Dogecoining the U.S. dollar. There’s a benefit to scarcity that Dogecoiners don’t get—nor does the Fed.”
– U.S. congressperson
Warren Davidson , speaking at
Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, referring to daily creation of 10,000 new units of the ‘started as a joke but now we seem to be stuck with it’ meme coin
Doge . While ostensibly a partisan dig at Joe Biden’s economic stimulus intended to score points with the assembled crypto boosters, Davidson’s comments underscore the deep strangeness of
any framing of economic scarcity or value at the moment.
A team of researchers led by material scientist Yoel Fink , have developed a digital fiber that can “sense, memorize, learn, and infer.” Moving beyond previous analogue fibres, it encodes discrete bits of information—the prototype (shirt) can store a “767-kilobit full-colour short movie file and a 0.48 megabyte music file.” It also tracks the body temperature of its wearer, and extrapolates what actitivies they are engaged in with high accuracy, bringing us one step closer to future ‘smart’ clothing that monitors health and vital signs.
“Instead of the actual colours of its leaves and flowers, a different palette is used, alluding to techniques of camouflage, as they are deployed today for refuting any recording by tracking systems of algorithmic surveillance.”
– Greek artist
Kyriaki Goni , on the AR portrait of an “invisible plant” she created for
Data Garden (2020).
Micromeria acropolitana , a mint endemic to the Acropolis in Athens, was presumed extinct for nearly a century before its rediscovery in 2006.
Hailed as a “landmark digital media auction” of 28 screen-based works, Sotheby’s opens “Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale.” Working with crypto artist Robert Alice , the American fine art trader prides itself in bringing together NFT trailblazers like Larva Labs and XCOPY with genre stars like Addie Wagenknecht , Casey Reas , Simon Denny , Anna Ridler , and Ryoji Ikeda (A Single Number That Has 10,000,086 Digits , image crop). The 28 works are on display at Sotheby’s galleries in New York City through auction end on June 10.
“What is in and what is out? Is the architecture of a commercial gallery a factor in your reception of its exhibition? Are the protestors in the museum’s lobby? What if the security guards have prevented the protestors from entering, but their chants filter in through a window?”
– The Art-agenda editorial team, in an incisive short text that cites quantum physics and a bronze sculpture of a cat to provoke readers to evaluate their measures of where the reading of an artwork starts and ends
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