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Patrick Tanguay Parses the “4, 5, 6 Futures Currently Vying for the word Metaverse”

Strategist Patrick Tanguay weighs in on the metaverse, moving beyond stock claims on and critiques of the term. The problem, with ‘the metaverse,’ is it’s whatever you want it to be; VR or videogame developers see problems of interaction and immersion, crypto boosters and the web3 crowd see economic empowerment and decentralization. Here, Tanguay uses the early days of the web to think about open standards and platform capitalism, and his reading is better off for it. Of note: his description of “a full world, at movie quality,” which imagines the blockbuster media property as a new kind of persistent experience. He is spot-on, in stating “the merging of the tools and interim steps are actually much more interesting … and offer much more varied potential than those 4-5-6 futures currently vying for the word metaverse.”

Joana Moll Links Biodiversity Loss and Rising CPU Power

First in a series of new works exploring techno-capitalism and biodiversity loss, Joana Moll’s 4004 launches at TPG, London, and online. In the piece, the Spanish artist draws parallels between microprocessors and insects, “both small but key components of larger systems.” Over the show’s duration, a generative tapestry of bugs and bees is gradually superseded by microprocessors, echoing the dramatic decline seen since the first commercial CPU, the Intel 4004 the work is named after, was introduced in 1971.

July 2021
July 2021
Niklas Roy and Kati Hyyppä ‘Collect Vectors’ on the Streets of Chemnitz

As part of the Dialogfelder initiative, DIY connoisseurs Niklas Roy and Kati Hyyppä take to the streets of Chemnitz, Germany, to engage the public in pop-up machine drawing sessions. As participants wrestle Vektor Kollektor, a crude plotter with a joystick as input device, the drawing’s meta data is collected on a vintage Robotron typewriter. While the Etch A Sketch-style outputs are for the creators to take home, the vector and meta data feed an animated online archive at vektorkollektor.com (image).

Plant Geneticist Ponders the Southern African Welwitschia
“Most plants develop a leaf, and that’s it. This plant can live thousands of years, and it never stops growing. When it does stop growing, it’s dead.”
– Queen Mary University of London plant geneticist Andrew Leitch, on his research into the improbable longevity of the Welwitschia, a plant native to the inhospitable Namib Desert in Southern Africa that lives upwards of 3,000 years
Nairobi Museum Shows Sci-Fi Shorts Featuring “Disobedient Devices”

Part of an eponymous long-term research project, “Disobedient Devices” opens at the Nairobi National Museum, Kenya, “imagining a technological future that draws from local stories, myths, and memories.” Artists Greenman Muleh Mbillo, Joan Otieno, and project instigator Dani Ploeger present three newly completed science-fiction shorts that feature repurposed obsolete devices developed by Nairobi-based artists, technicians, and academics (image: Joan Otieno’s Medusa’s Coil Concept).

Anab Jain Mourns the Impacts of a Rapidly Warming Globe
“Assessing the damage caused by last weekend’s flash floods to Mitigation of Shock in storage. Worst affected are our fake books with titles like How to Cook in Scarcity, Pets As Proteins and Foraging in Reclaimed Flood Zones. I can’t even.”
– Superflux’s Anab Jain, mourning the impacts of a rapidly warming globe. Heavy irony: Mitigation of Shock (2017-19) imagines a London flat adapted to cope with the impacts of climate change in 2050.
“Don’t Be Evil”—University of Queensland Art Museum Reanimates Axed Google Motto for Critical Exploration of Networked Technologies

The University of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum opens “Don’t Be Evil,” the second iteration of the “Conflict in My Outlook” exhibition series curated by Anna Briers. Named after Google’s former corporate motto (insidiously axed in 2015), the show “materialises the invisible power structures beneath the surface of networked technologies” with works by Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman, Simon Denny, Xanthe Dobbie, Forensic Architecture, Kate Geck, Eugenia Lim (image: ON DEMAND, 2019), Suzanne Treister, and many others.

Out Now: Alex Nathanson Tells “A History of Solar Power Art and Design”
OUT NOW:
Alex Nathanson
A History of Solar Power Art and Design
A survey of creative applications of photovoltaic power, including sound art, wearable technology, digital media, and industrial design
Aram Bartholl ‘De-Recognizes’ Arnsberger Faces

Commissioned for the annual Arnsberg Kultursommer festivities, German media artist Aram Bartholl invites the visitors of Arnsberg’s historic city hall to a Hypernormalization photo session. After having their portrait taken and analysed by a custom face recognition software (provided by Tom-Lucas Säger), participants get to chose an emoji, font, and colour to have their face ‘de-recognized.’ The results are then printed on fine art paper for people to take home.

Vellum LA Brings NFTs to LA Art Show, Causes “Sea Change”

Presenting NFTs by Claudia Hart, Auriea Harvey, Holly Herndon, and nine other artists “whose work embraces our inevitable technological immersion,” Vellum LA opens “Sea Change,” an exhibition and online auction at the LA Art Show. According to Vellum LA, who claim to “meaningfully situate the digital and crypto art communities within the context of art history,” the NFTs are presented on collector-grade Luma Canvas displays—a sign of things to come at their soon-to-open NFT gallery space.

Jer Thorp on Using Data as a Substrate
ENCOUNTER:
“I’m interested in using data as a substrate for more abstract visualizations—systems that don’t so much embody the actual data as patterns and trends that might exist hidden within them.”
Canadian data artist Jer Thorp, on his search for insight, expressed through visualization wizardry on screen and interactive sculpture in public space
Jer Thorp Pushes the Limits of Working With (and Living in) Data
ENCOUNTER:
Whether parsing exoplanet candidates, the Okavango Delta, or MoMA’s archives, the Canadian artist has pushed the limits of representing (and living in) data for two decades.
48 U.S. Civil Rights and Advocacy Groups Demand Ban of Corporate Surveillance
“The harms caused by this widespread, unregulated corporate surveillance pose a direct threat to the public at large, especially for Black and brown people most often criminalized using surveillance.”
– A coalition of 48 civil rights and advocacy groups organized by Athena, demanding the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban “corporate use of facial surveillance technology, ban continuous surveillance in places of public accommodation, and stop industry-wide data abuse”
Latest Chapter of Ali Eslami’s “False Mirror” VR Research Opens for (Online) Visitors

Ali Eslami and Mathilde Renault add a new online component to their mixed-reality exhibition “Eclipse” at Tetem, Enschede (NL). Renault’s physical entry point to Eslami’s virtual world opened weeks ago; now remote visitors can book access to “discover the extent of their physicality … [and] interactions with one another.” An offshoot of Eslami’s ongoing VR experiments, this browser-based iteration allows users to inhabit an avian avatar, and interact with more corporeal forms that are only accessible on-site.

A Hack (Briefly) Damaged Confidence in the Alternative, Artist-Driven NFT Marketplace Hic et Nunc
“My idealistic read of Hic et Nunc peaked during the platform’s first hackathon in May, when 150 artists and developers came together to work towards improving the platform. On June 28th, the momentum came to a halt.”
Clara Peh, on how a hack of the open source alt NFT marketplace revealed the vulnerability of its model. “Hic et Nunc is essentially developer Rafael Lima’s passion project,” writes Peh, “and he is assisted by hardworking and generous enthusiasts who share a similar vision.”
Sterling Crispin Considers CGI Window Tributes and NFT Profit Sharing Models

Analysing the “John Karel window phenomenon”—creators minting tributes to the CGI artist’s popular NFT window series—Sterling Crispin considers a hypothetical profit sharing model. “As of June 20th the movement produced 2,329 transactions totalling 5,496.91 Tez in sales,” writes Sterling. In his model, the highest earners would help reward the movement’s instigators. “I think that a network of artists profit sharing could encourage experimentation, and be a more equitable way of fostering emergent online communities.”

Mitchell F. Chan Articulates the Missing Link Between Sol Lewitt and Art Blocks
“Like all our favourite artists on Art Blocks, Sol LeWitt wrote an algorithm that can be followed to create an infinite number of variations on the same artwork. The main difference is that LeWitt’s Wall drawings are written in plain English and executed by a team of gallery installers, rather than written in code and executed by a web browser.”
– Artist Mitchell F. Chan, linking the legacy of conceptual art with blockchain-based generative art
“From Creatures to Creators” Imagines Life *Not* as We Know It

Confronting the posthuman head-on, “From Creatures to Creators” opens at Kunsthaus Hamburg. Collecting works “going beyond the finite, conceiving the superhuman” artists including Ed Fornieles, Mary Maggic, and Tabita Rezaire contribute provocative, unsettling visions of life not as we know it, through installation, video, and VR. Pakui Hardware’s Thrivers (image, 2019), for example, presents glass forms as “porous hosts of life,” that fuse elements of flora and fauna lifeforms into chimeric experiments.

The Trouble of Determining a Reliable Metric of Human Values
“Arguably, one of the most consistent, historically reliable, widely accepted system of ethics in existence belongs to the Catholic Church. You want to base a responsible AI on that?”
– Novelist Stephen Marche, on the impossible task of determining a reliable metric of human values, when “caste and gender are baked into every word.” Where can AI engineers working with natural language models turn to, Marche asks. “Humanities departments? Critical theory? Academic institutions change their values systems all the time.”
Ryoichi Kurokawa Turns Petals Into Point Clouds in Buffalo Daughter’s New Music Video

Directed by digital artist Ryoichi Kurokawa for Buffalo Daughter, the “ET (Densha)” music video premieres on the band’s YouTube channel. Known for his clincial deconstruction of natural forms, here Kurokawa ‘explodes’ flowers into point clouds, which waft and dissipate in sync with the central bass hook and guitar feedback. Founded in 1993, Buffalo Daughter is a key player in Japan’s “cut-and-paste” rock Shibuya-kei movement. “ET (Densha)” is the lead single from their upcoming album We Are The Times.

Jason Fagone Contemplates Love and Loss in the Age of AI
“At first, he was impressed by the software’s ability to mimic the real Jessica Pereira. Within 15 minutes, he found himself confiding in the chatbot. After a few hours, he broke down in tears.”
Chronicle staff writer Jason Fagone, contemplating “love and loss in the age of AI” in a (moving) recount of how one GPT-3 chatbot, created with Project December, helped writer Joshua Barbeau find closure eight years after the death of his fiancé
CGI Ed Atkins Looks Like Everybody and Nobody
“It’s a face I know and don’t know.”
– Critic Jason Farago, on Ed Atkins’ CGI visage in The Worm (2021). Profiling the British artist for his New Museum show, he teases out the themes of melancholy and mortality that run through Atkins’ work. His 3D avatars ”have no names, no back-stories, no motivations,” he writes.
Instagram “Sensitive Content” Filter May Make Challenging Art Invisible
“I think of it as a kind of sanitizing of art, and it will most negatively affect artists who are pushing the envelope.”
– Artist Clarity Haynes, quoted in Valentina Di Liscia’s reporting on Instagram’s new ‘sensitive content‘ filter which (because prudishness) may screen out works by LGBTQIA+ artists, artists of colour, and feminist artists. “Decorative art that is not challenging will be fine,” Haynes wryly notes.
Science Gallery Dublin’s Exhibition-in-a-Box Explores Complex “SYSTEMS”
OUT NOW:
Science Gallery Dublin
SYSTEMS
A COVID-adapted exhibition-in-a-box “untangling the many complex systems, both visible and invisible, that surround us” through the work of artists and researchers like Ingrid Burrington, Vukašin Nedeljković, Julian Oliver and Tega Brain
Why Facebook Will Never Fix Itself
“Facebook’s problems today are not the product of a company that lost its way. Instead they are part of its very design, built atop Zuckerberg’s narrow worldview, and the careless privacy culture he cultivated.”
– Senior editor Karen Hao, in her review of Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s new book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. “Between the lines, the message is loud and clear,” Hao concludes: ”Facebook will never fix itself.”
Kei Kreutler Answers the Question of the Moment: What is a DAO?

Kei Kreutler answers the question of the moment: what is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)? Linking think tanks, libertarians, and MMORPG Guilds, she maps a prehistory of emergent governance, to contextualize (post-crypto) community tokenization. Noteworthy DAOs, both active and defunct get air time, as do tools and protocols; ultimately Kreutler schematizes DAOs as “tokens, teams, and missions” (image), and “compelling environments players want to inhabit, recognizing narratives, aesthetics, and goals held in common.”

Simon Denny Wants You to Become the Ultimate Data Capitalist, Curator Says
“The objective of Extractor for the player is to achieve world domination as the ultimate data capitalist. The work is a fictionalised attempt to find a visual language to articulate complex invisible power structures.”
– Curator Anna Briers, on Simon Denny’s 2019 board game, that “gamifies the dynamics of the data mining industry.” Extractor is a “pivotal work” in the forthcoming “Don’t Be Evil” exhibition Briers curated for the University of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum.
Ryoji Ikeda Creates “Universe Within the Universe”

An ode to the cosmos’ hidden mysteries, Ryoji Ikeda’s The Universe within the Universe opens as part of THE INFINITE, an immersive environment inspired by NASA missions. Created by Felix & Paul Studios and PHI at Montréal’s Arsenal, the 12,500 square-feet XR experience sends visitors on a journey to the International Space Station. Along the way, they encounter Ikeda’s audiovisual installation: a pitch black room with an LED ceiling and mirrored floor, designed to create “the feeling of weightlessness and even vertigo.”

Gijs Gieskes Releases Synth About Printing Money

Gijs Gieskes releases Insolventunclesam, the squelchiest critique of late capitalism ever. Inspired by money printer go BRRR economic stimulus, the Dutch artist created a signal path that models inflation. “The landscape line represents the S&P500, where the stock price goes down and the FED comes to the rescue,” Gieskes writes. He further describes the FED chairman oscillator, three more for household investors, and the ‘ELECT’ button “where the decisions can be influenced.” True to form, the price of each synth sold increases by 2%.

Governments only Spent 2% of Covid-19 Response Funds on Clean Energy Measures
“As of the second quarter of 2021, governments around the world have allocated around USD 380 billion on clean energy measures as part of their economic response to the Covid-19 crisis. This is around 2% of the total fiscal support in response to Covid-19.”
– International Energy Agency (IEA) analysts in their Sustainable Recovery Tracker, in which they estimate CO2 emissions will climb “to record levels in 2023 continuing to rise thereafter”
As Jeff Bezos Enters Orbit, Let’s All Remember Andy Warhol’s Spacefaring Dick Pick

In the wake of Jeff Bezos riding a ‘giant phallus’ to space, art historian Michael Lobel reminds his Twitter followers of The Moon Museum (1969), “a tiny ceramic wafer with images by six artists covertly attached to the Apollo 12 spacecraft and reportedly left on the moon’s surface.” Realised by American sculptor Forrest Myers in collaboration with scientists from Bell Laboratories, the tile includes a sketch by Andy Warhol “that can be interpreted as a penis or a rocket ship.”

Out Now: “Until Proven Safe” by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley
OUT NOW:
Manaugh & Twilley
Until Proven Safe
Journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley explore the history and future of quarantine—from the Black Death to big data
TK Smith Contemplates the Aesthetics and Affect of “The Dirty South”

TK Smith reviews “The Dirty South,” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, for Art in America. Scanning works spanning landscape illustration to a literal manifestation of slab culture, Smith parses the character and affect of the American South. Of note: the discussion of Paul Stephen Benjamin’s Summer Breeze (2018, image), which blends Billie Holiday and Jill Scott song and spoken word with archival footage “creating a second meaning for Holiday’s phrase, juxtaposing the legacy of lynching with the fact of survival and Black joy.”

Edward Snowden: “The Spyware Industry Shouldn’t Exist!”
“Their only products are infection vectors. They’re not security products. They’re not providing any kind of protection, any kind of prophylactic. They don’t make vaccines—the only thing they sell is the virus.”
– NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, on for-profit malware developer NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance company whose business dealings with authoritarian governments recently leaked to the press. “Commercialising vulnerabilities in widely used mobile phone models is an industry that should not exist.”
Jonas Lund Throws Animal Party for Crypto Shareholders

A window into the Jonas Lund Token (JLT) universe, ”On This Day” opens in König Galerie’s virtual showroom on Decentraland. JLT (2018–) is a distributed autonomous artistic practice where shareholders get to invest and participate in the Swedish artist’s career. 50 chairs are reserved for selected JLT shareholders (meetings to be announced!), while 3D animals—JLT collectibles—watch Lund’s avatar reminisce over photo memory tokens on the wall.

Malaysian Authorities Crush 1,069 Bitcoin Mining Rigs With Steamroller

Authorities in the city of Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia seized 1,069 rigs from Bitcoin miners alleged to have stolen $2 million USD worth of electricity. “The electricity theft for mining Bitcoin activities has caused frequent power outages, and in 2021, three houses were razed due to illegal electricity supply connections,” explains Miri police chief ACP Hakemal Hawari. Six individuals were arrested, fined, and jailed in the sting; the police then proceeded to crush the hardware, worth an estimated $1.25 million USD, with a steamroller.

Hito Steyerl: “NFTs Are Like Toxic Masculinity”
“In the art world it was quite shambolic—the worst and most monopolistic actors immediately colonized the space and started extracting labour from precarious workers. For me, NFTs are the equivalent of toxic masculinity as a medium, because they take up way too much attention and use up all the oxygen in the room.”
Hito Steyerl, when asked about NFTs during a STUDIO BONN panel featuring the media artist in conversation with Joseph Vogl and Ville Haimala
Beyond Resolution: Rosa Menkman Gathers “Im/Possible Images” in Munich

Instigated by artist Rosa Menkman and featuring works by Memo Akten, Sophie Dyer & Sasha Engelmann, Susan Schuppli, UCNV, Alan Warburton, and others, “im/possible images” opens at Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich. The exhibition extends out of Menkman’s research into digital image infrastructures and kicks off a two-month summer school exploring the conditions of image making today: “How do resolutions shape images? How has the field of computer simulation expanded the rules and functioning of our imagery? Can one listen to an image?”

For His New Documentary, Director Morgan Neville Created an AI Model of Anthony Bourdain’s Voice
“In a world of computer simulations and deepfakes, a dead man’s voice speaking his own words of despair is hardly the most dystopian application of the technology. But the seamlessness of the effect is eerie. ”
– Writer Helen Rosner, on the computer-generated voice of Anthony Bourdain in the new documentary Roadrunner. “There were three quotes there I wanted his voice for that there were no recordings of,” the film’s director Morgan Neville tells Rosner. So “I created an AI model of his voice.”
$40 USD