Chris Burden, Untitled, 1974 – Lithograph with hand-colored appliqué, ed. 50
(presumably a note from his partner asking him NOT to nail himself to that Volkswagen).
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Uncanny Robot Podcast
Absurd AI-generated stories read by humans.
Photography and AI
“Apple’s newest smartphone models use machine learning to make every image look professionally taken. That doesn’t mean the photos are good.”
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Open-source intelligence
“Under the pseudonym Intel Crab, University of Alabama sophomore Justin Peden has become an unlikely source of information about the unfolding Ukraine-Russia war. From his dorm room, the 20-year-old sifts through satellite images, TikTok videos, and security feeds, sharing findings like troop movements and aircraft models with more than 220,000 followers on Twitter. Peden said that his posts have reached 20 million people and his follower count has increased by over 50,000 people over the past month, according to his Twitter analytics.
Today, Peden is one of the most prominent open-source intelligence (OSINT) figures on Twitter”.
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Web Tapestries
Eva Ostrowska (b.1989) is a French visual artist whose mixed media work offers critiques of social dynamics and romantic relationships using a raw and unapologetic combination of humour, sarcasm, and irony. Ostrowska provides a commentary on love and relationships in the digital era, the dissonance of which is made even more impactful through the use of ancient mediums such as weaving and knitting to depict modern digital realities like the text message.
When Guys Turn 20
For the past several years, artist Joshua Citarella has targeted his research-based practice on the political behaviors of the young and very online. Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman has similarly used his documentary practice to investigate emergent political modes like Seasteading. Together in When Guys Turn 20, they explore how users across the political spectrum deploy memetic tactics on social media, as well as how the rhetoric and reality of Silicon Valley diverge.
Cycling through a variety of locales and roles (teacher, Twitch streamer, prisoner, Sith Lord), Citarella narrates online political methods and mechanisms of propaganda. From MMORPGs as a proof-case for socialism to the tricks of meme extremists to the problems of Big Tech, When Guys Turn 20 offers a behind-the-servers glimpse into various expressions of platform capitalism.
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Karaoke Torii
Karaoke Torii (2017), by Benoit Maubrey
300 recycled loudspeakers, Bluetooth receivers, microphone, line in, 1 amplifier. A 4-channel speaker system allows the public to express themselves directly via a microphone, a line in or their smart phones and wireless technology.
Commissioned by Kamiyama Artist Residency Program (KAIR) , Japan
12′ x 15′ x 2′ – Also commissioned by the Kobe Biennale 2015
Art belongs in a frame
You can ramble about “newness” in art as long as you want, but in the end everything ends up in a frame, over a couch (or an armchair).
Life on the CAPS
Life on the CAPS is a film trilogy by artist Meriem Bennani. It is set on a fictional island where American troopers have exiled immigrants who attempted to enter America via teleportation. In the world of the CAPS, teleportation has replaced air travel, and displaced populations utilize this portal to cross oceans and borders. Layering live action footage and computer-generated animation, Bennani intuitively adapts editing techniques that evoke documentary film, science-fiction, phone footage, music videos, and reality TV.
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A Supercut of Supercuts
A video essay by Max Tohline.
“Three years in the making, this feature-length pop-academic investigation of the SUPERCUT asks where supercuts came from, how they hold our attention, and why they became so popular when they did. Tracing back the genetic lines of experimental film, fan remix, documentary, news, and more, this video essay uncovers the roots of the supercut well before YouTube: back in the 1920s and beyond. These multiple interlocking genealogies reveal that the supercut isn’t just a new form of compilation editing; rather, it’s a new way of thinking expressed by a mode of editing. In fact, the supercut is only a small part of a much larger story about a culture that traded one paradigm of knowledge and power, that of the archive, for a new one: the database.”
Suicide Solution
While I was researching for a lesson, I bumped into this classic work of game art by Brody Condon. I remember seeing it at the time, but then forgot about it. Suicide Solution (2004) is a compilation of suicide scenes from various first and third-person video games.
Fred Turner Keynote: From Counterculture to Cyberculture
The Whole Earth – California as Dialectic Image. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Keynote by Fred Turner (21.6.2013) – www.hkw.de
The computer is like a playground of the absurd
“The computer became more like a playground of the absurd. I wanted to play and have a sense of fun. This offered me the possibility of accident to discover the art. It’s still my best prospect of creating something that has the feeling and aura of humanity.”
Charles Csuri, pioneer of computer art and computer graphics, has passed away at age 99.
Dancing in front of the bathroom mirror
Remember the guy skating and drinking juice on TikTok in 2020? Please meet the new TikTok “vibe setter”: Jamie Big Sorrel Horse, aka jamie32bsh. The remixes are pouring and they are pure internet magic.
Sid Meier doesn’t like in-game monetization
Speaking to the BBC on the 30th anniversary of its release, the brains behind Civilisation is warning the games industry to remember why people play in the first place.
“The real challenge and the real opportunity is keeping our focus on gameplay,” says American developer Sid Meier. “That is what is unique, special and appealing about games as a form of entertainment. When we forget that, and decide it’s monetisation or other things that are not gameplay-focused, when we start to forget about making great games and start thinking about games as a vehicle or an opportunity for something else, that’s when we stray a little bit further from the path.”
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The Weird and Wonderful World of AI Art
This article contains an interesting timeline of recent AI art applications, from 2015 to 2022:
“The AI art we had before 2021 was intriguing, but tended to be abstract, esoteric, and just not that relatable to a human. The AI art we have now is fully controllable, and can be about whatever you want it to be. What changed? Well, there’s something to be said for the new wave of publicity and interest, which certainly accelerated the pace of our art-generation techniques. But the main development is the rise of multimodal learning.”
Another good read on the same topic is Clip Art and the New Aesthetics of AI by Luba Elliott, which also mentions this amazing work by Memo Atken.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, by John Koenig, “creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have”.
US Copyright Office refuses to register AI-generated work
“Can a work entirely created by a machine be protected by copyright?”
“Entirely” seems quite a big word to me.
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AI-Generated Andy Warhol
“Continuing a trend that has been controversial among filmmakers, a new Andy Warhol documentary series, coming to Netflix next month, will resurrect the Pop artist using artificial intelligence. In the show, Warhol can be heard reading from his diaries. That voice, however, is not the artist’s own but rather the product of AI made to sound like him.”
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The age of shitpost diplomacy
“We came of age on Twitter, Tumblr, and 4chan, and still see the world through their frames. We find it harder and harder to distinguish the actual from the image; we struggle to disentangle perception management from problem management. This is what it looks like when the terminally online ascend to positions of real responsibility. Welcome to the age of shitpost diplomacy.”