Episódios
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Today's conversation is with Zachary Small, staff reporter for the NY Times. I have been following their arts journalism since they wrote for Hyperallergic years ago. They're often the first to identify new, consequential developments in a field that thrives on change.
A little less than a year ago, they became a staff reporter at the Times – a well deserved and enlightened hire. In particular, they have been hot on the trail of the NFT "situation" (remember that) and I suspect we'll be hearing much more about art and digital tokenization over the months and years ahead.
Zach’s first book, “Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022,” will be published by Knopf in spring of this year.
So it was a pleasure to be able to speak to them for Informer.
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Today's conversation is with Prem Krishnamurthy, designer, author, and educator. His multifaceted work explores the role of art as an agent of transformation at an individual, collective, and structural level. This manifests itself in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops.
He is one of those thinkers and makers whose brain is spinning out ideas and reflections as fast as you can absorb them. And I appreciate so much his emphasis on the importance of embracing juxtaposition as a prerequisite not only for artistic creativity but also as a key ingredient for healthy civic life. He argues that there is no singular America, but instead a multiplicity of Americas just as there is no singular individual: we are all collections of paradox and competing interests.
We also talk about the ways in which the world will forever be hybrid, there's no going back to the old technologies. And how do we take what we learned from the "zoomacene" (his word) and build that into the ways in which we come together now.
This conversation, and it was very much a conversation more an interview, was a joy. And I hope you find it to be inspiring and nourishing as well.
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If you are an artist, or someone who cares about the health and wellbeing of the arts in the United States, I think you will find this conversation to be both insightful and inspirational. There's only one Ruby and I am honored to be able to work with her through my directorship at Eyebeam, where she serves on the board. It was a pleasure to dig into the shifts in the culture since the meltdown of the NEA in the 90's to the current version of the culture wars we are experiencing now from her perspective, as an arts executive since the 80's. As she finalizes a new archive and website of her work and the artists that she has engaged with, this was a fine moment to capture conversations that we typically have offline.
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What does it mean to have a body that moves in three dimensional space in our current time? How do cultural institutions better relate to the public in a way that takes into consideration the massage changes in technology over the last three years? Can relating to the other than human beings help us learn how to be better partners to the planet? These are the types of questions London-based choreographer and dancer Sara Wookey dives into. She is one of the most interesting thinkers on the relationship of bodies and material space and how post-modern dance can open windows into more rational ways of understanding our bodies in space and, as she always points out, time.
As she says, "we look back on the effects of the pandemic on the way that we choreograph ourselves in social interactions since the pandemic. We've had to raise our awareness of our three dimensional space." These days she is spending a lot of her time helping museums and other cultural organizations think through how they can take a more creative approach to engaging publics that are re-thinking their relationship to the material in the post-covid age.
I spoke to Sara last fall so some time has passed and you'll notice our references to the season feel anomalous, unless you're in the southern hemisphere. But I'm glad that's the case because everything is shifting so quickly at the moment, it is sometimes helpful to get a snapshot of where things were at even just 5 months ago in order to gain some footing as to where we are now.
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My friend, the designer and artist, Mushon Zer-Aviv was in town a few months ago so we sat down to catch up. Having worked in open, values-driven design in tech for the last two decades, Mushon goes deep into what he sees as being the mistakes of the early internet and how we can avoid them in the future. His thoughtfulness is always optimistic: as he says, he is a designer so he wants to design! He points to the contradictions inherent in our tendency to offload "ethics into infrastucture" and the kind of return of the tech bros singing the same song with web3. This is a wide-ranging conversation that points to so many of the current challenges while showing new paths to the future.
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Deborah has a reputation as an innovative arts leader here in New York. Over the past couple of years, she has fully transformed into a sharp-eyed astrologer building from decades of experience in the arts as well as a lifelong spiritual practice. In this, the final Dog Days 2022 episode, Roddy and Deborah discuss the value of astrology in the context of being an arts director where everybody is obsessed with knowing the future. And what it means for Deborah to give notice, then begin a full-time astrology practice in upstate NY. This is a wide-ranging conversation about the value of art, and astrology, in creating space for people to relate to one another and is a great way to close out the summer.
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There are a handful of contemporary net artists for whom I have particular affection. Constant Dullaart is one of them. Since I first learned of his work in the early aughts, I've found an extraordinary depth to every move he makes. As our understanding of the internet has matured, Constant's work becomes more relevant. I most recently worked with him as one of our Eyebeam fellows in our Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future initiative in 2020. I appreciated this conversation so much, his insistence on thinking through powerful ways to help people re-think ways of being together digitally, most recently creating common.garden, the only art exhibition platform fully exited from surveillance capitalism.
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As we enter these long, hot days of this unusual year, I'll be releasing three special episodes that aim to provide some dreamy inspiration for late summer. Between now and labor day, I'll be speaking with three dynamic artists over three episodes. The conversations move from foundational questions around what technology actually means to playful platforms for new forms of co-creation and community, and then finally to a discussion of astrology as an ancient, vital technology for spiritual practice.
These artists, Jonathon Keats, Constant Dullaart, and Astrologer Deborah Fisher, give us new space to dream as we enter these late summer days when reality seems to be consumed by the sun. I hope your are enlivened by the work of this special trio of thinkers and makers, with these Dog Days Special episodes.
Today's episode of Informer, part 1 of 3 Dog Days Special episodes, is with experimental philosopher and artist Jonathon Keats. Jonathan's work forefronts ways in which decisions are made in technology, highlighting the fact that they are decisions, not inevitabilities. He talks about technology as a way in which we become who we are and one which can also *distort* who we become. I think you'll enjoy this episode, as it articulates a lot of the topics that I've been exploring this year. i find his work to provide an insightful foundation, a look at the first causes that brought us to where we are, from human's first use of the pick axe to this moment of emergent capitalisms based on surveillance and instrumentalization of behavior. Jonathon has a background in philosophy and brings it to bear in a practice that is always burrowing into our innate relationships between the technologies we create and how that influences our sense of self.
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B Covington, a multi-modal sound artist whose work is as formally challenging as it is joyfully satisfying, was in New York last month and sat down for a conversation with me at my office in Brooklyn. I enjoyed our time so much an it is the first episode of Informer that was recorded in person.
We started by talking about the incredibly radical work of the Public Television Workshop, creators of Sesame Street, and the influence that had on B's practice and his ideas around "public narrativity". Our rollicking, wide-ranging conversation then took us many places, including their contemplation of the media's framing of the relationship between Michael Jackson and his sister LaToya and how that acts as inspiration for their new composition. I also enjoyed B's thinking about ways we might work more closely with AI as a creative force.
I think of this conversation as part 3 in my "AI Personhood" series that began with an interview with K Allado McDowell, followed by James Bridle in episode 17. I encourage you to check those out if you haven't already.
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James Bridle imagines new modes of invention and engagement inspired from relationships with non-human beings. He's a fascinating thinker and this is one of my favorite conversations.
His relentless inquiry into how we can co-create technologies that better serve the world, not just a few humans, is inspiring. His latest book, Ways of Being, is a tour-de-force of imagining not only how our definitions of intelligence can expand to be more all-encompassing to how these new definitions can open new ways of imagining our relationships to machines.
James Bridle
Charles Stross
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
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I first heard about K when they were active in the electronic music scene of the bay area in the early 2000's. I've enjoyed following their work from that time into becoming a force for thoughtful engagement with AI, thinking about it in very expansive way, involving anthropology and cosmology.
I find that their work unites the abstract with the personal in an elegant way, spotlighting the weird and unexplained in the technological. It was an absolute joy to connect on today's episode.
K Allado-McDowell
Amor Cringe (K's new book)
Google Art and Machine Intelligence
Weird AI Reading List by K Allado-McDowell
Dale Pendell
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I really enjoyed this chance to catch up with her and hear what she's seeing as being exciting developments in the fields of art, technology, and science. And we had a great time discussing what an intra-institutional approach to building a new tech-art infrastructure could be, as a counterpoint to the dominance to the dominance of a few tech. companies. We get into the weeds on potential funding structures that would allow non-profits to collaborate to build a more humane and human version of the metaverse.
Shownotes and links: https://www.informerpodcast.com/episodes/15/index.html
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"As an artist I am trying to see the hidden connections between things and trying to understand things that I feel as a person that thinks in slightly different ways." - Angelo Plessas
In early February of 2020, I was invited to an impromptu lunch at the lovely and large home of artist Chrysanne Stathacos in the Kolonaki neighborhood of Athens, the day before my return to New York.
We all have moments that stand out as markers of the time before covid and all that has been left in its wake. That afternoon with friends in Athens stands for me as one of those poles representing the time before. It would have been memorably enjoyable on its own, without all the fear, change and upheaval that followed. But due to its pivot-like quality, the gathering takes on a sort of weightiness. It seems appropriate that this was also the occasion in which I met Angelo Plessas, an artist whose work is focused on technology’s relationship to spiritual growth. I remember him discussing with me his plans for the Gwangju Biennial and how his work was going to explore the topic of healing and technology. In retrospect, his practice couldn’t be more profoundly in-sync with the world that emerged.
Angelo is someone who, from the beginning, has been and remains deeply invested in understanding the internet not only as a tool but also how it exists inside each of us, deep in our interiority. When speaking again, after more than two years of the whole world moving almost fully online, he remains an optimist. It is a welcome change whenever I speak with Angelo, someone who feels that the internet remains queer and is capable of bringing people together in a positive way. Who’d believe it, given the doom and gloom prophesied by seemingly everyone else.
I enjoyed this conversation with Angelo a lot. I think we need more people thinking like he is, finding moments of healing in our relationships with technology. We talk about a number of things, including his recent collaboration with Acne Studios in producing a fashion line from his singular style of quilting, made from materials that protect our bodies from electro-magnetic fields being generated by the devices that surround us.
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It's always a pleasure to be in conversation with Mendi and Keith Obadike. The sound art duo have been working together for 25 years, which gives them perspective to be able to identify trends, changes, and ongoing challenges in the field. Their sound work is beautifully designed, often utilizing the human voice as an instrument, and typically they take on issues often ignored in sound art, like race relations in the United States or the country's histories of exclusion. In this conversation, we covered a lot of ground, including their recent refusal to accept an award from ZKM, a media arts center in Germany, due to that organization's public disclosure of their difficulties in adjudicating within an offensive and false dichotomy of quality vs diversity.
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I had the privilege of visiting an insightful and rich exhibition at Albright-Knox, Buffalo, last month. Co-curated by curator and art historian Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan and artist Paul Vanouse, it focused on the impact of "difference machines" AKA computers in shifting our notions of identity. Featuring many artists that I have been fans of for years, I hope that this ground exhibition continues to make waves. You can dig into their ideas on this, the latest episode of Informer.
"You can not talk about contemporary life without talking about technology."
Photo: Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan and Paul Vanouse standing in front of Saya Woolfalk's Landscape of Anticipation 2.0, 2021.
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There are so many fascinating stories to be told about the present and future of technology in the arts, especially in this moment of a profound, digital turn. Tamiko Thiel, a truly singular artist, tells a numbers a number of them. As a very early innovator in the field of VR, along with a side career as product designer which includes creating the visual design of the The Connection Machine, the world's first AI computer and now in the permanent collection of MoMA, her work has been and continues to be groundbreaking. It's motivated by a deep curiosity about what it means for humans to make technology and how we might do so in a way that doesn't sacrifice our planet in the process.
Any one component of Tamiko's life and career seems rich enough to launch its own spin-off podcast, with Tamiko right at the center of some unwritten but influential history. Whether it's about her father being the first to patent shipping containers, then shockingly losing the patent, to Steve Jobs in the 80's asking his marketing manager to hire Tamiko after seeing her visual design of the Connection Machine and then being told that it's too late, Tamiko's gone off to Europe to be an artist!
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Zach Lieberman is one of the leading creative coders and digital artists in the world. And what I love about the way Zach works is that he is equally dedicated to thoughtful and open pedagogy as he is to creating poetic digital works. This wide-ranging conversation reveals the motivations in his co-founding of the School for Poetic Computation as well as his continuing fascination with the human, machine dialogue that results in the creation of new worlds.
For those listeners who may not know, DOS was an operating system that was fully text-based and was marketed as being an accessible for home users to access programs and software and also opened the door to people like Zach to start to create by typing in words and then seeing them magically transform into activities on the screen. He begins by recounting one of those early experiences. Zach begins by describing one of those early, magical moments.
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I’m excited to share this fascinating conversation with LA-based artist Lauren Lee McCarthy. She reminds us that, actually, creating technology is one of the most human of activities. Her work is largely about trying to get us to take responsibility for the machines we are building. She suggests, that we need to get “out of our dorm room” in how we approach machine learning and the way it’s changing the world. She states, “the difference between machines and humans is that humans can reflect on their values to make decisions about the future. Machines can’t.” I hope you’ll enjoy learning about this emerging artist who is poised to make a big impact.
The idea that we need to get “out of our dorm room” in how we approach machine learning and the way it’s changing the world feels right to me. I hope you enjoyed this conversation and you’ll check us out online at informerpodcast.com.
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I’ve known Julia Christensen for quite a long time, since we were both graduate students at Mills College in Oakland in fact. One of my first memories of her was when we were both in Pauline Oliveros’s composition class.
Since then, I’ve kept up with Julia’s work on and off over the years, seeing her when she would exhibit in town or by catching up at artist retreats in upstate New York. I think it’s the expansiveness of her work that has always intrigued me most, leaping from the micro to the macro with ease. Ranging from her studies and photography of how local communities creatively re-use defunct “big box” stores to now creating work intended to communicate life on earth to beings in other galaxies, she is driven by getting to the bottom of things, even if that means interrogating possibilities alongside jet propulsion engineers.
What I love about artists with a research-based practice is that they look outside themselves for answers and then fearlessly shift their focus as new revelations emerge. Like Julia, artists who work this way bring a quality of real-time investigation and appraisal to their work. This faith in process, constantly creating from the elements discovered whatever they may be, strikes me as having the quality of altruism, something shared among all the artists I admire.
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I’ve known Commissioner Casals for a number of years, since his time at the Highline, where he was creating very forward looking public art programs. His philosophy of building cultural democracy is quietly radical, particularly in a city like New York which has spent most of the last twenty years betting on high-profile legacy institutions. It seems to me that Gonzalo is working to draw a new map of interdependence for the arts in New York.
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