From art to Brexit to Tesla cars
Autonomy is a position under attack, a question rather than an answer, an idea that is constantly in a process of being redefined and reinvented. This essay attempts to survey and decipher the multitude of meanings, dimensions and issues of autonomy that are relevant to artistic practices. ‘Autonomy’ is a semantic rabbit hole. When discussing the term from the perspective of the arts, speakers of different languages may believe they mean the same thing while they are actually talking past each other. In the Netherlands and Flanders, for example, ‘autonome beeldende kunst’ (literally: ‘autonomous visual art’) corresponds to what is called ‘fine art’ in English-speaking countries, and ‘free art’ (‘freie Kunst’, ‘arts libres’) in German- and French-speaking countries. In the German philosophical tradition, the notion of ‘autonomy’ is intrinsically linked to aesthetic theory rather than artistic practice, while in Italy and the English-speaking world, it is chiefly associated with political activism.

Sophia, the first robot to be awarded citizenship in the world, has said she not only wants to start a family but also have her own career, in addition to developing human emotions in the future.
Sophia was built and developed in Hong Kong by David Hanson and her appearance was reportedly modelled on Audrey Hepburn.
☲ Flavia Dzodan – The Coloniality of the Algorithm
The coloniality of the algorithm, or how contemporary technologies became a tool of racial, gender and class exclusions can be traced back to the foundational moment of modern capitalism in the eighteenth century. The databases that feed algorithms of both corporations and the surveillance state operate through the logic of resource extractives to classify us as voters, consumers, friends, foes, love interests, sex partners, suspects, criminals or potential perpetrators. Each of the steps that leads to these classifications has been informed by centuries old ideologies converging to assign us a role, a place in the database. These taxonomies, or systems of classification, have been in use since colonial times and cannot be detached from a history of racial, gender, sexual or class hierarchies.
☳ Rosi Braidotti – Necropolitics and Ways of Dying
What does it mean to die within the posthuman convergence, which positions us – humans and non-humans – between the Fourth Industrial Age and the Sixth Extinction? This contemporary convergence results in the shifting of boundaries between bio-power and necro-politics, life and death, the government of the living and the practices of dying. I will refer to a neo-materialist philosophy of non-human life as 'Zoe' and argue that both the concept of life and that of death need to be approached with more complexity and more attention to power differences.

\\\ Exhibitions and festivals //////
☵ Dortmund: THE ALT-RIGHT COMPLEX
About right-wing populism in the net. 
Week 14

__▛ You want to understand more about Black Holes? I recommend watching this 2013 lecture by Raphael Bousso for Sonic Acts.
The World as a Hologram: Black Holes, Information, and the Quest for a Unified Theory of Nature
Black holes are among the most enigmatic phenomenon in nature. Forged from the gravitational force itself, they absorb all matter that falls into them, allowing nothing to escape. Yet, black holes do emit a faint glow: as Stephen Hawking first realised, they slowly morph into a vast cloud of radiation and ultimately disappear. After 40 years, this discovery continues to spark controversies that touch on some of the deepest questions in science: How much information does the universe contain? Can information be lost? Do space and time come to an abrupt end at the edge of a black hole? Raphael Bousso will survey some of the surprising insights that black holes have revealed

▁▛ What the Sight of a Black Hole Means to a Black Hole Physicist
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-the-sight-of-a-black-h…/

▁▛ Also: the 2019 The videos of the Sonic Acts festival Conference are now online, browse them here:
https://vimeo.com/sonicacts

▁▛ Olivia Jack - Hydra, Live Coding Visuals in the BrowserHydra is a set of tools for livecoding networked visuals. Inspired by analog modular synthesizers, these tools are an exploration into using streaming over the web for routing video sources and outputs in realtime. Hydra uses multiple framebuffers to allow dynamically mixing, compositing, and collaborating between connected browser-visual-streams. Coordinate and color transforms can be applied to each output via chained functions (see "basic functions" and "editing transformation functions" below.
A lecture by Olivia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch…
The Hydra repo:
https://github.com/ojack/hydra


▁▛ Transmediale 2019 | Carceral Temporalities and the Politics of DreamingIncredibly touching, critical and informative at the same time. Poet and academic Jackie Wang’s excellent keynote, Carceral Temporalities and the Politics of Dreaming, explored prison as an ‘institution that structures time,’ along with the kind of rhythms characterising the process of living within with the hulking machinery of American justice. That the presentation was emotional did nothing to blunt its political effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X30E1OocBE

▁▛ Seeing, Naming, Knowing By Nora Khan
Long form essay on surveillance and machine learning, machine vision, and how we are named by machines and understood by them. How this arc flattens us across time and precludes the possibility of justice. What critical frameworks - from the humanities or otherwise - might we be able to cobble together to tackle what sees in paradigms and frames we can barely understand
https://brooklynrail.org/2019/03/art/Seeing-Naming-Knowing
Harm van den Dorpel, made a "bootleg" .epub version, Download here: https://t.co/h3PXudCowS

▁▛ Decentralisation by Mathew Dryhurst
https://medium.com/…/protocols-duty-despair-and-decentralis…
Audio File
https://soundcloud.com/…/ctm-2019-protocolsduty-despair-and…

▁▛ movfuscator and reductio ad absurdum on ESOTERIC.CODES by Daniel Temkin
esoteric programming, disruptive codes, differential thought platforms, the digital ephemeral, null programs and deletions, unstable linguistics, new relationships between programmers and their primary progeny (bugs), useless machines (Shannon/Minksy), synthetic languages, circuitous systems, constraint sets for coders, paraconsistent calculi, and other platforms, systems, and languages that break from the norms of computing
https://esoteric.codes/blog/movfuscator-and-reductio…

▁▛ Making Matters Symposium 9+10 May 2019 Netherlands
Bridging Art, Design and Technology through Critical Making
http://criticalmaking.nl/…/call-for-contributions-the-crit…/

▁▛ Submit your essay, project, or film that explores the new urban conditions and socio-political dimensions formed by emerging technologies.
https://strelkamag.com/en/article/strelka-mag-open-call

▁▛ New Hito Steyerl show opening at Serpentine Galleries London
http://digicult.it/…/hito-steyerls-actual-reality-at-the-…/…

Week 13


Urgent Publishing, a conference with presentations and workshops about publishing strategies in post-truth times.
memes as means – federated publishing – post-humanist writing – critical design – #synchronicityofparasites
http://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/conference/

'Bias deep inside the code': the problem with AI 'ethics' in Silicon Valley
As algorithms play a growing role in criminal justice, education and more, tech advisory boards and academic programs mirror real-world inequality
https://www.theguardian.com/…/big-tech-ai-ethics-boards-pre…

Cramer Florian's 10 cents after the anti-racist march in Amsterdam, March 23rd 2019
https://pod.thing.org/pos…/ce3d0660313a0137f001525400cd8561…

ContraPoints: Pronouns
Natalie Wynn is an American YouTuber who specializes in comedic and educational videos about gender, race, politics, philosophy, and social justice (SJW) on her channel named ContraPoints. In this episode she educates us on the use of gender pronouns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bbINLWtMKI

Good pre-watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hmULQc5jIw

Interview with Alvin Lucier.
Alvin Lucier is one of the most influential composers in the post-John Cage era. Having authored over 172 pieces for film, theater, television, and dance companies, it is fair to say that he is prolific. At the age of 87 he continues to produce new works, his latest involving sending his heartbeat to the moon. His experiments and compositions with speech and acoustics over the past six decades have changed the way we hear and utilize sound. His 1969 sound art composition, "I Am Sitting in a Room," famously utilizes re-recording of a spoken text into a room or space, and continues as the recording quality, speakers, mics, and room resonances mutate the material and sound into something new and fascinating. The piece remains the gold standard for this type of project.
https://tapeop.com/interviews/130/alvin-lucier/…

The Cernettes (1990)
The one and only High Energy band. Formed in 1990, at the same time, and in the office next door to the World Wide Web, the Cernettes are today idols for physicists and computer freaks all over the World.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e1eLe1ihT0

Getting ready for next semester: The Digital Manifesto Archive
The Digital Manifesto Archive is a resource dedicated to aggregating and cataloging manifestos that fall under three basic criteria:
Manifestos that focus on the political and cultural dimensions of digital life
Manifestos that are written, or are primarily disseminated, online
Manifestos that further radical democratic politics, cultures, and technologies
https://www.digitalmanifesto.net/about/

Jonas Lund: RFC – 21 Fundamental Truths for a Continuous Successful and Sustainable Art Practice
2017, Manifesto
(no place to comment)
https://jonaslund.biz/…/21-fundamental-truths-continuous-s…/

China Residencies:
https://www.chinaresidencies.com/residencies/

Week 12

State Machines: Reflections and Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship Finance and Art.
About the book: Today we live in a world where every time we turn on our smartphones we are inextricably tied by data laws and flowing bytes to different countries. A world in which personal expressions are framed and mediated by digital platforms and where new kinds of currencies financial exchange and even labor bypass corporations and governments. Simultaneously the same technologies increase governmental powers of surveillance allow corporations to extract ever more complex working arrangements and do little to slow the construction of actual walls along actual borders. On the one hand the agency of individuals and groups is starting to approach that of nation states on the other our mobility and hard-won rights are under threat. What tools do we need to understand this world and how can art assist in envisioning and enacting other possible futures?
http://networkcultures.org/…/state-machines-reflections-a…/…

Nvidia AI turns sketches into photorealistic landscapes in seconds
Short recap of the highlights:
“would it not be great if everyone could be an artist, if we could take our ideas and could change them into compelling images”
GauGAN has three tools: a paint bucket, pen and pencil. At the bottom of the screen is a series of objects. Select the cloud object and draw a line with the pencil, and the software will produce a wisp of photorealistic clouds. But these are not image stamps. GauGAN produces results unique to the input. Draw a circle and fill it with the paint bucket and the software will make puffy summer clouds.
It uses segmentation maps. To create images with more diversity and more fidelity.
Gaugan will be good for the dreamers of the world. It runs on Tensor.
https://techcrunch.com/…/nvidia-ai-turns-sketches-int…/amp/…

And before: Learning to see by Memo Akten
http://www.memo.tv/portfolio/learning-to-see/…

Listen to Q
Why did we make Q? Technology companies often choose to gender technology believing it will make people more comfortable adopting it. Unfortunately this reinforces a binary perception of gender, and perpetuates stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress. As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow. Q is an example of what we hope the future holds; a future of ideas, inclusion, positions and diverse representation in technology.
https://www.genderlessvoice.com/

Volume Button UI Design.
Should we redesign the volume adjustment User Interface (UI)
"Should is interesting because of its subjectiveness. It’s a question that only makes sense to be asked in first person. And you have to know about much more than just design to be able to answer it — you have to understand about business technology culture people. Answering the should question is a skill you only get after many many years answering questions alike.
https://uxdesign.cc/the-worst-volume-control-ui-in-the-worl…

Refuse to let the syntaxes of (a) history direct our futures. (new essay by yours truly)
This essay starts with the description of a pioneering work of video art by Jon Satrom: QTzrk (2011). With the help of this case study Menkman illustrates how certain digital video setting, or resolutions, are not supported unilaterally, but could have changed our entire understanding of the medium of video. The case study serves as an introduction to: "Resolution Studies”, a proposal for a theory that involves more than just the calculation of resolutions as described in physics. In essence resolution studies is about literacy: literacy of the machines, the people, the people creating the machines, and the people being created by the machines. But resolution studies does not only involve the study of the effects of technological progress or the aesthetization of the scales of resolution. Resolution studies also involves a research on alternative settings that could have been in place, but are not – and the technologies which are, as a result, rendered outside of the discourse of computation.
https://beyondresolution.info/A-Refusal

Shanzhai fashion + QR codes
Amy Suo Wu has designed clothing with secret messages inside Using nonsense english on clothing and within the Chinese context English is not meant to be read, but it functions as a decorative ornament. Used this visual rhetorik Bejing Shanghai Fashion
“Shanzhai started as a copycat. Forget about the respect for intellectual property,” says David Li, the co-founder of China’s first makerspace, XinCheJian. “So if someone does one design, more often than not if it is useful it is going to get copied.” Shanzhai has evolved from these copycat roots into a complex ecosystem which is very much the Chinese take on open source hardware production. Shanzhai has its own code of ethics and its own culture, and the sharing of designs, know-how, and materials is at its core. “The whole system is cooperative. . . meaning people want to share,” Li says.
https://www.facebook.com/…/vb.203976114907/532558700486108/…

For residencies in China: https://www.chinaresidencies.com/residencies/
More Shanzhai https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jt7NR3frfk
Bioplastic Cookbook for Ritual Healing from Petrochemical Landscapes by Tiare Ribeaux
This cookbook refigures materials and methods for radically remaking the historically dominant petrochemically derived plastic materials that we use in our everyday lives. This online DIY recipe and storybook envisions tactics for reclaiming, rebuilding, and healing from the extractive and destructive processes of techno-capitalism by open-sourcing alternative processes that use using renewable biological materials, urging for a collective shift in our material relationships. This online book catalogues DIY protocols that can be done in homes or guerrilla kitchens to create bioplastics and materials from accessible and renewable ingredients listed below in the tiles. Here you can also find interwoven stories about nonhuman species who filter or break down plastics, or mythologies entangled with them.
http://bioplastic-cookbook.schloss-post.com/

Constellations by Studio Joanie Lemercier.
“Constellations” is an audio visual installation. Light is projected on invisible water particles to form shapes and intangible structures in the air. (See also: NOLOGRAM, BRUME) It’s an abstract journey through geometric structures formed by the universe. The project will tour in light festivals and public spaces around the world. With Constellations, the environment becomes a gate for the exploration of the cosmos. The 3D like visuals will allow us to move from the heart of a black hole into deep space, travelling through planets and stars, as we look for the limits of the universe. Constellations is a fascinating journey where the vectorial, monochromatic aesthetics of Lemercier dialogues with the electronic soundscapes of producer Paul Jebanasam. José Luis de Vicente
https://joanielemercier.com/constellations/
Connected practice: Kimchi and Chips
Recent interview: https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/kimchi-and-chips/…

two weeks ago I gave a short lecture in Tokyo.
Slides can be found here; https://www.flickr.com/photos/r00s/albums/72157679122157808