My work Computers Watching Movies (2013) is part of the exhibition AI: Artificial Intelligence at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona. This ongoing traveling exhibition, which began at The Barbican as AI: More than Human in London in 2019, is “an unprecedented survey of the creative and scientific developments in artificial intelligence, exploring the evolution of the relationship between humans and technology.” The exhibition in Barcelona, which opened on October 18, 2023, is on view through March 17, 2024.
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ORDER OF MAGNITUDE at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark
My work ORDER OF MAGNITUDE is part of the exhibition The Irreplaceable Human at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the curators:
“…this large-scale, interdisciplinary exhibition seeks to define the phenomenon of creativity from a broad, humanistic perspective. What are the conditions for creativity in society today? And is there reason to fear that artificial intelligence will take over and surpass human creative abilities?”
You’ll find my work in the Work-Life section opposite Rineke Dijkstra and just ahead of Trevor Paglen. The exhibition is up through April 4th, 2024.
Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto as Redaction Poetry
Yesterday, the influential Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen published what he titled The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, an anti-regulation anti-ethics hyper-capitalist growth-obsessed screed that, sadly, highlights the thinking that’s led to so much exploitative toxic tech. Instead of writing a point-by-point critique, I instead chose to simplify Andreessen’s arguments using redaction poetry. The result leaves in place the little bits one needs to get a decent sense of Marc’s thinking.
You can read the full redaction poetry version of Andreessen’s Manifesto. If interested, here is a link to the original document.
Article About Radically Finite Social Media
As part of my recent fellowship with the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard University, I wrote about some of my preliminary findings in an article titled Minus: Radically Finite Social Media and Alternative Futures. This text stems from my deep read and analysis of Minus’ early days. I draw several conclusions about the cultural effects of Minus’ finitude, and contrast that with the pseudo-infinite frame of big social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Feature about my work in La Presse (Montreal)
La Presse (Montreal) wrote a feature about my work in a piece titled Ben Grosser, l’antinumérique, and also quoted me in another, titled À la recherche du réseau social idéal (In search of the ideal social network). (Note: both are in French)
Minus Featured in The New York Times
My social network Minus was featured in yesterday’s New York Times. In an article titled The Future of Social Media Is a Lot Less Social, journalist Brian X. Chen writes about the increasingly impersonal nature of big social platforms, and the space that shift is creating for smaller online spaces. He quotes Jonathan Zittrain talking about Minus as an experimental alternative that treats our time and attention as the finite resources they are:
One app that emerged from the program, Minus, lets users publish only 100 posts on their timeline for life. The idea is to make people feel connected in an environment where their time together is treated as a precious and finite resource, unlike traditional social networks such as Facebook and Twitter that use infinite scrolling interfaces to keep users engaged for as long as possible. “It’s a performance art experiment,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of law and computer science at Harvard who started the research initiative. “It’s the kind of thing that as soon as you see it, it doesn’t have to be this way.”
If you haven’t tried out Minus yourself, give it a try.
Artist Talk with Telematic Media Arts (2020)
In fall 2020, I gave an online artist talk with Telematic Media Arts in San Francisco as part of its exhibition of my work ORDER OF MAGNITUDE. Telematic recently posted this talk on YouTube, and you can now watch it there (or above). The talk is followed by a discussion with Telematic director Clark Buckner.
Data and (Dis)obedience Conference in Boston
On 15 March I’ll be on a panel at the Data and (Dis)Obedience Conference at Northeastern University, talking about artistic approaches to data surveillance. Keynote is by Marek Tuszynski from Tactical Tech. Conference is organized by Jen Gradecki, and is being streamed online if you’re not in Boston. Register here.
Workshop on Imagining Alternative Social Media Designs at Harvard
I’m running this hybrid workshop at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard on March 23, framing and guiding some collective thinking on social media alternatives to the status quo. If you’re interested, please join! You can get all the details here.
Recent Books Discussing my Projects
Recent books discussing my projects include:
- Mulgan, Geoff. Prophets at a Tangent: How Art Shapes Social Imagination. Cambridge [UK]: Cambridge University Press
- Ganyet Josep M. La democràcia mor al núvol. Barcelona: La Magrana (Penguin)
- Sicart, Miguel. Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press
Thanks to Miguel for sending a copy of his book, as I can’t wait to read it! I’ve got the Mulgan on order. Sadly I can’t read the Ganyet as I can’t read Spanish, but hopefully an English translation is in the works.