Produce the bodies, be they alive or dead.
PhD Programmes in Art & Design, NTU. Culture + Senses. Interested in Film, Painting, Photography, Design, Embodied Knowledges, Ecology, Technology, Space/Time, Touch, Sound & Vision… 👨🎤✊🏼🌎
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Produce the bodies, be they alive or dead.
Mathematicians have unraveled a key conjecture about knot theory
4/ My Techtonic guest this week, Webb Keane, on "AI sycophancy": techcrunch.com/2025/08/25/a...
A couple months ago, I heard a spellbinding talk by a futurist named Tracee Worley, who's spent a lot of time thinking about sci-fi writer Octavia Butler and her stunning predictions. I talked to Worley about futurism, prediction, and collective survival: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Article on plant intelligence from @npr.org “Plants communicate and alert each other to predators. They mount defenses, such as releasing toxic or unpleasant chemicals when animals munch on their greenery, and learn to ignore harmless stimuli. They may even form memories.” Alex Mayyasi / NPR
‘Unlike a traditional computer database, an AI language model does not retrieve data from a catalog of stored "facts"; it generates outputs from the statistical associations between ideas […] these models generate statistically plausible text based on data […] fed into their neural networks’
The great concrete poet Eugen Gomringer died last week aged 100.
“Known as intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (Istar) systems, these tools, built by several companies, allow users to track, detain and, in the context of war, kill people at scale with the help of AI.”
Happy weekend! Here’s a 3,500 year-old Minoan clay flask decorated with a spectacular wide-eyed octopus! 🐙😍 From Palaikastro, a Bronze Age settlement site on the island of Crete. Heraklion Archaeological Museum. 📷 by me #Archaeology
NASA Art Program article, images + NASA Flicker link documenting America’s Space Exploration through Art, via @openculture.bsky.social www.flickr.com/photos/nasac...
When Ted Turner asked Carl Sagan if he was a socialist, Sagan gave the answer America keeps failing to learn.
“I think ideally an audience can look at a film, emotionally get the whole thing, and not necessarily be able to explain it to somebody else.” - Robert Altman on The Dick Cavett Show, 1972
Traditional biology has long ignored nature’s sexual diversity—but evolution tells a far more complex story.
George Orwell’s Final Warning: Don’t Let This Nightmare Situation Happen. It Depends on You!
"Exposure to extreme heat has reduced bird populations in tropical regions by 25–38% since 1950." theconversation.com/70-years-of-...
Watch Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera: The 8th Best Film Ever Made
“The Inca Empire is often cited as the rare exception to the general rule that empires must have a form of written expression, says Kit Lee, a research associate with the university, but this is only because "khipus get overlooked as a form of writing." Nell Greenfieldboyce / NPR @npr.org
(7/7): The insights from this survey will help guide our approach to the evolving landscape of AI and publishing. Many thanks to all who shared their perspectives. Read the full report by Press Director Amy Brand and co-authors at @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social:
Watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the Influential German Expressionist Horror Film (1920) www.openculture.com/2024/10/watc...
"The end state of black hole formation."
Post one of the most haunting shots in movie history from a film made before the year 2000
lol you’ve got an AI girlfriend?? ur putting techbros in charge of your relationship??? ok buddy lmfao ok champ
“Apart from persistent hallucinations, we've already seen LLMs exhibiting extremely bizarre behavior, from calling out specific human enemies & laying out plans to punish them, not to mention encouraging NY Times columnist Kevin Roose to abandon his wife.” Victor Tangermann / Futurism
It’s a clunky headline so I consulted ChatGPT to figure out a subheading to help smooth things over: “The real-life astronaut and NASA hero passed away at 97, while the actor who portrayed him in the acclaimed 1995 film Apollo 13 continues his career.”
How do we conserve sensory experiences? How we perceive multisensory artworks (like those at @kidspacemuseum.bsky.social's Wired for Wonder exhibition) can help create more nuanced conservation strategies:
"Cypherpunks warned that the internet could quickly turn from a utopian dream into an authoritarian nightmare."
The neurologist Oliver Sacks found that the social-media era resembles a neurological catastrophe on a gigantic scale.
Such a good cover. I think she did this especially for The Affair, a series that does an excellent job using climate change as a backdrop. youtu.be/3dZ5KjFLxgA?...
“Kemp warned of narcissistic & psychopathic leaders - a powerful but small "oligarchy" working against the interests of the rest of us - who turn a blind eye to existential threats like global warming, nuclear weapons, & AI.” Futurism piece about Luke Kemp, Center for the Study of Existential Risk
In 2024, researchers reported a startling finding: deep-sea rock formations—known as polymetallic nodules—may be producing oxygen in total darkness. The phenomenon, dubbed “dark oxygen,” challenged assumptions about life-supporting chemistry in the deep ocean. Watch the full video: bit.ly/4foQbHp
The ‘authorities’ telling local people the radioactive wasps aren’t a cause for alarm sounds like the opening scene to a 60s B-movie that ends with giant wasps clambering over iconic buildings while a deafening buzz plays out the film… (or something!)
The view from the International Space Station as an aurora meets the sunrise in space.
“As global warming continues to threaten the Earth's polar ice sheets, scientists are hopeful that these kinds of measurements can give us a better sense of how human activity is actively reshaping the planet.” Victor Tangermann in Futurism, reporting research by Lancaster University
Oh no
Finding ways to communicate the direct impacts upon people of the political choices being made might help disrupt the flow of mis/disinfo. Perhaps especially where people feel their real-life experiences are being glossed over by lies/propaganda.
This is a billionaire-funded Tony Blair lobbying project being funnelled unchallenged onto the front page of a national newspaper. 1/
“I’ve been disabled for 14 years,” Jessica Slice writes, “but have never lived somewhere safe where I can use all (or even most) of the rooms.” She reports on the indignities of seeking housing when exclusion is built into the architecture:
This surprisingly relaxing footage is from SIX MILES under the ocean – and it’s the deepest ecosystem yet discovered
The state we are in. 24m Britons, 36% of the population, live below minimum socially acceptable living standard. Wealth systematically transferred to the rich - 1% have more than 70% of the population combined. Can't rebuild without improving spending power of the bottom 50% of population.
"Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution" Our new article is out in @science.org today www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis. The heat that hit Svalbard in February was so intense that scientists could dig into the ground with spoons, "like it was soft ice cream." grist.org/climate/trou... #Norway #Arctic #Climate #heat #IceCream #Global
Some stills from my edit of the live film with Benjamin Wigley. slowly chopping and editing my way through the footage. Thanks to Help Musicians for making this happen- playing music in this beautiful space an absolute privilege! Check my links to see which other spaces I'm playing in this year
"The question we should be asking is not if ChatGPT is useful or not (it is), but if OpenAI’s unaccountable power, linked to Microsoft’s monopoly and the business model of the tech economy, is good for society." ainowinstitute.org/publications...
This year quantum physics turns 100, so @nature.com decided to conduct the biggest ever survey of what lies behind it. Do physicists really believe in multiple universes? Can influences happen instantaneously? Is the Copenhagen interpretation all it's cut out to be? ⚛️🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
hi
i CANNOT stop watching this
when they close it all up, I do believe this will go down as the funniest video on the internet
Carl Sagan's prediction of America, made 30 years ago.
Listen closely as Carl Sagan explains how regular people can create change!
Mostly Failing Printer if it’s anything like the one I’ve got! The AI chatbot designed to help with enquiries takes me into a looped series of endless frustrations, more or less guaranteeing both physical and virtual failure!
‘I thought it would be great if I could somehow shake things up a bit’ – Fiona Tan on curating a show from the Rijksmuseum’s collection to explore how mental disorders were experienced and treated in the 19th century
This AI video of Jesus and a little boy singing Bless the Lord Oh My Soul, while Jesus holds a disembodied child’s foot is so beautiful and spiritually inspiring.
When worlds collide
Beach find, 11th March 2022. A beachcombing first for us - a string of plastic pork sausages with faces.
If you see this, I implore you to post from your device without context
This delighted me far more than is reasonable.
The internet and its discontents run wild in a new film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a prolifically offbeat Japanese filmmaker who's spent the last four decades putting subversive spins on traditional genres.
Saving the Lost Silent Zuckerberg Interview With the Amazing Power of AI 🔗 www.404media.co/saving-the-l...
Media outlets can't pivot to AI to save themselves. It's not a business strategy and it's not going to work. The only path forward is for journalists to lean into their humanity, to do things AI can't, and to make clear they are writing for people, not algorithms: www.404media.co/the-medias-p...
Great article www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture...
The impressive speed at which we are currently harnessing the most obvious and abundant energy source on Earth still isn't fast enough. But it's fast enough to show how totally do-able it would be to replace oil, gas, and coal — if we had leaders and banks who gave a shit.
Yes, I did sound the alarm on agentic AI's privacy threat, and rightly so. observer.com/2025/07/sign...
Nice!
Sensory archaeology ‘helps researchers understand how past societies interacted with their worlds through sight, touch, taste, smell and sound, [so] we can imagine how people encountering the Bayeux tapestry would have connected with and understood it.’ Alexandra Makin on the Bayeux Tapestry
Research also shows why these categories are so important: because when people learn they’re not true, attitudes and perspectives shift, as does – most importantly – support for climate action! bsky.app/profile/kath...
"I hypothesize a kind of subprime AI crisis is brewing."
Aesthetically astounding German drama seamlessly blends the visual and the tactile, just as it weaves together three families from different eras From Karlovy Vary: dmovies.org/2025/05/14/s...
Which side are YOU on? (And why are there sides at all?)
The US has entirely surrendered the future to China.
A Visualization of the History of Technology: 1,889 Innovations Across Three Million Years
For the latest issue of Artforum I wrote about the culture of “AI” in my sector of academia, arguing that a focus on what it does distracts attention away from examining the exploitative conditions that the hopeful rhetoric of its promise upholds. www.artforum.com/features/gen...
Christian Franzen is recalled as one of the most outstanding photojournalists of his time and was particularly active in Madrid from the mid-1890s. In this portrait from 1903, Sorolla has used a deliberately restrained palette to create a painting of simplicity and elegance.
More transparency over funding decisions is needed to “sustain the political will to fund science”, according to the head of Wellcome. #Metascience2025 www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-worl...
"Like all LLMs, Claudis hallucinated important details, instructing shoppers wanting to pay by Venmo to pay into a non-existent account that it just made up. The AI could also be cajoled into giving discount codes for numerous items, and even gave some away for free."
Call it clickwork, crowdwork, data labor, or ghost work - they are all poorly-paid, precarious and traumatic jobs that make AI possible. Read an excerpt from The AI Con by @alexhanna.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social on @restofworld.org . restofworld.org/2025/the-ai-con-book-invisible-labor
Through their efforts, AI boosters are re-configuring and diminish how people understand the human, human flourishing, our capacities and potential, and why we bother being alive at all. "By deciding what robots are for, we are defining what humans are." Excerpt from my HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY:
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
Post an unusual sign if you feel like it
Me watching MEGAN 2.0.
This is a nice piece on the backlash to AI, which has persisted so long that it might simply be considered the norm at this point "As a whole, the benefits of AI seem esoteric and underwhelming while the harms feel transformative and immediate." www.wired.com/story/genera...
I give you a momentary reprieve from the madness: The Vera Rubin Observatory has taken its first images of the sky, and they are *extraordinary*. Mind blowing detail, jaw dropping beauty. badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/rubin-open... 🔭 🧪
Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif (no Star Wars, LOTR, Star Trek, or Marvel)
Meredith has always been a G, but it's still exceptionally weird and very refreshing hearing from a tech exec who can see through all of this AI bullshit for what it is at its foundation: a backdoor surveillance tool.
'Three Bread Rolls.' (1933) Disabled with a serious heart condition and confined to his home, Dick Ket turned to still life painting in the late 1920s as few other subjects were available to him.
‘Besides the fragmentation of international politics […] undermined by the rise of nationalism, there are essentially three developments: social fragmentation driven by economic crisis, conflicts over gender relations, & the radical reorganization of the media system.’ Sven Reichardt / Post-Fascism
"To use a venture capital metaphor...Vance has only just progressed from his pre-seed to seed funding." JD Vance is everywhere—and he’s the highest point of contact, Trumpworld sources say, for tech billionaires who went all-in on Donald Trump. via @wired.com www.wired.com/story/jd-van...
I’ve been an author of the national climate assessment since the Bush administration. It is an incredible one-stop shop for climate info. Download the PDFs of NCA5 here:
True 🤣
Vinnie Jones somehow looks like his whole body is in tension, and he doesn’t even know how much of an effect he’s having on Gazza. Quite a contrast with Jocky Wilson’s relaxed vibe!
They did it.
What athlete’s expression will stay with you the rest of your life? Thinking here of Gazza’s expression, although the level of intense determination on Vinnie Jones’ face is almost equally striking.
In her depictions of the human form, Jenny Saville pushes paint to its limits, says Sarah Howgate of the National Portrait Gallery in London
The lovely Tilda Swinton has signed the #parkypetition100K at @glastonbury.bsky.social - thanks TasteTibet for showing her our leaflet. Now everyone please follow her lead - we’re a bit behind target this morning petition.parliament.uk/petitions/71...
