Disintegrator

You already follow @avocado_ibuprofen. His memes IV-ed into the arm of the artworld, circulating through the DMs; they are acidic and thereaputic, they throw up solidarity through critique and gentle negation. We talk about art education, disappointment, exhaustion, glamour, and a beautiful idea (automating the viewer) he began to expand upon in an interview with Valentinas Klimašauskas here.Buy his mugs. Memes we discuss:(Selling Mugs Galaxy Brain)(Phone/Pocket/Lineage)(AI Meme 1, AI Meme 2)Ambient track is 'Respect for the Medium' by friend of the pod They Became What They Beheld, show them some love on Bandcamp.

Few people have done more to define the contemporary media theory landscape than Alex Quicho @amfq, an indefinable thinker and artist and intellectual force who brought Girl Theory to the front and center of The Discourse. One note, friend of the pod Morgane Billuart has also just released an interview with Alex on her excellent podcast Becoming the Product. We don't believe there's such a thing as too much AMFQ. Morgane is an upcoming guest for us too, so it's a nice trifecta!In terms of Quicho-core:Everyone is a Girl Online (September 2023) -- if you haven't read it, HARD RECCO.The Aura Points lecture (December 2024)Small Gods: Perspective on the Drone (May 2021) GIRLSTACK at BODYSTACKThe amazing girlstack substack -- because everyone is a girl and everyone is online ;)Key references and concepts from the pod include:Helena shouts out Bogna Konior whose work is absolutely at the top of the top atm. We love her lecture ANGELS IN LATENT SPACES omg.When identifying AI with/as a girl, Alex leverages concepts from K Allado-McDowell on model-as-self.Alex references Sayak Valencia's Gore Capitalism and Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty on media representations of violenceWe briefly chat about Maya B. Kronik and Amy Ireland's "cute accelerationism" paradigm and their year-defining book on the topic.Alex grabs some concepts from Paul Virilio and Susan Sontag's foundational work on photography, violence and war, Edward Glissant's work on opacity and resistance, Benedict Singleton's traps and levers, Helen Hester and the Laboria Cuboniks collective's xenofeminism, Tiqqun's young girl, and (IYKYK) Luciana Parisi's absolutely singular "Abstract Sex" (the book that brough Roberto and Marek 2gether).Marek shouts out master of blur Dana Dawud's Monad series.Helena references artist Zein Majali's work "Propane" and Jennie Livingston's generation-defining "Paris is Burning."

The lecture dives into the dramatic shifts in music consumption driven by technology, revealing how streaming alters personal connections to music. It highlights music as a form of cosplay, where identity is often dictated by algorithms. The creator discusses the complexities of digital production, emphasizing concerns about copyright and artist recognition. A thought-provoking look at the commodification of art urges artists to innovate in a changing landscape, spotlighting the need for adaptive strategies to thrive amid digital transformation.

No notes, pure vivid realness and realism.Li Zhenhua is a major force in the art world, especially in film.A tone poem from Torino. Marek's favorite episode.

Two of our discourse besties from UAL's Fashion Media Practice & Criticism -- experiential designers Daniel Felstead and Jenn Leung -- join us to talk Janky Capitalism (the obvious falling-apart weirdness of the world while capital spins off farther and farther away from it, leaving us behind), Roblox, and neural media. You probably know their work from the iconic 'The Metaverse in Janky Capitalism' on Dis and its associated 'Literally No Place' and 'Always on My Mind' -- or from associated speaking / discourse production all over the internet (++ more on Jenn (link) and Daniel (link)).References from the pod include:Ruba Al-Sweel's awesome piece for SQD: 'Sandbox Semiotics' referenced in the intro.Jenn references artworld queen Anna Uddenberg (e.g. 'Continental Breakfast'), Harvard's GSD's Guide to Shopping, and Ian Bogost (whose critique of anthropomorphism in video games we really relate to).Daniel references Sam Cummins from Nymphet Alumni, a favorite podcast that everyone should already know and spend all their time listening to.Daniel references Catherine Malabou's concept of plasticity (throughout her work, typically referencing neuroscientific plasticisty, here used in its more generalized form).The second half of the episode spends some time with the theory of K. Allado-McDowell, specifically the concept of neural media. We could not recommend this episode of our other favorite podcast (New Models) more strongly.Roberto mentions Zachary Horton's 'Cosmic Zoom', which is our obsession atm.Ok enjoyyyy byee!

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is one of most important people in AI, and apart from his leadership position as CTO of Technology & Society at Google, he has one of those resumes or affiliations lists that seems to span a lot of very fundamental things. He’s amazing; the thoughtfulness and generosity with which he communicates on this episode gently embraced our brains while lazering them to mush. We hope you have the same experience. References include:Blaise’s own books Who Are We Now?, Ubi Sunt, and the upcoming What Is Intelligence?He references James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State, which we strongly recommend, Benjamin Peters’ How Not to Network a Nation, and Red Plenty by Francis Spufford.Strong recommendation also to Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World.Roberto references Luciana Parisi’s Abstract Sex (our favorite book!) and the work of Lynn Margulis with respect to biology and reproduction.Blaise references James E. Lovelock’s project “Daisyworld” with respect to the Gaia hypothesis.He also references the Active Inference thesis, e.g. that of Karl J. Friston, and the work of Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercer on reason.The cellular automata work referenced here involves the Von Neumann cellular automaton and the Wolfram neural cellular automaton.Wish us a happy 1 year anniversary of the pod!

A very warm welcome to Helena McFadzean, who is joining the Disintegrator wrecking crew. This week’s episode features one of our favorite artists, Tega Brain. In this episode, we talk through two of our favorite pieces, both of which are not just great exercises in conceptual design, but are actual practical engineering projects whose artistry consists in real solutioning. References from the pod: Sam Lavigne is an artist and engineer and educator whose collaborates frequently with Tega Brain. Both his creative technical work and his writing are highly recommended.The two pieces we talk about most are Cold Call, a collaboration with Sam Levine, and Solar Protocol, a collaboration with Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella, among others.Tega references the Critical Engineering group (Julian Oliver, Gordan Savičić, Danja Vasiliev), whose manifesto is very much worth reading, and 100rabbits, whose blog and methodological work are super super engaging.In climate-related discussions, we talk about Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Breeding Sweetgrass, Holly Jean Buck’s Ending Fossil Fuels, the concept of ‘feral computing’ from Austin Wade Smith, and the data work by Crowther Lab on forest development.Marek briefly mentions Joshua Citarella’s absolutely phenomenal ‘A Public Option for Social Media’.Thanks for your patience while both Roberto and Marek were in mega-travel mega-project mode. We will be releasing something very large in the next few weeks to make up for it. :)

Here’s a gem from our archive, a recording with Jonathan Impett — Director of Research at the Orpheus Instituut. Impett has had a MAJOR impact on Roberto and Marek, a kind of intellectual godfather to the two of us. His staggering breadth of knowledge continues to blow our minds. You can find more about Impett's work here. A number of references from the discussion include: Impett's chapter in Choreomata is awesome. Buy our book! :) Impett references Alexander Nagel and Chris Wood's Anachronic Renaissance an unbelievably ambitious tome that delves into the situatedness of art both inside and outside of the Renaissance.A few California references -- Jonathan tags in Swarm and references the composer Brian Ferneyhough. We're all Reza Negarestani fans here -- for more about computational interactionism, check out Reza's epsiode of the pod, Anil Bawa-Cavia's episode of the pod, and Reza's absolutely mondo Intelligence and Spirit.At the time of the interview, Matteo Pasquinelli's influential The Eye of the Master had not yet been released and is referenced as an upcoming release.For more information on the "waste product" -- Alain Badiou's Immanence of Truths is actually pretty forthcoming in this respect. Jonathan also references After Sound, a very timely read by G. Douglas Barrett.

Majorly excited to have Patricia Reed on the pod. This is a beefy episode! If I was looking for a major reset in my relationship to the world around me, I'd start here.Here’s a list of the references we make throughout the interview:Here's that e-flux diagram I talk about in the intro, and here's a lecture in which she discusses this diagram. Here's the Diagramming the Common piece, which is older but I really like it. Here's a must-read interview with Denise Ferreira da Silva where the concept of "the end of the world as we know it" is postulated.When Patricia Reed refers to the "logics of worlds" in a Badiousian sense, she's referring to Alain Badiou's work on truth and world. Unless you're down for a real rabbithole, you're likely good with Reed's description here.Reed references Margaret Morrison and the Black-Scholes model in the context of finance.Reed references Sylvia Wynter's work consistently, specifically her discussion of humanism and of Frantz Fanon.Check out Beth Coleman's work on Octavia Butler AI, as well as da Silva's "Unpayable Debt" (inspired by Butler's Kindred) -- and if you somehow haven't read the Lilith's Brood Trilogy after we discussed it with Luciana Parisi, go read it (aka Xenogenesis). It's like idk the most important work of fiction in the last 50 years idk!!!Ofc big shoutouts as always Anil Bawa-Cavia -- this is the book we discuss toward the end of the episode.If you aren't aware of Laboria Cuboniks and the XFM, stop listening and read it!!!

This episode features one of our most anticipated guests: M. Beatrice Fazi.M. Beatrice Fazi is a philosopher working in philosophy of computation, philosophy of technology and media philosophy. In this episode we mostly cover some key definitions relating to computation and its onto-epistemology grounded in Fazi’s landmark book, Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics published in 2018. But our discussion doesn't end in 2018.Now more than ever, Fazi`s work on computation holds unbelievable importance with wide-ranging implications. Philosophy is becoming a major foil to technocapital and technopolitics, forcing us to seriously (re)consider fundamental questions about technology and correlated fundamentals of knowledge and being.Ever wondered what computation actually is? According to Fazi, it exists and unfolds not only as a function, but also as a creative modality forming its own conditions for existence. This episode dives deep into the concept of computation as an autonomous form of thought and creation, that is nevertheless contingent, i.e. not independent from the material conditions of the world.We move further into Fazis more recent work in ontology: the triangulation of abstraction, representation and thought. This pushes us into massive questions - what does computation mean for the future of thought? How should we conceptualize the relationship between humans and technology? And why should we rethink the idea of technology as merely an extension of ourselves?Relevant Links & References:Fazi’s landmark book, Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics—still essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of technology. About the fundamentals of what computation does and what material, ontological and epistemological consequences this holds. Brian Cantwell Smith’s essay, “The Foundations of Computing” (2003)—a text we explore, even if Fazi offers a different perspective on the nature of computation.Oh, also, look to Anil Bawa-Cavia's (life changing) episode of Interdependence, where he enumerates further on computational functionalism, computational realism, but more importantly for more color on the paths to incompleteness traced in Gödel and Turing -- to which Fazi builds her main thesis: these incompletenesses are actually strengths and not limitations of computation.Pls like and subscribe or leave a review or whatever we're a baby podcast that's doing huge things!