New Models

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Our guest is Orit Halpern: co-author of The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2023); author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke, 2014); and Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Often in discussions about machine learning and smartness, AI is presented as the natural path of human progress, an evolutionary – almost biological – development that emerged out of human communication systems and that has the potential to far exceed them. But as Orit argues, these technologies are neither inevitable nor inhuman. Rather they are the result of a particular intersection of neoliberal theory, psychology, and computer science that generated the economic incentives, political will, and public desire for AI to exist in the specific form we have now. On this episode, Orit animates the technological imaginary that gave rise to our culture of AI, asking, among other things, how a highly adaptive, machine-learning enabled world changes the terms of political possibility and human revolution. For more: https://orithalpern.net
 “Financializing Intelligence: On the Integration of Markets & Machines“ https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/on-models/519993/financializing-intelligence-on-the-integration-of-machines-and-markets/ “Futures of Cybernetic Urbanism” in "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective" catalogue of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale (2025) Counter-Practices and The Image of Thought https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768640251335679 Planetary Infrastructure https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-38128-8_1-1 - Episode image adapted from: Marco Zorzanello photo of the installation TERMS AND CONDITIONS by Transsolar, Bilge Kobas, Daniel A. Barber, and Sonia Seneviratne at La Biennale di Venezia, 2025

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com On this ep, NM is joined by filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko, who you may know as the director of films such as 0s and 1s, Wobble Palace, Spree, and most recently, The Code, which stars Peter Vack & Dasha Nekrasova and is currently streaming on Mubi.  Like much of Eugene’s work, The Code understands itself both as entertainment and as cinema — cinema-in-a-time-when everyone is an editor, cinema-in-a-time-when content has become infinite, which is to say empty, a site of projection for viewers-turned-users. We talk about The Code on this episode and about the industry, about virality, idenity, authoritarianism, slop, empathy. comedy, and success. For more: https://www.instagram.com/madabouteug (IG) Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/directorscommentary Site: https://www.everybodyloves.me   Watch “The Code” MUBI: https://mubi.com/en/de/films/the-code-2024 LA: https://lumierecinemala.com/film-the-code-2024/ NYC: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-code-3-2-3-2/

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io or https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com In town for an event with Matt Copson at Berlin’s KW, Dean Kissick stops by the show to talk about art, criticism, and self-performance as well as fire punks, AI monsters, vulgarity, Ye, and the death of the hot take. Now based in London following a decade-long tenure in Downtown New York, Dean is a writer with recent and forthcoming work in Spike, Heavy Traffic, and Civilization. His essay, “The Painted Protest: How Politics Destroyed Contemporary Art” appeared in the December 2024 issue of Harper’s. For more: @deankissick IG & X

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Gideon Jacobs joins NM to discuss his latest piece for the LA Review of Books, “Player One and Main Character,” which explores the logic of power in a time when some of its key agents are no longer operating in base reality. Related: Lil Internet’s “Hallucinator’s Dice” (unlocked) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/hallucinators-dice See also: 
 "Player One and Main Character" (LARB, Apr 2025) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/ “Trump l’Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/ NM Talkcore w/ Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024) https://on.soundcloud.com/kC8NzddUcGynZyZj6 Episode image adapted from photo by Daniel Arnold for Document Journal of Gideon Jacobs as the character Father Bartholomew Mary, 2025.

Unlocked (first released to subscribers 17 March 2025) --> https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com https://newmodels.io Lil Internet purges his Musk Derangement Syndrome one last time in a monologue that could have been titled “Ket, Lies, and Video Games”—until a decades-long shift in base reality is revealed by dice in a Hong Kong bar. - [Excerpt from monologue]: “A very brief review of what everyone knows but might not think about all at once: Elon Musk bought Twitter, the most influential social media platform in the world, and promised to make it ”politically neutral.” He then renamed it X, which, in mathematics and logic stands for any arbitrary thing you want, and turned the entire platform towards boosting far right parties across the globe. He controls what does and doesn’t appear on your feed, what does or doesn’t get fact checked, and bans users on a whim. He owns Starlink, a satellite ISP that allows him to monitor traffic or sever a home’s entire internet connection at any time. He owns SpaceX, which is building a classified satellite network called Starshield for the National Reconnaissance Office of the US Military that will allow 24/7, real-time images and AI-powered intelligence gathering across the entire surface of the planet. He owns xAI, which is building the world’s most powerful supercomputer to achieve AGI and have it run the US government. He owns Tesla, which sells cars that he can control, shut down, or render permanently inoperable via satellite, and builds humanoid robots explicitly for replacing human jobs. And then there’s Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company that is literally implanting thought-reading microchips in people’s brains. This is all basic public knowledge, and yet people who swore Bill Gates was putting 5G microchips in the vaccines seem to be totally fine with an even richer guy controlling their social media, internet access, and car while building robots to replace their jobs, putting every square inch of Earth under 24/7 surveillance, and implanting microchips in people’s brains. Elon Musk has openly, transparently, turned every conspiracy theory trope into a business he directly owns. He is openly, transparently, every dystopian fear embodied within a single man. Yet the paranoid and the conspiratorial are most likely to support him. Why? I think it’s because transparency has replaced truth and trust in society, and with Elon transparently the most dangerous man to ever exist, truth and trust have become irrelevant.”

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe | https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com - Writer and Nymphet Alumni co-host Biz Sherbert joins NM following the launch of her newsletter, American Style. Its premise is simple — travel around the country and talk to people about what they are wearing and why. On the show, we chat with Biz about the transmission of style today, particularly in the USA, and whether personal aesthetic transformations may be a stand-in for pursuing the erstwhile American Dream. For more: https://instagram.com/bizsherbert https://bizsherbert.substack.com/about Nymphet Alumni Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/65CYBeAlLNevYAdW0YgyD1 See also: “What Does Beauty Look Like in the Age of Trump?” AnOther (Feb 2025) https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/16218/what-does-beauty-look-like-in-the-trump-era-anna-claire-howland-addison-rae “On the Fashion Philosophy of the Crypto Bro,” Zora (June 2023) https://zine.zora.co/biz-sherbert-crypto-style Biz Sherbert x Emma Chamberlain, The Face (Sept 2024) https://theface.com/culture/emma-chamberlain-style-voice-of-a-generation-young-people-social-media-famous Nicole Kidman shot by Petra Collins for Time Woman of the Year, 2025 https://time.com/7216403/nicole-kidman-interview/

First published in Heavy Traffic V (Fall 2024), Mark Leckey's kaleidoscopic, transhistorical sojourn into the Eikonomachia (the 'image struggle') is presented here in radio play form w/ sound design and production also by Leckey. This reading is part of Heavy Traffic’s New Models residency, which features pieces from the magazine read aloud by their authors. Heavy Traffic V of is out now. https://heavytrafficmagazine.com See also:  📹 "Enter Through Medieval Wounds" video version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyi-ZRJj7mI 🔉NM Greenroom | Mark Leckey (2025) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/preview-nm-greenroom-mark-leckey-2025? 🔉NM75 | w/ Heavy Traffic editor/publisher Patrick McGraw https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/mcgraw-heavytraffic-nm75/s-VB0sQZYweL0 🖼️ 3 Songs from the Liver,” Gladstone Gallery, NYC (2024-25) https://www.gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/13694/3-songs-from-the-liver/installation-views

K Allado-McDowell is a writer, speaker, musician, and the mind behind books like "Pharmako-AI," as well as the founder of Google's Artists + Machine Intelligence. In this discussion, K explores the evolution of media in the age of AI, focusing on the rise of 'neural media' and its impact on individuality. They dive into ethical considerations in animal communication, and the philosophical implications of AI's role in creativity and truth, proposing new frameworks for understanding our relationship with technology. A thought-provoking conversation!

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe. | https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com _ British artist Mark Leckey — creator of famed club culture docu-hallucination, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), winner of the 2008 Turner Prize, and longtime NTS Radio host — discusses the terms of art-making in our technological present and our increasingly medieval relationship to representation. His show “3 Songs from the Liver” was on view at Gladstone Gallery, NY, Nov 2024 - Feb 2025. “AI outputs are not “images” as we know them. And if we try to understand them in that way, then we’re really…. f*cked, you know?” Following this conversation, keep listening for “Enter Through Medieval Wounds” a radio play by Mark Leckey, which first appeared in essay form in Heavy Traffic V (Fall 2024). For more: https://markleckey.com https://www.nts.live/shows/mark-leckey https://www.gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/13694/3-songs-from-the-liver/installation-views Episode image adapted from Mark Leckey, "Carry Me into The Wilderness" (Icon), 2022

This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 13 Feb 2025 | Subscribe --> https://newmodels.io Part 2 of this NM Greenroom features Amnesia Scanner's Ville Haimala & French artist Freeka Tet discussing the work they do in parallel to their AS collaboration. For Ville, this includes developing scores and sound design with Anne Imhof for her monumental performance-installations; while Freeka discusses his recent music video for The Weeknd. In Part 1 (released 9 Feb 2025) AS's Ville Haimala & Martti Kalliala, together with regular collaborator Freeka Tet speak about their most recent release, AS HOAX (PAN, 2024) and the project's innovations within the post-streaming subcultural industrial complex. For more: 
@amensiascanner @freekatet @villehaimala (IG) https://p-a-n.org/product/amnesia-scanner-freeka-tet-hoax-pan-148/