Interdependence: Recent Episodes
Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst
$5 grad school by Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, covering the people, projects and technologies shaping 21st century culture.
Patrons and Channel holders get access to weekly episodes as they drop, the free feed is time delayed <3
In advance of the premiere of her new AI fueled gesamtkunstwerk “Gorgon”, the artist Marianna Simnett joins us to dive into mythology, mimicry and the saga of convincing tools to do what you want them to!
“Gorgon” (commissioned by LAS) will take place at HAU Berlin from the 13-17th September
https://www.las-art.foundation/programme/gorgon
Follow Marianna Simnett: https://www.instagram.com/mariannasimnett/
Collect OGRESS on Foundation: https://foundation.app/collection/ogress
Over the past two decades Shawn Reynaldo has operated in every corner of electronic music. His substack "First Floor", recently anthologized into his debut book, offers a refreshingly candid account of his feelings about the turbulent state of a culture in transition.
We dive into some of the choice essays from his book, reflect on some major shifts of the last decade, and attempt a COVID post mortem.
See Shawn on tour: https://thevinylfactory.com/news/first-floor-shawn-reynaldo/
Buy and read First Floor Volume 1: https://velocitypress.uk/product/first-floor-volume-1/
Sub to the First Floor Substack: https://firstfloor.substack.com/
Follow Shawn: https://twitter.com/ShawnReynaldo
Everyone and their llama is talking about AI ethics and law, so we invited the high Llama Andres Guadamuz, an eminent researcher in AI and IP, to discuss the particularities and uncertainties of AI training law, in honor of his recent paper on the subject. It is an issue of our time. We make it fun.
A Scanner Darkly: Copyright Infringement in Artificial Intelligence Inputs and Outputs: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4371204
Follow Andres on twitter: https://twitter.com/technollama
After some weeks of nativity bliss and medical drama we are back!
A joy to invite Venkatesh Rao to take us down a number of his bunny trails, focussing initially on his great piece The Permaweird, the latest in his Great Weirding series. We discuss the tendency to call "crisis!", a generally ambient sense of weirdness, and how the latest developments in AI suggest that isn't slowing down anytime soon
The Permaweird: https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-permaweird
Subscribe to Ribbonfarm: https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/
Follow Venkatesh on twitter: https://twitter.com/vgr
We caught up with Damien Roach, aka patten, aka 555-5555, to discuss the need for new language to navigate the abstract implications of machine learning for our understanding of art, and the limitations of the modernist approach. We also eventually get around to discussing his beautiful new record "Mirage FM" created in part with Riffusion, a text-to-audio model.
Follow Damien: https://twitter.com/patttten / https://www.instagram.com/patttten
Buy "Mirage FM": https://patttten.bandcamp.com/album/mirage-fm
Runway have been on an absolute tear of late offering new AI tools for their creative production suite, so we invited CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela to join us to discuss their approach, and how the mental models of artists and greater society may change in accordance with the shifts happening.
Try out Runway: https://runwayml.com
Follow Runway: https://twitter.com/runwayml
Follow Cristóbal: https://twitter.com/c_valenzuelab
Hey everyone!
We recently linked up with the inimitable K Allado McDowell as part of the "Death by Landscape" series at HKW Berlin to discuss their new book "Air Age Blueprint" with a live audience, out now on Ignota Books, as well as recent controversies around AI sentience, and K's own work exploring interspecies communication with machine learning.
Lots more to come, hope you are warm and well.
Order "Air Age Blueprint": https://ignota.org/products/air-age-blueprint
Check out the HKW: https://www.hkw.de/en/
Cover art by Somnath Bhatt
Over the moon to welcome titans of AI music Dadabots! We debate the coming obsolescence of human artists, their new open source AI music organization HarmonAI, and discuss what is being prototyped on the bleeding edge of AI sound generation.
Follow Dadabots: https://twitter.com/dadabots
Dadabots in the AI song contest: https://www.aisongcontest.com/the-2022-finalists
We catch up with Moisés Horta Valenzuela (Hexorcismos) to discuss his remarkable experiments with music and machine learning, and his upcoming software project Semilla that experiments with co-ownership of musician AI models shared for anyone to use. Just...the best.
Listen to Hexorcismos: https://hexorcismos.bandcamp.com/
Follow Hexorcismos: https://twitter.com/hexorcismos
Check out Semilla: https://semilla.ai/
Primavera De Filippi of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society joins us to discuss her economic experiments, her groundbreaking art project Plantoid, her novel concept on Extitutional theory, and her current thoughts on the state of crypto.
Follow Primavera: https://twitter.com/yaoeo?lang=en
An Introduction to Extitutional Theory: https://cyber.harvard.edu/story/2021-01/introduction-extitutional-theory
Read Blockchain and the Law (cowritten with fellow pod guest Aaron Wright):
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241596
A great joy to host Andy Turner and Emma Catnip to discuss their work in celebration of the release of Plaid's latest album Feorm Falorx. We discuss their intergalactic space travel over the covid lockdown, our mutual rabbit-holing over the latest AI tools and techniques, and the situation for touring artists as they prepare to take the record on the road.
Experience Feorm Falorx, the album and graphic novel: https://plaid.warp.net/
See Plaid on tour soon: https://ra.co/dj/plaid/tour-dates
Follow Andy Turner: https://twitter.com/chimpandy
Follow Emma Catnip's work: https://linktr.ee/emmacatnip
Hi everyone! Back in the saddle after an enforced little break prompted by a peculiar cluster of medical scare, pregnancy and founding a new organization. What a wild year.
Thrilled to host James Bridle to discuss his recent book on ecologies of non-human intelligence "Ways of Being", animal sensing and co-operation, deliberative democracy, the singing origins of language, cybernetics, and a great deal more. Few have such an encyclopedic and generous grasp of this field and it was a real treat.
Have a sweet week 🦾
Read "Ways of Being": https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/317823/ways-of-being-by-bridle-james/9780241469651
Order the audiobook of "Ways of Being" read by James himself! https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250856111/waysofbeing
Read "The New Dark Age": https://www.versobooks.com/books/3002-new-dark-age
Follow James: https://twitter.com/jamesbridle
Mat joined our friends Emilie & Andrea at The Culture Journalist to cover a brief history of the current wave of AI art, why artist replacement narratives can veer on the absurd, and the work we are doing launching our new organization Spawning.
Read and subscribe to the Culture Journalist: https://theculturejournalist.substack.com/
See if you feature in AI training models, and opt out or opt in: https://haveibeentrained.com/
A real joy to welcome one of our favorites David Kanaga, the composer and game designer behind Soft Valkyrie, a recent opera starring Stephen Fry and Attila Csihar, the dog opera Oἶκoςpiel and more. We discuss gaming and modern composition and the fascinating villainy of Wagner.
Listen to Soft Valkyrie: https://davidkanaga.bandcamp.com/album/soft-valkyrie-first-day-from-the-ring-of-the-nibelung-directors-cut
Follow David: https://twitter.com/dkanaga
Play Oikospiel: http://www.oikospiel.com/
David's music: https://davidkanaga.bandcamp.com/
A joy to welcome Yancey Stickler to discuss his idea of Post-Individualism and his new project Metalabel. We also get into his prior work founding Kickstarter, its parallels to web 3, and new proposals to fund artistic scenes.
Metalabel: https://www.metalabel.xyz/
Follow Yancey: https://twitter.com/ystrickler
Read Yancey's great blog: https://www.ystrickler.com/writing
Such a joy to have on virtuosic musician and instrument builder Tim Exile to discuss his collaborative online musical ecosystem Endlesss, the uneasy state of contemporary music, new folk traditions and what piqued his interest in web 3.
Follow Tim: https://twitter.com/timexile
Endlesss: https://endlesss.fm/
Tim's music: https://warp.net/artists/91285-tim-exile/info
David Turner shares some of the most insightful and thorough analyses on the music industry through his Penny Fractions newsletter.
We link up to discuss the current state of streaming, his skepticism about much of crypto, and his positive perspective on the regular recycling of the 20th century in popular culture.
Sub to Penny Fractions: https://pennyfractions.ghost.io/
Follow Penny Fractions: https://twitter.com/pennyfractions
Anil is one of our favorite thinkers on AI. To celebrate the advent of Anil's debut book "Logiciel: Six Seminars on Computational Reason", we try and pick apart some high level concepts on reason and computation, and discuss why recent deep learning breakthroughs may require a break from traditional conceptions of what we consider to be intelligence.
Follow Anil: https://twitter.com/cavvia
The Inclosure of Reason: https://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/p/The-Inclosure-of-Reason-ecTsvnENeC1GXtmgRNaMH9
A real pleasure to welcome Emad Mostaque to discuss the impending launch of Stable Diffusion, his comprehensive plans for open source AI infrastructure, the impending reconfiguration of how we create everything, and how artists might hope to adapt to it all.
Stability.ai - https://stability.ai/
Stable Diffusion Beta: https://stability.ai/beta-signup-form
Follow Emad: https://twitter.com/EMostaque
Wonderful to catch up with DDSP co-author Hanoi Hantrakul, whose practice considers transcultural exchange using new technologies from machine learning to 3d printing. We discuss his contribution to the 2022 AI song contest, his VST plugin developed in his new role at Tik Tok, and the fascinating challenge of fair and generative ways to interact with deep cultural traditions in the context of AI.
Follow Hanoi: https://twitter.com/yaboihanoi
Vote in the AI Song Contest: https://www.aisongcontest.com/the-2022-finalists
Try Mawf: https://mawf.io/
Try DDSP: https://magenta.tensorflow.org/ddsp-vst
We had a wonderfully funny chat with Marina Abramović on AI authorship and digital twins, the urgent need for heroism, and the parallels between performance art and web 3's attempts to value the immaterial.
Marina Abramović's debut NFT project with Circa - The Hero 25FPS: https://circa.art/nft/
Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Easy_Pieces
Marina Abramović: The Life: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/marina-abramovic-life/
We sit down with Sound.xyz founder David Greenstein to discuss the many different experiments and approaches happening to revalue music within the Ethereum ecosystem, touching on Spotify, TikTok and the traditional music industry in contrast.
Full disclosure, we contributed a small sum to Sound's seed investment round.
Follow David: https://twitter.com/dgreenstein1
Follow Sound: https://twitter.com/soundxyz_
Celebrating the release of his first book "Greenpilled: How Crypto Can Regenerate The World" we welcome Kevin Owocki to discuss regenerative crypto-economics, doomer optimism, impact DAO's, public goods and crypto's relationship to the state .
Buy Greenpilled and take the pledge: https://greenpill.party/#book
Sub to The Green Pill Podcast: https://availableon.com/greenpill
Follow Kevin: https://twitter.com/owocki
Gitcoin: https://gitcoin.co/
Our favorite projects at the moment are finding ways to harness the generative potential of Discord communities to coordinate ambitious projects, and what THE FRINGE are building is remarkable.
Already having created a bespoke successful Sci-Fi universe with their debut film PROSPECT, they are turning to Web 3 to build a more expansive, co-created and ultimately fair way to create movies.
Really excited to share this one!
THE FRINGE: https://fringedrifters.com/
THE FRINGE White Paper: https://mirror.xyz/thefringe.eth/d4F3Xok4kOKHs8Dzbpan1A7XNtdTO3nBsEWcEGIhGec
Follow THE FRINGE: https://twitter.com/fringedrifters
PROSPECT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_(film)#:~:text=Prospect%20is%20a%202018%20American,in%20the%20moon's%20poisonous%20forest.
Wonderful to chat with Brett Scott in advance of his new book "Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto and the War for Our Wallets" (Penguin) about the creeping incursions of cashlessness, the naivety of crypto and why cash is maybe worth keeping around!
Follow Brett: https://twitter.com/Suitpossum
Preorder "Cloudmoney": https://www.amazon.com/Cloudmoney-Cash-Cards-Crypto-Wallets-ebook/dp/B09HSBDLKG
Sub to Altered States of Monetary Consciousness: https://brettscott.substack.com/
Excited to chat with one of the most exciting projects in the music and crypto field, Songcamp, and the world's first headless band, Chaos!
Camp Chaos: https://www.chaos.build/
Songcamp: https://songcamp.mirror.xyz/
Follow Mark: https://twitter.com/markredito
Follow Matthew: https://twitter.com/matthewchaim
Follow Songcamp: https://twitter.com/songcamp_
Follow Chaos: https://twitter.com/headless_chaos
Lars Holdhus: http://www.larsholdhus.com/
Matt Liston's 0xOmega: https://www.ccn.com/crypto-cult-augur-founder-creates-ethereum-based-religion-called-0x%CF%89/
Welcoming crypto art legend and valued Interdependence subscriber Harm van den Dorpel on the podcast to discuss scarcity, genetic algorithms, managing expectations, limit experiences and his upcoming work, Markov's Dream
Follow Harm: https://twitter.com/harmvddorpel
Check out Harm's Work and writing: https://harm.work/
Check out Markov's Dream: https://harm.work/work/markovs-dream
Chemsex Benelux / Indiscreet Units: https://benelux.chem.sex/
Celebrating the release of Debit's album "The Long Count", composed using machine learning tools trained on the worlds largest archive of Mayan wind instruments!
We discuss the genesis of the project, working with the gorgeous grain of nascent AI instruments, ancestral technologies, travels through Mexico, the plague of musical conservatism, and the double edged sword of "world music".
Buy "The Long Count": https://boomkat.com/products/the-long-count-16d8c6ef-30e1-4e6f-80fa-6957fd643e18
Follow Debit: https://twitter.com/delibeat
Hi everyone!
Something different this week. After listening to some great episodes pulling apart the Bandcamp Epic Games acquisition and showing some skepticism about Web 3, I approached Money 4 Nothing podcast to have a convivial discussion about crypto for a collaborative episode.
We discuss common concerns and skepticisms, debate the motivations and significance of major labels in the space, ask if saving the 20th century music industry is worth it and a great deal more
I can really recommend checking out M4N at the links below!
Money 4 Nothing: https://money4nothing.podbean.com/
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/M4Npodcast
On Bandcamp and Epic Games: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bandcamp-and-epic-games-get-hitched/id1514180523?i=1000554131793
M4N with David Turner: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/web-3-bro-with-david-turner/id1514180523?i=1000550471345
We are happy to be back after Mat's COVID trip, discussing art prepping, Sterling's upcoming ArtBlocks piece, and his expert opinions on the state of ML, AR, VR and what is worth watching (and ignoring) about the impending metaverse.
Sterling's upcoming ArtBlocks reveal: https://www.artblocks.io/project/279
Sterling's art: http://www.sterlingcrispin.com/
Sterling's great blog: https://sterlingcrispin.blogspot.com/
Sterling's twitter: https://twitter.com/sterlingcrispin
Hey y'all, after many references to this project in previous episodes we are really happy to welcome Adam and Luke from Context!
We discuss their efforts to make Web3 activity legible to humans, debate criticisms of the speculative nature of the Web3 art space, discuss the antecedent of drop culture, the shockwaves caused by making previously hidden financial activity transparent, and the potential for permissionless identities.
Check out Context: Context.app
Follow Luke: https://twitter.com/worm_emoji
Follow Adam: https://twitter.com/adamludwin
Hey everyone! This week we host the inimitable Cherie Hu to discuss the evolution of Water & Music into the first contributor led research DAO for the music industry, the changing definitions and focus of music & technology, Tik Tok and the politics (and occasional burden) of relatability. It was fun and revealing to work through the particularities and practicalities of making the jump into uncertain territory with Web 3 from a position in the more traditional music industry!
Everyone should check out what Cherie is building with Water & Music: https://www.waterandmusic.com/
Read the comprehensive $STREAM report: https://stream.waterandmusic.com/
Follow Cherie: https://twitter.com/cheriehu42
Jacob from ZORA runs us through his latest essay, Hyperstructures, and the future of ZORA protocol. We pull apart how permissionless protocols and cc0 projects are gathering significant momentum and what this might mean for the future of the internet and art making! We also dive down the rabbit hole of some pretty psychedelic NFT use cases. Super fun and enriching as ever. Hope you are all having a great week!
Hyperstructures: https://jacob.energy/hyperstructures.html
What is CryptoMedia: https://cryptomedia.wtf/
Nouns DAO: https://nouns.wtf/
The Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)
A wonderful conversation with Jack Callahan, Eric Farber and Mike Pollard of Nina, who are building a protocol for permanent collections of music on the fast and affordable Solana Blockchain.
Made all the more special that we come from similar experimental music scenes, we discuss the critical importance of establishing and archiving context for marginal musics, Myspace data loss and the revival of 00's era aesthetics, reanimating Scatman John, our our mutual appreciation of experimental composer Jeff Witscher, how protocol art is a more enduring framing than "NFT" art (equivalent to the LP as a medium), and our excitement and frustrations at both the rollout of Web 3 and its detractors.
Nina Market: https://nina.market/
Jeff Witscher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Witscher
Flea label: https://newmusicindustrialcomplex.com/
Julius Eastman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Eastman
Myspace data loss: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/18/myspace-loses-all-content-uploaded-before-2016
We invited artist Simon Denny over to our studio for the final podcast of the year to go deep on his practice, a commitment to exploring context as a medium, making crypto art and exhibitions before everyone cared, and Dotcom Seance, his wild new art project on Folia.
A perfect guest to close out the year! We will be taking a break for the first week of January to focus on something big to be announced soon, and will also be doing an AMA in the early new year - send over questions!
Happy new year everyone and thank you <3
Simon Denny: https://simondenny.net/
DOTCOM SEANCE: https://www.dotcomseance.com/
Proof of Stake Exhibition at Hamburg Kunstverein
Contextual data dump:
Making art about stories told about technology
History of art funding and institutional critique
Context as an expanded medium of expression
Unprecedented Participatory auction dynamics
Industrialist patrons aren't new
Proof of Stake Exhibition at Hamburg Kunstverein
Collector DAOs - Fingerprints/Flamingo
Protocol art/Situating crypto art on a longer historical timeline as a sign of maturity for the space
Off chain work in the crypto canon
What canon is, how it is created, and is it changing?
Does an art world want to be decentralized?
Can we have a flamingoDAO book please?
When traditional habits start to reappear as rational
Galleries and intermediaries still kindof make sense when they know what they are doing
Evolution of art fairs
Folia!
Dotcom Seance: bringing dot com companies back from the dead
pets.com
CashWars and FunBugs experimenting with their Seance ENS
The amount of time it takes to run tokenised art projects
The relevance of Web 1 to the present day
CD-ROMS
How to reconcile slower art making practices with the speed of information exchange
Interdependence
Late night debate about conceptual art and beauty
Is anything ugly?
Beauty is in the eye of the token holder!
Beeple
We (Interdependence) are doing an AMA soon - questions in comments ;)
Big one this week, artist and researcher Kyle McDonald did the gruelling work to calculate the energy and carbon cost of Ethereum, and we try to break down those numbers, calculate their relative impact, discuss critiques of web 3 and debate why they are mostly coming from where they are coming from.
Ethereum Emissions: https://kylemcdonald.github.io/ethereum-emissions/
Kyle's art: https://kylemcdonald.net/
Follow Kyle: https://twitter.com/kcimc
Who Pays Artists?: http://www.whopaysartists.com/
People staring at computers: https://www.wired.com/2012/07/people-staring-at-computers/
We had a long and wonderful chat with Ali after reading his "Who Goes Crypto?" piece on the increasing number of working people opting into investing money into the casino of crypto and meme stocks rather than adhere to crumbling narratives over how the economy works, and for whom. We also dive into an area of his expertise, online disinformation and it's political ramifications.
Holly dips out half way through the discussion, she wasn't feeling great and we did not realise at the time she had contracted COVID. Fortunately all is well now, but that will explain the occasional coughing and spluttering.
Thanks everyone, have a great week <3
Follow Ali: https://twitter.com/alibreland
Read Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/
Who Goes Crypto? by Ali Breland https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/11/who-goes-crypto-eth-bitcoin-etc-financialization-gamestop-class-wealth/
Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia? by Ali Breland https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/why-are-right-wing-conspiracies-so-obsessed-with-pedophilia/
Bad News by Joseph Bernstein https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/
We've been wanting to have this conversation for some time! Scott Moore joins us to discuss Gitcoin's efforts to sustain open source developers, the emerging culture shock between late 20th century free software ideologies and new proposals to get developers paid (which parallels a lot of the culture shock happening in the art and music world rn), discuss the role crypto may play in funding and sustaining public goods, and deviate into why setting good precedent may be important in anticipation of rapid onset AI.
We sound a little croaky for this episode and the next one because we had a bit of COVID in the house. All is good now thankfully. Stay safe out there everyone, and thanks <3
Gitcoin: https://gitcoin.co/
Follow Scott: https://twitter.com/notscottmoore
Gitcoin grants: https://gitcoin.co/grants/
Quadratic Funding primer: https://wtfisqf.com/?grant=&grant=&grant=&grant=&match=1000
Review of Optimism Funding: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/11/16/retro1.html
Original 'Dependency' cartoon by xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/
We had a wonderful friday night hang with artist Deafbeef, who has had a crazy year transitioning from full time blacksmithing to becoming a respected artist known for his on-chain audio visual experiments. After an intense year we try to go as far off script as is possible and just talk about art, satire, music making and cooking videos.
Check out Deafbeef's work: https://www.deafbeef.com/
Follow Deafbeef on Twitter: https://twitter.com/_deafbeef
Stuff we discussed
Brad Troemel's Athletic Aesthetics: https://thenewinquiry.com/athletic-aesthetics/
Media Archaelogist Erkki Huhtamo: http://www.erkkihuhtamo.com/
Folie à deux:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux
Etoy Corp https://etoy.com/
Frank Zappa at the PMRC hearing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgAF8Vu8G0w
Wonderful to welcome Jess from Seed club, who help web communities make the transition to member owned DAOs!
Apply for Seed Club: https://seedclub.xyz/
Follow Jess: https://twitter.com/thattallguy
Slaying Moloch, starting the first crypto art registry, Bowie Bonds, Data markets and data unions with Ocean Protocol's Trent McConaghy
Trent has been very influential to our thinking. There are few people who can talk with such fluency on matters we care about, even better build compelling alternatives.
In this we discuss how he and his wife Masha built the first crypto art registry, Ascribe, long before the concept of an NFT existed. We also discuss how his latest project Ocean Protocol proposes to hand us control of our data at the dawn of the next internet.
Follow Trent: https://twitter.com/trentmc0
Trent's Blog: http://trent.st/blog/
Ascribe: https://www.ascribe.io/
Ocean Protocol: https://oceanprotocol.com/
Swash: https://swashapp.io/
In conjunction with this years Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts titled "Iskra Delta "curated by Tjaša Pogačar we interviewed Janez Skrubej, the author of "The Cold War For Information Technology: the Inside Story".
Inside indeed, as Janez was the former CEO of Iskra Delta, a major contender on the world stage for not only personal computers, but also large scale networked IT systems. Based within Tito’s Yugoslavia it was caught in the crosshairs in the cold war, working between the US, Soviet Union, China, and India, with each corresponding intelligence agency pushing their own agenda. Janez was the managing director during this time, and was personally paid visits by the presidents of the Soviet Union, China and India, as well as the CIA and KGB. Ultimately the conflicting interests overpowered the small IT company and it closed, leaving Europe without a major contender in the global IT race.
It’s a treat to speak to Janez about this extraordinary situation, and to imagine an alternative history where Iskra Delta might have had a fighting chance.
Read The Cold War for Information Technology: The Inside Story: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Information-Technology-Inside-ebook/dp/B00C1NWL2E
Follow Janez Skrubej updates: http://sbpra.com/janezskrubej/
We cannot wait to see this film! http://senca-studio.si/en/portfolio/sparks-in-time/
Check out the Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic arts, with contributions by Other Internet, John Akomfrah, Simon Denny, Josh Citarella, us and more!: https://34.bienale.si/en/
Hi everyone!! We often have discussions on here about web 3 representing a real opportunity for the independent music industry, and Bruno Guez is an expert on how that might end up transpiring, from his time working as a label head, directing the Merlin Network and more recently in building Revelator.
Check out Revelator: https://revelator.com/
Follow Bruno on Twitter: https://twitter.com/brunoguez?lang=en
Rhea Myers conceptualised a new art world by curiously tinkering with new tools and seeing what art she could make with them. We catch up with her to reflect on the earliest days of crypto art, her experiments with the medium and their art historical roots in 60's conceptualism, the current state of the field, Loot frenzy and the recent arrival of the dragonslayers, and some areas she feels are yet unexplored.
This was crazy fun.
Follow Rhea on twitter: https://twitter.com/rheaplex
Read and check out Rhea's Work: https://rhea.art
Conceptual Art, Cryptocurrency and Beyond: https://www.furtherfield.org/conceptual-art-cryptocurrency-and-beyond/
Ethereum Art Market: https://rhea.art/ethereum-art-market
Certificate of Inauthenticity: https://rhea.art/certificate-of-inauthenticity
Tokens Equal Text: https://rhea.art/tokens-equal-text
Rhea's writing on Furtherfield: https://www.furtherfield.org/author/rhea-myers/
Furtherfields (excellent) book Artists Rethinking the Blockchain: https://torquetorque.net/wp-content/uploads/ArtistsReThinkingTheBlockchain.pdf
Rhea's Gallery Kate Voss: https://www.katevassgalerie.com/
Flow Blockchain: https://www.onflow.org/
Fingerprints DAO: https://www.fingerprintsdao.xyz/
Thrilled to welcome artist, educator and meme master Max Alper (La Meme Young) to join us to discuss running an online art school, sound and meme pedagogy, musical body building and deliver an on the ground report of crypto excessiveness arriving in his new home of Puerto Rico.
Learn music with La Meme Young: https://www.patreon.com/la_meme_young
Follow his incredible Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/la_meme_young/?hl=en
Brian Ferneyhough - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8RTPYaWXj8
Jason Eckardt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrY1V2Q3iwI
Nitro - Freight train - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGf5NxLQoEo
Our first ever in person discussion this week with writer and curator Shumon Basar to discuss his new book with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist, The Extreme Self, published in accompaniment with the exhibition "Age of You" most recently hosted at Jameel Art Centre, Dubai.
We discuss a number of neologisms that appear in the book, not least Shumon's concept of "Emotional Capitalism", the growing and alarming gulf between reality and the stories we have to comprehend it, and how art institutions might hope to keep up!
Read The Extreme Self:
Europe: https://doyoureadme.de/shop/culture-society/the-extreme-self?v=3a52f3c22ed6
US: https://www.artbook.com/9783960989738.html
Dazed Interview: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/53342/1/extreme-self-age-douglas-coupland-shumon-basar-hans-ulrich-obrist-interview
Watch Shumon's Visual Essay "Season Ending (The Day Of Forever): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzAc8yRWGCo
Hey everyone,
thanks again for your support! We have a great cast of people joining us over the next few weeks. In line with our recent emphasis on collective character development, we invited Arif Khan and Juliet Gardner of Alethea AI to discuss the incoming age of synthetic media, collectively and autonomously created characters, their concept of interactive NFTs and much more
Check out Alethea AI: https://alethea.ai/
Follow Arif: https://twitter.com/ArKhan
Follow Juliet: https://twitter.com/cybersomeone
If you have spent any time online recently, you have no doubt seen an explosion of remarkable images generated from text with Latent Visions, VQGAN and CLIP. We spoke to Adverb, the creator of Latent Visions, about his project, Promptism, and where we see these applications developing in the next few years (or at this pace, months).
Unmissable discussion with someone who has contributed so much to the field this year!
Follow Adverb: https://twitter.com/advadnoun
Thrilled this week to invite artist and author Emily Segal, whose debut auto-fictional novel “Mercury Retrograde” tells the story of a young artists attempt to reconcile the abstract landscape of overfunded startups and the art world, set in New York between Occupy and the Trump Presidency. We discuss what can be learned from the post-internet era as we stand at the precipice of a new internet, the tensions created by the meeting between financial and social capital, what the hell an artist is anyway now?? and Emily’s recent deep dive on funding new literature projects with web 3.
Read Mercury Retrograde: https://delugebooks.com/products/mercury-retrograde
Deluge Books: https://delugebooks.com/
$NOVEL on Mirror: https://emily.mirror.xyz/0AFENlMKv9amUC1OJIZY26udpISw_raXkoEcvelPvzg
Nemesis Global: https://nemesis.global/
Hi everyone, this week we are thrilled to invite author and developer Daniel Suarez, whose self published science fiction book Daemon became a cult success for its hard science fiction depiction of a narrow AI preprogrammed to re-order the world after the death of it's game developer author. We discuss Daemon and it's follow up Freedom™, how those books inspired aspects of the formation of Ethereum, the importance of reframing narratives through art, and Daniel's more recent work, Delta-V, researching the economics of space exploration. This is a really fun one!
Daniel Suarez: https://daniel-suarez.com/
On twitter: https://twitter.com/itsdanielsuarez?lang=en
Daemon: https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daemon-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731
Freedom™: https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-TM-Daemon-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451231899
Delta-V: https://daniel-suarez.com/Delta-v_synopsis.html
Super excited to share this one, on the advent of our collaboration for Holly+, we are joined by Chris Deaner and Yotam Mann of Never Before Heard Sounds, a brand new company releasing AI music tools, to discuss approachable AI tools for music making, the inevitable model economy, new approaches to DAWs and the Holly+ project more generally!
Never Before Heard Sounds: https://heardsounds.com/
Follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeardSounds
Play with Holly+ (and share your results!): https://holly.plus/
Happy to welcome activist and science communicator Zion Lights to discuss Energy Justice, the scientific consensus around Nuclear Power, the shaky morality of Degrowth positions, Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and her new advocacy organisation, Emergency Reactor!
Zion Lights: http://www.zionlights.co.uk/
Join Emergency Reactor: https://www.emergencyreactor.org/
Continuing our DAO thread we are thrilled to be joined by Aaron & Priyanka of OpenLaw, instrumental in formulating and passing the Wyoming DAO legislation, and stewards of NFT art collection DAO Flamingo, Tempest DAO and The LAO. We discuss what a DAO is, what the legislation means for human and nonhuman DAOs, art collecting in web3 and how DAO governance has been working in practice.
This is a great introduction to DAOs and early experiments in the medium for the unfamiliar!
Apologies for the imperfect audio, our laptop decided to rebel just as we started the call.
Next week we continue the theme by inviting Science Fiction author Daniel Suarez, whose book Daemon had a hand in inspiring the concept of the DAO in the first place, as discussed in this episode :)
Thanks again for your support everyone, have a wonderful week <3
OpenLaw: https://www.openlaw.io
FlamingoDAO: https://flamingodao.xyz/
The LAO: https://www.thelao.io/
Follow Priyanka: https://twitter.com/pridesai
Follow Aaron: https://twitter.com/awrigh01
Watch Josh's streams: https://www.twitch.tv/joshuacitarella
Listen to Josh's interviews: https://www.patreon.com/joshuacitarella
Joshua Citarella - 20 Interviews Book: https://www.amazon.com/20-Interviews-Joshua-Citarella/dp/1034279270/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=joshua+citarella&qid=1611597124&sr=8-1
Welcome to TikTok, the Wildly Popular Video App Where Gen Z Makes the Rules: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-tiktok-wildly-popular-video-app-gen-rules
Follow Jon: https://twitter.com/jgkoomey
Turning Numbers into Knowledge: http://www.numbersintoknowledge.com/
Estimating Bitcoin Electricity Use: A Beginner’s Guide: https://www.coincenter.org/estimating-bitcoin-electricity-use-a-beginners-guide/
SORRY, WRONG NUMBER:The Use and Misuse of Numerical Facts in Analysis and Media Reporting of Energy Issues: attached ;)
Mike Berners Lee: How Bad are Bananas?: https://www.amazon.com/How-Bad-Are-Bananas-Everything/dp/1553658310
Brandolini's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Rully Shabara: https://www.rullyshabara.id/
Senyawa: https://www.rullyshabara.id/senyawa
Alkisah: https://alkisah.net/
Participating label list: https://alkisah.net/track-list/
Raung Jagat: https://www.rullyshabara.id/raung-jagat
New Design Congress: https://newdesigncongress.org/en/
On Weaponized Design: https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/on-weaponised-design
This is Fine: Optimism and Emergency in the P2P network: https://newdesigncongress.org/en/pub/this-is-fine
Cade: https://shiba.computer/
Follow Cade: https://twitter.com/helveticade
Foundation: https://foundation.app/
Foundation on Twitter: https://twitter.com/withFND
Kayvon on Twitter: https://twitter.com/saturnial
Lindsay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lindsay_Howard
Sign up for updates on the Marine Snow project: https://marine-snow.co/sss
Follow Tony Lashley: https://twitter.com/tooonyl
Pseudodoxology Podcast Network: https://www.patreon.com/Pseudodoxia
"The Deluge": https://medium.com/@EdwardWaverley/the-deluge-f62968b20972
"The Sublimity of Permanent Collapse": https://medium.com/@EdwardWaverley/the-sublimity-of-permanent-collapse-and-the-leibnizian-problem-of-monadic-optimization-inherent-in-70d6e8be095a
Books!
Anything by Frederick Beiser
The Art of Memory by Frances A.Yates :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Memory
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind
Logic and the Art of Memory (The Quest for a Universal Language) by Paolo Rossi:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo3620360.html
The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press by Lina Bolzoni and Jeremy Parzen:
https://utorontopress.com/us/the-gallery-of-memory-2
LibGen: https://libgen.is/
Scissor Labels Essay: https://j.mirror.xyz/RUeJfZEZxr-hkuzUCakQyUuf2kOJVMPPiAWBaQFhhqc
How it was funded via $ESSAY: https://j.mirror.xyz/uVGCCwwm3k341lPpxaJmHTZROESVse9Pe_rmbiuUAC0
John Palmer: https://johnpalmer.site/#/
Kara Kittel: https://twitter.com/karakittel?lang=en
Toby Shorin: https://tobyshorin.com/
Other Internet: https://otherinter.net/
http://audreyt.org/ <3
Full editable transcript hosted on gov.tw:
https://sayit.pdis.nat.gov.tw/2021-03-03-interview-with-interdependence
Back in the saddle with Artist and Musician Lawrence Lek for the advent of his latest film AIDOL (2019) and the release of it's wonderful soundtrack on Hyperdub.
We discuss AI Pop Stars, SinoFuturism, IP and cultural stereotypes, NFT murder plots and a great deal more
Have a wonderful week all :)
LINKS
Lawrence Lek: https://lawrencelek.com/
AIDOL OST (Hyperdub): https://hyperdub.net/products/lawrence-lek-aidol-ost
AIDOL Trailer: https://vimeo.com/331655114
Geomancer Trailer: https://vimeo.com/251303726
In celebration of his new book "Hope Runners of Gridlock", we chat to polymath Simon de la Rouviere about designing new economies, never ending stories, Metamodernism and maintaining hope!
Buy the book! https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/hope-runners-of-gridlock
Follow Simon's writings! https://blog.simondlr.com/
Follow Simon! https://twitter.com/simondlr
A brief history of tokens and tulips, NFT aesthetics, energy dramas, fan brigades, social tokens and the meataverse with Daniel Keller (New Models)
Check out New Models!
https://newmodels.io/
https://www.patreon.com/newmodels
Topic marks!
3:00 NFTs and Post Internet
5:00 Metahaven “Can Jokes Bring Down Governments?” https://www.amazon.com/Can-Jokes-Bring-Down-Governments/dp/099291468X
7:00 NFTs for n00bs / What is an NFT
11:30 Ethereum Name Services
15:00 History of the space
16:00 Cryptokitties
20:00 Tulip Mania was overblown!
22:00 Terra0’s Flowertokens
24:00 Price and market
26:00 Present state of NFTs
29:00 Traditional art market improvements
31:00 Current NFT aesthetics
35:00 Horizontalism and “democratisation”
38:00 Beeple
40:00 Sedition and earlier experiments
44:00 NFTs, Ownership and My Collectible Ass
57:00 NFTs tied to physical objects
62:00 Protocols vs Symbolism
65:00 Crypto energy drama
77:00 Social and Community Tokens
82:00 Gas fees
91:00 Non custodial protocols
94:00 Matt Liston’s 0xOmega
98:00 Portable identities
102:00 The meataverse
108:00 What does Interdependence mean to Dan?
Hello everyone! Over the moon this week to welcome Professor Jason Edward Lewis and Suzanne Kite of the Indigenous Protocol and AI Working group!
We discuss the origins and goals of the project, different perspectives on creating AI elders, lessons about communicating with non human intelligences from various Indigenous groups, where utopian freedom of information ideas clash with ideas of self determination, and speculations about building a Hawaiian programming language.
We may take a break next week, but have plenty more great conversations recorded for you all. Thanks again for your support and have a safe and warm, albeit not ideal, holiday period <3
LINKS
Indigenous AI https://www.indigenous-ai.net/
Their Position Paper: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/986506/7/Indigenous_Protocol_and_AI_2020.pdf
Professor Jason Edward Lewis
http://jasonlewis.org/
Suzanne Kite
http://kitekitekitekite.com/
Kite's beautiful album "People You Must Look At Me" https://unheardrecords.bandcamp.com/
In this episode we welcome the full Audius squad, Roneil Rumberg, Forrest Browning and Clayton Blaha to discuss their new music protocol, how it establishes the rails for artist led, rather than centrally mandated, pricing and design of economic and interactive relationships, Soundcloud and the dangers of platform risk, and the ways in which we might drag people away from centralised platforms and communicate the benefits unlocked by decentralised scene ownership.
It was a wonderful discussion and I left it feeling very confident that this group of people are onto something! Head over to audius.co to take a look around.
Have a sweet week, we’ve got a lot more coming!
LINKS
https://audius.co/
https://twitter.com/AudiusProject
https://twitter.com/roneilr
https://twitter.com/ForrestBrowning
https://twitter.com/FerrariJetpack
In the advent of their new book “Pharmako-AI”, co-written with OpenAI’s GPT-3 system, we speak to K Allado-McDowell (and GPT-3) about creating with an inhuman (and a human), the nature and history of intelligence, and focussing art and technology towards healing.
K Allado-McDowell is a writer, speaker, and musician. They are the author, with GPT-3, of the book Pharmako-AI, and are co-editor, with Ben Vickers, of The Atlas of Anomalous AI. Allado-McDowell records and releases music under the name Qenric.
Allado-McDowell established the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI. They are a conference speaker, educator and consultant to think-tanks and institutions seeking to align their work with deeper traditions of human understanding.
Buy Pharmako-AI: https://ignota.org/products/pharmako-ai
Check out Kalla's other work: kalladomcdowell.com
The Inclosure of Reason (by Anil Bawa-Cavia): https://technosphere-magazine.hkw.de/p/The-Inclosure-of-Reason-ecTsvnENeC1GXtmgRNaMH9
Let's talk about elitism.
Buy Eliane's incredible book Elitism: A Progressive Defense
https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/elitism-a-progressive-defence
We welcome author Matt Colquhoun to discuss his release of TWO new books exploring the work of the late, great Mark Fisher.
We discuss Mark's life and legacy, Post Capitalist desire, accelerationism, the various misinterpretations of Capitalist Realism, and the need for psychedelic new fantasies.
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures: https://repeaterbooks.com/product/postcapitalist-desire-the-final-lectures/
Egress: On Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher: https://repeaterbooks.com/product/egress-on-mourning-melancholy-and-mark-fisher/
Xenogothic: https://xenogothic.com/
It was difficult to coordinate release schedules with the CIA but we got there in the end
This week we discuss the CIA and the art world with Frances Stonor Saunders, author of the canonical book in this field "Who Paid The Piper?".
Big thanks to the HKW for facilitating this discussion, and be sure to check out the other programming from their "Disappearance of Music" event.
LINKS
Who Paid the Piper?:https://granta.com/products/who-paid-the-piper/
HKW Disappearance of Music: https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2020/das_verschwinden_der_musik/start.php#:~:text=The%20discursive%20digital%20music%20festival,or%20under%20strict%20protective%20measures.
Hi everyone
In this episode we welcome Nathan Schneider, professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, significant player in the platform co-operativism movement and the originator of the term “exit to community”
We discuss the state of platform co-operativism today, the intersections between more traditional coop communities and the emerging crypto world, the history of co-ops, and as usual we get to gleefully dunk on the mythologies of the centralised platform economy.
xxxx
Hi everyone,
happy to share a conversation this week with The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, whose petition making demands of Spotify to improve terms for artists has gathered over 20,000 signatures and counting.
We discuss those demands in detail, other initiatives they have undertaken and take the rare opportunity to have a conversation about living under streaming with other actively touring musicians .
LINKS
Sign up for Justice at Spotify: https://www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify
Get involved with UMAW: https://www.unionofmusicians.org/
Follow them: https://twitter.com/UMAW_
Buy a Downtown Boys record: https://downtownboys.bandcamp.com/
We join Sarah Friend, core dev from talk of the town project Circles UBI to discuss the crazy few weeks they have been having giving away a UBI through social trust networks. We pull apart how the project works and discuss the history of local currencies, potential dystopian scenarios, "weird fatigue" and the turbulence of pursuing an art practice that involves building things that do stuff.
We went on a recording frenzy this past week so have a bunch more great episodes lined up. Hope you are all good!
Links!
Circles UBI
https://circles.garden/
Sarah's other work
https://isthisa.com/
2017: The year the blockchain got weird
https://www.coindesk.com/2017-year-blockchain-got-weird
Hi everyone!
This week we welcome Dee and Jacob from Zora, a new organisation that is building tools for artists to issue tokens around their creative practices.
We discuss their idea of dynamic pricing of art releases and at the advent of the musician RAC releasing his $RAC token through ZORA, the new space of artists and their audiences owning a stake in the value they interdependently create in the world. We also talk a tour around the very short history of artist token models, how these new tools are enabling financial literacy, what not to do, and what other potential models could emerge from this nascent era of collectively owned cultural institutions.
This was a really fun and optimistic conversation, and if you are interested to learn more about the project, be sure to check out http://ourzora.com or reach out to Dee or Jacob on twitter.
Have a great week and thanks again for your support!
LINKS
http://ourzora.com
https://twitter.com/js_horne
https://twitter.com/dg_goens
Back with a conversation with a special person and close friend of the podcast Jay Springett
Jay is a writer, theorist and podcaster who falls into a special category of people where we can say with some confidence that whatever they are thinking about will be commonplace in a few years. We discuss a passion of his, Solarpunk, cultural fracking, universe construction, permaculture, Russia’s real jurassic park, K pop and the factory model, reality modelling and aerospace, conspiracy theories and much more.
Can’t recommend enough that you check out Jay’s various cultural contributions, and hope you are all having a wonderful week.
LINKS
thejaymo.net
Permanentlymoved.online
Comeinternetwith.me
https://www.thejaymo.net/solarpunk-rusted-chrome/
http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/solarpunk-grand-dress-rehearsal/
https://www.thejaymo.net/seeing-through-the-debris/
https://stacktivism.com/
This week we are thrilled to welcome the author and critic Huw Lemmey in celebration of his new novel Unknown Language, written in collaboration with Hildegard of Bingen and out now on Ignota books
We discuss what it is like to channel the dead and write a novel together, Hildegard's visions and genius, constructed languages, and Bad Gays; Huw’s wonderful podcast with the historian Ben Miller.
We could have talked for a few lifetimes :)
Thanks again for the support and have a wonderful week!
LINKS
Unknown Language out now on Ignota Books
https://ignota.org/products/unknown-language
Utopian Drivel, Huw's weekly Substack!
https://huw.substack.com/
Bad Gays pod!
https://badgayspod.com/
Huw on Twitter
https://twitter.com/huwlemmey
The second part of our discussion facilitated in collaboration with Sonar +D and Ars Electronica.
Particularly excited to share this one, where we reflect upon what foundations of the club economy appear to be most exposed by the current crisis, discuss Richie's work with AFEM to help get producers paid, and speculate on the possibility of new and necessary economic relationships between DJ's and producers under a guild model.
Links
Sonar +D https://sonarplusd.com/
Ars Electronica https://ars.electronica.art/news/en/
AFEM: https://www.associationforelectronicmusic.org/initiatives/
Really happy to welcome Other Internet to the podcast, an independent strategy and research squad based between New York and Berlin.
Their recent essay “Squad Wealth” looks at the phenomenon of interdependent squads emerging on the internet as a necessary progression from the atomized independence economy.
We discuss Squad Wealth and their other incredibly useful conception of Headless Brands, the redundancy of the binary left/right axis when tracking emerging cultural developments, critiques that have been leveled against their Squad analysis, and different decentralized institutions and arrangements that are forming to spread big squad energy.
Wonderful group of people. Hope you are having a good week! We have a bunch of great guests lined up into the fall, and now have electricity in the space. Although given the way things work in Berlin it might be a few months before we might have an internet connection…
Links
https://otherinter.net/squad-wealth/
https://otherinter.net/web3/headless-brands/
Last night we recorded a long and fun conversation with the Hugo award winning author and futurist Bruce Sterling. As you will hear Bruce has a great deal of knowledge about a great deal of stuff, and as well as his early writing helping to establish the cyberpunk movement, he was also among a handful of people who set the countercultural tone in San Francisco at the dawn of WIRED and the dot com boom. He is also a curator and expert on digital art.
We discuss his being the first WIRED cover story, new information he uncovered on the relationship between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, the first science fiction writer; a woman referred to as “mad Madge”, Qanon as Christian fundamentalist Scifi, Amazons beginnings as a sci-fi bookstore, ideas from early dot com times that people didn’t pick up but maybe should have done more with, and to close we have a fiery debate about the merits and pitfalls of the name of this podcast and a conversation with GPT-3.
Bruce is a treat to talk to and a fountain of wild knowledge, we hope its fun to listen to. Have a great week.
This week we are thrilled to bring a conversation with Amy C. Beal from UC Santa Cruz, whose book "New Music New Allies: Experimental Music in West Germany from the Zero Hour to Reunification" not only gives us insight into the role that German state funding has played in American experimental art since the Second World War, but also offers clues as to the unique responsibilities and complications inherent to that continued funding to the present day.
We get to discuss how the US State Department funded Jazz concerts throughout Europe, the CIA involvement in cold war soft power art games, and she shares some novel insights as to the level of internal discrimination posed towards female Avant Garde composers of the time.
Amy is a deeply researched guest, and we hope that the contemporary implications of this conversation are clear to see.
Have a great week!
Links:
New Music New Allies: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Amy-C-Beal/dp/0520247558
It’s a hot one! This afternoon recorded a discussion with Mixcloud CEO and DJ Nico Perez, and our studio was so hot that we had to keep all the windows open for our own health and also to keep the laptop from spontaneously combusting! As a result this recording is resplendent with the occasional child screaming or dog barking, but hopefully that adds to the experience :)
Nico joined us to discuss Mixcloud's select feature for directly supporting artists, how their bold move to introduce payment splits between DJ’s and artists could potentially be taken further, club culture under COVID-19 and the new terrain of artist live streaming, and the importance of building strong foundations for strong scenes in opposition to the “one size fits all” model that is fortunately receiving its fair share of criticism online at the moment.
Thanks again for supporting us!! We hope you are having a great week and are well hydrated!
Links (feel free to request if we missed one!)
Mixcloud Select: https://www.mixcloud.com/select/
AFEM/Get Played Get Paid: https://www.associationforelectronicmusic.org/initiatives/
This week we welcome Jesse Walden, who recently announced the launch of Variant Fund, which looks to support what he describes as “The Ownership Economy”. We discuss Jesse’s background as an artist manager, his early experiments with putting tools into artists hands to control the destiny of their work online, the opportunities that decentralised networks offer to help us transition from the centralised platform economy in music and culture more broadly, and how distributing ownership to users and artists can help us transition from atomised and individualist support systems like Patreon towards more ambitious collective, interdependent(!), models online and in real space.
Mat and Jesse get really deep into some of these ideas, and if some of the technical speak is unfamiliar stick with us as we spend a lot of the conversation cycling back to hopefully demystify it. We hope you enjoy it and have a great week!
Links
The Ownership Economy: https://variant.fund/the-ownership-economy-crypto-and-consumer-software/
MediaChain Labs: http://www.mediachain.io/
Saga: https://fallowmedia.com/2015/dec/mat/
Bitcoin: https://bitcoin.org/en/
Ethereum: https://ethereum.org/en/
Passion Economy and The Future of Work: https://a16z.com/2019/10/08/passion-economy/
Media 2020: Rise of the Renaissance Creator: https://medium.com/@jarroddicker/media-2020-rise-of-the-renaissance-creator-459daec4bc6b
Defector: https://defector.com/
Foundation: https://withfoundation.com/
Jonas Lund Token: https://jlt.ltd/
For the second part of our conversation series with contemporary fiction writers we are over the moon to have a chat with Elvia Wilk, who released her debut novel “Oval” last year to great acclaim.
Oval is a beautiful book that depicts a world at vastly different scales, not least addressing the contemporary role of the artist as embedded in wider economic systems. We discuss how art communities in the shifting economic landscape of Berlin inspired some of the books themes, the increasingly entangled relationships between artists and corporations, the hyperstitional anxiety of seeing gestures from marginal scenes influence wider culture from your bedroom while also simultaneously feeling very little agency over the future, and how some of her writing related to machine learning takes on new dimension in the wake of OpenAI’s release of the GPT3 API.
Thanks again for listening and have a great week :)
Links
Read Oval - https://softskull.com/dd-product/oval/
"My Kid Could Do That" - https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/my-kid-could-do-that/
For this episode we welcome academic and DJ Larisa Kingston Mann from Temple University in Philadelphia, whose work analyzes the relationship between law, technology, sovereignty and creativity, especially focusing on the ways changing media technologies affect communities’ ability to flourish
Her PhD thesis “Rude Citizenship”, soon to be turned into a book, looks at the ways in which Jamaican popular music practices challenge the colonial underpinnings of copyright law and of sovereignty itself. We discuss the economics of Jamaican sound system culture, the sticky topic of copyright as a flawed protection for creators, and proposals for a fairer DJ economy.
We had a few sound issues that we tried to clean up for this episode, and Larissa is a generous and fun guest. I hope you enjoy it and are having a great week!
Thanks again for the support :)
On Larisa's recommendation, we donated to support The Attic Youth Center in Philly. The Attic Youth Center is the only organization in Philadelphia exclusively serving lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. https://www.atticyouthcenter.org/
Links
Sonic Publics Booming at the Margins: Ethnic Radio, Intimacy, and Nonlinear Innovation in Media: https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/8591
White Faces in Intimate Spaces: Jamaican Popular Music in Global Circulation: https://academic.oup.com/ccc/article-abstract/9/2/266/3979315
Since the idea of this podcast first came to mind, we had imagined starting a thread of conversations with fiction authors and artists that in many ways touch on some of issues that we might be exploring in other conversations.
Today we are thrilled to kick off this direction with a conversation with Tim Maughan, the author of Infinite Detail, winner of The Guardians best science fiction and fantasy book of 2019, and a gripping and prescient work that explores the simple question: what would happen if the internet stopped working?
In this conversation we discuss sailing on a trade ship to China, the 21st century skills of reading how invisible networks dictate many aspects of our lives, conservatism and relevancy in science fiction, and how the book economy works, and could work better.
Tim is a generous and funny guest, we hope you enjoy it!
There is also a weird noise that occasionally appears on Tim's side, we tried to pull it out but it made the audio very muffled. Hope it isn't too distracting!
Links!
Buy Infinite Detail! https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374175412
DRONEGOD$ manifesto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U7F5X84bj0
This week we talk to Director at PRS for music and Gomez songwriter Tom Gray, who, through the #brokenrecord hashtag and other advocacy work has been championing the need for reform the way that streaming services work, and reform copyright policy to better protect songwriters and producers.
We discuss the case for user centric streaming over the current pro-rata payment model, what is was like to witness the transition from sales to streaming as a successful touring band, and how, at a time when the song is earning the least amount it has ever earned, the expenses to develop the songs are being placed on the songwriter and producer more than ever before by labels and streaming. There are also some stories that border on ASMR, Tom has by far the best microphone we have encountered doing the podcast so far.
Links (if we ever mention anything in the pod you want a link to, leave a comment!)
Tom on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrtomgray?lang=en
PRS: https://www.prsformusic.com/
Ivors Academy: https://ivorsacademy.com/
In this episode we speak with Kate Crawford, founder of the AI Now Institute and professor who has spent the last decade studying the political implications of data systems, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
We discuss the anatomy of AI systems and full ecosystem of human and material resources behind an Amazon echo, the need to develop an understanding of the exponential accumulation of power under platform capitalism, the use of AI systems in predictive policing and other controversial areas, and Kate’s parallel experience as an electronic musician.
This episode ends rather abruptly as we got lost in conversation and Kate had to run, so forgive us for the atypical ending!
Relevant Kate links:
AI Now Institute: https://ainowinstitute.org/
Anatomy of AI: https://anatomyof.ai/
Links we raised:
Stance Features of Youtube Celebrities by Katri Mustonen: https://jyx.jyu.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/56988/1/URN%3ANBN%3Afi%3Ajyu-201802011411.pdf
In this episode we welcome David Turner, writer and founder of the Penny Fractions newsletter, which holds a critical and often political lens to the latest developments in the music industry.
In this episode we discuss the music industry response to Black Lives Matter, positive infrastructural proposals that could lead to long lasting and meaningful diversification, the meme music economy, lessons from ad hoc protest gatherings and sitting on a small plane with Radiohead and Silento.
David is a deeply thoughtful and fun guest, we hope you enjoy this one!
LINKS:
Penny Fractions newsletter (sign up!): https://www.getrevue.co/profile/pennyfractions/issues/penny-fractions-why-did-we-pause-the-show-255631
Black Teens are Breaking the Internet and Seeing None of The Profits by Doreen St.Felix:https://www.thefader.com/2015/12/03/on-fleek-peaches-monroee-meechie-viral-vines
Music Workers Alliance: https://musicworkersalliance.org/
Aziz Mian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX9SsfK6B24
Silentó - Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjW8wmF5VWc
In this episode we speak to Glen Weyl, author, economist and Principal Research at Microsoft Research. His ideas inspired the formation of the RadicalxChange Foundation, who recently held a conference in which we were speaking alongside Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan, Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum and others. Head over to RadicalxChange.org and look out for the deep list of archived talks.
In this very candid discussion with Glen we cover his recent work on COVID-19, his recently published essay “AI is an ideology, not a technology” co-authored with Jaron Lanier, his belief in the urgent need for pluralistic technologies and transitioning from corporations to stakeholder democracies, as well as his personal political transition from California libertarianism to socialism. It is a fun and generous conversation, I hope you enjoy it!
Links:
RadicalxChange conference
https://www.radicalxchange.org/2020-conference/
AI is an Ideology not a Technology
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-ai-is-an-ideology-not-a-technology/
Data Dignity:
https://issuu.com/radicalxchange/docs/data_legislation_paper_--_20191031
In this latest episode we talk with Professor Guy Standing, who has been at the forefront of Basic Income research for 30 years, running pilots all over the world.
We discuss his original concept of “The Precariat”, a new class that might be familiar to many listeners, the moral case for a basic income and its fans in US politics and Silicon Valley, and his vision of a future of a new left built upon enlightenment principles.
Links!
Guy Standing: https://www.guystanding.com/
Basic Income Earth Network: https://basicincome.org/
The Precariat: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-precariat-9781849664561/
Plunder of the Commons: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/308/308407/plunder-of-the-commons/9780141990620.html
In this episode we speak with the writer Liz Pelly, who over the past 5 years has written a series of revelatory critical pieces about the streaming economy for The Baffler.
We discuss whether the distinction of Independence is all that useful in music at this point in history, take a look at the ways in which the streaming platforms flatter some kinds of music and have flattered to deceive for others, and question what the recent Spotify exclusivity deal with Joe Rogan might mean for musicians.
This is a nice and long conversation, and we had one or two connection issues, so forgive us if you notice one or two jarring edits!
Check out Liz's work online here:
https://lizpelly.com/
https://thebaffler.com/authors/liz-pelly
In this episode we talk with Jesse Engel, musician, Senior Research Scientist at Google Brain and creative lead of the Magenta project.
Magenta is an open source research project exploring the role of machine learning as a tool in the creative process, developed by numerous researchers and engineers from the Google brain team, Google’s self directed machine intelligence group.
Amongst many things we discuss the role and research focus of Magenta, look at how research lab OpenAI’s recent Jukebox project raised some necessary ethical debates around the puppeteering of living artists voices and styles, get psychedelic about how making music technology precedes spoken language, and discuss his latest exciting project.
Check out the tools they have developed and reach out to Magenta here:
https://magenta.tensorflow.org/
If you would like to hear the full episode, consider supporting the project at
https://patreon.com/interdependence
In this episode we catch up with Trevor McFedries, founder of the meta media studio Brud ( (http://brud.fyi/) ), whose digital avatar artist and influencer Lil Miquela recently caused a stir through signing with one of the worlds premier talent agencies, CAA.
We discuss the origins of the project, why he sees Miquela as more of a challenge to Mickey Mouse than human artists, and also some pretty bold ideas for how avatar led projects might help us reorganise the music industry to be more equitable.
We are joined by research scientist and Director of Spotify's CTRL lab François Pachet and his collaborator, the composer Benoit Carré to discuss how the latest in AI research offers a new paradigm for both composition and the concept of authorship and ownership.
This will be one of many times we pursue conversations with researchers at the cutting edge of Artificial Intelligence and music, not only because it offers a glimpse into the future of music, but also the greater economy. Music is often the first to feel the tremors for greater economic earthquakes, so it feels like an important conversation to jump into!
We can't play their music during the podcast, however we recommend that you check out these works in combination with listening to the conversation!
Daddy's Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSHZ_b05W7o
The Ballad of Mr.Shadow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcGYEXJqun8
American Folk Songs EP: https://skyggewithai.bandcamp.com/
"Black is the Color” by SKYGGE featuring Pete Seeger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=sv56kfvsQAM
If you are interested in reading Evgeny's new piece in the Guardian, visit:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/15/tech-coronavirus-surveilance-state-digital-disrupt
Sign up to Evgeny's Syllabus project to receive a weekly syllabi curated around your interests:
https://the-syllabus.com/
If you would like to support this series, please visit:
https://www.patreon.com/interdependence
<3