Simon Ings's Blog, page 34
October 1, 2018
Hooked at the Science Gallery, London: From heroin to Playstation
Happy Chat Beast tries to be good in Feed Me © 2013, Rachel Maclean
Although this exhibition focuses on established artists like Rachel Maclean, there are pieces that point to just how mischievous and hands-on Science Gallery London is likely to become in the years ahead. Katriona Beales‘s Entering the Machine Zone II is a new commission, developed with the assistance of Henrietta Bowden-Jones, founder of the first NHS gambling clinic. It is the world’s most pointless video game – though I defy you to stop playing once you have started. It propels you with frightening rapidity towards the dissociative state that, for gamblers in particular, is the real attraction of their vice – far more addictive than the promise of money.
From heroin to Playstation
Happy Chat Beast tries to be good in Feed Me © 2013, Rachel Maclean
Although this exhibition focuses on established artists like Rachel Maclean, there are pieces that point to just how mischievous and hands-on Science Gallery London is likely to become in the years ahead. Katriona Beales‘s Entering the Machine Zone II is a new commission, developed with the assistance of Henrietta Bowden-Jones, founder of the first NHS gambling clinic. It is the world’s most pointless video game – though I defy you to stop playing once you have started. It propels you with frightening rapidity towards the dissociative state that, for gamblers in particular, is the real attraction of their vice – far more addictive than the promise of money.
September 20, 2018
Unseen, Amsterdam: Blanket coverage
“It’s the gesture that fascinates me,” says photographer Simon Norfolk. “There is something insane about trying to reverse the inevitable – a gesture as forlorn and doomed as the glacier itself.”
When Records Melt at Unseen Amsterdam, discussed in New Scientist, 20 September 2018
Blanket coverage
“It’s the gesture that fascinates me,” says photographer Simon Norfolk. “There is something insane about trying to reverse the inevitable – a gesture as forlorn and doomed as the glacier itself.”
When Records Melt at Unseen Amsterdam, discussed in New Scientist, 20 September 2018
Lunar renaissance
The punchier contestants who entered the never-awarded Lunar X Prize are racing to launch their probes. Who will make moonfall first? My money is on Israel’s SpaceIL. While everyone else was crashing through the X Prize’s deadlines, trying to design wheeled vehicles for their rovers, SpaceIL was racing ahead with a vehicle that bounces about the lunar surface like a steel bunny.
September 13, 2018
Objection reviewed: Prudery isn’t justice
We want the law to be fair and objective. We also want laws that work in the real world, protecting and reassuring us, and maintaining our social and cultural values. The moral dilemma is that we can’t have both. This may be because humans are hopelessly irrational and need a rational legal system to keep them in check. But it may also be that rationality has limits, and that trying to sit in judgement over everything is as cruel and farcical as gathering cats in a sack.
Reading Objection: Disgust, morality, and the law by Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick for New Scientist, 15 September 2018
Prudery isn’t justice
We want the law to be fair and objective. We also want laws that work in the real world, protecting and reassuring us, and maintaining our social and cultural values. The moral dilemma is that we can’t have both. This may be because humans are hopelessly irrational and need a rational legal system to keep them in check. But it may also be that rationality has limits, and that trying to sit in judgement over everything is as cruel and farcical as gathering cats in a sack.
Reading Objection: Disgust, morality, and the law by Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick for New Scientist, 15 September 2018
September 11, 2018
Jenna Sutela: Mars in a dish
Don’t call this an AI, whatever you do. Jenna Sutela’s mentor on this project, Memo Atkin, has issued a public warning that “every time someone personifies this stuff, every time someone talks about ‘the AI’, a kitten is strangled.”
Watching Jenna Sutela’s art-video nimiia cétiï for New Scientist, 11 September 2018
Mars in a dish
Don’t call this an AI, whatever you do. Jenna Sutela’s mentor on this project, Memo Atkin, has issued a public warning that “every time some personifies this stuff, every time someone talks about ‘the AI’, a kitten is strangled.”
Watching Jenna Sutela’s art-video nimiia cétiï for New Scientist, 11 September 2018
Welcome to Petri-dish World
Don’t call this an AI, whatever you do. Jenna Sutela’s mentor on this project, Memo Atkin, has issued a public warning that “every time some personifies this stuff, every time someone talks about ‘the AI’, a kitten is strangled.”
Watching Jenna Sutela’s art-video nimiia cétiï for New Scientist, 11 September 2018
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