We’ve all been following the debates around the impact that AI is having on art and on the specificity of human creativity. But does art have a voice when it comes to understanding and shaping AI?

A global overview of how contemporary artists incorporate text and the written word into work that speaks to some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century

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Portland-based artist Christina Mrozik (previously) closely observes flora and fauna to create hybrid drawings that unite the two in haunting new forms. In her monochrome work hair springs from hollow snake skins, claws emerge from floral bulbs, and spiders reveal human-like innards. Although there is a nightmarish quality to these unnatural combinations, a graceful undercurrent marks the way each invented creature twists upon the page.
Recently Mrozik compiled a collection of drawings and writings she created while moving through a period of depression. More


UK design studio Universal Everything (previously) is in the midst of crafting an experimental open-world environment called Emergence, available in a preview film. In Emergence, the glowing yellow user-controlled character is surrounded by crowds of anonymous people who react to the character’s movements. The scenes are set in a variety of abstracted but familiar environments like city streets and under water. Presumably, the viewer will be able to control the figure in a VR or immersive gallery setting. More

WASHINGTON—Calling the phenomenon “yummy yummy good,” the collective United States populace issued a statement Wednesday declaring that they “love when thing taste like other thing.” “We big like when chip taste like salsa! We lots like when pancake taste like cookie! When food taste like other food, can’t stop! Put…

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Augmented reality (AR) startup Magic Leap used the opening keynote of its L.E.A.P. developer conference in Los Angeles Wednesday to preview its plans for the future. These include not only software updates for its recently-launched Magic Leap One headset as well as an ambitious plan for city-wide AR information layers, but also a possible Burning […]

What child doesn’t want to slide out of an elephant’s butt? Back in my day, we worked 16 hours a day for the opportunity to walk uphill into an elephant’s butt, both ways!

All right, yep, you figured it out. Climate change isn’t caused by the heedless burning of fossil fuels pumping carbon into the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and slowly increasing the average temperature of the earth. It’s my magic. Does that convince you?

Nope. It’s not melting land-bound polar ice swelling the seas. It’s not an unnatural balancing of atmospheric pressure between the poles and tropics causing hurricanes to sluggishly crawl up coastlines, overflowing your rivers, and washing away your homes. It’s not the dissolving of carbon dioxide into the oceans that is raising the water’s acidity level, causing mass die-offs of fish and coral reefs. Nor is it a stalled jet stream that brought about a drought and extreme heatwave in Western Europe this summer, scorching crops and killing hundreds of people. It’s my wizardry. Uh-huh.

I know what the scientists have been saying. Trust me. I spent six years and mortgaged my house to earn my witch-doctorate in climatology at MIT. Not only did I learn how to channel the Dark Lord’s occult powers to excite the ocean and atmospheric particles in a way that would be identical to the accumulation of heat energy radiated onto our surface by our closest star, but also to falsify scientific-sounding data consistent with the effect of greenhouse gases parking themselves in the atmosphere.

Back in the late ‘70s, when I started my evil project, my masters-of-the-dark-arts thesis adviser was convinced no one would accept witchcraft as a reason for a planet-wide meteorological phenomenon. “Science is just too entrenched in our culture,” he said, “what with several centuries of explaining everything from the cause of disease to the motion of the planets.” (By the way, “imbalanced humors” and “God”, respectively.)

I argued that the world was changing and the Enlightenment was just a passing fad. Rationalism, the scientific method, and agreement on a shared reality were old news. The world was ready for totally unsubstantiated, arcane reasons to explain the mysteries of the universe.

Now, in 2018, the world is finally ready to hear the truth. You’ve proven it with your relentless, irrational skepticism in the face of all the evidence. I can drop the charade and reveal to you the true cause of global climate change: voodoo. Well done, I guess.

What has piqued my ire? Why have I turned my potent sorcery to the destruction of the world? One thing: fossil fuels and their derivative products. Coal, petroleum, plastic, you name it. I just don’t like them. Give them up and I may still spare your planet. Never mind why. Just fear my magic and stop using them, all right?

As your new weather demigod, I also command you to build monuments to my glory: solar panels in which I can admire my reflection, wind farms in which I can hear the song of the skies, and electric vehicles in which I can drive to get my groceries. Build these in my name and I’ll spare your fields, your grandchildren’s futures, and your low-lying coastal vacation properties. However, I will not help the polar bears because they suck.

Now, go! Spread the word to your kinfolk to shun their SUVs, to cast down their coal shovels, and to embrace compostable straws and coffee lids in my name. And once you’ve done that, why not try my elixir that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella?

Tonight in New York, Spoke Art will be unveiling the latest paintings from Scott Scheidly’s wildly popular "pink series," poking fun at notorious politictians, celebrities, and pop culture characters. Glamour Shots will feature 15 new satirical portraits (with ornate pink frames) that take on familiar subjects while dressing them up in hues that are historically more feminine, touching on issues of gender roles, power, and corruption.
Scheidly further explains – "the paintings are about the perception of color so by painting people in hues of pinks and purples it makes you step outside the norm and look at the subjects in a different manner. ”
Discuss Scott Scheidly here.

Take a breath. Sit back in your chair. You did it, my friend. You wrote for a full five minutes, uninterrupted. You’re a goddamned hero.

Go ahead and check your email, to see whether anyone has sent you a congratulatory email. If they haven’t, consider drafting a preliminary “thank you” email. Also, do you have any unread emails? What about emails from college? How about that rejection email you got two years ago? Have you reread that lately? Now you can read it from the high peak of one who has written for a full five goddamn minutes.

There will be parades in your honor. Ticker tape parades. Do they still do ticker tape parades? You should look that up. Also, was the ticker tape in ticker tape parades actual tape? Or like paper from a machine or something? You should check Wikipedia. You’ll want to know how to answer these sort of questions when the parade marshall knocks on your door, congratulating you for doing a full five minutes of writing.

Your downstairs neighbor has come up to ask why you’re marching around and high-fiving yourself. Open that door and start launching some high-fives in his direction, because once he finds out that you spent less than 1% of your waking hours successfully writing without interruption, he’s going to want to know more about you. “How is writing going?” he will now ask when he sees you in the hall, replacing his former question (“What is wrong with you, why do you stomp around your apartment screaming, ‘Eat it, Hemingway’?”). “Just fine,” you’ll say with a wink.

Get. Your. Agent. On. The. Phone.

You. Are. On. Hold. With. Her. Secretary.

Oh. That’s. Right. She. Dropped. You. As. A. Client.

Maybe she’ll decide that you’re worth representing now that you have done that full cinco minutos of writing. Escribir? How do you say “writing” in Spanish? Del escribo? Escritorio? That’s not it. Better open up Duolingo and play that for a while, until the word “writing” comes up by chance.

Wait, you got a new email. Your trophy guy says he won’t have the “PROFESSIONAL WRITING PERSON – 2018 (5 MINUTES)” trophy ready until Tuesday. That’s almost a week from now. Think about how much more writing you’ll have done. Six minutes? Seven minutes? Five and a half minutes? You did it. You’re done.