“‘And VIXAL-4 is an autonomous machine-learning algorithm,’ said Hoffman. ‘As it collects and analyses more data, it’s only likely to become more effective.’”
Kevin Slavin
Showing 7 posts tagged Kevin Slavin
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Alexis Madrigal: “The best images are when human artifacts are presented against the Martian landscape. What’s fascinating is that it’s *our* technology that looks alien, not the empty world to which we’ve sent it.” (A Stunning High-Resolution Photo of Curiosity’s Heat Shield Plummeting to the Martian Surface)
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This Friday is the opening of Under Tomorrow’s Sky, the scifi city making project of Liam Young, Warren Ellis, Bruce Sterling, Kevin Slaving and many others. Opening is at 8 pm at MU.
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Isn’t it mind-boggling that Kevin Slavin was taught by Hans Haacke? Keep these anecdotes coming…
It’s only long after the fact that I’ve come to really appreciate what an art school education provided me with. Here, at Eyebeam, I’m looking at a piece that’s nicely done, but then runs these cables to the floor carelessly and with duct tape. I remember doing something similar as a freshman at Cooper Union, and Hans asking what it was supposed to mean, the way I laid the AC cables across the floor. I said, “that’s just infrastructure, it’s not part of the work.” Hans said: “so you are saying that there’s part of this I *should* look at, and part of it I *shouldn’t* look at?” I nodded, and he shrugged and said “it would be a shame, if you understand that to be what artists do.” (Taken with Instagram at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center)
Last night a very strong Test_Lab: The Graduation Edition 2012 took place at V2 in Rotterdam. I was invited to be critical respondent, and my job was to ask the first question, and try to get the artists to tell a bit more about their work, fears and hopes.
The selected artists were Joseph Popper (Royal College of Art, London), Tomas Navarro (Piet Zwart institute, Rotterdam), Marcel van Heist (Eindhoven University of Technology), Shing Tat Chung (Royal College of Art, London), Marcel de Vries (Frank Mohr institute) and Matthijs Munnik (Royal Academy of Art, The Hague).
The artistic ambition and technical aptitude of this new generation of artists was genuinely impressive. Their subjects, more now than now, and referencing BERG, Kevin Slavin and Ryoji Ikeda, ranged from algorithmic finance and the new space race to synthesized weather and volumetric illuminations.
Thanks to Michel van Dartel for the kind invitation, and a shout out to Marnix de Nijs - maker of one of my favourite artworks - for buying me a beer.
In praise of Foursquare
Adam Greenfield, Kevin Slavin, Matt Cottam and Ben Cerveny, pictured above respectively from left to right, are four leading designers, thinkers and writers in the very it domain of ubiquitous computing. The last time the four men had been in the same room together was in 2009, at Picnic in Amsterdam. For various reasons, they were all in Amsterdam this weekend.
This picture was taken at Matt’s home, where he created an impromptu film studio to interview each other for a possible documentary on the current state of ubicomp. When asked what his favourite example of a ubiquitous device was, Adam interestingly enough answered “Foursquare”. Interesting, because Foursquare is not an object, but software.
Adam repeated more or less what he elegantly explained on the Urbanscale blog recently, that what he enjoys most about the popular check-in service - it currently has 20 million users worldwide - is that it encourages two almost diametrically opposite behaviours: exploration with the awarding of badges, and loyalty with the crowning of mayors.
I believe this is a deep insight in the working of Foursquare.
Unfortunately I couldn’t stay around to hear what Ben and Kevin would say later tonight, but I can live with the fact this only leaves me with more to look forward to.
Update:
Kevin adds: “It’s worth reinforcing that Matt is the only person in the room who lives in Amsterdam, and that AG, BC and I all arrived here under wholly different auspices. If only someone could develop software so that we could see what city our friends are going to be in soon, I’d be happy to … oh, wait.”
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This is a lovely story from Kevin Slavin:
Via dashboard, I saw this on Kars’ tumblr sometime around 4PM yesterday. I took a nap, went to dinner and not two hours later found myself sitting opposite Sarah, sitting there with the Faraday bag she made.
It’s not the strangest, or the best, thing that happened yesterday, but it’s up there.
(via Sarah van Sonsbeeck, artist)
Not too long ago I read Charles Stross’s Glasshouse, in which a faraday bag figures heavily. Leave it to artists like Sarah to make sci-fi a reality.
