This marks a significant milestone, as it is issue 52, celebrating a full year of curated discussions. We delve into the complexities of the contemporary art world, examining how various subfields define art differently and what it means to create art outside established norms. We also discuss the fascinating blend of traditional and modern techniques, illustrated through the works of artists like Shamma Golden and their unique storytelling methods. As we navigate through different artistic expressions, we reflect on deeper questions about the role of technology in shaping our perception of art and its narrative today.

Find the latest episode at https://theintersect.art/issues/52 , and sign up for the newsletter at The Intersect of Tech and Art website

Takeaways:

• Our curation over the past year highlights various aspects of contemporary art and its evolving relationship with technology.
• We discuss Lane Relaia's essay that categorizes contemporary art into five distinct areas, each with its own rules and definitions.
• The podcast raises thought-provoking questions about the nature of art and its purpose within the different subfields of the art world.
• We delve into Shamma Golden's artwork which combines personal memories and Sri Lankan folklore through her unique painting style.
• Discussion includes how AI can influence storytelling in visual art, prompting us to consider the human touch in artistic narratives.

Welcome along.

We're diving into the connections between art and technology today.

If you're new here, thanks for joining us as we explore some, well, really interesting intersections.

And for everyone who's been with us before, welcome back.

We're looking at the latest from the Intersect newsletter, curated by Jurgen Berkhessel.

That's right.

And this is actually issue 52, which means it's been a full year of the Intersect.

Quite a milestone.

So a big thanks to Jurgen for his work over the past year.

Absolutely.

He's consistently found these great links trying to keep a balance, you know, not just focusing only on AI, though that's obviously a huge topic for sure.

Today we're focusing specifically on Jurgen's own commentary from this latest issue.

Okay, so where does he start us off?

He begins with an essay by Lane Relaya called the Field of Contemporary Art.

A Diagram.

It was published on Triple Canopy.

Ah, Relaia's piece.

Yeah.

It basically breaks down the contemporary art world into, I think it's five intersecting areas.

Exactly.

You've got the art market, then the exhibition circuit.

So galleries, museums, then the academic side, community based art, and finally cultural activism.

Right.

And the key point Relaya makes is that each of these subfields kind of defines art and its purpose quite differently.

They operate with different rule books almost.

That's what Jurgen picked up on, too.

He felt this diagram really captures how disjointed the whole idea of an art world can be.

It's not really one single entity.

Mm, that makes sense.

Yeah.

And he mentioned personally feeling sort of split sometimes, navigating these different values and, you know, hierarchies within each area.

It definitely makes you think about where different pieces or artists fit or maybe don't fit neatly.

Totally.

And it leads to the question Jurgen raises.

What would it actually mean to try and create art outside of all these established coordinates?

Is that even possible?

That's a big question.

Maybe it's less about being completely outside and more about working between them.

Or challenging those coordinates from within.

Could be.

Well, moving from the structure of the art world.

Jurgen then looks at a specific artist.

Shamma Golden.

Her new show.

Too bad.

So sad.

Maybe next birth was featured on Colossal.

Oh, right.

Her paintings, they're described as oil on linen.

Very surreal drawing on myth, specifically Sri Lankan folklore.

But also her own memories.

Yeah, and Jurgen was really drawn to how she uses Diptych's pairs of paintings to build this four act visual narrative.

It's like she's weaving together these personal moments with grander cosmic ideas that blend.

Of personal and mythic is powerful.

And wasn't there an AI element, too?

There was, yeah.

She collaborated with filmmaker Paul Trillo to train an AI model on her visual style.

A really interesting mix of old techniques and new tech.

Definitely bridging tradition and the future there.

But Jurgen's main thought was about her storytelling, the sequential aspect.

He saw it almost like storyboarding a myth through her own lens, with real continuity in style, feeling and symbols across the pieces.

Like, each painting is a deliberate step in a larger story.

That's quite compelling.

It is.

And it made Jurgen wonder, how do we perceive this kind of deliberate, human crafted, sequential storytelling in visual art today?

Especially when AI is also, you know, constantly consuming and generating narratives?

Does it change how we look?

Hmm.

Does our exposure to machine generated stories affect our appreciation of the human hand in narrative art?

Yeah, that's something to ponder, definitely.

Okay, next, Jurgen shifts focus to something ancient.

There's new research reported by connie waters@ancientpages.com about discovering ancient Egyptian depictions of the Milky Way.

Oh, this sounds fascinating.

Tell me more.

So it's based on the work of Dr.

Or GRAR.

He studied, like, 125 images of the sky goddess Nut.

Nut.

The figure often arched over the earth, representing the sky.

Exactly.

And on a 3,000-year-old coffin lid, he found this rare depiction, a black, wavy curve across Nut's body that looks remarkably like the Great Rift in the Milky Way.

You know, that dark band of dust.

Wow.

So not just a symbolic representation of the heavens, but possibly mapping an actual galactic feature.

That's the idea.

And Jurgen found this really inspiring.

It suggests the Egyptians weren't just observing the sky.

They.

They were deeply integrating those observations into their cosmology, their religion, their art.

It shows a kind of ancient visual intelligence bridging what we'd now call art and science.

Precisely.

Dr.

Grauer is quoted saying these visual depictions add a whole new dimension to understanding Nut's link to the Milky Way beyond just texts.

That's incredible.

It makes you wonder what other cosmic narratives might be encoded in ancient art, just waiting for us to, well, ask the right questions or look with fresh eyes.

Right.

Jurgen wondered the same thing.

What else have we overlooked in museums?

Okay, shifting gears quite dramatically now.

Typography on a tombstone.

Ooh, whose tombstone?

Pope Francis's.

The New York Times reported that typography critics have been scrutinizing the inscription.

What's the issue?

The name Francis CVS is set in Times Roman, probably chosen for simplicity.

But the letter spacing the kerning is apparently Quite bad.

It looks something like F, R, A, N, C, I, S, C, V, S.

Ooh.

That's not ideal, especially for something so permanent and high profile.

Exactly.

And Jurgen, with his graphic design background, had, let's say, a strong opinion.

He basically said it's just poorly executed spacing.

Not the fonts ful.

Not some algorithm, just bad craftsmanship.

He didn't mince words, huh?

Not really.

He even quipped it was almost as bad as using Comic Sans.

Or like that time Trump shared an AI image of the Pope.

Just fundamentally jarring.

Yeah.

You expect a certain level of care with something like that.

So Jurgen's question is pretty straightforward.

Why do these kinds of basic typographic mistakes still happen when we have all the tools and knowledge to get it right?

That's a fair point.

It's like a lapse in attention to detail somewhere along the line.

Seems so.

Okay.

On a much lighter, maybe even tastier note, Jurgen highlighted mosaic artist Ed Chapman.

What's unusual about his mosaics?

Well, he was commissioned by McVities, the biscuit company, to make poor portraits using their chocolate digestive.

Wait, using actual biscuits?

Yep.

The BBC reported on it.

He made portraits of David bowie, Sir Trevor MacDonald, and Dame Judi Dench.

Apparently, he used the different shades.

Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, the plain biscuit side, to get the colors and tones right.

That is dedication and patience.

I can only imagine Jurgen admired the patience too.

Definitely.

He said creating likenesses from biscuits is quite something.

They're part of McVitty's 100th anniversary and were going on display.

So are they edible art?

Well, Chapman mentioned having to varnish them heavily to preserve them, which led Jurgen to a very relatable thought.

Let me guess.

He'd rather just eat them.

Pretty much.

He appreciates the art, but his first instinct is food.

It prompted his lighthearted question.

Would you rather preserve food as art or just, you know, eat it?

Huh.

It's a fun dilemma.

Okay, what's next on the list?

Jakub Geltner's work with surveillance cameras featured on designboom.

He takes these cameras and twists them into these curved, almost organic looking installations.

So turning technology into something that looks more like nature.

Kind of, yeah.

They end up looking almost like strange creatures.

Bent, clustered together, maybe seeming alive in an uncanny way.

That sounds visually striking and probably a bit unnerving.

That's the feeling Jurgen got.

He felt like the sculptures, even even though they're obviously deactivated, cameras still seem to have this intent, like they're straining to spy.

Mm.

Like the ghost of surveillance.

Exactly.

He interprets it as showing how deeply surveillance tech is embedded in our world, in our minds even.

It's become part of the architecture, physical and psychological.

There's an eerie presence to them that even turned off.

Yeah.

Suggesting the sort of inherited ingrained impulse to monitor.

Which led Jurgen to ask, what does it really take to disarm a surveillance culture?

Is bending the tools enough?

Or do we need to change the gaze itself?

How we look and are looked at.

That's deep.

It's not just about the hardware, but the whole mindset.

Right.

Okay.

From surveillance tech to cardboard.

Greg Lynek's amazing robot art.

Cardboard robots, yeah.

Featured on Design Swan.

He's a Melbourne artist, used to be a graphic designer, and now makes these incredibly detailed robot sculptures entirely from cardboard.

And get this.

It's all hand cut.

No digital tools like laser cutters.

Wow.

Does it look like cardboard in the end?

Apparently not.

The finished pieces are described as looking like these intricate relics from some sci fi world.

Really transforms the material.

That's amazing.

What did Jurgen notice about them?

He observed that because everything's made from the same material, cardboard, all the different robots have this unified look, a consistent aesthetic.

Even if the designs vary.

The medium becomes a unifying element.

Exactly.

And there's something satisfying, Jurgen noted, about taking disposable stuff like cardboard and turning it into something so deliberate and permanent looking.

It's that transformation.

Did the artist say anything about why cardboard?

Yeah, Elandric mentioned it just lends itself well to the simple curves and straight lines he uses, creating that connected feel across his work, which very relatably made Jurgen look at his own pile of Amazon boxes and think, hmm, maybe, huh?

Inspiring us all to look differently at our recycling bins.

Okay, what else?

Samsung TVs, specifically their Art Store feature.

CE Pro reported that Samsung is expanding it.

The art store.

That's the thing on the frame TVs that shows artwork, right?

That's the one.

So more of their high end TVs will have access to these curated digital galleries.

Art Basel.

Lots of artists.

Interesting.

So more screens becoming digital canvases.

Are all their TVs getting it?

Not the OLED line, apparently.

Still excluded for now.

But Jurgen's interest wasn't really about the specific TV models.

What was his angle then?

More the concept itself.

Integrating digital art galleries right into everyday devices.

He's curious how this changes how we display art.

Maybe even how we collect or engage with living artists.

Work making Art more ambient, perhaps.

Less of a destination, more part of the background hum of life.

Sort of, yeah.

Making it more present, maybe less focused on just owning a single physical piece.

He described it as shaping a kind of casual, everyday curation in our home.

Like channel surfing for art.

Huh.

Maybe it led him to ask if a subscription for rotating art on your TV starts to feel a bit like Netflix for paintings.

It certainly raises questions about accessibility versus maybe the perceived value or experience of art when it's delivered like streaming content.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Final piece Jurgen discussed is a group show called I Sought My Soul, reviewed in FAD Magazine.

I Sought My Soul.

Sounds intriguing.

What's the theme?

It draws inspiration from William Blake, exploring things like mysticism, identity, and the role of AI.

It was curated by Tiger Tiger in Berlin in a church space.

Actually, St Elizabeth Kirsch Blake.

Mysticism, AI.

That's quite a mix.

What was the feel of the show?

The review described it as having a surprising softness, even calling it a new sublime.

It features artists like Lu Yang and Imhoff, Jacoby Satterwhite, artists using things like digital avatars, dream logic, spiritual searching to maybe get beyond typical social or political divide.

So moving beyond explicit political statements toward something more internal or fluid.

That seems to be the idea.

And Jurgen reflected on this, saying he understands why some younger artists might feel limited by the idea that art must be political.

But does he agree with moving away from it entirely?

Not necessarily.

He thinks rejecting that impulse completely could be a missed opportunity.

He feels real autonomy for an artist includes making choices, and that can include choosing to engage politically or socially.

So it's about the freedom to choose the mode of expression rather than a mandate.

Either way.

Exactly.

The exhibition itself seems to emphasize fluidity between human and tech, between art forms, between identities, creating this very open emotional.

Space, embracing complexity and nuance.

Right.

And this led to Jurgen's final question for this issue.

Is it possible, he wonders, to hold space for both resistance and tenderness, both in art and, well, in life generally?

Wow.

That's a really potent thought to end on.

Balancing critique with care, perhaps.

It really is.

And on that note, that brings us to the end of our look into Jurgen's commentary for this edition.

It's been quite a journey through different ideas.

It certainly has.

His curation really does span a fascinating range.

Absolutely.

And again, happy anniversary to the Intersect.

One year down, Jurgen wanted to pass on his thanks to all of you listening and following along this past year.

It's been a great resource.

Definitely.

So if you want to read Jurgen's full commentary, see the images and click through to all the original articles we talked about.

You should head over to TheIntersect Art.

That's TheIntersect Aart.

Yep, TheIntersect Art.

You can sign up for the newsletter there and really deepen your understanding of this ever evolving relationship between art and technology.

A great way to stay connected to these conversations indeed.

Thanks for tuning in.