1. The mindbending, unnerving flatness of Lauren Marsolier's digital images.*
"We undergo what could be called a gestalt change. These transitional periods often feel like being in a place we know but can't quite identify. As we try to adjust to a post-modern society marked by speed and the implosion of boundaries between image and referent, appearance and reality, we repeatedly get this feeling of disorientation and dissonance.
We have been introduced to a new stage of abstraction, a dematerialization in which images and signs take on a life of their own, divorced from our former notion of the real. The loss of concrete connections to the objects of our senses creates a void within us, and unleashes a flow of new and elusive perceptions. Giving them the visual characteristics of a landscape is my way to explore them."
"The history of the intelligence community, though, reveals a willingness to violate the spirit and the letter of the law, even with oversight. What’s more, the benefits of the domestic-surveillance programs remain unclear. Wyden contends that the N.S.A. could find other ways to get the information it says it needs."
3. Photos of the last people in the world to have smallpox.
"Since smallpox was only transferred from person to person, the last infected person was the last link in the chain of transmission and represented the end of the disease in a country."
4. Trying to imagine "Our Drone Future. But will there be a resistance?
"In the near future, cities use semi-autonomous drones for urban security. Human officers monitor drone feeds remotely, and data reports are displayed with a detailed HUD and communicated via a simulated human voice (designed to mitigate discomfort with sentient drone technology). While the drones operate independently, they are 'guided' by the human monitors, who can suggest alternate mission plans and ask questions."
5. Andy Warhol on his love for his Amiga, from the January/February 1986 issue of Amiga World.
"How do you friends feel about computer art?
Andy: They all like it. They have been using xerox, and they can't wait until they can use this, because there are so many people into xerox art. You do it and then take the stuff to the xerox store and do the prints there. Jean-Michel Basquiat uses xerox. So, if he could be printing out on his own machine, he would be using this."
* This is what I imagine Thomas Pynchon's DeepArcher looks like. The anti-textured horizonless infinity slash nothing.
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It's better than a xerox store.
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