Search History: Silicon Brain-forest

In celebration of X-TRA Magazine's 25th anniversary, curator Nora N. Khan organized Softimage Poetics, a collection of works exploring Ingrid Hoelzl and Rémi Marie’s concept of the “softimage.”

“While we might not always know the specifics of how a softimage is made (whether through machine learning and neural networks, generative software, simulation, or graphic editing), we can recognize one when we see it: morphing, gooey, lush, emergent, evolving and adaptive, an image ever in-between one state and the next. The softimage refuses stability; it feels alive.”

The show closes Wednesday, March 15th, and is available to view online or in-person in Los Angeles at Seker Factory DAO. The fundraiser auction offers a rare opportunity to own pieces by Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, Petra Cortright, Travess Smalley, Harm van den Dorpel, Hirad Sab, and others.

Shezad Dawood's Sea of Redemption is not just another PFP project, it's “part organic fantasy world and part on-chain game populated by the Mermes, archaic sea animals whose kindness and power is absolute.” With its unique mechanics and the potential to mint 1/1 Expanded NFTs (part of Zien’s physically redeemable NFT protocol), Sea of Redemption offers a transcendental utility that goes beyond mere entertainment. 10 percent of all project proceeds go to ocean research and conservation.

Baggy Industries' WHO's OUTSIDE is a time capsule that transports viewers to downtown LA in the late aughts through a hyper hodge podge of people cut out from Google Street View, oil painting, and “aleatoric narratives” (aka MadLibs) generated via Python script.

Each NFT in the series of 100 is an animated portrait that introduces the viewer to the preferences, memories, and favorite quotes of the subject captured (most likely unknowingly) by Google’s Street View cars. The project drops on March 22nd.

This past Valentine’s Day, Jill Magid released a collection of digital bouquets called Out-Game Flowers via Artwrld. Each bouquet is unique and includes striking floral specimens sourced from video games such as The Legend of Zelda, World of Warcraft, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft. “Every iconic game, every iconic flower, we have it.”

Mika Tajima's Archive of Feelings is an NFT series that captures the emotional landscape of America using a sentiment analysis algorithm based on Twitter data. Each NFT features digital smoke that changes shape and color to reflect the mood of 12 different regions across the US during a 15-minute period of time on January 1st, 2023, providing a visual representation of the country's collective consciousness.

Presented by Pace Gallery and PROOF, Tajima will expand the project to create a living portrait of the US during the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.

CABLE is a collection of 545 SVG animations minted as NFTs, each representing a unique piece of the intricate web of undersea cables that power the internet. The exhibition is presented by Folia, a Berlin-based NFT gallery founded by Billy Rennekamp, Dan Denorch, Everett Williams, and Sam Hart.

The project’s creator Joan Heemskerk is one half of pioneering net art duo JODI—if you weren't familiar with their work, now you are.

Freaky Flowers is a collection of digital flower paintings by artist Jeffrey Scudder. Each minted “flower” in Scudder’s world is in fact a three-dimensional recording of the painting’s creation via VR headset and hand controllers. The flowers are viewable at aesthetic.computer, a playful in-browser command line environment built for browsing and making digital paintings.

Nina Sarnelle’s The Erosion of Silicon Beach is an ambitious research project and nineteen chapter digital book that “scrutinizes colonial power through the material lens of silicon in various forms: sand, glass, concrete, and microprocessors, to name a few.”

Fire is a Chrome extension that aims to make navigating Web3 transactions safer and more accessible, “showing you exactly what will enter and exit your wallet before you sign the contract”—essentially a GUI for wallet activity. As a person of being-phished-while-in-bed and wallet-drained experience, this tool should come in handy…

I enjoyed the first episode of this new podcast from Nina Protocol. The episode features Nina’s Jack Callahan interviewing 1990s techno pioneers Surgeon and Regis, spanning the origin of the Birmingham sound and Downwards Records to the notion that a recording artist’s autonomy impacts their sound.