GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy, 2018. Courtesy of Christie’s. On Thursday, in the same auction in which an Andy Warhol print sold for $75,000 and a work by Roy Lichtenstein sold for $87,500, a computer-generated artwork grabbed $350,000…

Accel­er­a­tion­ism pushes towards a future that is more mod­ern, an altern­at­ive mod­ern­ity that neo­lib­er­al­ism is inher­ently unable to gen­er­ate. 01. INTRODUCTION: On the Conjuncture 1. At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces a new breed…

http://rougesfoam.blogspot.de/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html?m=1

The message of many things in America is “Like this or die.” — George W.S. Trow, Within the Context of No Context , 1980 The Seeing Robot The camera is a small, white, curvilinear monolith on a pedestal. Inside its smooth casing are a microphone, a speaker, and an eye-like lens. After I set it up on…

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3169-communal-luxury-kristin-ross

Haunting presence ... Jacques Derrida, who coined the term hauntology, in a still from the documentary Derrida Hauntology is probably the first major trend in critical theory to have flourished online. In October 2006, Mark Fisher - aka k-punk - described it as "the closest thing we have to a…

Science and Technology Environment Our spring issue , looking at the democratic revolts of 1968, is out now! Subscribe or renew today. “There are five years left to save the planet.” That is what the World Wildlife Fund said — three years ago — so by 2012, it is all over. Some were a bit more…

Ne produis rien. Change de sexe. Deviens le maître de ton professeur. Sois l’élève de ton étudiant. Sois l’amant de ton chef. Sois l’animal de ton chien. Tout ce qui marche sur deux pattes est un ennemi. Prends soin de ton infirmière. Entre dans une prison et rejoue la scène centrale de la Ferme des…

http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/why-marvel-and-other-hollywood-films-have-such-bland-music.html

JD Lasica Cambridge Analytica & Facebook In nearly 500 pages of answers, Facebook stonewalls some senators’ questions Cambridge Analytica files for bankruptcy amidst “siege” of negative attention Cambridge Analytica shuts down after Facebook user data scandal Facebook building a “simple way to clear…

Today is the publication anniversary of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses ; it is also Joyce’s birthday. Elsewhere on Literary Hub, I took a look at the very different responses other famous writers have had to Joyce’s most notorious work, but what about your everyday bookworm? Turns out, regular readers…

On the suggestion of my primary supervisor, I have been taking a look at Jacques Lacan and Lacanian theory as it pertains to critical theory and literary criticism. To someone outside my academic field, this might seem slightly odd, but once you start to read into the subject, it begins to make a…

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2017-12-25/blogs-opinions/The-Lord-s-Prayer-the-Maltese-Semitic-version-and-its-historical-origins-6736182976

This summer, I seriously considered withdrawing from any involvement in politics. Exhausted through overwork, incapable of productive activity, I found myself drifting through social networks, feeling my depression and exhaustion increasing. ‘Left-wing’ Twitter can often be a miserable, dispiriting…

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-blathering-superego-at-the-end-of-history/

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/cockblocked-by-redistribution

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/21/privatizing-public-services-trump-democracy?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Instapaper

For an Inclusive Culture, Try Working Less

The Verso Prize for Cultural and Critical Studies is a new prize for the top student graduating from Birkbeck’s MA Cultural and Critical Studies . The inaugural prize has been awarded to student Neil Fitzgerald, for submitted work that was described as “truly exceptional” by the external examiner,…

December 2013 Image: Killoffer, "La Manif," 2009, Graphite on Paper48 x 63 cm, Courtesy of Galerie Anne Barrault This month we're showcasing the sparkling innovations in form and literature produced by the members of the Oulipo. The Paris-based literary collective explores how literature might arise…

A digital library would make knowledge, culture and literary achievement available to anyone with internet access. Photograph: Getty Images/Getty Images/Dex Image S cholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written. Then, in 2004, Google announced that…

As diplomats gather at the United Nations in New York this week to consider the future of global drug policy, one Portuguese official, João Goulão, will likely command attention that far outstrips his country's influence in practically any other area. That's because 16 years ago, Portugal took a…

Getty Images Igor Mordatch is working to build machines that can carry on a conversation. That’s something so many people are working on. In Silicon Valley, chatbot is now a bona fide buzzword . But Mordatch is different. He’s not a linguist. He doesn’t deal in the AI techniques that typically reach…

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-hidden-systems-at-work-behind-gentrification

Robert Maniscalco Dylann Roof (second from left) during the initial stage of jury selection for his trial for the murder of nine worshipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, September 2016 In early January, three weeks into the federal trial of Dylann…

Our spring issue , looking at the democratic revolts of 1968, is out now! Subscribe or renew today. We should just come out and say it — Donald Trump has a thing for Eastern European women. I remember Trump’s first wife Ivana well — Polish magazines praised her, and thousands of Dynasty-watching…

An armed guard stands at the entrance of the Survival Condo Project, a former missile silo north of Wichita, Kansas, that has been converted into luxury apartments for people worried about the crackup of civilization. Photograph by Dan Winters for The New Yorker Steve Huffman, the…

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/trumpism-and-the-davos-man/

When I hear other people talking about procrastination, I find myself getting proprietorial: surely their fleeting pauses are as nothing to mine. Procrastination is the main way I express anxiety and depression, if I can use these medicalised, dignifying terms. It’s franker to say that I put things…

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/magazine/the-great-ai-awakening.html?&version=readinglist&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=c-column-middle-span-region&region=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has revived the idea of a union of Southern European countries, a proposal first launched by another philosopher, Alexandre Kojève, just after World War II. This "Latin Empire" could act as a counter weight to the dominant role played by Germany in the European…

Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in October, 2016.Photograph: Getty Images B elow the medieval citadel in Kazan, two vast frozen rivers turn the landscape white. On a Saturday afternoon there are a few hardy locals shuffling through the icy sludge to take selfies against the mosque, the…

Now imagine if an aerial image of New York could camouflage itself as one from Hong Kong, or Milan. That’s just one of the things Invisible Cities , a new project from Italy’s Opendot (which includes Gene Kogan, Gabriell Gambotto, Ambika Jib Samsen, Michele Ferretti, Andrej Boleslavsky, Damiano Gui,…

Arts+CultureQ+A ‘Art Fair’ is a film made by Talk Hole that looks at the deathly competitiveness of New York’s art scene and how no-one’s really saying anything, are they? 1 December 2016 Text Thomas Gorton Maybe you’ve been to an art opening, or an art fair. You’re clutching a flute of lukewarm…

Donald Trump owed his election victory to his popularity in rust-belt areas, such as Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania.Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images I have no tribe. I have no comfort blanket, no default button that enables me to join the prevailing hysteria and cry in unison, “Of course, it’s…

AMERICA THE ANXIOUS How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks By Ruth Whippman 247 pp. St. Martin’s Press. $25.99. The first day I arrived in Paris for my semester abroad I smiled at all the helpful strangers: the passport agent, the taxi driver, the random person I asked…

The Holy Southern Empire: a proposal for Southern European anarcho-papism Written by Federico Campagna, 16.09.2013 Cura hominum potuit tantam componere Romam, quantam non potuit solvere cura deum. Hildebertus, Carmina Minora , no.36 Beyond the Latin Empire A few months ago, the Italian philosopher…

Catholicism As Radical Atheism Written by Federico Campagna, 24.03.2014 Steering clear of absolutist atheism My radically atheist attack against normative abstractions, however, was for the great part dissimilar from traditional atheism. While traditional atheism locates its critique on an…

IN MID-OCTOBER, the Nobel Committee for Literature awarded the Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The announcement came shortly after the most recent Annual Arts Basic Survey (AABS) by the National Endowment for the Arts…

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/22/hygge-conspiracy-denmark-cosiness-trend?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Add_to_Instapaper