Curated Culture

The latest social and cultural trends mixed with innovative works of visual culture. Spotted by cultural scientist Sanne van der Beek. More on: www.sannevanderbeek.nl

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Het tempo waarmee technologie elkaar opvolgt lijkt steeds sneller te worden. Google maar eens op 'Wet van Moore. Wie weet nog hoe een inbelgeluidje klinkt? Of wat een floppydisk is? Nick Gentry werkt in z'n schilderijen met 'vergeten technologie' zoals filmnegatieven, VHS cassettes en floppy disks zoals in dit portret om ons bewust te maken van de snelheid waarmee technologie ook weer in de vergetelheid belandt #kunst #kunstkijken #art #nickgentry #floppydisk #technologie #tech #techkunst #techart #technologythesedays #technology

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What do you do in a boring office? Well this according to Dutch artists Lernert&Sander for the Boring Collection of Lensvelt

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Simply briljant - Swimming lessons by Muriel Bordier

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De bedoeling van kunst is onze geest te bevrijden, en de taak van de recensent is om uit te zoeken wat we met die vrijheid kunnen doen. Dat we allemaal recensent zijn, betekent dat we allemaal in staat zijn om onze eigen vooroordelen te heroverwegen, om scepticisme te compenseren met een onbevooroordeelde houding, om onze afgestompte en overvoerde zintuigen aan te scherpen en te vechten tegen de intellectuele matheid die ons omringt. We moeten onze bijzondere hersens gaan gebruiken en onze eigen ervaring serieus gaan nemen.

A.O. Scott is de filmcriticus van The New York Times en auteur van het boek Better Living Through Criticism

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A dancer gradually becomes a 3D-printed version of herself in music video for The Chemical Brothers' track Wide Open

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Sheer beauty -  This bathtub by Israeli designer Tal Engel is woven from thin strips of wood veneer using a traditional Asian boat-building technique.

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Intriging photoseries ‘My first rifle’ of dutch photographer Anne-Sofie Kesteleyn in which she portraits American children with a special childrens rifle and let them describe what does them make afraid

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Drones & Dance 

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Dutch designer Joris Laarman has created an incredible living lamp made out of (get this) bioluminescent, living, glowing hamster cells. Called the “Half Life” his lamp produces a soft, ambient glow using cells from a Chinese hamster enriched with firefly genes (which are what make it light up). Biochemistry, meet interior design. (via)

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The conversation around urbanism these days is like the Latin mass, laden with jargon, reinforcing the barriers around a professional guild. The debates of the planners sound like buildings talking to buildings.[...] I know of very few writers or journalists who really understand the workings of cities. And the ones that do don’t know how to translate it into a story that will grab ordinary readers leafing through the gossip pages. Meanwhile the real-estate developers invest in professional storytellers to sell their sugared dreams of swimming pools and towers in the park to an uninformed populace.

Suketu Mehta about why inequality and gentrification in cities is booming. 

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‘Away from reality’ is a photo series which portrays a near future in which Londoners are withdrawn from reality as a result of their preoccupation with VR headsets.

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Our technologies, like our children, will go wrong. They will create new problems. We cannot create perfectly formed new technologies, only flawed ones. We must, thus, continually care for and improve them, just as we do our children.

Love your monsters - Impressive philosophical essay of Bruno Latour in which he speaks about our resposibility for our technology

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Good dogs on nice furniture, well the title of the new photo series of William Wegman is spot on..

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“Ever step on ants and never give it another thought? That’s what you are made to think of the targets – as just black blobs on a screen. You start to do these psychological gymnastics to make it easier to do what you have to do – they deserved it, they chose their side. You had to kill part of your conscience to keep doing your job every day – and ignore those voices telling you this wasn’t right.”

Impressive insight in what it means to be a drone pilot

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Plastic artist Agi Haines explores, in her series titled Transfigurations, a few hypothetical scenarios for surgically implanted body enhancements in babies. These enhancements aim to improve the life of the baby as it grows up.

Designs range from a baby whose cheeks were enlarged in order to absorb greater amounts of caffeine, upon reaching adult life – being thus better equipped to work longer hours in a high stress career – to another baby, whose scalp skin was augmented to better dissipate heat in a warmer world. (via)

More designerbabies on her website 

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LoVR tracks the moment of falling in love through neural data. I first saw this in Virtual Reality, in which it is seriously overwhelming, but as a flat vimeo it’s still pretty cool.

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What’s at stake here is not so much the final outcome – ie whether old people get care or not [...] when it comes to care, the process can be as important as the outcome, for many values that we hold dear – dignity, for example. [...] Thus, while robots might one day make funnier jokes than their human caretakers, it’s clear that they do not in any reasonable way care about the patients they serve. And if they don’t really care, why call it “care” then? Why not call it a cost-efficient and trouble-free bulk management of the elderly, for this is what it really is?

Internet critic Evgeny Morozov about smart care with robots in “Why growing old the Silicon Valley way is a prescription for loneliness”