To make The Followers, Depoorter started with EarthCam, a network of publicly accessible webcams around the world, to record a month’s worth of footage in tourist attractions like New York City’s Times Square and Dublin’s Temple Bar Pub. Then he enlisted an artificial intelligence (A.I.) bot, which scraped public Instagram photos taken in those locations, and facial-recognition software, which paired the Instagram images with the real-time surveillance footage. Depoorter calls himself a “surveillance artist,” and this isn’t his first project using open-source webcam footage or A.I. Last year, for a project called The Flemish Scrollers, he paired livestream video of Belgian government proceedings with an A.I. bot he built to determine how often lawmakers were scrolling on their phones during official meetings.
Controversial Artist Matches Influencer Photos With Surveillance Footage – Slashdot
New visual illusion tricks your brain into seeing things that don’t exist – CNET
The “Scintillating Starburst” will make you see shimmering rays of light — but they’re not real.
— Read on www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/new-visual-illusion-tricks-your-brain-into-seeing-things-that-dont-exist/
“I Wanted to Be on Fire.” On the Connection Between Art and Self-Destruction ‹ Literary Hub
But is there a Faustian choice? Good art and a kind of fragility do often go hand-in-hand—but then, so do bad art and fragility, and indeed no art and fragility. It might be only confirmation bias that makes us notice the people who suffer for their creativity—or maybe the fact that they do (let’s admit it) make a better story.
— Read on lithub.com/i-wanted-to-be-on-fire-on-the-connection-between-art-and-self-destruction/
Human-like robot creates creepy self-portraits | Live Science
“These images are meant to unsettle,” Aidan Meller, the gallery owner behind the creation of Ai-Da, told The Guardian. “They are meant to raise questions about where we are going. What is our human role if so much can be replicated through technology?”
— Read on www.livescience.com/amp/robot-artist-self-portraits.html
Investors Are Buying Land in Virtual Worlds
Last month, a Singapore investor bought a digital artwork for $69 million. Since the art does not have a physical form, it cannot appear in a usual museum.
— Read on learningenglish.voanews.com/amp/investors-are-buying-land-in-virtual-worlds-/5860444.html
NFTs, explained: what they are, and why they’re suddenly worth millions – The Verge
What’s worth picking up at the NFT supermarket?
NFTs can really be anything digital (such as drawings, music, your brain downloaded and turned into an AI), but a lot of the current excitement is around using the tech to sell digital art.
— Read on www.theverge.com/platform/amp/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faq
In Praise of Bitcoin | Epsilon Theory
Bitcoin is itself an NFT, a unique digital art work instantiated on a blockchain. It’s the most valuable NFT in the world. I don’t mean a Bitcoin, obviously that’s a fungible thing. I mean THE Bitcoin … the 21 million Bitcoins that make up the Bitcoin Project. The notion that Bitcoin would ever “go to zero” is ludicrous. Good art is always worth something. But how do we measure that something … how do we put a price on the value of good art at this particular moment in time? It’s a REALLY tough question.
Basquiat drawing to be auctioned as an NFT—and winning bidder will be given the option to destroy the original | The Art Newspaper
Drawing is being sold in an auction sponsored by the firm behind David Bowie’s online bank
— Read on www.theartnewspaper.com/news/basquiat-work-worth-usd120-000-to-be-auctioned-as-an-nft-and-winning-bidder-will-be-given-the-option-to-destroy-the-original
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