Supongo que tengo que empezar a aplicarme el cuento. Llevo varios años inculcando directa o indirectamente que el gusto, el taste, es el tipo de inteligencia que tenemos que empezar a cultivar más a menudo y, si puede ser, no acabar perdiéndolo por completo. Las razones son obvias, creo: el progreso de la inteligencia artificial, las cámaras de eco y un ecosistema sin fricciones lleno de recomendaciones sintéticas que atenta directamente sobre nuestra capacidad de "saber qué es relevante para nosotros y por qué"....
En este portal la divulgación se vertebra sobre una premisa clara: la creación y protección de contexto en una era en la que su destrucción lo impregna todo. Ese mandato y, también, la petición de muchos lectores solicitando la "formalización" de una sección de recomendación cultural, han acabado desembocando en Drill-A-Bus.
Al igual que KOOLIO, cada mensualidad espero poder enviar una pequeña selección de lecturas, contenido y proyectos a los que vale la pena seguir la pista. Será la sección más simple de esta plataforma, y no por eso la de menos valor. Si os soy completamente sincero: siempre me han parecido un engorro este tipo de formatos digest, por alguna razón mi cabeza no soporta los "contenidos variados". Pero creo que es buen momento de empezar a enfrentarme a esta manía tan absurda.
Sin más: aquí algunas de las recomendaciones que propongo prestéis atención y, si os convencen, añadáis a sea cual sea vuestra dieta de consumo de contenidos actual. Un recordatorio: el gusto va muy ligado al pensamiento crítico y este se construye consumiendo, también, cosas que puedan no gustarnos en absoluto.
Medios Calientes
Hito Steyerl, traducción y reedición por Caja Negra.
En estos textos, Steyerl investiga cómo las nuevas tecnologías de creación de imágenes transforman no solo las prácticas artísticas, sino también la manera en que comprendemos el mundo, el trabajo y la sensibilidad humana. ¿Qué significa “crear” cuando las imágenes se producen en masa por sistemas que no entienden ni el deseo ni el dolor? ¿Y cómo evitar que el arte se convierta en una herramienta más del extractivismo digital, la vigilancia global o la guerra algorítmica? A través de una escritura que cruza el análisis político, la filosofía y la experiencia directa, la autora traza una crítica contundente al optimismo tecnológico que invisibiliza las estructuras bélicas y extractivistas y las desigualdades que las sustentan.
El mejor de los mundos imposibles
Gabriel Ventura en Nuevos Cuadernos Anagrama.
Durante la pandemia muchos jóvenes popularizaron un extraño fenómeno virtual: el reality shifting, una práctica con la que miles de centenials afirmaban haberse transportado a universos paralelos mientras interactuaban con sus ídolos o sus personajes favoritos y experimentaban, a través de sus conciencias y creencias, una vida auténtica y real.
Entreprecariat
Silvio Lorusso en ONOMATOPEE.
Entrepreneur or precarious worker? These are the terms of a cognitive dissonance that turns everyone’s life into a shaky project in perennial start-up phase. Silvio Lorusso guides us through the entreprecariat, a world where change is natural and healthy, whatever it may bring. A world populated by motivational posters, productivity tools, mobile offices and self-help techniques. A world in which a mix of entrepreneurial ideology and widespread precarity is what regulates professional social media, online marketplaces for self-employment and crowdfunding platforms for personal needs. The result? A life in permanent beta, with sometimes tragic implications.
Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading
Nadia Asparouhova en Dark Forest Collective.
It's easier than ever to share ideas, yet some of the most interesting ideas are burrowing deeper underground, circulating quietly among group chats, texts, and whisper networks. While memes – self-replicating bits of culture – thrive in an attention-driven economy, other ideas are becoming strangely harder to find. Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading explores this paradox, uncovering the hidden forces that determine what we remember, what we forget, and why some ideas – no matter how compelling – resist going viral.
Machina Lucida: Reflections on Artificial Images
Lucas Genfold en SPIKE ART Magazine.
"As banal AI images come to supersaturate our visual culture, we should look with more curiosity toward image-makers who explore the specific quirks of different models. Their experiments may not squarely look like art (nor like engineering, nor research), but it is precisely in this interstitial space where tinkering is likely to find the essence of the apparatus – and thus to discern what these tools are doing to art and culture".
Eating the Future: The Metabolic Logic of AI Slop
Kate Crawford en e-flux.
How are the humans who live downstream of AI models adapting? Do we swim with or against the rivers of synthetic shit? If the metabolic rift decimates our ecosystems—including the information environment—whatever will become of the influencers? They’re transforming into coprophages: digital dung-eaters that consume and monetize slop.
Main Character Music Journalism
Shawn Reynaldo en First Floor.
Social media is also a volume business, in the sense that building a profile requires a near-constant stream of content; that’s hard enough for an established publication with a sizable staff to produce, but for an individual journalist with limited resources, it’s borderline impossible—unless they’re willing to lean into every single trending topic and / or significantly dilute the quality of the material on offer.
THE SPECTACLE MADE FLESH
Yasha Levine en NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS.
Influencers are the core of our political culture now. So much moves through them. They are central actors in the Spectacle. Many of them are on the feed every day stirring the psychic chaos, reflecting people’s fears and hatreds and petty grievances and giving them moral power. It’s all about riling up conflict — stoking tribalism, in-group/out-group hostility, painting targets on people’s backs. It doesn’t even matter what their politics are or whether you or I agree or disagree with their positions. The general pattern of the political influencer is almost always the same. It’s about conflict.
Kind of confusing
Tim Bayne en AEON.
Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural? There is much that is appealing in this conception of consciousness. As countless philosophers have pointed out, introspective access to our own experiences does seem to provide us with direct access to the very nature of consciousness. But, for all that, the manifest account of consciousness may well be wrong. To see why, consider jazz.
Kneecap, Masculinity & Why Techno Is Ruining The Mating Game
Ash Sarkar Meets Blindboy en Novara Media.
Blindboy is an artist, podcaster, and author. His storytelling style weaves anti-colonial histories with perspectives on modern masculinity, politics, and mental health, all cut with an absurdist sense of humour. In public Blindboy wears a mask made from a plastic bag, maintaining anonymity while developing a cult following as a podcaster. In this interview, Blindboy delves into the historical connections between Ireland and Palestine, going as far back as the 1920s when the two countries were occupied by the same units of the British army. How has this history shaped the politics of Irish rap group Kneecap? And how are anti-colonial folk songs being misappropriated by the far-right in Ireland today?
How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult
Continuing our investigation into how our current comedy era got to be so wonderful. They say that power doesn't corrupt, it reveals. Once a guy like Joe Rogan, the Comedy Czar, grabs hold of the reins of power, he can wield his power in any number of directions. We examine humanity's innate instinct to migrate, and where we head when there is nowhere else to go. How can the nature of subjective reality be leveraged and exploited. The complex psychological mechanisms behind the current comedy era. The powerful cult behind the destruction of everything that was ever good. Hyperreality, classic reality. And the cycles.
Sexiest Album Ever?
Adam Maness y Peter Martin en You'll Hear It.
We’re finally digging into “Voodoo” - D’Angelo’s Grammy-winning album that changed the sound of R&B, soul, and hip-hop forever. And the album a young Adam Maness had on repeat, seriously influencing his playing as well as countless musicians since. With Questlove’s “Dilla-drag” drumming, Pino Palladino’s funky bass lines, Roy Hargrove’s jazzy horn arrangements, and Charlie Hunter’s chicken-picking guitar, Voodoo is packed with the kind of cross-genre musicality that makes jazz musicians lose their minds.
@proyectouna_: Colectivo de escritura, “Feminismo brilli-brilli”, “Basura Woke”...
@no.investigues: Teoría cultural y política high-level. También en Substack!
@oval____: Excitante colectivo en Barcelona!
@404media: Publicación esencial e independiente!
@sustrato_ed: Interesante y nueva comunidad de autores
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