Signal to Noise
Signal to Noise explores how artists work with, challenge, or complicate the relationship between signals and noise—disruptions, glitches or interference—in communication technologies and the messages they send.
This week I am delighted to be in Melbourne for the opening of Signal to Noise, an exhibition I've been co-curating with Joel Stern and Emily Siddons at the National Communications Museum in Melbourne. I've got plenty more to say about it, but the opening is this Saturday so I'm sitting on my thoughts until then. As we say on the website:
Signal to Noise explores how artists work with, challenge, or complicate the relationship between signals and noise—disruptions, glitches or interference—in communication technologies and the messages they send. These technologies include the internet, telephones, radio and television, artificial intelligence, social media algorithms, and even the sounds of the natural world.
If you're in Melbourne, come to the opening! It's going to be a blast.
A sneak peak of opening day events on April 12 in Melbourne, which are included with your ticket to the exhibition:
Eryk Salvaggio (that's me). I'll be "opening the opening" at 1:30pm with a live (in person) narration of my film, Human Movie: Meditations on a Compression Algorithm, in a lecture-performance version called Human Presentation. The lecture will explore the shared (albeit problematically so) metaphors of AI and humanity, complicating them in all directions.
At 2:30, Explore the boundaries between human, animal, and machine with Kombumerri DJ and producer Rowan Savage (salllvage). There will be a live performance with crow recordings and home-brewed AI samples, followed by a conversation with Dr Joel Stern on Rowan's immersive sonic installation in Signal to Noise, Carrion Sentience.
At 3:30, from New York based duo elekhlekha อีเหละเขละขละ comes a participatory performance of "Jitr จิตร –Extended Gong Ensemble," a live-coding and sound-making performance where audiences are invited to bring found objects to contribute to a collaborative sonic experience.
Podcast Alert: DOGE and the United States of AI
I was on this weekend's Tech Policy Press podcast to discuss DOGE and the flimsy premise of automation that driving the gutting of government services in the US, based on my recent article on Future Fatigue.
In this convo with TPP's Justin Hendrix, I'm joined by Rebecca Williams, a senior strategist in the Privacy and Data Governance Unit at ACLU; Emily Tavoulareas, who teaches and conducts research at Georgetown's McCourt School for Public Policy and is leading a project to document the founding of the US Digital Service; and Matthew Kirschenbaum, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland.
