We Make Money Not Art

Concerning judging, I advise everyone to… just drop it!
We started dropping it when we launched Museomix[1] as it made no sense for the mood and culture we wanted to create: inclusive, cross-disciplinary, community building oriented.

Back in 2010 and 2011 with the first ArtGame Weekends we had a jury and a small money prize. Most people didn't in fact care for both of them: it was just not an integral part of what motivated them.

On the other hand, jury and competition induce several issues. One is explicitly stating from the get go that only some teams and projects will have merits. Another one is falsely relying on the prizes as the solution to what happen next (we gave you 5000€, now go build v1).

Jury and winners in hackathons are event a PR trap! With a winner, you now have to focus your post-event PR solely on the winner, loosing the possibilities of picking and talking about the right project to the right person.

So, I now advise my community friends and my corporate clients to not have a jury in their hackathons, but to instead have, for example, a Mentor panel. They are not there to elect a winner, but to close the event, create a demo goal, and most importantly use their knowledge of the ecosystem(s) to trace a path for the teams to pursue their project (by for example referring them to the right persons or organizations).

One of my very clever client decided she would instead of having a single prize just give away all the tech she bought for the participants…

The US, by their own admission, is "killing people based on metadata" [0].

Which in practice is done by using machine learning [1] on huge data sets gathered with that global surveillance enabled trough Five Eyes.

Because the army of humans that could manually sort trough those zettabytes of data has yet to be cloned. All that ends up in the fancy-sounding "disposition matrix" [2] aka the USGs kill-list. It's just systems upon systems doing their thing and nobody is directly responsible or accountable for anything that ends up happening, like when yet another 30 Afghani farmers get "splatted" by accident [3].

Considering how this has been going on for close to two decades, and the US has a very convenient way going about the casualty statistics [4], I guess these Afghani farmers are just another rounding error in the "war on terror". Figures, because before that they were mostly considered biometric cattle [5] and lab-rats for fantasies about "full-spectrum surveillance" [6].

Note: Under Trump, the USG now even stopped releasing their shined up drone statistics. So it's pretty much impossible to know the full scale about what's still going on to this day.

[0] https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

[3]…

There has been talks of headless chickens for use as food before.

http://www.wired.com/2012/02/headless-chicken-solution/

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2012/02/farming-the-unconscious.php

I'm not going to say impossible, but we just don't need them at this point. Plus since a lot of these genetic experiments would be ultimately affecting something in the brain, it might be near pointless. I don't know, I just don't see it being plausible or necessary or allowed anytime soon.

If we can grow headless bodies, we can just use the organs for transplants, so... that'd be much easier.

I don't know, that's kind of a strange question that I don't feel comfortable even considering. Not many scientists would be comfortable experimenting on headless humans either.

Understanding DNA/RNA and simulating it with computers while using animals to verify the algorithms might be more effective.

Basically science is: predict what will happen, try everything, see what happens, study the results, don't blow yourself up or kill people. Mice and other animals are debatable to harm if necessary, greater good I suppose.

Art and code are definitely compatible, and there is certainly a market for digitally curated / created art.

If you want to create art, spend time exploring and educating yourself. Learn what you like, what you find interesting and what you feel is worth exploring.

There are quite a few people who seem to be making money in these fields, via commissioned works - one that spring to mind is Robert Hodgin [1]/[2].

There are also galleries which specialise in 'digital art'. I know of one in particular in Berlin [3].

There are blogs which cover digital and emerging forms of art. [4] [5]

I've only just scratched the surface .. there's a LOT that's definitely worth exploring.

[1] http://www.flight404.com/

[2] http://roberthodgin.com/

[3] http://dam-berlin.de/

[4] http://www.vvork.com/

[5] http://we-make-money-not-art.com/

For anyone interested in the history of generative art and its parent discipline "(new) media art", some historical resources:

- http://generative.net/read/home

- http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/mediaartnet/

- http://userwww.sfsu.edu/swilson/book/infoartsbook.html

- http://archive.aec.at/, and https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/139740/8aec5cb9da76a6194bfc5184a427c5b3.pdf?1376461955

- http://dada.compart-bremen.de/

- http://turbulence.org/

- http://neural.it/ (magazine)

- http://rhizome.org/art/artbase/

- http://www.nettime.org/ (classic net.art mailing list)

- http://we-make-money-not-art.com/ (previous-generation blog)

- http://www.creativeapplications.net/ (current generation blog)

Referring to Naon as a "prodigy" is a deeply out-of-context claim.

I find these arguments unsettling, but it reminds me of this:

https://we-make-money-not-art.com/farming_the_unconscious/

> As long as their brain stem is intact, the homeostatic functions of the chicken will continue to operate. By removing the cerebral cortex of the chicken, its sensory perceptions are removed. It can be produced in a denser condition while remaining alive, and oblivious.

> The feet will also be removed so the body of the chicken can be packed together in a dense volume.

> Food, water and air are delivered via an arterial network and excreta is removed in the same manner. Around 1000 chickens will be packed into each ‘leaf’, which forms part of a moving, productive system.