Disintegrator

CW: eating disorders are discussed a few times in this episode. Vespers is a limited series within Disintegrator that focuses on the creative feedback loops between music and social media. It follows from the Nobody Listens to Music Anymore superlecture, where themes of youth identity formation, reference-as-medium, generative AI, and the complexities of working with the total archive are discusse...

Vespers is a limited series within Disintegrator that focuses on the creative feedback loops between music and social media. It follows from the Nobody Listens to Music Anymore superlecture, where themes of youth identity formation, reference-as-medium, generative AI, and the complexities of working with the total archive are discussed in more detail. For this episode, we're joined by RayonBase. I...

Artist and curator Dana Dawud joins Disintegrator to talk about Open Secret, her touring platform for internet cinema, and her evolving film series Monad. We discuss the blur as a visual device and trend, the impossibility of representing Palestine, being trained by AI and building myth in the age of the feed. The audio is laced with reflections by collaborators orbiting Open Secret: redactedcut @...

We’re joined by philosopher Peter Wolfendale — a singular voice in contemporary theory, known for his work on autonomy and the metaphysics of cognition. In this episode, we dive deep into the philosophical problems behind artificial general intelligence, not from the angle of safety or speed, but from the standpoint of what it means to think , to revise , and to reproduce . Peter’s blog and twitte...

CW: There is some brief discussion of abusive familial relationships at several points within this episode. Two titanic figures in contemporary theory join us for two separate and strongly divergent episodes on the status of revolutionary thought in political philosophy today. Timothy Morton is one of the most outspoken and controversial voices in the discourse, someone whose impact punched hard i...

Two titanic figures in contemporary theory join us for two separate and strongly divergent episodes on the status of revolutionary thought in political philosophy today.   Ray Brassier influenced a generation of philosophers not only with his outstanding and highly rigorous writing, but also his absolutely stunning translations of Quentin Meillassoux and François Laruelle, and in so doing is subcu...

It’s such an honor to welcome Giuseppe Longo to the pod! Professor Giuseppe Longo is the Research Director Emeritus at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. His work spans mathematics, computer science, biology, especially through the connective theoretical tissue of epistemology.  Our conversation orbits around the limitations (or specific capaciti...

We’re on with Morgane Billuart, a writer and artist and a researcher whose work engages critically with technologically mediated and determined worlds — not least within her exceptional book “Cycles, the Sacred and the Doomed: Inquiries in Female Health Technologies.” Morgane joins us to talk about a large, recent research project on a particular character that many of us identifies with, what Gee...

Gordon White is a chaos magician, shamanic practitioner, and permaculture designer based in Tasmania. He podcasts and teaches through the vehicle of Rune Soup , the world's largest magic academy, and he writes prolifically -- not only on the Rune Soup blog but in several incredible books. Gordon's breadth and depth of knowledge is unbelievably humbling, and it was an honor to spend an hour or so w...

You already follow @avocado_ibuprofen. His memes IV-ed into the arm of the artworld, circulating through the DMs; they are acidic and thereaputic, they throw up solidarity through critique and gentle negation. We talk about art education, disappointment, exhaustion, glamour, and a beautiful idea (automating the viewer) he began to expand upon in an interview with Valentinas Klimašauskas  here . Bu...

Few people have done more to define the contemporary media theory landscape than Alex Quicho @amfq, an indefinable thinker and artist and intellectual force who brought Girl Theory to the front and center of The Discourse.  One note, friend of the pod Morgane Billuart has also just released an interview with Alex on her excellent podcast Becoming the Product. We don't believe there's such a thing...

On finishing the project of music, on TikTokCore and SpotifyCore, on music as cosplay and the technicity of cultural imperialism, on the bureaucratic turn in the arts, on being dangerous. Lecture given for my beloved DMR at Columbia University at the beginning of December.   Feeling a bit bolder than usual on this one, but it's cuz my toddler is sleeping good. <3    Shoutouts included at the to...

No notes, pure vivid realness and realism. Li Zhenhua is a major force in the art world, especially in film. A tone poem from Torino.  Marek's favorite episode.

Two of our discourse besties from UAL's Fashion Media Practice & Criticism -- experiential designers Daniel Felstead and Jenn Leung -- join us to talk Janky Capitalism (the obvious falling-apart weirdness of the world while capital spins off farther and farther away from it, leaving us behind), Roblox, and neural media.  You probably know their work from the iconic 'The Metaverse in Janky Capi...

Blaise Agüera y Arcas is one of most important people in AI, and apart from his leadership position as CTO of Technology & Society at Google, he has one of those resumes or affiliations lists that seems to span a lot of very fundamental things. He’s amazing; the thoughtfulness and generosity with which he communicates on this episode gently embraced our brains while lazering them to mush. We h...

A very warm welcome to Helena McFadzean, who is joining the Disintegrator wrecking crew.   This week’s episode features one of our favorite artists, Tega Brain . In this episode, we talk through two of our favorite pieces, both of which are not just great exercises in conceptual design, but are actual practical engineering projects whose artistry consists in real solutioning. References from the p...

Here’s a gem from our archive, a recording with Jonathan Impett — Director of Research at the Orpheus Instituut .   Impett has had a MAJOR impact on Roberto and Marek, a kind of intellectual godfather to the two of us. His staggering breadth of knowledge continues to blow our minds. You can find more about Impett's work here .  A number of references from the discussion include:  Impett's chapter...

Majorly excited to have Patricia Reed on the pod. This is a beefy episode! If I was looking for a major reset in my relationship to the world around me, I'd start here. Here’s a list of the references we make throughout the interview: Here's that e-flux diagram I talk about in the intro, and here's a lecture in which she discusses this diagram. Here's the Diagramming the Common piece, which is old...

This episode features one of our most anticipated guests: M. Beatrice Fazi. M. Beatrice Fazi is a philosopher working in philosophy of computation, philosophy of technology and media philosophy. In this episode we mostly cover some key definitions relating to computation and its onto-epistemology grounded in Fazi’s landmark book, Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, and Indeterminacy i...

𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑚01 𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑠 𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑒

BACK with some of the world's foremost experts on  NOISE : Mattin & Inigo Wilkins . Relevant links include: The Noise Research Union ( NRU ) which involves both Mattin and Inigo alongside founding members Cécile Malaspina , Martina Raponi ,  Miguel Prado , and  Sonia de Jager . Mattin's AWESOME book Social Dissonance (out on Urbanomic). Mattin's podcast Social Discipline . Inigo Wilkin's UPCOM...

In this episode, Georgina Voss helps Roberto and Marek kick off on a journey to think about the relationship between human agency and political scale, specifically how that relationship is mediated by technology. The next few episodes will stick to this theme. Georgina's work spans the arts, anthropology, policy, technology, cultural theory -- and, critical to this episode's scope: systems theory....

Youtube for the full experience + Q&A. In the pod, I say to just listen to the audio, but honestly the video is really really fire. Lecture given to our friends at Foreign Objekt, now ON POD. Programmer and Organizer: Sepideh Majidi Moderator: Maure Coise Video Edit: Shaum Mehra Tons of references here from all over the place, but definitely strongly in debt to the work of many many people. Se...

This one is deep so see tons of explanatory resources below. The philosophy talk turns to political talk (easier to grok) after about 15 minutes, but the philosophical context adds a lot of richness to the latter conversation.   Patricia MacCormack is driving productive tension between philosophy and political action. Her Ahuman Manifesto is strongly recommended, even to those who may take issue w...

Creativity = sus.