MÉTACONTEMPORAIN

20/09/2026

In 1960, the insides of thermostats, cameras, and clocks revealed how they worked. Today, their insides are indecipherable circuit boards. As psychologist Frank Keil notes, younger generations have been raised amid these opaque technologies and black-box AI systems and, as such, have lost direct access to causal understanding. How can we prepare children to find insights and cognitive agency in a world of ever-shrinking opportunities to learn how things work?

In "The Disappearance of Insight," Keil investigates how rapid technological change is shaping the world around us—and what this means for our children and their futures.

"A striking analysis of childhood and cognition in today’s technology-saturated world." — Tania Lombrozo, author of "Why We Ask Why"

Learn more: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262054140/the-disappearance-of-insight/

04/09/2026

I finished a new essay "Seven Worlds of Digital Art: A Visitor's Guide" :

https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/seven-worlds-digital-art

Digital art is usually defined by its technology — art made with computers — and then divided by tool and output format: net art, interactive installation, data art. This article takes a different approach, borrowed from the sociology of culture (Howard Becker's Art Worlds) and informed by my four decades in the field.

Over those decades digital art did not only grow. It divided. Separate worlds emerged, each with its own audiences, institutions, criteria of evaluation, and support structures. Some did not exist even ten years ago.

I describe seven of these worlds. What distinguishes them is not technique or content but three other things: where the work circulates, who values it, and by what criteria it is judged.

I also analyze the growing connections between these worlds. Many careers now cross from one world into another, and so do tools, works, formats and conventions.

10/08/2026

Feeding the AI rush, datacenters are everywhere now. Jenny Wu connects the architectural vacuity of the server farm to a longer history of ‘dirty’ work.

Read the full article here: https://artreview.com/the-digital-jungle-on-datacenters-and-slaughterhouses-jenny-wu/

09/08/2026

What is copyright, in the age of AI? ©️💻

This year at Gresham College, our Professor of Business Daniel Susskind explores the relationship between AI, creativity and copyright.

His lectures show how new technologies challenge the traditional view that creativity is a uniquely human activity, and traces the historical origins of copyright, setting out how earlier technologies like the Internet have forced intellectual property law to change and adapt.

Find out more: gres.hm/ai-copyright

King's College London
University of Oxford
Stanford University

20/07/2026

As BFA and MFA programs experiment with emerging technologies, they are subtly redefining what it means to train as a contemporary artist.

06/07/2026

29/06/2026

ZKM | Karlsruhe presents Silver Egg: The Eros of Media Art, its major thematic exhibition of 2026.