Speculative aesthetics in the algorithmic age

We are not in the King Charles III Space Station this week. We are in Harriet Green’s sister station, which is a less reliable bit of lore but a more useful studio. Into it comes Mat Dryhurst: English conceptual artist, Berlin resident, collaborator with Holly Herndon, co-founder of Spawning AI, and the rare guest willing to tell Anglofuturism that Greek statues of ourselves might be a sign of stuckness rather than civilisational vigour.

The episode explores

• Why Greek statues in the space station might be a symptom of Anglofuturist stuckness
• Strange Rules in Venice and the end of art as a separate autonomous category
• Michael Levin, two-headed worms, and why everything starts to look like a communication protocol
• Ken Stanley, PickBreeder, and why greatness cannot be planned
• Aston Villa, the Europa League, and why old forms stop meaning what they once meant
• Instagram and the infinite feed as the actual cultural event of the past 20 years
• Oman banning advertising and the politics of cognitive security
• The Call, choirs, consent, and participatory AI
• Why Bauhaus was not a look, and why commissioning “a future aesthetic” misses the point
• Progressive elitism, Channel 4, Chris Morris, and institutions taking punts before the public asks for them
• The new weirdos who look normal until they start talking about prediction markets
• Spawning AI, machine-readable permissions, and why copyright is too small for model culture
• The 30-year question: which low-status interaction now becomes the future’s obvious value layer?