Episode 057
Speculative aesthetics in the algorithmic age
Mat Dryhurst
Show notes
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?
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