Today's conversation is with Zachary Small, staff reporter for the NY Times. I have been following their arts journalism since they wrote for Hyperallergic years ago. They're often the first to identify new, consequential developments in a field that thrives on change.

A little less than a year ago, they became a staff reporter at the Times – a well deserved and enlightened hire. In particular, they have been hot on the trail of the NFT "situation" (remember that) and I suspect we'll be hearing much more about art and digital tokenization over the months and years ahead.

Zach’s first book, “Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022,” will be published by Knopf in spring of this year.

So it was a pleasure to be able to speak to them for Informer. 

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

Today's conversation is with Prem Krishnamurthy, designer, author, and educator. His multifaceted work explores the role of art as an agent of transformation at an individual, collective, and structural level. This manifests itself in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops.

He is one of those thinkers and makers whose brain is spinning out ideas and reflections as fast as you can absorb them. And I appreciate so much his emphasis on the importance of embracing juxtaposition as a prerequisite not only for artistic creativity but also as a key ingredient for healthy civic life. He argues that there is no singular America, but instead a multiplicity of Americas just as there is no singular individual: we are all collections of paradox and competing interests. 

We also talk about the ways in which the world will forever be hybrid, there's no going back to the old technologies. And how do we take what we learned from the "zoomacene" (his word) and build that into the ways in which we come together now.

This conversation, and it was very much a conversation more an interview, was a joy. And I hope you find it to be inspiring and nourishing as well. 

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

What does it mean to have a body that moves in three dimensional space in our current time? How do cultural institutions better relate to the public in a way that takes into consideration the massage changes in technology over the last three years? Can relating to the other than human beings help us learn how to be better partners to the planet? These are the types of questions London-based choreographer and dancer Sara Wookey dives into. She is one of the most interesting thinkers on the relationship of bodies and material space and how post-modern dance can open windows into more rational ways of understanding our bodies in space and, as she always points out, time.

As she says, "we look back on the effects of the pandemic on the way that we choreograph ourselves in social interactions since the pandemic. We've had to raise our awareness of our three dimensional space." These days she is spending a lot of her time helping museums and other cultural organizations think through how they can take a more creative approach to engaging publics that are re-thinking their relationship to the material in the post-covid age.

I spoke to Sara last fall so some time has passed and you'll notice our references to the season feel anomalous, unless you're in the southern hemisphere. But I'm glad that's the case because everything is shifting so quickly at the moment, it is sometimes helpful to get a snapshot of where things were at even just 5 months ago in order to gain some footing as to where we are now. 

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

If you are an artist, or someone who cares about the health and wellbeing of the arts in the United States, I think you will find this conversation to be both insightful and inspirational. There's only one Ruby and I am honored to be able to work with her through my directorship at Eyebeam, where she serves on the board. It was a pleasure to dig into the shifts in the culture since the meltdown of the NEA in the 90's to the current version of the culture wars we are experiencing now from her perspective, as an arts executive since the 80's. As she finalizes a new archive and website of her work and the artists that she has engaged with, this was a fine moment to capture conversations that we typically have offline.

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

My friend, the designer and artist, Mushon Zer-Aviv was in town a few months ago so we sat down to catch up. Having worked in open, values-driven design in tech for the last two decades, Mushon goes deep into what he sees as being the mistakes of the early internet and how we can avoid them in the future. His thoughtfulness is always optimistic: as he says, he is a designer so he wants to design! He points to the contradictions inherent in our tendency to offload "ethics into infrastucture" and the kind of return of the tech bros singing the same song with web3. This is a wide-ranging conversation that points to so many of the current challenges while showing new paths to the future.

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

Deborah has a reputation as an innovative arts leader here in New York.  Over the past couple of years, she has fully transformed into a sharp-eyed astrologer building from decades of experience in the arts as well as a lifelong spiritual practice. In this, the final Dog Days 2022 episode, Roddy and Deborah discuss the value of astrology in the context of being an arts director where everybody is obsessed with knowing the future. And what it means for Deborah to give notice, then begin a full-time astrology practice in upstate NY. This is a wide-ranging conversation about the value of art, and astrology, in creating space for people to relate to one another and is a great way to close out the summer. 

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

There are a handful of contemporary net artists for whom I have particular affection. Constant Dullaart is one of them. Since I first learned of his work in the early aughts, I've found an extraordinary depth to every move he makes. As our understanding of the internet has matured, Constant's work becomes more relevant. I most recently worked with him as one of our Eyebeam fellows in our Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future initiative in 2020. I appreciated this conversation so much, his insistence on thinking through powerful ways to help people re-think ways of being together digitally, most recently creating common.garden, the only art exhibition platform fully exited from surveillance capitalism. 

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

As we enter these long, hot days of this unusual year, I'll be releasing three special episodes that aim to provide some dreamy inspiration for late summer. Between now and labor day, I'll be speaking with three dynamic artists over three episodes. The conversations move from foundational questions around what technology actually means to playful platforms for new forms of co-creation and community, and then finally to a discussion of astrology as an ancient, vital technology for spiritual practice.

These artists, Jonathon Keats, Constant Dullaart, and Astrologer Deborah Fisher, give us new space to dream as we enter these late summer days when reality seems to be consumed by the sun. I hope your are enlivened by the work of this special trio of thinkers and makers, with these Dog Days Special episodes.

Today's episode of Informer, part 1 of 3 Dog Days Special episodes, is with experimental philosopher and artist Jonathon Keats. Jonathan's work forefronts ways in which decisions are made in technology, highlighting the fact that they are decisions, not inevitabilities. He talks about technology as a way in which we become who we are and one which can also *distort* who we become. I think you'll enjoy this episode, as it articulates a lot of the topics that I've been exploring this year. i find his work to provide an insightful foundation, a look at the first causes that brought us to where we are, from human's first use of the pick axe to this moment of emergent capitalisms based on surveillance and instrumentalization of behavior.  Jonathon has a background in philosophy and brings it to bear in a practice that is always burrowing into our innate relationships between the technologies we create and how that influences our sense of self. 

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

B Covington, a multi-modal sound artist whose work is as formally challenging as it is joyfully satisfying, was in New York last month and sat down for a conversation with me at my office in Brooklyn. I enjoyed our time so much an it is the first episode of Informer that was recorded in person. 

We started by talking about the incredibly radical work of the Public Television Workshop, creators of Sesame Street, and the influence that had on B's practice and his ideas around "public narrativity". Our rollicking, wide-ranging conversation then took us many places, including their contemplation of the media's framing of the relationship between Michael Jackson and his sister LaToya and how that acts as inspiration for their new composition. I also enjoyed B's thinking about ways we might work more closely with AI as a creative force.

I think of this conversation as part 3 in my "AI Personhood" series that began with an interview with K Allado McDowell, followed by James Bridle in episode 17. I encourage you to check those out if you haven't already.

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.

James Bridle imagines new modes of invention and engagement inspired from relationships with non-human beings. He's a fascinating thinker and this is one of my favorite conversations.

His relentless inquiry into how we can co-create technologies that better serve the world, not just a few humans, is inspiring. His latest book, Ways of Being, is a tour-de-force of imagining not only how our definitions of intelligence can expand to be more all-encompassing to how these new definitions can open new ways of imagining our relationships to machines. 

James Bridle

Charles Stross

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Informer is the podcast of Ultradilute, a service to explore homeopathy, build health, and nurture creativity in an absurd world.
Founded by Roddy Schrock, Ultradilute is a modern homeopathy practice for curious minds and complex cases.
🌀 Learn more at ultradilute.com
📬 Questions or comments? Email us at [email protected]

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding personal health concerns.