New Models

Unlocked (first released to subscribers 17 March 2025) --> https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com https://newmodels.io

Lil Internet purges his Musk Derangement Syndrome one last time in a monologue that could have been titled “Ket, Lies, and Video Games”—until a decades-long shift in base reality is revealed by dice in a Hong Kong bar.

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[Excerpt from monologue]:

“A very brief review of what everyone knows but might not think about all at once: Elon Musk bought Twitter, the most influential social media platform in the world, and promised to make it ”politically neutral.” He then renamed it X, which, in mathematics and logic stands for any arbitrary thing you want, and turned the entire platform towards boosting far right parties across the globe. He controls what does and doesn’t appear on your feed, what does or doesn’t get fact checked, and bans users on a whim. He owns Starlink, a satellite ISP that allows him to monitor traffic or sever a home’s entire internet connection at any time. He owns SpaceX, which is building a classified satellite network called Starshield for the National Reconnaissance Office of the US Military that will allow 24/7, real-time images and AI-powered intelligence gathering across the entire surface of the planet. He owns xAI, which is building the world’s most powerful supercomputer to achieve AGI and have it run the US government. He owns Tesla, which sells cars that he can control, shut down, or render permanently inoperable via satellite, and builds humanoid robots explicitly for replacing human jobs. And then there’s Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company that is literally implanting thought-reading microchips in people’s brains.

This is all basic public knowledge, and yet people who swore Bill Gates was putting 5G microchips in the vaccines seem to be totally fine with an even richer guy controlling their social media, internet access, and car while building robots to replace their jobs, putting every square inch of Earth under 24/7 surveillance, and implanting microchips in people’s brains.

Elon Musk has openly, transparently, turned every conspiracy theory trope into a business he directly owns. He is openly, transparently, every dystopian fear embodied within a single man. Yet the paranoid and the conspiratorial are most likely to support him. Why? I think it’s because transparency has replaced truth and trust in society, and with Elon transparently the most dangerous man to ever exist, truth and trust have become irrelevant.”

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe | https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com

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Writer and Nymphet Alumni co-host Biz Sherbert joins NM following the launch of her newsletter, American Style. Its premise is simple — travel around the country and talk to people about what they are wearing and why. On the show, we chat with Biz about the transmission of style today, particularly in the USA, and whether personal aesthetic transformations may be a stand-in for pursuing the erstwhile American Dream.

For more:

https://instagram.com/bizsherbert

https://bizsherbert.substack.com/about

Nymphet Alumni Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/65CYBeAlLNevYAdW0YgyD1

See also:

“What Does Beauty Look Like in the Age of Trump?” AnOther (Feb 2025) https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/16218/what-does-beauty-look-like-in-the-trump-era-anna-claire-howland-addison-rae

“On the Fashion Philosophy of the Crypto Bro,” Zora (June 2023) https://zine.zora.co/biz-sherbert-crypto-style

Biz Sherbert x Emma Chamberlain, The Face (Sept 2024)

https://theface.com/culture/emma-chamberlain-style-voice-of-a-generation-young-people-social-media-famous

Nicole Kidman shot by Petra Collins for Time Woman of the Year, 2025 https://time.com/7216403/nicole-kidman-interview/

First published in Heavy Traffic V (Fall 2024), Mark Leckey's kaleidoscopic, transhistorical sojourn into the Eikonomachia (the 'image struggle') is presented here in radio play form w/ sound design and production also by Leckey.

This reading is part of Heavy Traffic’s New Models residency, which features pieces from the magazine read aloud by their authors. Heavy Traffic V of is out now. https://heavytrafficmagazine.com

See also: 

📹 "Enter Through Medieval Wounds" video version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyi-ZRJj7mI

🔉NM Greenroom | Mark Leckey (2025)

https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/preview-nm-greenroom-mark-leckey-2025?

🔉NM75 | w/ Heavy Traffic editor/publisher Patrick McGraw

https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/mcgraw-heavytraffic-nm75/s-VB0sQZYweL0

🖼️ 3 Songs from the Liver,” Gladstone Gallery, NYC (2024-25)

https://www.gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/13694/3-songs-from-the-liver/installation-views

Unlocked (first released to subscribers 19 March 2024) --> https://newmodels.io

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How does media actually work in 2024, which is to say in a time of omnipresent AI? And what kind of subject is this era of media producing? On this ep, we speak with K Allado-McDowell—the author, with GPT-3, of Pharmako-AI, Amor Cringe, and Air Age Blueprint, and founder of the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google AI—about how media is evolving. Specifically, we ask about rise of “neural media,” which K has theorized as developing out of network media in the mid-2010s amid increasing human-AI interaction. Hearing K describe neural media's mechanics, it seems inevitable that our ideas of individuality and identity formation, even what it means to communicate as a human (among other living beings) are about to be majorly recalibrated.

For more:

@kalladomcdowell (IG & X)


“Designing Neural Media” (2023), Gropius Bau Journal

https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/en/gropius-bau/programm/journal/2023/k-allado-mcdowell-designing-neural-media

"Am I slop? Am I Agentic? Am I Earth" (2025), The Long Now

https://longnow.org/ideas/identity-neural-media-ai/

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe. | https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com

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British artist Mark Leckey — creator of famed club culture docu-hallucination, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999), winner of the 2008 Turner Prize, and longtime NTS Radio host — discusses the terms of art-making in our technological present and our increasingly medieval relationship to representation. His show “3 Songs from the Liver” was on view at Gladstone Gallery, NY, Nov 2024 - Feb 2025.

“AI outputs are not “images” as we know them. And if we try to understand them in that way, then we’re really…. f*cked, you know?”

Following this conversation, keep listening for “Enter Through Medieval Wounds” a radio play by Mark Leckey, which first appeared in essay form in Heavy Traffic V (Fall 2024).

For more:

https://markleckey.com

https://www.nts.live/shows/mark-leckey

https://www.gladstonegallery.com/exhibition/13694/3-songs-from-the-liver/installation-views

Episode image adapted from Mark Leckey, "Carry Me into The Wilderness" (Icon), 2022

This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 13 Feb 2025 | Subscribe --> https://newmodels.io

Part 2 of this NM Greenroom features Amnesia Scanner's Ville Haimala & French artist Freeka Tet discussing the work they do in parallel to their AS collaboration. For Ville, this includes developing scores and sound design with Anne Imhof for her monumental performance-installations; while Freeka discusses his recent music video for The Weeknd.

In Part 1 (released 9 Feb 2025) AS's Ville Haimala & Martti Kalliala, together with regular collaborator Freeka Tet speak about their most recent release, AS HOAX (PAN, 2024) and the project's innovations within the post-streaming subcultural industrial complex.

For more: 
@amensiascanner @freekatet @villehaimala (IG)

https://p-a-n.org/product/amnesia-scanner-freeka-tet-hoax-pan-148/

This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 9 Feb 2025 | Subscribe --> https://newmodels.io

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Ville Haimala & Martti Kalliala of the experimental music duo @amnesia-scanner & regular collaborator Freeka Tet join NM to discuss AS HOAX (@pan_hq 2024) — both the making-of and the world into which the dual record project was released. 

This is Part 1 of 2. It focuses on the Amnesia + Freeka project and its innovations within the post-streaming subcultural industrial complex.

Part 2 (coming soon) expands to Ville & Freeka’s activity outside of Amnesia Scanner, including recent work with artists Anne Imhof and The Weeknd.

Recorded at the end of 2024, the conversation presciently channels the noise, distortion, and attentional overload that has quickly come to characterize the info-sphere of 2025.

For more: HOAX (PAN, 2024)

https://p-a-n.org/product/amnesia-scanner-freeka-tet-hoax-pan-148/

Related:


Joshua Citarella, Doomscroll: Trevor Paglen: Mind Hacking, AI and Psyops Capitalism,” 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--0kYOwOoDQ

Joshua Citarella, Doomscroll: Matty Healy: Pop Culture in the 21st Century, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdCdpnz0wDU&t=1732s

This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 29 Jan 2024 | Subscribe --> https://newmodels.io

// One week after the 2025 US presidential inauguration and less than a month since fires devastated LA, American journalist James Pogue and energy specialist Ellie Holbrook talk us through the current political terrain.

James has been covering the New Right since the early 2010s. His back-to-back features this month on the Republican party’s uneasy Tech/MAGA alliance (NYTimes) and the demise of the Dems (Vanity Fair) are, together, an essential primer for how power works today. With literal power (fuel) being part of this equation, Ellie shares her knowledge on the energy trade and LNG markets in particular. What follows in an orientation for our strange new real.

See also: 
@hellholbrook (IG)
@jhenseonpogue (x)

Forthcoming: James Pogue, The Natural Division (Pantheon) is “a first-person journey deep into a region at the epicenter of both America’s megafires and militia politics, told through California’s far-flung northern State of Jefferson.”

NM82: James Pogue on American Futures (2024)
https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/prvw-nm82-james-pogue-on-american-futures

NM54: Damn Nation w/ James Pogue (2022)

https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/damn-nation-james-pogue-nm54

This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 27 Oct 2024 | Subscribe --> https://newmodels.io

Jay Springett is a writer, researcher, consultant, musician, podcaster, Royal Society of Arts Fellow, New Centre instructor, and decade long admin of solarpunks.net. Currently at work on a book exploring the history of Dungeons & Dragons (the so-called metaverse), Jay joins New Models to speak about the proliferation of “worlds” (perhaps in lieu of the 20th century public sphere) and strategies for existing within them.

For more: thejaymo.net

Jay’s podcasts: https://thejaymo.net/permanentlymoved/ & https://experience.computer/

On the occasion of Loretta Fahrenholz’s exhibition “A Coin From Thin Air” at Amant in Brooklyn, Carly Busta and artist/writer Jak Ritger discuss art making, AI, and value in a time of infinite content.

02:45 - Intro by Amant chief curator, Tobi Maier

05:00 - Carly gives context on Fahrenholz’s practice

15:00 - Jak x Carly discuss the show’s works & themes

36:50 - Q&A feat. Joshua Citarella, Dena Yago, Gideon Jacobs, Anika Jade Levy, Brian Droitcour, Dru Ritger, and Peter Fend, among others

Exhibition Guide: Loretta Fahrenholz “A Coin From Thin Air”

https://dcld85wa7rf0u.cloudfront.net/api/file/5ZatFCPRhKKTUQjpYsxP

Watch: Loretta Fahrenholz, Trash The Musical (2023, HD, 37 min)

https://vimeo.com/1046803248

Courtesy of Reena Spaulings Fine Art

This talk took place on Saturday, January 4, 2025 at Amant.

https://www.amant.org/exhibitions/95-loretta-fahrenholz-a-coin-from-thin-air

The exhibition remains on view through February 16, 2025.

Episode image: courtesy K8 Howl