The Intersect of Tech and Art

The companion podcast to Issue No.91 of The Intersect, and this one breaks the usual format: instead of two hosts talking shop, the curator sits for an interview and answers in his own voice. The question running underneath the whole conversation: when a camera can do nearly anything, what is still worth deciding by hand? Juergen takes it from the shoebox forward.

• 00:07 Building a Pinhole Camera
• 01:11 This Week in Photography
• 03:18 Ansel Adams, Recolored
• 05:24 The Case for Waiting
• 09:23 Platinum Prints, One Sheet at a Time
• 11:45 Tomorrow’s Cameras, Today’s Misses
• 14:19 Hands-On with Lensbaby Prisms
• 16:40 What to Do by Hand
• 17:16 The Intersect, Issue 91

Building a pinhole camera A shoebox, a brass shim, and a row of map pins standing in for a viewfinder. Juergen opens with the camera he built in school, and why the setup still shapes how he sees.

Ansel Adams, recolored Someone ran a signature black-and-white photograph through an AI and put the result up for sale. Why Juergen committed to calling it the worst idea in the history of ideas, and why he thinks the tool is not the villain.

The case for waiting An app that hides your own pictures for a full day to recreate the disposable-camera ritual. Juergen pushes back hard on what he thinks actually taught him to compose, and it was not the suspense.

Platinum prints, one sheet at a time A man in Cleveland still hauling a 15-pound antique camera and mixing his own 19th-century chemistry. What a platinum print does that a screen simply cannot fake.

Tomorrow's cameras, today's misses A confident 1990 BBC clip betting on the cameras of the future. They got the direction right and the details gloriously wrong, and the real future turned out stranger than anyone drew on the whiteboard.

Hands-on with Lensbaby prisms A box of glass that does nothing until your hand gets involved, in a year when you can type the same look into a slider. Juergen circles the word that keeps nagging him: decides.

What to do by hand The one job no camera has ever done for you, and the single thing in the whole issue Juergen says he would fight for.

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• Website: theintersect.art
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The companion podcast to Issue No.90 of The Intersect, and this one runs differently: instead of the usual two-host conversation, Juergen, the curator, sits for an interview and answers in his own voice. The animating question: when our first reaction to anything striking has become is it real rather than is it good, what have we traded away, and who pays the fine?

• 00:04 Seeing Through Contrast
• 01:03 The Chicken and the Real
• 03:02 An Artist Accused of AI
• 04:51 A Sketch Rewritten by AI
• 07:30 When Science Images Become Art
• 09:31 The Novel Under Suspicion
• 11:39 Proving What a Camera Saw
• 12:50 Can We Trust Our Eyes?

The chicken that flew half a mile A goofy flying contraption crosses the feed, and Juergen's very first thought is one he can't shake. He never checked. He explains why that bothers him more than the clip did.

An artist accused of AI Years of work, a first museum solo, and a stranger on Reddit. What happens when a tool's reputation arrives before the art does.

A sketch rewritten by AI A court artist's neutral drawing gets new, angrier faces and a very different meaning. Why Juergen insists this isn't an AI-is-evil story, and what he wants you to go look at.

When science images become art A microscope video wins, then loses. The question hiding inside: where does making data legible end and making it up begin.

The novel under suspicion A horror novel pulled over the shape of its sentences, an author who says she wrote every word, and a detector that flagged Juergen's own writing. Why this one got personal.

Proving what a camera saw Two rival ways to prove an image is real, and the company that quietly sat it out for years. Whether fake images are the problem everyone says, or a passing fad.

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The companion podcast to Issue No.89 of The Intersect. This one is different: instead of the usual two-host conversation, the curator sits in the chair and answers for himself, in his own voice, while the host presses him. The question she keeps circling: when does hiding your stance so the work can travel further stop being a strategy and start being an alibi? Come sit with the gap.

• 00:02 Vacation and New Issue
• 00:34 The Courage Gap
• 02:37 Vanity Fair Cover Debate
• 05:29 AI Film Under Fire
• 08:39 The Sky of Infinite Wishes
• 11:36 Papier-Mâché Titanic Protest
• 13:55 Marching Into the Fields

Where the title came from The curator traces "The Courage Gap" back to a single protest image, hundreds of likes, and not one mind moved. The uncomfortable idea underneath the whole issue starts here.

The Vanity Fair cover debate A famous photographer restages a 200-year-old painting for a cover of the man selling the fog. Subversive, or flattering? The curator admits he cannot tell, and wonders if the artist can either.

The AI film under fire A feature made for $2,000 where every frame is generated so real faces stay safe. The sharper question the curator does not enjoy asking: are we forgiving the tool because we approve of the message?

The sky of infinite wishes Good omens that never stop arriving, with the machinery left visible on screen. An uncanny valley of abundance, and a quiet tilt you could walk right past and miss.

The papier-mâché Titanic Five feet of cardboard outside a developer event, craft he genuinely admires. And yet: who is it actually for, and is reminding your own people they are not crazy the whole job?

Marching into the fields A coalition that skips the gallery and stands on contested land. Reach versus audience, blunt against allegory, and why nobody scrolls past a body in a field.

If this conversation is your kind of crossing, follow along and help keep The Intersect going.

• Website: theintersect.art
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The companion podcast to Issue No.88 of The Intersect, and a different kind of episode: this week the curator, Juergen, sits in the guest chair while our host asks him to defend a title. When machines can generate anything in seconds, why would four people choose the hardest, silliest path on purpose, and find something there worth keeping? Come sit on the corner and watch.

• 00:03 Heavy News, Silly Craft
• 01:44 The AI Panic Spreads
• 02:22 One Finger, One Court
• 04:19 A Metal Magnet Joke
• 07:04 Artists, Games, and Curators
• 09:31 Clocks in the Browser
• 11:38 Charming or Poignant?

Heavy news, silly craft After the heaviest issue this newsletter gets, Juergen goes looking for something light. The news, as usual, has other ideas.

One finger, one court A London artist and a vintage typewriter, a million keystrokes, one index finger. Juergen tries to explain why this moves him and a nine-second image generator doesn't.

A metal magnet joke A New Zealand studio machined a slab of aluminium to do the job of a fridge magnet. Two millimetres of committed craft spent entirely on the punchline, and Juergen would hang it on his wall.

Artists, games, and curators A video game where the final boss is a museum curator, and the artwork is only finished when you lose. Juergen chuckled. Uncomfortably.

Clocks in the browser Two brothers rebuilt a $200,000 clock installation in a browser and gave it away, complete with a secret star. Is it art, or craft quietly climbing toward it?

Charming or poignant? A week later, with the news still going, Juergen still can't decide, and starts to wonder whether the two were ever separate.

If your week has also felt heavy, here is one email that isn't about the end of the world. Follow along and support The Intersect.

• Website: theintersect.art
• Instagram: @theintersectnews
• Threads: @jberkessel
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• LinkedIn: Juergen Berkessel

The companion podcast to Issue No.87 of The Intersect, and this one breaks format: instead of the usual two-voice conversation, the host sits down to interview the curator himself, who answers in the first person. The question underneath it all: if pictures stopped describing the world and started acting on it, what are we still looking at? Come for the answer he gives.

• 00:36 Opening the Archive
• 05:19 What Still Stands
• 06:30 Machines Learn to See
• 08:14 Refugees Train the Vision
• 10:53 The Gallery Blimp
• 12:56 Painting Against Certainty
• 15:13 The New Normal

Machines learn to see A book that argues the image stopped being a window and became a lever someone else is holding. The curator explains why that claim feels bigger than photography itself, and why it lands hardest on a September anniversary.

Refugees train the vision Three people flagged as suspect end up teaching the very machines that do the flagging. It is a loop the curator calls chilling, and one of the more unpredictable downstream turns of the last twenty-five years.

The gallery blimp A dirigible that reads your posture and decides whether you are enemy or civilian, verdict displayed for all to see. The curator, once a licensed drone operator himself, has a personal reason for circling back to this one.

Painting against certainty A painter who refuses preparatory drawings turns a threadbare office carpet into history with nothing but a title. Why the curator reads her rebellion as aimed less at the usual targets and more at our own certainty.

If substance over hype is your thing, follow along and help keep The Intersect going.

• Website: theintersect.art
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The companion podcast to Issue No.86 of The Intersect. Chelsea and Georgia sit with an uncomfortable question: when did the work we make digitally become more fragile than a photographer's glass plate, and what would it actually take to design something meant to outlive us? A conversation about permanence as a deliberate act, not a promise the cloud quietly keeps.

• 00:07 Permanent by Design
• 00:51 Cage's 639-Year Piece
• 05:39 Saving Artists’ Websites
• 07:37 Building Your Own Archive
• 09:59 Copy That Floppy

Cage's 639-Year Piece An organ in a small German church just changed chords for the first time in over two years, and nobody in the room will live to hear the piece end. Chelsea and Georgia get into the strangest part: the inheritable tickets to a finale six centuries away.

Saving Artists' Websites An artist's site is no longer a business card. It's the whole record of a life's work, and it can blink out overnight. There's a quiet rescue effort underway, and it isn't only chasing the famous names.

Building Your Own Archive For the rest of us who will never be famous enough for anyone else to build the lifeboat. One question from the piece lingers: which drive in the drawer would you grieve if it never spun up again?

Copy That Floppy Three decades after a campaign told kids not to duplicate discs, a university is now begging people to do exactly that. The delicious irony carries the sting of the whole issue.

If these are the conversations you want in your week, follow along and help keep The Intersect going.

• Website: theintersect.art
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The companion podcast to Issue No.85 of The Intersect. Chelsea and Georgia sit with a strange inversion: original human work now needs a hall pass while the machine-made flood walks right in. When did proving you wrote something start to mean making it worse? Pull up a chair for the messier version of this week's reckoning.

• 00:15 Human Work on Trial
• 02:27 Writers, AI, and Backlash
• 05:34 Apple’s Photo Proof Push
• 08:20 Substack’s Humanity Test
• 11:55 The Detector Arms Race

Human Work on Trial A celebrated novelist walks into OpenAI expecting to talk craft, then aims the microphone right back at the people who handed it to him. What Chelsea and Georgia make of that catastrophic line is worth staying for.

Writers, AI, and Backlash One generation folds AI in as an editor and calls the work better; another treats any trace of it as disqualifying. The split runs deeper than tools, and the closing question lands hard.

Apple’s Photo Proof Push Your phone maker may soon offer to certify that your photo is actually real. Relief or quiet defeat? The line between edited and generated turns out to be blurrier than anyone wants to admit.

Substack’s Humanity Test An optional scan that some treat as a purity test, and the false positives that land on people writing every word by hand. Where the honest writer gets caught is the part nobody has answered yet.

The Detector Arms Race Machines built to catch machine text, and other machines built to hide it. Most people are betting on the wrong mouse, and there's a genuinely clever workaround that removes the thing there was to detect in the first place.

Follow along and help keep The Intersect going. We would love to have you in the conversation.

• Website: theintersect.art
• Instagram: @theintersectnews
• Threads: @jberkessel
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• Substack: The Intersect on Substack
• LinkedIn: Juergen Berkessel

The companion podcast to Issue No.84 of The Intersect. While an auction house spends a whole summit guessing what the newly minted AI rich might one day hang on a wall, Chelsea and Georgia sit with a sharper question: what if the tools those fortunes were built on are more interesting in the hands of the people pointing them the other way? A conversation about who's actually studying whom.

• 00:00 AI Wealth and Wall Art
• 00:04 The Coat That Blinds
• 00:09 Malware Garden Protest
• 00:11 Scanning Wrong on Purpose
• 00:14 Listening to the Quiet

AI Wealth and Wall Art A summit billed as art plus tech turns out to be something closer to a sales forecast. Chelsea and Georgia unpack why the aperture felt so narrow - and whose mind might have been the real story on that stage.

The Coat That Blinds A garment wrapped in AI-generated noise that quietly refuses to be read as a human figure. Elegant judo, or a workaround for a problem that was never ours to wear? The full context is in the issue.

Malware Garden Protest Code that locks your machine for a day and grows a garden instead of demanding a ransom. We ask whether forced disconnection still means anything in an age when we pay to do it to ourselves.

Scanning Wrong on Purpose A school chair, a scanner fed only fragments, and a Golden Nica for the sculpture built from everything the machine couldn't see. When did a perfect scan become more truthful than an honest one?

Listening to the Quiet Magnetized needles tapping glass, letting you hear the Earth's magnetic field - but only if you slow down enough to bother. The gentlest thing in the issue, and maybe the most pointed.

If this conversation left you curious, follow along and support the work - the newsletter is where the links, the curation, and the full context live.

• Website: theintersect.art
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The companion podcast to Issue No.83 of The Intersect. Chelsea and Georgia chase one nagging question across the week's stories: when does a machine built to measure or manufacture quietly become a machine for feeling - and who gets to decide? It's a conversation about the friction, the honesty, and the doubt behind that move, not a tidy recap. The full issue waits at theintersect.art.

• 00:00 Satellite as Camera
• 00:03 Listening to Plants
• 00:05 Hockney's Machines
• 00:08 Crystal Synth Experiments
• 00:10 3D Printing on Runways
• 00:12 Tools for Feeling

Satellite as Camera Six uneventful days of water vapor, 22,000 miles up, turned into drifting brushstrokes. Chelsea and Georgia ask what else we've been staring at for years without realizing it was footage waiting for an editor.

Listening to Plants A fern wired into a synthesizer hums a drone - but is the plant telling us something, or are we finally quiet enough to listen? The most refreshing part might be how willing these artists are to say they don't know.

Hockney's Machines Fax machines, photocopiers, Polaroids - the proof that "tech in art" meant something long before it meant a glowing screen. And a question about the friction we may have traded away.

Crystal Synth Experiments A microscope, a Moog, and real solar wind data, all patched together in 1982. When one curiosity reaches across that many fields, is it still one discipline or four pretending to be one?

3D Printing on Runways Here's where the hosts genuinely disagree - a couture printer that makes each garment singular, or pure runway spectacle? They're honestly torn, and they're turning the question over to you.

Tools for Feeling The thread that ties a satellite, a fern, a fax, a microscope, and a printer together - and the wondering it leaves behind about the measuring instrument sitting right next to you.

If this is your kind of thing, come follow along and help keep The Intersect going.

• Website: theintersect.art
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• Threads: @jberkessel
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• Substack: The Intersect on Substack
• LinkedIn: Juergen Berkessel

The companion podcast to Issue No.82 of The Intersect. Chelsea and Georgia shut the curtains on the fireworks next door to ask a quietly provocative question: does great work require leaving home, or just knowing exactly where home is so you can leave it on purpose? An hour of looking everywhere but here - and wondering whether that's the most patriotic move of all.

• 00:00 Birthday Curator's Outward Eye
• 00:01 Bjork Beyond the Album
• 00:04 Aurora Turned to Sound
• 00:07 Silent Lives in the Frame
• 00:11 Rippled Glass and Credit
• 00:13 Resistance Abroad in LED

Birthday Curator's Outward Eye Why an issue with zero American stories - released on America's 250th - might be the most earned kind of celebration. Chelsea and Georgia trace the curatorial logic back to a Brooklyn courthouse and a deliberately outward gaze.

Bjork Beyond the Album Reykjavik hangs Bjork on a gallery wall as painter, video artist, and musician all at once. When a song stops being only a song, where does the artwork begin?

Aurora Turned to Sound A Norwegian artist builds her own crystal radio to transpose the northern lights into sound - and the result raises an uncomfortable question about the gap between a compelling concept and a compelling experience.

Silent Lives in the Frame Photographs of extinct birds, lit so tenderly they seem to breathe, with the stitches left visible. A deliberately non-AI pick that asks when technology has to look like technology to count.

Rippled Glass and Credit A Brisbane theater whose facade ripples like water - and a thorny question about who gets to claim a vision when a new tool makes it thinkable for the first time.

Resistance Abroad in LED Jenny Holzer stages American political resistance in Porto, in spinning LED and stone. When does a word stop being a word and start becoming a machine for moving people?

If this conversation sparked something, follow along and help keep The Intersect running.

• Website: theintersect.art
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