What’s Happening: An ambitious new group show at the Centre Pompidou questions how networks have influenced contemporary society—and can shape the technology of tomorrow.

The Download: Is everything today one giant network? It’s a difficult question posed by “Worlds of Networks,” a group exhibition at the Centre Pompidou that brings together works by more than 60 creatives across architecture, design, art, and film, curated by Marie-Ange Brayer and Olivier Zeitoun. The show probes how networks have spurred technological change and influenced societal issues across history, from early information theories that shaped architecture—French-Hungarian visionary Yona Friedman’s megastructures and the utopian city New Babylon imagined by Constant Nieuwenhuys—to present-day artworks connected in real time to the internet and crypto. Taken as a whole, the exhibition postulates how a surveillance society may have emerged from the omnipresence of social networks and how blockchains and the metaverse will shape the future.

One of the show’s biggest—and strangest—highlights involves physarum polycephalum, a brainless unicellular organism called a “slime mold” that knows how to “make decisions and solve mazes.” In dark, wet, and bacterial conditions, its bright yellow mass slowly expands in vein-like protrusions across surfaces, identifying the most direct pathways toward food.

For its contribution, the design firm ecoLogicStudio, helmed by Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, trained an algorithm to behave like a slime mold to design a future Paris. “Even if we don’t understand it rationally, we can apply that logic to the design of cities—to make them behave similarly to that organism and reach out and distribute resources,” Poletto told Frame. “AI can be an ally in helping us expand our understanding of intelligence and where we can find it.”

In Their Own Words: “There’s this very interesting tension between a critique of networks that will focus on the absurdity of the online experience,” Zeitoun says. “At the same time, it gives poetic visions of this experience as a multitude—what it allows in terms of collective thoughts and feelings.”

Surface Says: If you’re having trouble wrapping your head around the concepts in this exhibition, don’t fret—we are too. All the more reason to book a spring trip to Paris, right?

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The lovable mascots of OffLimits are gearing up for a journey into the metaverse. The artistic plant-based cereal brand has teamed up with Open3—a network of creatives who fashion NFT-driven experiences—to launch a capsule of generative NFTs featuring artist interpretations of OffLimits illustrated characters Spark, Flex, Zombie, and Dash.

The 2,500-piece collection will grant holders access to a gated channel in Discord, where the community will collaboratively design an IRL cereal box to be printed on the brand’s packaging and eventually delivered in the physical form. The foray into Web3 is yet another unconventional initiative for OffLimits, whose mission is to inject a little fun into a staid everyday breakfast staple. “The counterculture mentality is what makes us unique,” says founder Emily Miller. “Our customer is creative, rebellious, and too smart to get duped by glossy health claims. This idea was inspired by the success of our artist-collaborated boxes. Much like how Wheaties features athletes, OffLimits features artists.” In order to guarantee an NFT on mint day, happening later this month, sign up for the Cereal List.

When: March 12–June 11

Where: Heal’s Building, London

What: The Dutch photographer Iwan Baan presents images captured during his travels with Burkinabè architect Francis Kéré throughout the West African country, during which they visited communal compounds in Gando and Pound, a mosque in Bobo-Dioulasso, and the decorated houses of Tiébélé. Exploring the interplay between natural sunlight, vernacular architecture, and everyday life throughout Burkina Faso, Baan’s photographs capture the stark qualities of light in Sub-Saharan Africa and how it passes through traditional Burkinabe buildings to shape daily life.

Line Lamp is a series of curved and slotted brass tubes connected by a cloth cord. The slots hold LED bulbs that shine back against the wall. Each bar can be adjusted to change the density of light and shadow along the wall. Elish Warlop Design Studio is a multidisciplinary practice that specializes in lighting and furniture objects. Warlop channels her distinct perspective from her architecture background to merge creativity and design with construction and experimentation. Her studio’s work blurs the lines between art and design while having a practical application as it creates light or divides space.

Line Lamp will be on view in “Woman Made” at Surface Area in the Miami Design District through April 4.

The Batman, in theaters now starring Robert Pattinson, showcases another creative team’s illustration of Gotham City, the famed fictional metropolis Batman is perpetually defending from dark underbellies of crime and supervillains. “As production designers, it’s the most exciting challenge you could possibly be presented with, to create your own take on such a loved city,” production designer James Chinlund says about Gotham’s latest iteration. “At the end of the day, they all combine to create this universal Gotham.” From themes spanning Frank Lloyd Wright to Russian Constructivism to Hitchcockian noir, here’s a look back at Gotham City’s many interpretations over the years.

In 1932, when vehicle suspension engineer George Carwardine invented a spring, crank and lever mechanism that could be positioned with the lightest of touch yet would maintain its position once released, a blueprint for the first Anglepoise task lamp was born. The Anglepoise lamp has subsequently achieved iconic status and its engaging, anthropomorphic form is recognized and admired around the world.

Scientists have started using AI to decode pig calls and monitor their wellbeing.

This Twitter bot is exposing gender pay gaps at companies posting platitudes.

LimeWire returns as an NFT cash-grab marketplace that’s slightly less illegal.

The Scarface house in Montecito, California, hits the market for $40 million.