What’s Happening: As debates about AI’s potential impact on the creative industries rage on, a new exhibition explores how both a seasoned artist and Instagram’s algorithm respond to a curatorial prompt about loss.

The Download: As more is uncovered about the capabilities of AI systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E, the debate about their potential impact on the creative industries continues to flare. Some proclaim the “death of art” and fear workers trained in analog skills will lose their jobs. Others theorize AI will spark an explosion of innovation if used correctly. That scenario, of course, hinges on artists finding inventive ways to make the AI work for them rather than against them. No matter one’s perspective, AI has reached a point of moral vertigo: “the uneasy dizziness people feel when scientific and technological developments outpace moral understanding.”

Discourse is brewing about AI’s impact on creating art, but what about the curatorial process? The University of Oxford’s Internet Institute is seeking to answer this question through a new exhibition, called “The Algorithmic Pedestal” and on view at London’s J/M Gallery through Jan. 17, that juxtaposes Instagram’s algorithm with human curation by artist Fabienne Hess, who was invited to select images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Open Access collection corresponding to the concept of loss.

Over the course of three years, Hess physically explored the collection, studied each object’s history, and photographed them during site visits to create an image collection called “The Dataset of Loss” based on the distinctly human experiences of time, curiosity, and patience. Among the works are an anonymous 19th-century valentine depicting the silhouettes of two cherubic figures, carved ivory plaque fragments of a bearded male dignitary dating back to the 9th century BC, and Lovers Eyes, a 19th-century watercolor of a woman peering longingly through a rounded, mirror-like aperture.

Her selects will be shown alongside those of Instagram’s algorithm, which were captured by uploading images from Open Access to @thealgorithmicpedestal in a specific order. “Instagram has announced the content in users’ Home feed will increasingly be decided by a ‘black box’ algorithm, rather than what friends or family have recently posted,” says Laura Herman, the Oxford Internet Institute researcher who spearheaded the show. “This means we don’t know exactly what Instagram chooses to prioritize, though these selects drastically influence users’ experience of visual culture.”

One of the most potent criticisms of AI-generated art involves the viewer’s perspective—and how the process of creation adds to its experiential value. Some argue that without understanding the human labor the artist has invested into their work, the experience is cheapened. “Part of what gives art and athletic achievement its power is the process of witnessing natural gifts playing out,” philosopher Michael Sandel once wrote in The Atlantic on the subject of genetic engineering. “People enjoy and celebrate this talent because, in a fundamental way, it represents the paragon of human achievement—the amalgam of talent and work, human gifts, and human sweat.”

In Their Own Words: “Many of these algorithmic platforms, such as Instagram, weren’t created with the intention of artistic display,” Herman says. “They have very different goals: enabling connection between friends, selling ads, gaining attention, serving as a marketplace, and so on. We’re outsourcing decisions about our visual culture to an inanimate machine with very different ways of seeing.”

Surface Says: We go to museums to escape the algorithms.

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From the whitewashed villages of the Algarve to creative energy–filled Lisbon to the increasingly stylish beach town of Melides, Portugal’s hotel scene continues to evolve in spectacular ways. This week, we’re surveying the landscape.

On the eastern edge of the Alentejo region, in the foothills of Monsaraz near the border of Spain, a family-owned agricultural estate has been reimagined as a 40-room boutique hotel. São Lourenço do Barrocal is a 2,000-acre property steeped in history and filled with archaeological relics, the result of a meticulous 14-year redevelopment.

The former epicenter of the Alentejo region, São Lourenço do Barrocal has lived many lives spanning the Iron and Bronze ages, Roman and Moorish eras, and a 19th-century stint as a farming village. But perhaps the most exciting evolution can be seen in its current iteration, helmed by José António Uva, an eighth-generation member of the Portuguese family that has owned the property for more than 200 years. He partnered with cross-disciplinary experts, including archaeologists, historians, Pritzker Prize–winning architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Lisbon-based firm Anahory Almeida to create the sustainability-focused Barrocal, which has swiftly become one of Portugal’s premier destinations.

Former cowsheds, stables, and olive presses, connected by a cobblestone colonnade, were converted into rooms, suites, and multi-level cottages ideal for family stays. The interiors pair original elements—vaulted ceilings, rustic farm doors, and rehabilitated terracotta bricks—with contemporary touches like artisan-made black wooden furnishings and leather Chesterfield sofas. Farm-to-table dining rings true at Barrocal: the estate still operates as a working farm ripe with olive groves, grain fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, and a heritage line of livestock. Chef Celestino Grave, an Alentejo native, has a keen focus on seasonality—think artisanal bread with olive oil pressed on-site, roasted pumpkin soups, and grilled lamb chops.

Cinco x Cinco’s latest series of tubular lighting fixtures and furniture is meant to evoke the feeling of frolicking on a playground—especially the curved metal structures found in the studio’s home country of Guatemala. The collection, called the Sum of Small Parts, does justice to its name. Comprising a chandelier, bar cart, and lounge chair, it features sinuous chrome structural elements and a mix of locally crafted artisanal materials, such as the chandelier’s Chinautla clay “pendant charms” and the bar cart’s conacaste wood slabs. They amount to a head-turning series that deftly fuses local handicraft with modernist archetypes.

“One goal we share as a collective is to innovate Guatemalan handmade and industrial techniques, show what Guatemala can bring to the design scene, and create functional, sustainable design with impact in the artisans’ communities,” architect Esteban Paredes, one of five talents helming Cinco x Cinco, told Dezeen. It’s safe to say the studio is succeeding. This past year, the Sum of Small Parts received the Inédito Award, one of Design Week Mexico’s most prestigious accolades.

When: Jan. 14–20

Where: New York Life Gallery

What: This past summer, Drake Carr took over not one but three New York City galleries with his psychedelic-hued renditions of the city’s queer nightlife scene. Now, the artist’s vibrant palette is beating back the city’s winter blues in real time: his current undertaking is a residency and exhibition of live drawings with an emphasis on capturing the stylistic glamor of sitters including his friends, fellow artists, muses, and strangers. As each sketch, illustration, and painting is completed, the artist will install them for immediate exhibition, and the public can view Carr’s process during a weeklong portion of his residency. Image credit: Jan Carlos Diaz.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Vaping Teen Sets Off Fire Alarm at Orange County Museum of Art [ARTnews]

Surveillance Footage of Tesla Crash on SF’s Bay Bridge Hours After Elon Musk Announces “Self-Driving” Feature [The Intercept]

Vast Pompeii Residence Unveiled With Panel Depicting a Giant Penis [The Art Newspaper]

Art Gallery Owner Who Hosed Down Homeless Woman in SF Finds It “Hard to Apologize” [ABC]

Lincolnshire Artist Recreates Stonehenge From Own Kidney Stones [BBC]

Amtrak Passengers Stranded for 29 Hours Feared They Had Been Kidnapped [The Guardian]

No, the Woke Mob Is Not Coming for Your Gas Stove [MSNBC]

Titus Kaphar’s rise to art-world stardom has been nothing short of meteoric. After earning his MFA at Yale University, he began painting canvases that wrestle with racism and the lack of representation of people of color in the Western art canon. One series renders mugshots of incarcerated Black men in gold leaf, partly submerged in tar based on how much time each man spent in prison. Another subdues young Black protesters in aggressive strokes of white paint, suggesting attempts to silence them. His paintings have appeared on the cover of Time magazine twice, landed him a coveted residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and earned him a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.

Despite his success, a void remained. “Ninety percent of what I sell doesn’t go into Black or brown homes,” Kaphar explains to his dealer in Shut Up and Paint, a 20-minute-long short film that marks the artist’s directorial debut about how the insatiable art market seeks to silence his activism. “The conversation that Black artists have been having is that our work exists in white spaces, in white people’s houses. They become separate from us, and disconnected from us, in a way that just feels not just.”

Savvy Studio is a branding and architecture design practice based in New York and Mexico. The firm uses its expertise to create brand stories and experiences for ventures such as boutique hotels, restaurants, retail spaces, art galleries, and museums.

Surface Says: With work that ranges from interiors and graphics to elaborately spiced chocolate bars, Savvy Studio injects a contemporary slickness to each of its projects. Consequently, their clients are always on the cutting edge of cool.

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