The Intersect: Art in Tech and Tech in Art - Culture Under Pressure

Greetings from Juergen

Hi all,

This week I’m stepping into territory I usually sidestep: politics. Several stories here touch on art’s uneasy relationship with power, public policy, and the ways culture gets shaped—or squeezed—by whoever holds the reins. I know this isn’t our usual beat, so if you’re here for cosmic illusions or the odd bit of digital nostalgia, don’t worry, there’s some of that too.

From city planning that treats creativity as essential infrastructure, to the slow erosion of public arts funding in the US, to the blurred lines between propaganda and art, I’ve tried to pick pieces that show just how tangled things get when politics enters the conversation. And if you’re wondering whether technology ever really escapes these forces, there’s plenty here to chew on about AI, public art maps, and what we see when we look up at the night sky.

You can listen to this edition in our companion podcast, where I unpack each story in a conversational format. Subscribe to never miss a week and join the ongoing conversation between art and technology.

Public Art

How to Plan for the ‘Creative Wellness’ of a City

Fast Company’s interview with editors Rana Amirtahmasebi and Jason Schupbach unpacks The Routledge Handbook of Urban Cultural Planning, a 500-page deep dive into how cities can prioritize culture across policy, infrastructure, and public health. It highlights programs that resist gentrification, rethink public safety, and reframe wellness—not through more data, but through art, storytelling, and community memory.

What struck me most is how this challenges the tech-first, metrics-obsessed model of city planning. I’ve seen how creative expression gets treated like icing—nice, but nonessential. But what if it’s actually the structure beneath the cake?

“It’s a provocative angle, considering how efficiency and technocracy—the opposite of the difficult to quantify nature of culture—still dominate urban planning.”

Why do we still need to justify cultural value in economic terms before anyone takes it seriously?

City of South Lake Tahoe Launches ‘ArtVenture’ Interactive Public Art Map

The Tahoe Daily Tribune recently reported on ArtVenture, South Lake Tahoe’s interactive public art map that helps people find and explore over 25 city-approved murals, sculptures, and installations. It’s mobile-friendly and designed for self-guided tours on foot or bike, with details on artists and locations. The new feature comes alongside the city’s updated Arts and Culture page, offering a central spot for upcoming cultural events and artist opportunities.

This kind of tool is long overdue in most cities. Art isn’t just meant to be stumbled upon—it deserves a framework that helps people engage with it intentionally, not just accidentally. I've walked through places so rich with murals, but without context or a guide, the experience can feel fragmented. A map like this doesn’t just help you find art—it helps you value it.

“ArtVenture allows us to celebrate the creativity in our community and provides a meaningful way for people to connect with art,” said Stacey Ballard, Arts, Culture, and Tourism Vice Chair.

What kind of public art would you want to see mapped in your own city?

Art & Science

10 Space Pictures Whose Appearances Will Deceive You

The folks at Big Think, with astrophysicist Ethan Siegel, put together a fascinating piece called “10 Space Pictures Whose Appearances Will Deceive You.” It’s full of beautiful, mind-bending astrophotography—images that look like one thing but turn out to be something else entirely. Galaxies that appear to collide but don’t. A cloud that looks like a hole in the universe. A quasar that shows up five times in the same frame. The visual trickery of the cosmos is on full display, and it’s humbling.

What gets me is how much more advanced our tools have become—JWST, ALMA, Gaia—yet the more precise our images and data, the more the universe reveals how little we understand. These aren’t just optical illusions. They’re reminders that our perception is always partial, and often flawed.

The farther our understanding reaches, the more we realize how easily we’re fooled—not just by light and gravity, but by our own assumptions of what’s “real” in the first place.

How many of our Earth-bound convictions are just well-lit projections waiting to be unraveled?

Art and Politics

Aestheticized Aggression — Why Gosha Rubchinskiy’s ‘Victory Day’ Photo Book Is Russian Propaganda

At the London Photo Festival, Russian artist Gosha Rubchinskiy presented Victory Day, a photo book he claims is a non-political look at military aesthetics and youth culture. As reported by Kate Tsurkan for The Kyiv Independent, critics see it differently: a stylized repackaging of symbols now tied to Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine. The use of Red Square, the St. George ribbon, and Soviet iconography isn't neutral—these images have real consequences for Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, many of whom see their histories erased in the process.

I can’t help but contrast that with my own experience. I’ve seen artists use American flags and military symbols—especially during Vietnam and Iraq—not to glorify, but to question. If anything, American art rarely celebrates its empire. It critiques it.

“The glorification of these symbols in this exhibition normalizes them together with the past and current war crimes, instead of questioning what the Soviet Union and Russian state have done wrong,” said photographer Emine Ziyatdinova.

So I’m left wondering: has American culture become so critical of itself that a truly pro-American artwork, not parody or protest, has become almost unthinkable?

The Loss of the NEA Is a Loss for Civil Society

The Washington Post’s piece “The Loss Of The NEA Is A Loss For Civil Society” lays bare the slow dismantling of a public arts infrastructure that took decades to build. Under the current administration's latest proposals, funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities could vanish by 2026. Reporter Philip Kennicott paints a picture of centralized control and a shift from local, inclusive support to top-down cultural mandates.

The arts have always existed in tension with power. But this feels less like a pendulum swing and more like a bulldozer. Redirecting NEA funds to staged patriotism and giant statues? That’s not culture—it’s branding. Arts funding should serve diverse communities, not reinforce a narrow aesthetic dictated by whoever’s holding the megaphone.

“An entire system of vetting ideas, defining local priorities and building communities is at stake,” Kennicott writes. “The loss would be felt throughout civil society.”

Is this merely a pause—or a breakdown—before we swing back toward something more democratic?

Photomontage and Generative AI

From a sharp and timely piece by Jörg Colberg, Photomontage and Generative AI draws a direct line between the subversive power of Weimar-era montage and the unsettling banality of today’s generative image tools. He revisits works by Hannah Höch and John Heartfield—not to romanticize the past, but to show what’s missing in the glossy output of AI image generators. This isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about intent, critique, and control.

What sticks with me is how Colberg pins down the ideological vacuum behind generative AI. These tools don't imagine futures. They remix the past—mostly a flattened, sanitized version of it.

“Even the imaginary communities envisioned by far-right tech billionaires (whether on Mars, in Greenland, or Gaza) are ultimately little more than the romantic villages from an (again largely) imaginary past.”

As George Orwell put it in his 1984 novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Exhibitions & Events

National Ethnographic Museum Presents the Starry Sky Mythology and Science Exhibition

The Bulgarian News Agency reports on a new exhibition at the National Ethnographic Museum in Sofia called The Starry Sky – Mythology and Science. It bridges folklore and astronomy—pairing Bulgarian mythologies about the cosmos with scientific perspectives. Folk tales about the moon and stars sit beside data from space missions and physics. It’s a striking reminder of how long we’ve looked upward and tried to make sense of what we see.

I’ve always thought of the night sky as a kind of shared canvas. Way before telescopes or satellites, people shaped stories from the stars. The shapes we saw weren’t just constellations—they were characters, gods, omens. It’s like the sky was one of our first collaborative artworks, and no one ever stopped adding to it.

The exhibition “presents the Bulgarian people's worldview regarding the planets, the Sun, the Moon, the stars... and showcases scientific discoveries that reveal and explain the laws of the universe.”

How long have we been staring at the same stars and seeing completely different things?

Electric Dreams Art and Technology Before the Internet

Another article about Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet, which brings together over 150 works from more than 70 artists, tracing the unexpected ways that tech and art have crossed paths since the 1950s. The show runs until June 1, 2025 — and as reported by Tate’s curatorial team, it highlights everything from early computer graphics to kinetic sculptures that predate digital culture as we think of it today.

What really gets me is how much of this work came long before the web. I love seeing these experiments that never relied on a browser or algorithm. It reminds me — maybe a little painfully — that the core idea behind this newsletter isn’t new at all. People have been obsessed with this intersection for decades.

I used to think I was part of a new wave exploring art and tech. Then I saw a 1965 light installation coded on punched tape and thought, “Okay, maybe I’m just catching up.”

Could we say that artists were already dreaming in pixels before pixels even existed?

The Last Word

Thanks for sticking with me through a slightly different kind of issue. Your feedback always shapes where this project goes, so if any of these stories hit a nerve—or if you think I should stick to less political ground—let me know. I value these conversations, even (especially) when they challenge my own assumptions. Let’s keep exploring where art, technology, and society cross paths, even when the route gets a little uncomfortable.

Best, Juergen