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/

Unlocked | K Allado-McDowell on Neural Media (NM76) 2024

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 | NM x Heavy Traffic: Mark Leckey, “Enter Through Medieval Wounds” radio play

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/

Preview | NM Talkcore: writer Biz Sherbert on American Style (2025)

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

Gideon Jacobs joins NM to discuss his latest piece for the LA Review of Books, “Player One and Main Character,” which explores the logic of power in a time when some of its key agents are no longer operating in base reality.

Related: Lil Internet’s “Hallucinator’s Dice” (unlocked) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/hallucinators-dice

See also:  
"Player One and Main Character" (LARB, Apr 2025)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/
“Trump l’Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/

NM Talkcore w/ Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024)
https://on.soundcloud.com/kC8NzddUcGynZyZj6

Episode image adapted from photo by Daniel Arnold for Document Journal of Gideon Jacobs as the character Father Bartholomew Mary, 2025.

Preview | NM Talkcore: Gideon Jacobs on Musk, Trump & Fiction (2025)

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

In town for an event with Matt Copson at Berlin’s KW, Dean Kissick stops by the show to talk about art, criticism, and self-performance as well as fire punks, AI monsters, vulgarity, Ye, and the death of the hot take.

Now based in London following a decade-long tenure in Downtown New York, Dean is a writer with recent and forthcoming work in Spike, Heavy Traffic, and Civilization. His essay, “The Painted Protest: How Politics Destroyed Contemporary Art” appeared in the December 2024 issue of Harper’s.

For more: @deankissick IG & X

Preview | NM Talkcore: Dean Kissick (2025)

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On this ep, NM is joined by filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko, who you may know as the director of films such as 0s and 1s, Wobble Palace, Spree, and most recently, The Code, which stars Peter Vack & Dasha Nekrasova and is currently streaming on Mubi. 

Like much of Eugene’s work, The Code understands itself both as entertainment and as cinema — cinema-in-a-time-when everyone is an editor, cinema-in-a-time-when content has become infinite, which is to say empty, a site of projection for viewers-turned-users. We talk about The Code on this episode and about the industry, about virality, idenity, authoritarianism, slop, empathy. comedy, and success.

For more: https://www.instagram.com/madabouteug (IG) 
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/directorscommentary
Site: https://www.everybodyloves.me  
Watch “The Code”
MUBI: https://mubi.com/en/de/films/the-code-2024
LA: https://lumierecinemala.com/film-the-code-2024/
NYC: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-code-3-2-3-2/

Preview | NM Greenroom: Filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko (2025)

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

Our guest is Orit Halpern: co-author of The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2023); author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke, 2014); and Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden.

Often in discussions about machine learning and smartness, AI is presented as the natural path of human progress, an evolutionary – almost biological – development that emerged out of human communication systems and that has the potential to far exceed them. But as Orit argues, these technologies are neither inevitable nor inhuman. Rather they are the result of a particular intersection of neoliberal theory, psychology, and computer science that generated the economic incentives, political will, and public desire for AI to exist in the specific form we have now.

On this episode, Orit animates the technological imaginary that gave rise to our culture of AI, asking, among other things, how a highly adaptive, machine-learning enabled world changes the terms of political possibility and human revolution.

For more: https://orithalpern.net 

“Financializing Intelligence: On the Integration of Markets & Machines“
https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/on-models/519993/financializing-intelligence-on-the-integration-of-machines-and-markets/

“Futures of Cybernetic Urbanism” in "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective" catalogue of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale  (2025)

Counter-Practices and The Image of Thought https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768640251335679

Planetary Infrastructure
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-38128-8_1-1

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Episode image adapted from: Marco Zorzanello photo of the installation TERMS AND CONDITIONS by Transsolar, Bilge Kobas, Daniel A. Barber, and Sonia Seneviratne at La Biennale di Venezia, 2025

Preview | Orit Halpern on Agentic Imaginaries (NM88) 2025

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

Our guest is American media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. He is the author of such seminal books on digital culture and networked communication as Cyberia (1994), Media Virus (1995), and Coercion (1999); and numerous further titles including, Program or Be Programmed (2010/2025) and Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (2022). He is also the host of Team Human and a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics as CUNY/Queens.

On this episode, Doug speaks with us about the evolution (and devolution) of digital culture across web 1, 2, 3, and beyond via a synthesis of media theory, psychedelic thinking, and practical wisdom for navigating our contemporary networks.

Names cited: Adam Curtis, Alex Garland, Allan Kaprow, Amazon, Art Bell, AT&T, Bernie Madoff, CNN, Cyberia, CVS, Dan Rather, Daniel Dennett, David Bowie, David Hershkovitz, David Lynch, Donna Haraway, Douglas Rushkoff, Elon Musk, Emmanuel Levinas, Francis Bacon, Genesis P-Orridge, Jake Tapper, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jesse Armstrong, Joe Rogan, John Brockman, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Chaikin, Kamala Harris, Lauren Sanchez, Louis Rossetto, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Madonna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Media Virus, Michael Jackson, Milton Friedman, Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, Neil Simon, New Models, New York Times, Norbert Wiener, Orit Halpern, Paper Magazine, Peter Thiel, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Present Shock, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Dawkins, Robert Anton Wilson, Ross Douthat, Skinny Puppy,  Spinoza, Star Trek, Team Human, Temple of Psychic Youth, The Long Boom, The Process Church, The Simpsons, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Walter Benjamin, William S. Burroughs, Wired Magazine


Preview | Douglas Rushkoff, from Meta to Soma (NM89) 2025

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

Theorists Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo (co-hosts of the Dis.integrator pod) come on New Models to talk us through their highly anticipated new book, Exocapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits, which is out this month from Becoming Press. Through their radical rethinking of capitalism — its indifference to human scale, its endless appetite for complexity, its rapacious transformation of everything into betting surfaces — Marek and Roberto relieve us of old Leftist frameworks, supplying a decoder ring for the growing incoherence of everyday contemporary life.  

Exocapitalism: Economies With Absolutely No Limits (Becoming Press, 2025)
https://becoming.press/exocapitalism-economies-with-absolutely-no-limits-(2025)-by-marek-poliks-roberto-alonso-trillo

Authors: Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo
https://www.marekpoliks.com/
https://robertoalonsotrillo.com/
https://open.spotify.com/show/4AcGAXHIdRu1toaZYnK3kB

Foreward: Charles Mudede
Afterward: Alex Quicho
Art & Design: Palais Sinclaire
Illustrations: Avocado Ibuprofen

Names cited:
AMD, Amazon/AWS, Amanda Askell, American Express, BlackRock, Bogna Konior, Charles Mudede, ChatGPT, Citadel, Cortical Labs, Daniel Felstead & Jenn Leung, David Graeber, DraftKings, Dunkin', SNAP (US food stamps), Elena Esposito, Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, GUS (Global University Systems), Helen Hester & Nick Srnicek, Hilton Worldwide, Jürgen Habermas, K Allado-McDowell, Karl Marx, Kraft Singles, Luciana Parisi, Luigi Mangione, Nick Land, Nvidia, OpenAI, Ray Brassier, René Benko, Robinhood, Salesforce, Silvia Federici, SpaceX, Starbucks, TSMC

Preview | Exocapitalism, the Book - Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo (NM90) 2025

Gavin Brown, Caroline Busta, Joshua Citarella, Ben Davis, Jason Farago, Tobias Spichtig and Lloyd Wise read their contributions to “What Is Contemporary Art For Today?" (Perić Collection, 2025)

This is a preview — for the full episode (released 08/13/2025), including a conversation with the book's editors, Matt Moravec, Eleonore Hugendubel, and Dean Kissick, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels newmodels.substack.com

From January 2023 to January 2024, the Perić Collection funded a series of informal, highly attended talks about the state of Contemporary Art. Hosted by Dean Kissick and coordinated & commissioned by Eleonore Hugendubel and Matt Moravec, the monthly event, known as the Seaport Talks, took place in Downtown Manhattan. As a kind of coda to this series, Matt, Eleonore, and Dean created a correlating reader (likewise supported by Perić) featuring texts by 25 contributors who have spent some significant part of their life in the art world. Each writer was asked to briefly respond to the book’s titular question: “What is contemporary art for Today? And what should it be for, if anything?” For this special episode, we bring you a selection of the answers.

For more: https://www.mcnallyjackson.com/product/what-contemporary-art-today

NM Reads: Excerpts from "What Is Contemporary Art For Today?" (Perić, 2025)

Public RSS | Art, tech, media, pop culture, climate -> networked tech's impact on life | https://newmodels.io 
Hosts: Caroline Busta & Lil Internet 
Subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels  
Subscribe: https://newmodels.substack.com
Follow: @newmodels_io
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New tracks tagged #New Models