Chicago Architecture Biennial Addresses Surveillance, Segregation and More

The third edition of North America’s largest contemporary art, design and architecture survey, this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial focuses on the theme of  “….And Other Such Stories.” In congregating around this topic, the platform—and its curator Yesomi Umolu—has placed the biennial in conversations surrounding social justice, segregation, surveillance, land rights, gun violence and more. Architecture has long impacted political, personal and environmental issues, and the …

ImageNet Roulette’s AI-Assigned Labels

Designed by artist Trevor Paglen and Microsoft researcher Kate Crawford, ImageNet Roulette—which is on exhibition now at the Fondazione Prada, Milan—applies labels to user-submitted photos by sourcing its identification system from the original Image Net, a Stanford-backed project that assisted AI in identifying structures, objects and even people. Employees from across the US were rewarded with minimal amounts of money for each photo they assigned …

Understanding the Bubbles at the Center of the Milky Way

First spotted in the 1980s, a massive filament-like structure has been seen in the Milky Way some 100 times over the past 30+ years. With the supermassive black hole at its center, its “billowy lobes resemble the two halves of an hourglass” as they stretch out in opposite directions. Now, South Africa’s pioneering MeerKAT radio-telescope has revealed that electrons buzzing around inside are producing radio …