Welcome everyone, to this audio companion for the Intersect newsletter.

If you happen to be new here, we basically explore that really interesting, always changing space where art and technology meet.

And for this edition, we're drawing from issue number 53.

The curator Jurgen highlighted some, well, really thought provoking intersections.

We'll get into things like art showing up in unexpected places, how we perceive all this rapid tech change.

Right.

And how art and tech are, you know, tackling some big modern challenges and innovations.

Exactly.

And we're going to be focusing quite a bit on Jurgen's own commentary and the insights he pulled from the articles featured in the newsletter.

Okay, let's start with that first point Jurgen raised.

Why art belongs in industrial spaces.

This came from an artnet news article he.

Well, in Jurgen's perspective was interesting.

He suggested art can actually boost things like productivity, worker well being, emotional health, and maybe surprisingly, even safety.

Safety, huh?

Yeah.

And he apparently shared a personal story about working in finance in a really sterile office and how you could almost feel the lack of artwork.

Yeah, it just highlighted how much our surroundings affect us, you know?

Totally.

And Jurgen made this great point about art bringing in, like, humanity and maybe even a bit of humor into places that can feel really repetitive.

Right.

That packaging plant example he used.

Imagine working there all day.

A little bit of art could really change the mood, couldn't it?

Definitely.

And there was that quote Jurgen pulled from the article.

Oh, yeah.

Art isn't a luxury.

It's a smart, strategic investment in people and performance.

That really sums it up.

It does.

And Jurgen's conclusion was key.

It has to be intentional.

Not just some corporate wallpaper, but thoughtfully chosen art makes sense.

Okay, so then the newsletter shifted gears to Jerry Cullum's piece, Virtual Vistas.

This one was from Art Papers way back in 2000.

Yeah, quite a while ago.

And Jurgen found it still really relevant, which is fascinating in itself.

Well, the article was about how our own personal histories, our cultural habits, they basically act like filters for how we see new digital stuff, like hypertext back then.

VR, digital art.

It shapes our perception.

Exactly.

And Colm mentioned thinkers like N.

Kathryn Hales and A.D.

coleman who explored this idea.

Jurgen pointed out that even with all the insane tech leaps since 2000, that basic concept that our perception has filtered is still completely true.

It really makes you pause.

How much are we really seeing the new thing versus seeing it through our old lenses?

And Jurgen included that key quote from Talim.

We may all be looking at the same artwork, for example, but what we see, what we notice, not just how we value it is shaped by our usual way of doing things.

Our usual way of doing things.

That's powerful.

It is.

And it led Jurgen to ask, basically, are we reacting to the tech itself, or are we reacting more to our own expectations of the tech?

Good question.

Okay, what was next in the newsletter?

Glass Imaging funding.

Right, the VentureBeat article.

They raised $20 million to use AI to improve digital photos.

So this is their Glass AI software using AI to fix problems with lenses and sensors.

Yeah, things like making images sharper, enhancing details, reducing that grainy noise you sometimes get.

And Jurgen noted this could be used everywhere.

Right.

Smartphones, AR headsets, drones.

He saw it as a subtle shift, but a meaningful one.

Yeah, and interestingly, Jurgen's take was that digital photography has always involved some interpretation.

Right.

From the sensor capturing light.

So maybe AI correction isn't quite as radical a break as we might think.

It's just another layer of processing.

Maybe.

Perhaps.

And the CEO of Glass Imaging, Zivatar, was quoted explaining their neural network handles all sorts of things.

Sharpening, denoising, HDR edges, noise removal, all in one go.

Which brought Jurgen to another interesting question.

If the AI is correcting the lens flaws, who decides what the real image is supposed to look like?

Exactly.

Where's the baseline?

It definitely makes the idea of an objective photo a bit fuzzier.

Okay, next up was that company IO featured in the next Web?

They've got a different approach to camera sensors, aiming for more human, like color vision.

Yeah.

Jurgen flagged this as maybe a bit technical, but he seemed pretty excited about it because it's not AI or algorithm based.

It's about the sensor hardware itself.

So inst of the usual RGB filters.

They use these things called color splitting waveguides, Basically tiny structures that physically separate light based on wavelength.

It's physics, not software, doing the heavy lifting for color.

That sounds fundamentally different.

It really is.

And the big advantage apparently is that it captures almost all the incoming light.

Old filters block a lot, so you get brighter images, better low light performance.

Jurgen stressed this was a real change in sensor design.

And the quote from IO CEO Jerome Haut was pretty bold.

IO is fundamentally redefining image sensing by eliminating decades old limitations.

He said it paves the way for new applications.

Definitely ambitious.

And Jurgen's thought on this was, could this lead to cameras that actually see light in color more like our own eyes do at that fundamental sensory level?

Wow.

Okay, let's shift gears again.

The Venice Architecture Biennale.

Jurgen touched on the Deutsche well coverage.

The focus was on cities dealing with extreme heat.

Yeah, a super critical topic, especially after the heat related deaths in Europe in 2023.

The BNAL is looking at how cities architecture need to adapt.

And the curator Carlo Ratti talked about combining AI natural systems and collective intelligence.

That's the vision.

Jurgen really appreciated architecture as an art form being central to this climate change conversation.

He also mentioned being surprised that northern Europe is warming so rapidly.

You wouldn't necessarily expect that.

Right?

And he pointed to Paris as an example of a city really trying to tackle this, rethinking its urban spaces.

Jurgen sounded, you know, cautiously optimistic, seeing.

That he shows it's possible at least.

And Ratty's quote that Jurgen included really hits home.

Architecture needs to reach out across generations and across disciplines to address a burning world.

Architecture must harness the full intelligence around us.

Full intelligence, yeah, that makes sense.

Which led Jurgen to ask, well, if Paris can start greening its famous boulevards, what's stopping other hot cities?

A very fair question.

Okay, one last piece Jurgen covered.

This was from Mixed Reality news about the VR painting app Vermilion.

Ah, yes, the new feature for the meta quest 3.

The pass through painting.

Exactly.

It uses the headset's cameras to let you see your real surroundings, and then you can basically snap a view and turn it into a paint by numbers template inside VR.

Jurgen called it Bob Ross with VR Goggles, which is just perfect.

It really is.

He thought it was such an interesting blend of the real world right in front of you and digital painting tools, kind of blurring the lines of observation and creation.

He also mentioned liking outdoor painting, but not the bugs and turpentine Relatable.

Totally.

The article explained you just take a photo with the headset and the app uses Meta's tech to convert it into that template.

Pretty seamless.

Which brought Jurgen to his final question, which I thought was great.

Would you actually sit on your porch and paint the sunset while wearing a VR headset?

It definitely makes you think about where this is all going, doesn't it?

Yeah, new ways to make art, new ways to see the world.

Or maybe just new.

So those were just a few of the really fascinating points Jurgen Berkhessel explored in issue 53 of the Intersect newsletter.

Yeah, lots to chew on there.

And if you want to explore these topics more, read the original articles and get Yurgit's full commentary.

You should definitely head over to the Intersect art.

You can read the issue there and also subscribe to the newsletter to keep up with this ongoing conversation between art and technology.

That's the Intersect art.

Definitely worth checking out.