Where do our ideas meet?

GOOD LINKS#

• Where do our ideas meet? (Humanmaxxing) — In conversation with Alex Dobrenko, Nadia Asparouhova, author of Antimemetics, follows our retreat from public feeds into group chats, and now into one-on-one conversations with AI. Each move changes who gets to encounter an idea and build on it. A conversation can be personally useful while leaving everyone else out of the loop. What happens to shared knowledge when more of our thinking happens this way? A good question to keep asking, including inside our smaller spaces.
• The Pope has something to say to artists (Vatican) — “Algorithms lack the spark of the human, whereas ‘authentic culture and art preserve this spark” Pope Leo XIV said in an October 2 address calling for a renewed alliance with artists. His argument goes beyond what the finished image looks like: the person making it matters. We stand with His Holiness on this one.
• The invitation was part of the party (Gallery 98) — A dollar bill, sunglasses, a miniature magazine with its own magnifying glass. New York’s infamous AREA nightclub treated invitations as things worth keeping. We’ve been thinking a lot about the whole experience of a gathering, from the invitation to the morning after. Imagine getting one of these in the mail.

DFOS Spotlight: POPULAR#

A screenshot catches something that interests us. A hundred screenshots can make it hard to remember what that was.

Kel Rakowski’s Studio Book Workshop invites people to move from saving and consuming to selecting and making. She’s spent years working with images, designing art books for Todd Oldham and directing photography at Metropolis magazine. These days she writes Popular, a newsletter about creativity and taste.

Over four weeks, Kel shares how she writes, researches and builds a book of images. Participants make their own alongside her, comparing notes and sharpening their eye. ‘Your studio book keeps you caught up with yourself,’ Kel writes. The workshop runs from October 22 to November 12 in downtown NYC, with classroom sessions hosted at DFOS HQ and a visit to Library 180’s magazine archive.

The first cohort met on Zoom, used Notion for resources and kept in touch through Telegram. This time, Popular’s DFOS space gives the group a shared home for resources, findings and conversation. It stays open after the workshop ends, giving those relationships and ideas room to keep growing.

Explore Popular or learn more about the workshop.

A quick DFOS update#

The DFOS update we planned for September is taking longer than we expected. We’re using what we’ve learned so far from building DFOS and feedback from all of you to shape the next release, and taking the time to work it through.

Thank you for your patience.

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