[figure and ground] [television] [memes]

social media flipped memes (the disjointed building blocks of “democracy”) from ground to figure .... Now, the memes ... have to be promulgated and enforced. And that’s why political propriety in much of today’s West is gauged not in terms of policy substance or even popularity, as it is in one’s ability to... See more

As art evolves to meet the constraints of algorithms, it starts to look more like social media posts. Posting is not only art, it’s the most prevalent and most influential art form of our time. It’s art made not for the gallery, but for the feed, meant to be viewed not in a space set apart from the rest of reality, but as part of the texture of our... See more

That’s why we get all our information as memes. The meme has become the metastory, the layer where meaning is carried. You don’t need to read the thing; you just need the gist, compressed and passed along in a sentence, an image, or a joke. It has taken the role of the headline. The machine accelerates this dynamic. It demands constant material; st... See more