This is absolutely chilling, and straight out of the Nazi playbook

Colourising classic photos is a travesty, especially in a serious newspaper. Today’s Observer has a review of the latest Tennyson bio, with an uncredited colour photo of the poet, “photographed in 1869”. The original is by Julia Margaret Cameron, of course, and it’s in black & white.

Great to catch up with Adrian Wilson, Kim Mannes-Abbott and Micha Riss at the British Art Fair today. Adrian and his colleagues are doing a fantastic job of promoting the importance of the Quantel Paintbox in the history of digital art! @quantelpaintbox.bsky.social

Christie’s Quietly Deletes Digital Art Department -Artnet News news.artnet.com/market/chris...

Kelly - Bronze - well done!

I’ve passed this stunning building near Selkirk many times, hoping that someone would finally restore it. Designed by Peter Womersley for Bernat Klein, the studio is now in a bad way. At last, a coalition of heritage organisations are hoping to buy it at auction. Please donate if you can!

AI bot scrapers are hitting every site on the web in search of training data. This report is the first good attempt to evaluate the impact of these AI scrapers, especially on smaller institutions that are trying to make their collections open to the public www.404media.co/ai-scraping-...

Edwin Heathcote on the revamped Chelsea Hotel, where “Rooms start at $605” - a night that is. You could have stayed for about 3 months in the ‘60s. @edwinheathcote.bsky.social

There are still five days left to submit something for SOUND+PURPOSE hosted in Lund in November. Some really great proposed contributions so far showcasing the strength and variety of research in sound. Come and join our discussions of the *why* of sound and the *purpose* of sound research!

Wonderful visit to V&A East Storehouse - an amazing project that really transforms public access to the Museum's stored collections. It's great to see some old favourites back on display too. Huge congratulations to everyone involved in making all of this happen - quite an achievement!

Great review of the V&A’s new Storehouse in the Guardian, plus an excellent write-up by their architecture critic too. I’m looking forward to visiting the Museum’s collection at the Olympic Park on Friday! www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

If I were a museum anywhere that had loaned anything to anyone in the US I would ask for it back immediately and I would already have ceased any upcoming loans. Not as a punitive measure, merely pragmatic.

On #VEDay80, remembering my father Albert Dodds (right), a sergeant in the British Army's Pioneer Corps. He was evacuated from France 3 weeks after Dunkirk, then took part in the Sicily, Salerno & Normandy landings. Most of his company was at Lüneburg in May 1945, when the Nazi forces surrendered.

New CFP: What Do (Digital) Images Want? Join us in exploring a decade of data, power & visual knowledge! dahj.org/cfp/11

TANK vs TESLA "We've crushed fascism before and we'll crush it again" - ⁠WW2 veteran Ken, 98, in the tank

In other news, rubber ducks are migrating to Canada, where they won’t be subject to Trump’s tariffs on Mandarin goods

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing @annagk.bsky.social talk to our Dickens postgraduates about www.dickensnotes.com - a fantastic open access resource showing Dickens's working notes for his novels. Highly recommended!

Another beautiful art deco pool ticked off my to-do list! This is Mounts Baths, Northampton - a water-filled cathedral for swimming worshippers

That’s me, bottom right

The deletion of websites and other government data is a dangerous attack on knowledge, harming democracy. My colleague @nannathylstrup.bsky.social & I contribute a guest essay in @nytimes.com today: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/o...

I wrote my latest piece for Anthropology News to not only draw attention to the fragility of digital data, but highlight the work being done by those at The Internet Archive (@archive.org) and independent archivist like Jason Scott (@textfiles.com). www.anthropology-news.org/articles/bit...

#generativeart and #aiart didn’t just come out of nowhere - “A Computer in the Art Room: the origins of British Computer Arts 1950-1980” is now available as an ebook @amazonkindle.bsky.social & Apple books £5.99 & $4.99

Are you interested in the history of art & tech in Britain? My newest book features George Mallen, pioneer of creative computing since 1964, cybernetics and Gordon Pask, artist Stephen Willats, the Royal College of Art & the history of the Computer Arts Society in 1960s-1970s bit.ly/3xdOE58

Currently on a much-delayed train, stuck at Newark with this advert outside. Brilliant marketing by LNER - “Days that live on forever.”

The Palestine Museum is set to open in Edinburgh on May 17. The institution, an offshoot of the Palestine Museum US inaugurated in 2018 in Woodbridge, Connecticut, will be the first in Europe dedicated to contemporary Palestinian art. www.artforum.com/news/europes...

Trump’s attack on the Smithsonian is utterly chilling, and blatantly fascist too. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Fabulous work, and so timely!

This is the best piece of reporting I’ve seen so far on what is going on at IMLS. I encourage everyone who cares about the key role that libraries and museums play in the United States to read it. news.artnet.com/art-world/do...

I’m thrilled to bring together two institutions that shaped my work: BarabásiLab & metaLAB (at) Harvard. On June 11–12, 2025, we’re hosting Data | Art—a conference on how data entangles with artistic, scientific & curatorial practices. We have a stellar lineup of speakers! More soon: data-art.info

Art world looks to Bluesky as Meta and X shift right www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/03/a...

More recent acquisitions - “computer ink plots” by Swedish artists Beck & Jung (Holger Bäckström 1939-1997 and Bo Ljungberg 1939-2007). The originals were produced on a colour inkjet plotter at Lund University in the early 1980s.

My early computer work, Hand Memory (1990), is on the cover of VERBUM magazine, vol 4.3 published in the winter of 1990/1991. Hand Memory was first made in 1986 in Japan on an NEC computer, and then printed with a machine that was the prototype of inkjet printers.

A big hello to - and from - artist Barbara Nessim, who’s just joined Bluesky!

Woah, this database of art auction sales catalogues (from the 17th century to 1945!) is really something! digitalprojects.wpi.art/auctions

Fascinating conversation about the practicalities of art book publishing, with Mark Eastment of Yale University Press. Mark was previously at the V&A too.

Well, Pinksky is looking increasingly promising as an alternative to Instagram. It picks up the photos I’ve already posted on Bluesky, including older ones I’d imported from Twitter. No need to sign up separately either!

What happened on the day the Palisades Fire broke out? How staff at the Getty Villa sprung into action: gty.art/4jypCkC

Sharp, concise and visually stunning, this image-led history of global digital art from the 1960s to the present day links the digital art scene to wider art and design histories, and to their social, political and technological contexts we-make-money-not-art.com/digital-art-... @ThamesHudsonUSA

Sissinghurst was looking stunning today, and with very few visitors too!

Great memo from Dennis Cox, Sussex University’s Librarian in 1967, complaining about inadequate ventilation and the number of students asleep in the new Library. “I would prefer not to belleve this is entirely due to the dissipated life these undergraduates are supposed to lead in Brighton.”

Looking forward to seeing this concrete poetry show at the Estorick Collection in the New Year. The V&A has many works by Dom Sylvester Houédard and his contemporaries too.

"Demystifying Generative Autonomy" by Peter Bauman @monkantony.bsky.social In Part 4 of our generative art framework, Bauman covers autonomy—why artists choose to cede control 📖: lerandom.art/editorial/demystifying-generative-autonomy

Yale’s cross-collections discovery system is so impressive! Do give it a try at lux.collections.yale.edu

The Raymond Briggs exhibition at Ditchling Museum really is Bloomin’ Brilliant! It finishes on 22 December though, so catch it if you can. www.ditchlingmuseumartcraft.org.uk/event/bloomi...

Nothing expresses the social value of digitising museum collections quite like this story of the undoing of a 300 year-old lie about a black Caribbean scholar, scientist and mathematician, and the mockery it makes of David Hume and his infamous racist footnote www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Excellent review of Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams, by @lauracummingart.bsky.social in the Observer. “This enthralling show…”

Wonderful see so many old friends in the Tate’s Electric Dreams show - plus some new acquaintances too. Edward Ihnatowicz, Frieder Nake, Harold Cohen, Mary Martin and so many others…!