Today's conversation is with Zachary Small, staff reporter for the NY Times. I have been following their arts journalism since they wrote for Hyperallergic years ago. They're often the first to identify new, consequential developments in a field that thrives on change.

Today's conversation is with Prem Krishnamurthy, designer, author, and educator. His multifaceted work explores the role of art as an agent of transformation at an individual, collective, and structural level. This manifests itself in books, exhibitions, images, performances, publications, systems, talks, texts, and workshops.

I've known Sara Wookey since we both lived in the Netherlands when I was working in creating music for dance, collaborating with our mutual friend Seamus Cater. Her career progressed in very exciting ways, eventually becoming a student of the seminal figure in dance, Yvonne Rainer and is a certified teacher of Rainer’s seminal dance work “Trio A” (1966) and other repertoire. She received her Phd. from Coventry University in England where her research looked at dance in the museum as relation...

Having worked in the arts in NYC for about 15 years now, a constant inspiration has been Ruby Lerner. I have found her profound commitment to the importance of artists in building a more imaginative and rich culture in this country and her extraordinary talent in realizing that belief as the founder of Creative Capital, to be the gold standard of how to build rational and strategic approaches to arts funding.

My friend, the designer and artist, Mushon Zer-Aviv was in town a few months ago so we sat down to catch up. Having worked in open, values-driven design in tech for the last two decades, Mushon goes deep into what he sees as being the mistakes of the early internet and how we can avoid them in the future. His thoughtfulness is always optimistic: as he says, he is a designer so he wants to design! He points to the contradictions inherent in our tendency to offload "ethics into infrastucture"...

Deborah has a reputation as an innovative arts leader here in New York. Over the past couple of years, she has fully transformed into a sharp-eyed astrologer building from decades of experience in the arts as well as a lifelong spiritual practice. In this, the final Dog Days 2022 episode, Roddy and Deborah discuss the value of astrology in the context of being an arts director where everybody is obsessed with knowing the future. And what it means for Deborah to give notice, then begin a...

There are a handful of contemporary net artists for whom I have particular affection. Constant Dullaart is one of them. Since I first learned of his work in the early aughts, I've found an extraordinary depth to every move he makes. As our understanding of the internet has matured, Constant's work becomes more relevant. I most recently worked with him as one of our Eyebeam fellows in our Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future initiative in 2020. I appreciated this conversation so much,...

As we enter these long, hot days of this unusual year, I'll be releasing three special episodes that aim to provide some dreamy inspiration for late summer. Between now and labor day, I'll be speaking with three dynamic artists over three episodes. The conversations move from foundational questions around what technology actually means to playful platforms for new forms of co-creation and community, and then finally to a discussion of astrology as an ancient, vital technology for spiritual...

B Covington, a multi-modal sound artist whose work is as formally challenging as it is joyfully satisfying, was in New York last month and sat down for a conversation with me at my office in Brooklyn. I enjoyed our time so much an it is the first episode of Informer that was recorded in person.

James Bridle imagines new modes of invention and engagement inspired from relationships with non-human beings. He's a fascinating thinker and this is one of my favorite conversations.

I first heard about K when they were active in the electronic music scene of the bay area in the early 2000's. I've enjoyed following their work from that time into becoming a force for thoughtful engagement with AI, thinking about it in very expansive way, involving anthropology and cosmology.

I've known Julia for over a decade and have admired her fearless approach to both creating communities through her Art and Tech Meetups which ran for years throughout New York City and then to her leadership in the creation of New Inc, an art and tech incubator with the New Museum. She's also developed a fantastic career as an independent curator, which she shares more about in our conversation.

"As an artist I am trying to see the hidden connections between things and trying to understand things that I feel as a person that thinks in slightly different ways." - Angelo Plessas I enjoyed this conversation with Angelo a lot. I think we need more people thinking like he is, finding moments of healing in our relationships with technology. We talk about a number of things, including his recent collaboration with Acne Studios in producing a fashion line from his singular style of...

It's always a pleasure to be in conversation with Mendi and Keith Obadike. The sound art duo have been working together for 25 years, which gives them perspective to be able to identify trends, changes, and ongoing challenges in the field. In this podcast, I talk to them about issues of structural racism, the changes they've seen in the last two years in how people consume their music, and their public refusal of an award offered by ZKM and the reason they chose to do so.

I had the privilege of visiting an insightful and rich exhibition at Albright-Knox, Buffalo, last month. Co-curated by curator and art historian Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan and artist Paul Vanouse, it focused on the impact of "difference machines" AKA computers in shifting our notions of identity. Featuring many artists that I have been fans of for years, I hope that this ground exhibition continues to make waves. You can dig into their ideas on this, the latest episode of Informer. * "You can not...

There are so many fascinating stories to be told about the present and future of technology in the arts, especially in this moment of a profound, digital turn. Tamiko Thiel, a truly singular artist, tells a numbers a number of them. As a very early innovator in the field of VR, along with a side career as product designer which includes creating the visual design of the The Connection Machine, the world's first AI computer and now in the permanent collection of MoMA, her work has been and...

Zach Lieberman is one of the leading creative coders and digital artists in the world. And what I love about the way Zach works is that he is equally dedicated to thoughtful and open pedagogy as he is to creating poetic digital works. This wide-ranging conversation reveals the motivations in his co-founding of the School for Poetic Computation as well as his continuing fascination with the human, machine dialogue that results in the creation of new worlds.

A conversation with artist Lauren Lee McCarthy. We discuss how her work is an effort in helping our species take responsibility for the machines we build. She suggests that we need to get “out of our dorm room” in how we approach machine learning and the way it’s changing the world.

Artist Julia Christensen describes her new book as an envelope for a multi-year research project that traces our relationship with machines through their impact on our sense of time, memory, and imagination. Her work is poetic and hard-hitting, digging into guilt about e-waste as well as imagining human invention through the lens of cosmic space. This wide ranging conversation with an old friend was fun and energizing.

Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Gonzalo Casals shares his view of the how to nurture a city's art ecosystem. As he points out, his first day was March 11, the exact date most people pin to the start of the global crisis.

Mutale Nkonde shares her vision for creating a better future and the role art plays in policy and advocacy.

Bassem Saad is a young artist whose video work is compelling and strange, in the right ways. It's theoretically on target and is full of formal considerations that lend it heft while also fizzing with queer energy and insight. In this conversation, he discusses what it was like to bounce around the world alongside riots, uprisings, and a global pandemic, and feeling like those events required him to make a new work in response.

In conversation with artist Lynn Hershman Leeson on the occasion of her first NYC museum solo show.

In this episode, acclaimed artist Jesse Darling speaks to Roddy Schrock about the ways in which we can re-imagine how we approach technology all around us, outside mythologies of disruption and upgrade cycles.