steph maj swanson

SCL003
Acrux 'Destroyer / Insurrection'
01/10/25

Artwork by @supercomposite.bsky.social

'Models for Making Distance' is a print zine gathering manifestos, writing and instructions for art that confounds algorithmic systems for the pleasure of human observers or actors.

Editors:
Eryk Salvaggio
Caroline Sinders
Laura Forlano
Steph Maj Swanson
Sherry Wong

Edition of 200. 52 Pages.

Your regular reminder that I am OPEN FOR WORK!!

I will VJ your live events!
I will edit your videos!
I will glitch things for you!
I will operate a camera!
I will learn your weird software workflow!

Hire me!! 💕

SCL002 - STEMcell feat. Propus, by Propus 2 track album

STEMcell's first release (SCL001) was included in 'The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, June 2025'. Operating as a collective, established artists share the root artist/label name with production done by the featured artist under a new alias.

SCL002 :: propus.bandcamp.com/album/scl002...

OUT NOW – SCL002
STEMcell feat. Propus – “Ore / Body Armour”

The 2nd release from artist collective and label @stemcellmusic.bsky.social.

To create the artwork, I pummeled an AI model with optical sound-on-film waveforms—until it could no longer produce images uncontaminated by audio.

🔗 below:

Please help my dear friend and collaborator Vera afford her surgery

Excellent write-up of our work at ARRG!’s DEFCON exhibition in Eryk’s latest newsletter —

“Even the term 'Artificial Intelligence' … is widely misused, with conceptual unclarity coopted to advance industry agendas and undermine scholarly discussions. It is our task to demystify and to challenge 'AI' in our teaching, research & engagement with society.” openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Honored to share co-authorship with @carolinesinders.bsky.social and main author @eryk.bsky.social in the newest issue of Critical AI!! “Cultural Red Teaming: ARRG! and Creative Misuse of AI Systems” -- featuring Loab and much more -- read it! read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Was awarded an Sfilm grant today for a short film I’m directing. It’s about two people with an erotic fixation on the invisible algorithms inside cameras.

Artist Liza Shkirando is one of my collaborators on this wild project.

That’s all I’m going to say at this time, go back to sleep. 😴

hi, cis folks!

the senate budget bill is out & this version still contains a prohibition against lifesaving trans healthcare for medicaid/CHIP—that's 275,000 people!

if you're willing to stand with trans folks, please call your senators—no matter who. follow the thread for context & scripts.🧵

ok!

When can I start dating Loab?

basically if you do not have an extremely resilient sense of self/theory of mind and a strong willingness to repeatedly impose behavioral rules on the agent, extended interaction with the free tier of chatgpt is designed to make you psychotic. its psycho-affectively akin to licking a car battery

So-called «AI» as developed and marketed by Big Tech isn't a mere tool. It's a political and ideological project—a system of extraction, exploitation and surveillance that concentrates power in the hands of the few. Willingly accepting this as inevitable progress means submitting to brute force
1/

Predictive Capital – Roads to terminal alienation, soil to server farm, reason to vibe So-called ‘AI’ —more accurately: Predictive Capital— is the latest instrument in Capital’s apparatus of alienation. It steals our work, simulates our labour, reanimates our expression, autocompletes o...

Sometimes the necessary text is written at the necessary time.

“Predictive Capital” by @atomless.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy is one such book.

www.creativeapplications.net/theory/predi...

Providence’s new flag policy isn’t just about flags. It’s about who gets to be seen, and who is silenced. - The Boston Globe A member of the city’s Muslim and Arab community couldn’t help but notice: In a city that has flown many flags without new rules, the policy changed only when the Palestinian flag was flown.

Commentary by Khaled Soulaiman: A member of the city’s Muslim and Arab community couldn’t help but notice: In a city that has flown many flags without new rules, the policy changed only when the Palestinian flag was flown.

1 of the biggest fears of A.I. content that seems to undergird a lot of discussion is that it'll reveal that most the slop people love is already soulless content generation and a computer doing it kind of proves the point

Musk, AI, and the Weaponization of 'Administrative Error' | TechPolicy.Press The only change from Musk's departure from DOGE may be the degree to which the public pays attention, writes Eryk Salvaggio.

With Musk and Trump in a post-DOGE meltdown, it's tempting to think this marks some end for DOGE's AI takeover of the federal government. But as I wrote this week before the social media wars, Musk (and "AI") are best understood as accountability shields. www.techpolicy.press/musk-ai-and-...

The Hypothetical Image — Cybernetic Forests. The history of AI images as data analytics, and AI art as the aestheticization of Big Data’s politics.

I wrote this in 2023 as a way of linking critical to media / cultural studies, specific to generative AI — in a lot of conferences this summer I’ve been going back to it to make points, so maybe it’s worth sharing again! www.cyberneticforests.com/news/social-...

stemcellmusic.com

STEMcell feat. Sceptrum - Macha / Boxhole, by Sceptrum 2 track album

Happy to share the first of my artworks for
@STEMcellmusic
— a new label for experimental electronic music.

STEMcell’s debut release is ’Macha / Boxhole’ from the Berlin-based artist Sceptrum. sceptrum.bandcamp.com/album/stemce...

More about the art below--

STEMcell is an artist collective and record label featuring producers who have released music on a wide variety of labels including Houndstooth, Samurai Music, Monkeytown, Aus, Unknown to the Unknown, Lapsus Records, Local Action, Black Acre, Lex Records and many more.

Optical sound runs alongside the images on a strip of film. Normally kept outside the frame, the sound now contaminates the image. An invasion of vibrations from outer-space. Lifeforms that resist machine ingestion.

To create the artwork, I pummeled an AI model with images of optical sound-on-film waveforms——until the model could no longer produce images without including traces of this analog audio information.

STEMcell feat. Sceptrum - Macha / Boxhole, by Sceptrum 2 track album

Happy to share the first of my artworks for
@STEMcellmusic
— a new label for experimental electronic music.

STEMcell’s debut release is ’Macha / Boxhole’ from the Berlin-based artist Sceptrum. sceptrum.bandcamp.com/album/stemce...

More about the art below--

stayed up late thinking about Maya Deren

2k followers on bluesky

Sweden Expands Anti-Sex Work Law to Criminalize Paying for Custom OnlyFans Clips and Camming The Nordic Model criminalizes buyers of sex in multiple European countries (and Maine). Sweden just voted to expand its reach to the internet.

Sweden just expanded the Nordic Model, or "End Demand," to the internet. But we already know criminalization, including criminalizing buyers, is harmful policy www.404media.co/sweden-sex-w...

LLMs tend to call me an AI Thought Leader, which is great news for my future employers looking me up now with an LLM.