057. Mat Dryhurst: Speculative aesthetics in the algorithmic age
Show notes
We are not in the King Charles III Space Station this week. We are in Harriet Green’s sister station, which is a less reliable bit of lore but a more useful studio. Into it comes Mat Dryhurst: English conceptual artist, Berlin resident, collaborator with Holly Herndon, co-founder of Spawning AI, and the rare guest willing to tell Anglofuturism that Greek statues of ourselves might be a sign of stuckness rather than civilisational vigour.
The episode explores
* Why Greek statues in the space station might be a symptom of Anglofuturist stuckness
* Strange Rules in Venice and the end of art as a separate autonomous category
* Michael Levin, two-headed worms, and why everything starts to look like a communication protocol
* Ken Stanley, PickBreeder, and why greatness cannot be planned
* Aston Villa, the Europa League, and why old forms stop meaning what they once meant
* Instagram and the infinite feed as the actual cultural event of the past 20 years
* Oman banning advertising and the politics of cognitive security
* The Call, choirs, consent, and participatory AI
* Why Bauhaus was not a look, and why commissioning “a future aesthetic” misses the point
* Progressive elitism, Channel 4, Chris Morris, and institutions taking punts before the public asks for them
* The new weirdos who look normal until they start talking about prediction markets
* Spawning AI, machine-readable permissions, and why copyright is too small for model culture
* The 30-year question: which low-status interaction now becomes the future’s obvious value layer?
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