057. Mat Dryhurst: Speculative aesthetics in the algorithmic age

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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