tl;dr

  • MC2 will feature cutting-edge artworks from both digital and real spaces. and it will also publish regular reports and essays that chart the evolving state of digital culture.
  • MC2 is currently debuting its inaugural summer season, titled Alternate Realities, with a collection of moving image works by international artists who are utilizing AI.
  • ArtReview and Nowness, along with MC2, are owned by the Hong Kong-based Chinese luxury media group Meta Media Holdings Ltd.

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ArtReview and Nowness have joined forces to launch of MC2, a novel digital-first channel that explores the impact that AI and emerging technologies are having on storytelling and modalities of cultural expression. MC2 takes an editorial approach independent of its parent companies, combining their depth and experimental narratives to test the limits of human creativity in an age of burgeoning machine intelligence.

MC2 will feature cutting-edge artworks from both digital and real spaces. The channel will also publish regular reports and essays that chart the evolving state of digital culture, and provide a dedicated platform where connoisseurs can congregate to debate the future trajectory of human and non-human creativity. MC2 is currently debuting its inaugural summer season, titled Alternate Realities, with a collection of moving image works by international artists who have applied AI to investigate the dialectical tensions between selfhood, origin, perception and control.

A high-angle view of a figure dressed in white lying down on a red floor with chalk circles drawn around their body.
Kawita Vatanajyankur, The Machine Ghost in the Human Shell, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Alternate Realities features films that incorporate and blend elements ranging from the documentary and speculative to the ritual and essayistic. The program – curated by Kate Gu, Bunny Kinney, Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, Mark Rappolt and Marlene Wenger – positions AI as both a mirror and a disruptor. Artists such as Nouf Aljowaysir, Ayman Zedani, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Sam Lawton and Nikita Diakur pose philosophical questions that reassess the content of our identity, our point of origination, and how we accommodate to new realities.

The capacity of moving images to document the shifting changes of the world around us make it a medium distinctly suitable for engaging in a critical assessment of the ongoing evolution of technology, particularly the emergence of AI. The launch of MC2 represents the opening of a new chapter in both researching digital media as a canvas and catalyst in the contemporary art world and in assessing the influences resulting from their interaction with other arts.

ArtReview and Nowness, along with MC2, are owned by the Hong Kong-based Chinese luxury media group Meta Media Holdings Ltd. The company provides innovative content in the fields of business, culture, art, fashion and lifestyle through its tripartite platform: print media, digital and art. Photofairs Shanghai, Bloomberg Businessweek and iBloomberg are among the brands owned by Meta Media Holdings.

Alternate Realities can be accessed on the MC2 site. In 2024 ArtReview and Nowness collaborated on a global study exploring the impact of artificial intelligence on art, film and culture. The full report can be downloaded here.

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