Medium Hot - by Hito Steyerl (Hardcover)

About the Book

"explores the future of the image in the age of climate change and artificial technology"--

Book Synopsis

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE IMAGE IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?

Hito Steyerl is one of the most celebrated artists of our time. Her work, both as an artist and a writer, has consistently challenged the political boundaries between art and technol­ogy. In this new collection of groundbreaking essays, she explores how AI, the use of large language models and the algorithmic creation of imagery transform our understanding of the world. She argues that such practices cannot be divorced from the economic and political conditions of the times.

Medium Hot is a collection of scintillating meditations on the limits of art and technol­ogy: the essential handbook for the present conjuncture. The pieces here probe the man­ufacture and distribution of images in the age of AI and climate change. She asks whether art can be made not only by machines but for machines. She argues against the production of images that heat up the planet, disfranchise workers and fuel the arms trade, and questions whether such creations can even be called art.

In an era of such rapid change, Steyerl does vital work investigating whether machine learning will infiltrate every aspect of our lives and what that means for the future.

Review Quotes

"Hito Steyerl's ability to interrogate and reinterpret our contemporary world of images is unparalleled. From data-driven warfare to fossil-fuelled fascism, Medium Hot is a Pandæmonium for the age of machine intelligence, a front line account of making art and meaning after the arrival of AI"
--JAMES BRIDLE, author of WAYS OF BEING: ANIMALS, PLANTS, MACHINES: THE SEARCH FOR A PLANETARY INTELLIGENCE

"Steyerl is an artist and filmmaker whose work explores the complexities of the digital world, art and capitalism and the implications of artificial intelligence for society. Medium Hot is an urgent read for the twenty-first century"
--HANS ULRICH OBRIST, author of WAYS OF CURATING

"A Dante-esque journey through the roaring inferno of twenty-first-century visual culture. With the world's most astute observer as our guide, we move through a strange underworld of images that have become statistical, operational, thermal, perverse, boring, and deadly. Absolutely essential"
--TREVOR PAGLEN, artist

"In 11 searing essays, filmmaker and new media scholar Steyerl discusses cutting-edge advancements in AI and art and outlines the ripple of damage caused by competing tech companies. By highlighting a system of global damage incurred at the expense of new technology, Steyerl paints a rotten digital landscape on the brink of something terrible... A techno-environmentalist warning shot for the digital landscape's impending doom."
--Kirkus

"With the rise of generative AI, images are changing; [Medium Hot] offers theoretical tools and language to grapple with what that means."
--Cassie Packard, Frieze

"With this new book, Steyerl returns to her ongoing interest in the nature of digital images, which have grown ever stranger as AI tools become publicly accessible."
--Art in America

"[Medium Hot] turns its attention to the accelerating forces shaping our visual culture in the age of AI ... with Steyerl's signature blend of critical theory, dry wit and sharp eye for the surreal contradictions inherent in our digital era."
--Elizabeth Short, Morning Star

"A propulsive read"
--Jenny Wu, ArtReview

"Insightful [and] memorably stylish, above all in delivering a damning verdict."
--Tim Smith-Laing, Apollo

"Compelling ... Steyerl challenges us to recognise the vast scale of AI's ubiquity and to realise its 'artificial stupidity' by disentangling its inner workings."
--Terry Nguyen, ArtReview

"For more than a decade, artist Hito Steyerl has been writing--in biting, playful prose--about how images, technology, and politics are all interlinked. In her latest book, Steyerl returns to her familiar territory of war and violent conflict, updated for the era of Web3, and this time she expresses her stance more decisively and simply than ever before"
--Larissa Pham, Art in America

"Reading Medium Hot felt like downloading an especially adaptive dataset and plugging it directly into my neural pathways--in almost no time, I'd become a small language model of my own."
--Will Harrison, The Baffler

About the Author

HITO STEYERL is one of today's leading video artists. Her work explores the divisions between art, philosophy and politics. She has had solo exhibitions at, among others, MOCA, LA; the Reina Sofia, Madrid; and the ICA, London. She has participated in the Venice Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Documenta and Manifesta. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern. She is the author of The Wretched of the Screen and writes for numerous periodicals. She is currently Professor of New Media Art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.