The Second-Guess

An entire week as a blessing ✨ @Romenewmedia has been an impressive, pioneering week for Digital Art in Rome 👌. I was deeply touched and honored to see my film "The Withering Lands" presented at the Human Interface exhibition by @_second_guess @postanika , alongside such incredible work by @tamikothiel @francis_ost @leahschrager and @speciesofvalue ✨ Enjoying Rome for two more days, after a few unfortunate days of poor health... But mentally and secretely, I'm already looking forward to the next edition.🔥 Congratulations, @vandaloruins and thank you 🙏

Technology is a matter of choice. In my last film, Maïa choose to get assistance from an AI in the begining... before finally break the process in the end, with peace and fervor. The story of The Withering Lands, is before anything else, a story about that choice. Hers alone to make. 🎞️Goodbye, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess and collected by @yangwong

Ritualizing the end of a process 🖤 📷Before Burial, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess collected by @YuranYakon

The lands are grieving too. Echoing the myth of Demeter, Maïa's pain dries the landscapes around her. A profound ancient story that guided me through the making of the film, as a reminder of how powerful and devastating someone's pain and anger can be. 🎞️The Withering Lands, Thank you for Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess

❖ Weekly Recap ❖ ✦ Featured on the objkt merch store: Creative Space, a new artist collaboration with @zizzyza ✦ Season 01: Web Nostalgia @Kentocards previewed artist cards from @riniifish & @ALIENQUEENART. The open call for art submissions closes 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝟯𝟭, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 — 𝟮𝟯:𝟱𝟵 𝗚𝗠𝗧 ✦ Featured Exhibitions: ✦ "Ghost of the Brush," curated by @ilyabliznets for @accomparts, explored how composition, color, form, and atmosphere continue to shape image-making across digital painting, AI, and generative art. ✦ "Thank You for Sharing Your Pain" by @m_blehaut, curated by @_second_guess, examined grief, AI caregiving, and the intersection of empathy, surveillance, and data extraction. ✦ Featured @objktlabs releases: ✦ "P.i.x.e.l.l.a.n.d.i.a." by @_pixellare, presented through @objktlabs and curated by @postanika, transformed photography into evolving pixel compositions where abstraction gradually becomes recognition. ✦ Moment of Significance by @alexmayarts, presented through @objktlabs, explored the fleeting instant when an experience begins to matter before it can be understood. ✦ Silence by @Olga_f2727, presented through @objktlabs, explored the search for balance in an accelerating world, using minimal forms and empty space to transform visual noise into moments of clarity. ✦ New on OBJKTOR: ✦ @objktlabs spoke with @_pixellare about collaboration, abstraction, pixels, and why abstraction can produce knowledge rather than escape reality. ✦ @ForgetDali published a feature on @0009ine, exploring how textiles, memory, graffiti, and urban culture shape his artistic practice. ✦ @objktlabs interviewed Micah Alhadeff about glitch, AI, experimentation, and embracing imperfection as a creative language. ✦ Featured on @bootloader_art: - Slider, 2026 by @jczobele - 6/:+(/-/ P////< by @llllll__lllllll ✦ New on @dropdotart: - Emanaciones by @BarbaraBezina - PlateShifters by @flintpope ✦ Coming soon to @dropdotart: SMELLS LIKE PROTEIN by @no_hygiene, where online body horror, shitposting, and cursed supermarket aesthetics collide. ✦ Collector of the Week #52: @James_Glohe reflected on collecting as a long-term conversation with digital art. Up next: @1xVollard ✳ Thank you for being part of another week celebrating digital art. ▼ High Tide Laboratories, by @zlaserrr

My ritual begins with an invocation. Each invocation is a sonic representation of the celestial bodies’ positions at the precise starting moment. The word comes later, from the forge. nomalila opens with its tone…and sounds of joyful children smashing hammers into steel poles.

Art on Tezos Friday Recap 🔔 → TezCon 2026 returns to Seattle on July 11 with an open-mic program for art and action, featuring live performances, Voices of Iran, panel talks, DJ sets, artist presentations, and community jam sessions. 🌲🎙️ → Projects by @ChiaraPassa1 and @mishaderidder × @miragenesi have been selected for exhibition at @MovingImageNYC through the MoMI × Tezos Foundation partnership. 🏛️✨ → @TeiaCommunity opened submissions for #ComputationalJewelry with @Song11Ting, connecting digital art, physical jewelry, and women’s health ahead of an exhibition in Beijing. 💎💜 → @TheTezos presented "Echoes From Venezuela", a growing collection featuring 34 Venezuelan artists. Curated by @MiRetratito, @StrokeDriven, and @AuRo404, the initiative supports artists directly through #Tez4Venezuela. 🇻🇪🎨 → Only a few days remain to join #Art4LifeTez, organized by @paraxenod and @CinziaGabrielPH, with 1,700 tez awarded across 10 selected artists. 🩸🎨 Deadline July 13. → The Human Interface, curated by @_second_guess was presented at @Romenewmedia in San Lorenzo on July 7, bringing together artists exploring AI, digital identity, memory, and the evolving relationship between humans and technology. 🤖🧠 → Art on Tezos introduced the first "Totally Not A Cabal" collector pair, sharing how @tinoch invited @jedi6900 into the Tezos art ecosystem and what shaped their collecting journeys. 🤝🖼️ → Deadline approaching: Artists have until July 14 to join the 3rd Annual #CINDTezos minting event by @malsheep56, celebrating Disability Pride Month through works by CIND artists and allies. ♿💖 → Discover the newest "Art on Tezos: Curated" selection by @fabriziobrarez, featuring five works exploring the fragile space between appearance and disappearance. 🌫️✨ → @greekdx examined "hello world" by @qubibien through @Automatdotart, co-collected last year on Tezos by Giannis Sourdis and @thefunnyguysNFT, and its connections to the history of computer art. 💻📚 → @TezosCommons announced a special in-person Artz Friday from Seattle, featuring a live interview with the organizers of TezCon ahead of the event. 🎙️🌲 → Brarez published a new edition of Seen By Brarez, this week spotlighting @ArtWojak. 🔍🖼️ → "SMELLS LIKE PROTEIN" by @no_hygiene announced, where online body horror, shitposting, and cursed supermarket aesthetics collide. Coming July 15 to dropart. 🥩🫦 → New on OBJKTOR: @objktlabs spoke with @_pixellare about collaboration, abstraction, pixels, and the idea that abstraction can produce knowledge rather than escape reality. 🟪🧠 → @ForgetDali published a new article on @0009ine, exploring how textiles, memory, graffiti, and urban culture shape his practice. 🧵🏙️ → objkt featured @James_Glohe as Collector of the Week #52, discussing collecting, community, Tezos, and why people often stay for the relationships built around the art. 💬🖼️ → @AntrumArtSpace opened submissions for Waves Syntax, inviting visual, sonic, digital, and interior interpretations of waves for a new collective collection. 🌊✨ Don't Miss: → a new @tezvendsmachine takeover by @nefetesudaca on July 11, combining vaulted works with newly minted 1/1s. 🎟️⚡ → "Ghost of the Brush", curated by @ilyabliznets for @accomparts, exploring composition, color, form, and atmosphere through digital practice. 🖌️✨ → "Thank You for Sharing Your Pain" by @m_blehaut, curated by The Second-Guess. 🤖🫂 → "Your Existence is Canceled: Issue 2", presented by @cubedekant. 🖼️ → "P.i.x.e.l.l.a.n.d.i.a." by p.i.x.e.l.l.a.r.e., curated by @postanika and presented through objktlabs, transforming photographs into pixel compositions that unfold over time. 🟦📷 → Beyond Silence: Iranian Artists by @OneLoveArtDAO, curated by @svofshahr and @MShahraminia, exploring resilience, hope, censorship, isolation, and personal triumph. 🇮🇷🖼️ → New on @dropdotart: - Emanaciones by @BarbaraBezina - PlateShifters by @flintpope - Paradox Post-Photography Archive by @UzupisMUC → New on @bootloader_art: - Slider, 2026 by @jczobele - 6/:+(/-/ P////< by @llllll__lllllll Image: "stats of wrong karma" by @ttiimmees

A fruit that already knows. In the Greek myth of Demeter, her daughter Persephone, taken to the underworld, eats the pomegranate seeds, which ties her to the realm of the dead for perpetual cycles. In this film, I choose to show the opened pomegranate a a sign Maïa refuses to admit : that her daughter is not coming back. 🎞️The Withering Lands, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess

Since I started taking selfies, I’ve been fascinated by isolating the hand and phone in a pic. In this video, I place it into a floral techno-still life. What if only the hand and phone remained of a selfie? It travels through a landscape of flowers, glass, sculpture, and more — briefly revisiting the original photo before transforming again on its journey. "In Bloom" is live @objktcom, curated by @_second_guess 🪞📸

For 15 years my work explored self-representation. This series shifts the question. Mirrors, phones, cameras, and AI stop functioning as technologies of representation and begin functioning as technologies of reproduction. The image becomes its own creator. "In Bloom" is viewable on @objktcom, curated by @_second_guess Some screenshots below:

Not a human bond. This specific shot could tell the whole story on its own. Beneath naturalistic, realistic human textures, the shapes are distorted at their essence. The randomness of it, to me, captures the nature of this relationship, an unhuman one. 🎞The Withering Lands, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess

Dearest Yang, your words honor me 🖤🙏 This specific shot, among the two pieces you collected, to me, crystallizes the agent's fundamental ambiguity, almost human, data-hungry, innocent and benevolent. Something close and unhuman. Thank you for collecting those fragments 🎞️Listener, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess

2/2 The second day of @Romenewmedia continued with a series of exhibitions, talks, and panels across San Lorenzo, including @oliviapedi Liv’s Psychic Hotline, alongside The Human Interface, curated by @postanika @_second_guess , bringing together artists exploring AI, digital identity, memory, and the evolving relationship between humans and technology. And panels amongst which Collectors Conversations, moderated by @eleonorabrizi for @100collectors with @jennipl, @Sinbadilmarino , and @rare_viktor . We discussed what drives digital art collectors today, how collections take shape, and the role of patronage in supporting artists and the ecosystem. Another day filled with thoughtful exhibitions and inspiring conversations

Two other editions sold yesterday ❤️ In this shot, Maïa holds what's left of the agent, the one who listened to her, absorbed her, and will speak no more. A quiet thought on what she chose to end, in a Hamlet-like gesture. Thank you @fantasticplanet for collecting this precious meditating piece 🖤 📷 The Back of Its Skull, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess

Do you know what this image means? For Maïa, the main character of the film, this hand laying on the ground, is her own human decision. A passage from one state of her grief... To a next one. I will let you watch the film and find your own meaning. 🎞️Burial Scene, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, with @_second_guess

I met Joan Fontcuberta last night for the first time. In April he published his book "Imagini Latenti" in Italy, including an essay on the relationship between AI-generated images and photography, referring to my image "THE ELECTRICIAN" and Miles Astray image "FLAMINGONE". He sees AI images as part of photogeaphy and proposes the term "algorithmic photography". Miles and I disagree and published a rebuttal in @petapixel. Fontcuberta promised to write his rebuttal until the end of summer. The first image is an AI-manipulated photo. It was 40 degrees in the room and too hot for a suit. I felt the temperature. AI cleaned it up. The second image is the original selfie, a authentic photo. The third a backview, is hallucinated by AI, using ChatGPT Image2. This is a synthetic image, or what I call promptography. Stay tuned when we debate the nature of photogeaphy again.

»The Human Interface« Feat. @m_blehaut, @francis_ost, @tamikothiel, @leahschrager, and @speciesofvalue. Now on view at @Romenewmedia and on @cifraworld. 👀 cifra.com/playlist/the-h…

2 other editions sold yesterday 🖤 Thank you @joshuasobel for collecting those unique pieces, that express so much. The Session captures the ambiguous tension between the characters, while Vampire litterally invision the vampiric impusle of the AI agent... absorbing every thought, every memory, every loss. 🎞️Vampire, Thank You For Sharing Your Pain, @_second_guess

»When people ask, ›What do you think about the art?‹ I can’t think about the art because I don’t want to die.« — @Grimezsz in conversation with @JoshuaCitarella

✦ Release Highlights ✦ @m_blehaut explores AI, grief, and technological care. @leahschrager explores what happens when images no longer need their maker. new releases curated by @_second_guess as part of "The Human Interface" at @Romenewmedia ↓