Do Not Research

Do Not Research is a multidisciplinary publication exploring contemporary issues through art, essays, and analyses. It covers internet culture, digital and political art, technology's impact on society, and the evolving relationship between humans and digital media. Themes include the critique of consumer culture, digital legacy, and speculative futures.

Internet Culture Digital Art Technology and Society Consumerism Mental Health Political Art Digital Legacy Speculative Futures Environmental Impact of Technology Human-Computer Interaction

The hottest Substack posts of Do Not Research

And their main takeaways

Holly Overton: After Geoengineering Paintings

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Cultural Theory Consumer Culture Climate change
  1. Art can convey messages about the environmental impact and human perception of nature, like in the paintings of Holly Overton.
  2. Wetlands play a crucial role in absorbing and storing carbon; restoring them can help reduce carbon in the air significantly.
  3. Climate change responsibility extends beyond individual households, requiring collective emotional responses to mobilize effective actions.

Christopher Michael: WHOLEEARTHBELOWME

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Visual Arts Cultural Commentary Technology
  1. Heavenly thinking, focused on utopian goals, influences both religious beliefs and modern technological advancements.
  2. The concept of Heaven is portrayed as a virtual space, always just beyond reach but never truly attainable in the present.
  3. The project WHOLEEARTHBELOWME explores contemporary examples of Heavenly thinking through a sound piece that includes AI voices and meditational sounds.

Pneumatic Materials: Digital Pseudepigraphy

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Internet Religion History
  1. The internet's resharing culture, particularly of anonymous texts and images, raises questions of authority and authorship in a digital age.
  2. Anonymity on platforms like 4chan gives an aura of authority to content, blurring the lines between human authorship and collective knowledge.
  3. False attribution has been a longstanding practice, lending authority to texts and ideas across history, just as contemporary online content can create a veneer of authenticity through obscurity.

Troy Scully: Selected Works

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Visual art Paintings Conceptual Art Contemporary Art
  1. The artist explores the human impulse toward comprehension and how it is affected by the constantly changing landscape of information.
  2. The works by Troy Scully reflect themes of political anxieties, ecological autonomy, and content fatigue.
  3. The artwork presents fragmented narratives and didactic suggestions, hinting at complex societal issues and individual experiences.

Austin Kim: HALLOWED BE THY NAME

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Childhood Religion Video
  1. The author reflects on childhood weirdness and how certain memories shape us, even if we don't fully realize it at the time.
  2. Rituals involve convincing oneself to momentarily believe in something outside of normal logic, using psychodrama and repetition.
  3. Themes of religious prayer, devotion, and piety play a role in the psychological drama of ritualistic behavior.
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Logan Bruni: To The Heavens

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Visual art Digital Art
  1. An artist created a digital art piece featuring 3D scans of cultural objects from different sources like historical art, public app uploads, and everyday items.
  2. The digital art piece includes a mix of spiritually driven objects, kitsch toys, and everyday items such as a toothbrush and wallet.
  3. The background of the art piece is a video of a 13th-century painting of a space shuttle launch, accompanied by Britney Spears' song Everytime.

Pneumatic Materials: Episode 0

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
⛪ Faith & Spirituality Philosophy Theology Art
  1. Pneumatic Materials explores spirituality through art, culture, and philosophy
  2. The project aims to offer an alternative to reactionary dogmatism by addressing the yearning for God in modern society
  3. Episode 0 discusses themes like net-based religious larping, esoteric Instagram, and Christian Atheism

Nick Bird: They Speak to you Like You Are Children

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Media Politics Internet Youth Psychology
  1. Many individuals do not perceive the urgency for change in today's societal and political circumstances.
  2. Media and communication often patronize audiences by speaking to them in a condescending manner, like children.
  3. It is crucial for young people to critically navigate online information and avoid falling into dangerous or unproductive ideological traps.

Joe Iovino: Neoliberal Children's Books

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Children's Books Children's literature
  1. Children's books have changed, with a rise in books by political figures for kids, often serving propaganda-like purposes.
  2. Two major categories include the Hagiographic Style that glorifies figures and the Friendship Style that simplifies morals in a cartoonish way.
  3. Conservative figures have created their own publishing ecosystem for children's books, more focused on influencing young minds compared to their liberal counterparts.

Eamon Levesque: We Need To Talk About Mikey

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Internet culture Mental health Online Harassment Social media Internet Fame
  1. Mikey's online presence highlights the phenomenon of internet micro-celebrities showcasing funny but concerning content based on their mental health struggles.
  2. The concept of a 'Cringe Vortex' categorizes how individuals can unintentionally become targets of online mockery, leading to potential mental health issues and harmful repercussions.
  3. Learning from past cases like ChrisChan, a structured understanding of the phases and potential exits from the 'Cringe Vortex' can help in recognizing and possibly preventing similar situations in the future.

Drew (Kunai): Bootleg Adidas

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Design Critique Digital Platforms Brand
  1. Speculative design can provide a way of seeing the present, not just imagining the future.
  2. Art that blurs the line between independent creation and corporate merchandise challenges audience perceptions and sparks thought.
  3. Using corporate motifs can transform artisanal objects into mass-market goods and facilitates worldbuilding in reality.

John Fullmer: Symbology Jacket

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🪞 Fashion & Beauty Fashion
  1. The Symbology Jacket by John Fullmer features 63 patches inspired by secret black site insignia, limited edition projects, and military specifications, sewn onto a military bomber jacket.
  2. The patches are based on Trevor Paglen's Symbology project and include unique designs from projects like the Orbital Reflector and Do Not Research.
  3. The jacket, made of mid-weight flight nylon with water resistance, stays close to the classic military bomber jacket specifications while crossing over into civilian fashion.

Max Dauven: Assuming Control

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Photography Memes Digital Art
  1. Max Dauven is a photographer from Cologne, Germany, who recently graduated from the Academy of Media Arts.
  2. In his diploma project, Dauven explored the visual aspects of memes through a photographic lens, connecting analog/digital photography with internet meme practices.
  3. Dauven's approach involved arranging and photographing key meme fragments as sculptures in a photo studio, minimally digitally processed to preserve their essence and showcased as art pieces.

Paige K B: laugh(riot)

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Visual art Digital Art Contemporary Art Fine Art Mixed Media
  1. The artwork created by Paige K B in 2021 included a seven-foot-tall digital print on vinyl and two smaller drawings with a predominant color of yellow, referencing political imagery like the Gadsden flag.
  2. Paige K B's work aimed to offer a facetious take on significant events like the Capitol riots, combining humor with elements of tragedy and personal experiences with art institutions.
  3. The artwork by Paige K B incorporated intricate details, textures, and symbols such as the crane, bridging connections between internet memes, historical references, and future technological developments.

Michael Bikeal: Skitching w/NPCs

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Capitalism Politics Social Change
  1. Psychogeography encourages unconventional ways of engaging with infrastructure to reconnect with more inventive and fun ways of navigating the world.
  2. Skitching involves riding a bicycle and getting pulled by a moving car, offering a unique and thrill-inducing DIY transportation experience.
  3. The concept of NPC memes dehumanizes individuals and reflects a societal struggle with dissociation caused by modern capitalism's impact on our minds and experiences.

Jakob Maier: Friend

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Entertainment Media Consumption Nostalgia Digital Media Identity
  1. Media consumption plays a significant role in filling the void of loneliness, allowing individuals to form parasocial relationships with characters on the screen.
  2. The ironic memeification and hyper-sincere fan economies of entertainment franchises like Friends showcase how media consumption can become an identity signifier and a meme.
  3. The average American has been spending around 8 hours per day on streaming services during the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating a steady increase in digital media consumption.

Annebel Breij: Capitalist Realism Meme Book

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Memes Critical Theory
  1. Memes can be a powerful form of communication and expression in online spaces.
  2. Creating and understanding memes can provide insights into critical theories and unconventional ideas.
  3. Translating memes correctly requires a deep understanding of theory and can lead to a greater appreciation of the knowledge they contain.

DJ Big Dumb Idiot: Parasite

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Music Inspirational Literature Nostalgia Visual art
  1. DJ Big Dumb Idiot's work is both deeply serious and deeply unserious, making them embolden each other.
  2. The author struggled to incorporate new knowledge into their existing art practice and needed to become DJ Big Dumb Idiot to finish their project.
  3. Parasite, a jungle tune, mourns lost futures and Mark Fisher's work, aiming to be part of a world that could be free.

Pixel Austerity: Brand Manifesto

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Activism Art Social media Environmentalism Satire
  1. Pixel Austerity promotes reducing online carbon footprint by dithering images, making them less resource-intensive and retro-looking.
  2. The movement challenges the idea of wasteful NFTs and advocates for greener alternatives.
  3. Pixel Austerity critiques performative activism on social media and aims to provoke thoughts on systemic change for a sustainable future.

Mitch Anzuoni: DESENSITIZED WEB: A SURVEY OF CRYPTOLITERATURE

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
📚 Literature Web3 Digital Media Financing
  1. The rise of web3 platforms like Mirror is changing how writers monetize their content, moving away from ads and grants towards market speculation and tokenizing their work.
  2. Mirror blurs the line between readers and investors, offering backers a stake in the digital assets created by writers, fundamentally altering the traditional relationship between creators and their audience.
  3. While platforms like Mirror offer new financial opportunities for writers, the shift towards a tokenized creative environment raises questions about the true value placed on artistic expression versus financial gain.

Do Not Research: Mont‐Pèlerin Field Trip

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
💾 History Neoliberalism Economic Development Corruption
  1. After WWII, the Mont‐Pèlerin Field Trip laid the foundation for neoliberalism as a new economic orthodoxy.
  2. The Mont‐Pèlerin building intended to be luxury apartments lies empty due to halted credit flows and investor interest vanishing.
  3. One of the shareholders of the holding company involved in the Mont‐Pèlerin development has been implicated in fraud and money laundering, showcasing the dark side of neoliberalism.

Travis Hunnie: Dark Forests and Student Organizing

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Art Political Activism Education
  1. Starting a student group during a labor dispute involved combining online and offline experiences from dark forest spaces.
  2. Creating a collective space in Discord allowed for trust to develop, enabling risky direct actions like sit-ins and pickets.
  3. Engaging in community organizing work alongside artistic practice led to personal transformation and upcoming exhibition of solidarity experiences.

Dale Eisinger: Appropriating Celebrity: The Efficiency of Digital Detournement

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Celebrity Memes Fandom Art
  1. Memes have become a common component of web browsing, social media, and politics, spreading rapidly and influencing behaviors through easily accessible formats like imagery and short text.
  2. Celebrities serve as a powerful tool for endorsement and representation in the modern digital age, impacting consumer choices and political perceptions through the mere existence of their image.
  3. Detournement, a strategy of disrupting the cultural logic of capitalism by using image commodities against themselves, emphasizes the unification of seemingly unrelated elements to create subversion and arousal of uncertainty.

Ferg: Contemporary Animation Technique and Aesthetics

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Animation Technique Aesthetics Craft Concept
  1. Animation has gone through a transition with the dominance of digital techniques, leading to a reevaluation of aesthetics like CGI's representational realism.
  2. Modern animated films like Klaus, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, and I Lost my Body are experimenting with merging 2D and 3D techniques to create innovative visuals.
  3. There is a significant difference in approach between craft-focused animation education and concept-focused fine art education, impacting the way artists value their work.

Theo Belci: Vessel JR

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Satire Gentrification Urban Development
  1. The artwork 'Vessel Franchise' by Theo Belci aims to critique gentrification and corporate influence on art in New York City, turning real-estate brochures into art pieces.
  2. The project consists of three images and a memo that satirize the impact of large-scale art projects on affordable living spaces and countercultural development in the city.
  3. Theo Belci's work reflects on the continuous transformation of New York City, highlighting the push towards soulless corporate construction over artistic and community-oriented spaces.

Ruba Al-Sweel: The Map of Hell

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎨 Art & Illustration Visual art Internet culture Geography Cultural influence
  1. The Map of Hell project is inspired by works by Sandro Botticelli and Caroline Busta, reimagining the internet as a deepening geological structure with different levels of access.
  2. The art project layers retro Khaleeji music and Arabic pop from the early 2000s, connecting it with the broadband internet era and the global culture created through BitTorrent and Youtube tutorials.
  3. The project sets its absurd journey in an oceanic setting, reflecting the dominance of aquatic terms in internet lingo and hinting at vast undersea cables.

Gustav Heinsen: KidZania; Branding a Society

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🎭️ Culture Society Branding Education Community
  1. KidZania is a global theme park company that brands itself as a society, with its own government, currency, and brand loyalty through edutainment.
  2. The company blurs the lines between work and play, offering children the experience of working in corporate-sponsored jobs and earning money for products while promoting brand loyalty.
  3. KidZania constructs a community with shared consciousness through a detailed brand identity that promotes a Westernized idea of society, equating citizenship, life, and success with work within a corporate structure.

Attila Haraszti: The Dire, Bullshit Economics of Twitch Creators

0 implied HN points • 15 Feb 22
🕹 Technology Social media Streaming Economics Creativity Online Platforms
  1. The majority of Twitch creators do not earn enough to reach the Euro-American minimum wage, relying on additional sources like patrons and sponsorships to make a living.
  2. There is a small percentage of creators on Twitch, approximately 0.117%, who are on track to earn the minimum wage in 2021, highlighting the challenges many creators face in achieving sustainable incomes.
  3. The creator economy includes around 50-60 million 'aspiring' content creators worldwide, but only a fraction of them, about 1 million, are considered 'professionals' who can make at least the minimum wage from social platforms.

DNR FALL 2021: Margo Bergamini & Abbey Pusz

0 implied HN points • 08 Oct 21
🎨 Art & Illustration Political Discourse Art Community
  1. The DNR project recognizes artists as critical influencers in the online political discourse, aiming to challenge mainstream news cycles and dogmatisms.
  2. The community formed around DNR serves as a peer-to-peer school for artists, exploring political imagination and questioning the current state of the art world.
  3. DNR's research aspect not only informs art practice but also detects emergent trends, highlighting the interplay between aesthetic ideals, politics, and cultural influences.

Holly O: MILK WARS

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🏥 Health & Wellness Nutrition Dairy Food Industry
  1. The online world has seen the rise of alternative health communities questioning mainstream narratives.
  2. Seed oils, with contradictory health impacts, have become symbolic of discourses around health and modernity.
  3. There's a symbolic battle between dairy traditionalists and milk alternatives, reflecting deeper sentiments about food production and personal choice.

DJ UMBERTO ECCO 2K MANIFESTO

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🎶 Music Manifesto
  1. The post is about the DJ Umberto Ecco 2K Manifesto shared on donotresearch.substack.com
  2. The post includes multiple images and options for sharing through social media platforms like Facebook and Email
  3. There are several repetitive prompts to share the post throughout the content

My Political Journey: Margo Bergamini

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Identity Online Culture Mental health Literature
  1. The author's political journey was heavily influenced by their personal experiences as a transgender individual, which led them to radical politics.
  2. Discovering folk-punk music in middle school sparked the author's interest in anarchism and DIY culture, shaping their political views.
  3. Engaging with online communities and content creators, such as leftist YouTubers and anarchist subreddits, played a significant role in the author's evolving political ideologies.

Academic Fraud: The Memeing of Mark Fisher

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🎭️ Culture Social media Memes Comedy Internet culture
  1. Mark Fisher may not have appreciated memes and jokes made about him, as he seemed serious and critical in his views.
  2. Despite some of Mark Fisher's predictions about social media not coming true, there is still value in the online discourse and sharing of niche interests through memes and content.
  3. The act of 'shitposting' and creating memes can unintentionally lead to a better understanding of complex topics and attract new readers to philosophical works.

Devin Thomas O'Shea: /lit/

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
📚 Literature Novels Authors Reading Academia
  1. The /lit/ board attracts a diverse group including thwarted academics, aspiring writers, and individuals seeking intellectual validation outside traditional institutions.
  2. Reading novels is still important because it provides a break from the attention economy and encourages active, empathetic thinking that is often lacking in late capitalism.
  3. The landscape of academia, especially in fields like English Literature, is changing with a shift towards areas like Ethnic Studies and a decline in traditional humanities departments.

Sketchbook: Abbey Pusz

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🎨 Art & Illustration Visual art Digital Art Illustration Fine Art
  1. Sketchbook consists of eight vertical video art pieces capturing spiritual desires and radical political demands for a postcapitalist future.
  2. The works in Sketchbook were originally presented as Instagram stories and serve as digital inspiration for promotional purposes.
  3. The series includes a mix of artwork and promotional content for DoNotResearch.net or the artist's physical exhibitions.

Joshua Citarella: Auto Experiment: Hyper Masculinity

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🏥 Health & Wellness Fitness Nutrition Supplements Mental health Self-Improvement
  1. Engaging in extreme male improvement techniques can physically transform you but may not change your political views.
  2. Managing your exposure to toxins like phthalates and xenoestrogens can have a significant impact on your health and well-being.
  3. Challenging disciplines like seed retention can lead to personal transformation in terms of energy, focus, and self-awareness.

Alfred Muszynski: Can't Delete Later

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🎨 Art & Illustration Paintings Media Cultural analysis Digital Art
  1. The project 'Can't Delete Later' showcases a collection of oil paintings exploring the power of images and media as an archive.
  2. The focus is on the shift from individuality to collectivity in cultural preference, leading to a new way of perceiving online behaviors and their impact beyond the digital realm.
  3. Through 'devirtualization,' the project merges digital culture with physical reality, offering a holistic and un-deletable portrait of both no one and everyone.

Dank Lloyd Wright: Wanderer Above the Burning Yards

0 implied HN points • 15 Sep 21
🎨 Art & Illustration Architecture Capitalism Neoliberalism
  1. Hudson Yards in Manhattan symbolizes the trend of privatized urban development under capitalism.
  2. The architecture community is grappling with being dominated by finance capital and speculative real estate, leading to a lack of solidarity and meaningful change.
  3. There is a growing desire within the younger generation of architects for an anti-capitalist narrative and a need for outlets to express frustrations and disappointments.