Space:Queens: Yvonne Shortt

Hey everybody! Welcome to the first installment of my Space:Queens segment, where I explore afrofuturistic art, culture and influencers in my home borough of Queens, NY! First up is Yvonne Shortt, who is the creative director of RPGA Studio, Inc., and is the curator for Queens Art Initiative, where she works on several community-based art and technology projects […]

Moving on the Wires: ‘The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics’

Louis Chude-Sokei, the author of The Last ‘Darky‘: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, will be releasing a new book, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics. Chude-Sokei, as he has done in his previous work, explores the complexities of race and ethnicity through a Caribbean lens. As someone who calls myself Afro-Caribbean-American, I […]

The My-Stery: Animism, Cybernetics and Adaptability

Ever since my mother received her smart phone, she has constantly been coming to me with numerous questions about how to use it. She has such a difficult time adapting to how it works no matter how many times I show her. No matter how much she uses the smart phone, I don’t think she […]

Modern Griots Reviews: A Dangerous Cure

We all know that humans use technology as a tool for our own advancement, but what about when technology becomes a trap to our own destruction? How do we as humans rationalize it all when technology does not help but is controlling us and leading us to chaos? This is one of the themes explored […]

Moving on the Wires: Articles and Posts from This Week

Below are some news stories and opinion pieces that I collected over the week. Since Facebook is changing up its system of how posts are viewed and is fishy with what it considers as “violating community guidelines,” I will post the articles I come across during the week on Sunday along with posting them there […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Curwen Best

I was searching for Caribbean science fiction, which is frustrating because most of the first results are for Pirates of the Caribbean (ugh!), but anyway, I stumbled across Bajan scholar Curwen Best and his analyses of the intersections between technology, the internet, social and other media, and Caribbean culture and identity. He has written a […]

The My-Stery: Why STEM Fields Need an A(rt)…

A few days ago I witnessed a twitter battle between astrologist Sam F. Reynolds and Science Nerd/Blogger Rai Elise on November 5th (click on view conversation to read her tweets) over the legitimacy of astrology and the conversation highlighted some important and common conflicts between art fields and science/math/technology fields. Reynolds says some key things […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Poets Verb + Reggie Eldridge

While watching the past two episodes of the spoken word series, Verses and Flow, on TV One, two poets stood out to me, Verb and Reggie Eldridge. Verb spoke a critique of our current dependency on hi-tech technology and it reminded me of Louis C.K. rant on smartphones. It does make you think about how […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Apeshit + The Creation of the Humanoids – The Politics of Obsolescence

This morning I heard that communication companies are attempting to rid us of phone landlines and replace them with wireless service only, and it reminded me of the two films I saw last night, Leah Gilliam‘s movie Apeshit and Wesley E. Barry‘s The Creation of the Humanoids. Gilliam spoke at the showings of the film […]

The My-Stery: Revisiting The Mask as Technology

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the mask as technology, but after reading Louis Chude-Sokei’s essay about PT Barnum and Joice Heth, I want to think further about saying that the mask is technology, specifically in reference to German producer Frank Farian and the groups Boney M and Milli Vanilli. Most people know […]