DEMO2025, the annual festival from NEW INC (the New Museum's incubator for cutting-edge culture), is hosting a public event at Water Street Projects in Lower Manhattan featuring on-site augmented reality experiments and new models of collective storytelling. To mark the festival, CULTURED asked several NEW INC alumni—including Idris Brewster, Mindy Seu, Stephanie Dinkins, LaJuné McMillian, and the MSCHF Collective—to share which technological developments they find most concerning as artists and which offer the most potential. Their responses address surveillance, attention economies, extractive systems, and the promise of radical alternatives rooted in collectivity and world-building.
This article matters because it captures a critical conversation among artists at the forefront of technology and culture, revealing how creative practitioners are grappling with urgent issues like AI-driven homogenization, surveillance normalization, and the dissolution of funding streams. By highlighting both fears and hopes—such as augmented reality's capacity to connect people to their environment and the potential for intentionally developed, community-based technologies—the piece offers a nuanced perspective on the intersection of art, technology, and social change, reflecting broader debates within the contemporary art world.