Editor’s note: This story is the latest edition of Link Rot, a new column by Shanti Escalante-De Mattei that explores the intersections of art, technology, and the internet.

At the Palazzo Diedo, you can find a typically Venetian pleasure: seeing the sleek edge of contemporary art set against the backdrop of a fading fresco. And what an edge. “Strange Rules”—curated by Mat Dryhurst, Holly Herndon, and Hans Ulrich Obrist with Adriana Rispoli—gathers works of such strange futurity as fortune-telling metal plants, a film to be made over the course of a millennium by artificial intelligence, two-headed flatworms, and hyperscans of brains communicating in a pre-verbal state. In this show, the curators seem to be staking out a position on what counts as art, just as the mass adoption of blockchain, generative AI, and other disruptive technologies challenges our understanding of artistic authorship. Where is the line between content and performance art? Between scientific research and artistic research? Is using AI to make an artwork evidence of inexcusable laziness, or simply one more mechanical medium that, in the right hands, can be wielded to stimulating ends? Is a given website a gimmick, a game, or something to take seriously? These questions tend to boil down to one: “Is it art?”