Tag: Art

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Coyote vs Acme and the blockbusters that may never be seen

…if Coyote vs Acme was finished, why not release it, anyway? The answer, apparently, is that distributing and promoting a film adds so much to the overall cost that it is hard for it to make a profit. It can be cheaper for a studio to dismiss the film as a “tax write-down”, and claw back millions of dollars. But the strategy is only legal if the film is never shown. Effectively, it has to cease to exist.

Films, it seems, are no longer being seen as works of art – or even as pieces of entertainment. They are being seen as items on a balance sheet, minor details in a global corporate strategy, and small components in a portfolio of intellectual property.

Reminder that large entertainment conglomerates are not your friend.

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Monaspace is a family of monospaced fonts with some interesting features. The fonts are sized to be interchangeable, and they have something called “texture healing.” With monospaced fonts, wide (w, m) and narrow (i,l) letters are the same width, but texture healing widens the wide letters when they’re adjacent to a narrow letter while maintaining equal spacing.

I’m not sure I actually love any of these enough to switch from my usual fonts, but the tech behind them is super interesting.

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…the only way I can understand Rodriguez’s incredibly thin-skinned reaction to my article is that he has managed to rise to this status of apex visibility without any kind of critical writing about him at all. It’s all just been feel-good profiles, so that the first critical word feels like a huge crisis. That’s a relatively new kind of situation for an artist to be in, and worth analyzing.

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The music business used to be characterised by artists disappearing into the studio for months on end and emerging with an album for expectant fans to get their hands on at some time in the future…Streaming and social media combined to turn that model on its head, heralding the era of the always-on artist. Now, artists fear the consequences of not putting out a single every month.

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(English version follows | Angla versio sekvas)

[La interna ideo estas ke] sur neĆ­trala lingva fundamento forigi la murojn inter la gentoj kaj alkutimigadi la homojn, ke ĉiu el ili vidu en sia proksimulo nur homon kaj fraton. Ĉio, kio estas super tiu interna ideo de Esperanto, estas nur privataÄ”o, kiu povas eble esti bazita sur tiu ideo, sed neniam devas esti rigardata kiel identa kun ĝi.

Ĉio cifereca kion oni kreas en Esperanton estu senpaga kaj libere kopiebla, speciale en la epoko de la interreto. Estas tiom multe da bonaj esperantaj rimedoj (libroj, kantoj, tradukoj, lerniloj, kulturaÄ”oj, kaj tiel plu) kiuj oni ne rajtas kunhavigi ĉar ili estas “protektata” pro kopirajto. Sed kunhavigi alian kopion ne havas koston, kaj kunhavigi alian kopion ne forigas kopion de alia, do kontraĆ­ kio kopirajto protektas ciferecan verkon?

Ĉi tiu kredo ne instigas ke homoj ne povus esti pagata por laboro por esperanto, tio estas ke se oni estas esperanta guvernisto aƭ organizanto aƭ verkisto aƭ muzikisto kaj tiel plu, nur ke verkoj kiuj povas esti kopiata ne havu protekton kontraƭ kopiado.

Ĉi tiu kredo ankaƭ ne signifas ke oni ne povas vendi konkretajn esperantaĔojn (tio estas libroj, kompaktaj diskoj, artaĔoj, kaj tiel plu).

Ĉi tiu kredo ankaƭ ne instigas ke oni povas alproprigi la verkojn de aliaj aƭ ke homoj perdu sian statuson kiel originala verkisto.

Ke tiu ĉi kredo estas “super” la interna ideo mi ne kredas. Ĝi estas bazita sur la ideo, kaj celas helpi ĝin. Esperanto celas forigi la murojn inter la gentoj; kopirajto (de ciferecaj esperantaj verkoj) celas teni tiujn murojn.

Copyright is against the internal idea of Esperanto

[The internal idea is that] on the foundation of a neutral language remove the barries between peoples and accustom people that everyone from their point of view is a person and brother. Everything that is above this internal idea of Esperanto, is merely a private matter, which can possibly be based on this idea, but never should be regarded as identical to it.

Everything digital that one creates in Esperanto should be without cost and freely copiable, especially in the internet age. There are so many good esperanto resources (books, songs, translations, learning materials, cultural works, etc) which one isn’t able to share because they are “protected” because of copyright. But to share another copy doesn’t have a cost, and to share another copy doesn’t delete another’s copy, so what is copyright protecting digital work from?

This belief doesn’t mean that people can’t be paid for their Esperanto work, that is that if one is an Esperanto tutor or organizer or author or musician etc, only that works that can be copied shouldn’t have protection against copying.

This belief also doesn’t mean that people can’t sell physical esperanto works (that is books, CDs, works of art, etc).

This belief also deson’t mean that one can appropriate works from others or that people should lose their status as the original author.

I don’t believe that this belief is above the internal idea. It is based on the idea and aims to help it. Esperanto aims to remove the walls between peoples; copyright (of digital works) aims to maintain those walls.

 

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Only material that provokes an emotional reaction will be shared, and a lot of AI generations are devoid of personality. Technical skill isn’t what makes fans join someone’s Patreon or buy their work, or at least not all of it — it’s the person behind it. Once the gimmick of generative AI wears off, the material will have to be good enough to organically earn attention. Creators can’t compete with AI on volume, but they beat it on humanity.

I think I kind of came to a similar conclusion (but regarding AI music). No matter how good AI art is or might become, no one will ever really identify with it or appreciate it in the same way they do with art that was made by a human.

People’s taste in music is largely governed by their identity and culture. A large part of a listener’s attraction to a musician isn’t just the music they make, but how the listener absorbs and incorporates the artist as part of their identity and cultural beliefs. I don’t see people resonating with AI musicians in the same way. No one is going to have a favourite AI musician in the same way they have a favourite performer.

 

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One of my favorite writing prompts comes from a podcast I love by three veteran journalists. They have a segment called, “Some idiot wrote this.”
The point of the segment is not (usually) to pick on the writer of a bad take, unless the take is egregiously error-prone. It’s just a jumping-off point for the three to discuss the correct way to approach, research, and write an article on whatever the topic may be.

This is a much more constructive approach to making criticism.

If you have a criticism of something you’re implying that there could exist a better version. And if there is, why not demonstrate it? Or at least tell us about it?

Being able to articulate criticism via creation or even revision is a gurantee of good criticism. If you’re struggling to imagine how to improve something, chances are you don’t understand what you’re dealing with enough to be in a position to criticize.