Module: DM7917
This week I turned my attention the the role of art and culture, of AI and technological advancement, and those emerging technologies and how we might use them.
I came across the name Ray Kurzweil, a director of engineering at Google, a futurist. Kurzweil has written about topics wide ranging from biotechnology and nanotechnology to artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and the technological singularity.
An article by Mathew Kenedy: https://rossdawson.com/futurist/best-futurists-ever/ray-kurzweil/
gives an insight to the areas of his work. You can read many accurate predictions and his other successes, in his 2010 essay titled “How My Predictions Are Faring.” Page 91-92 is of significance as he mentions Dynamic Virtual Art, virtual paintings and digital installations. The predictions of how we will shape and view art were written by Kurzweil in the book The Age of Spiritual Machines, written in the mid to late 1990s.
Generative art, http://www.soban-art.com/ga.asp as seen here in Bogdan Sobian's website and referenced by Kurzweil, is about a programme running a manipulation to the artists desire, creating a new work from a set of parameters instructed by the creative.
I have also been working on a series of artworks that use repetition as its basis for the work, the digital image is manipulated and sometimes painted to then create a worthy art piece. That is my interpretation of worthy, as the first creation of the digital piece should be enough.
See more here: https://www.instagram.com/tina_scahill_design/
Digital creativity and the monetisation of such work is emerging and we are philosophising about its impact in society today.
NFTs are todays watchword, NFTs are "one-of-a-kind" assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property, but they have no tangible form of their own. NFTs can also contain smart contracts that may give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
A quote from a recent BIMA conference (https://resources.bima.co.uk/partner/bima/bima-huddle-the-big-nft-debate-643/thanks) panel members say of the NFT debate is:
"a modern renaissance"
NFTs are being used also as a key to access the image file, movie file or animated gif, so it provides the owner a source of power over the item they own. I shall revisit this area of art ownership as the AR value in the art created needs to be tied into a digital buying and selling of the asset and thus producing art worthy of showing, owning and selling.
A brilliant article about the loss of our archives and faking the reality we know:
by Rick Prelinger is an archivist, filmmaker, writer, and educator whose collection of 60,000 films was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. He is currently chair and professor of film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.