Culture and society – Page 4 – An Echo That's Reversing

DALL-E and the re-creation of the artist

Updated 31 Aug 2024

It’s an almost mundane trope now that DALL-E will obviate the need for visual artists and illustrators.

The most relevant counter to this is to look back at the advent of photography and its positive affect on artists, acting as a force compelling countless new approaches to visual expression. The effortless realism of photography changed the game–even if it was, at the beginning, crude realism. Artists came up with responses such as “vision”-base styles (Impressionism, Pointillism), psychologically-influenced styles (Symbolism, Expressionism, Fauvism), and then progressively further away from realism throughout the 1900s. Realistic and photorealistic works were still being created (Chuck Close’s work, certain periods of Gerhard Richter), but realism was now a choice. Influenced by the level playing field that photography provided, most anyone could afford their own portrait.

Driven by or co-incident with photography, “manual” visual artists also moved to more pedestrian subjects. Subjects such as boxing matches, picnics, and street scenes were added to the more rarified choices of portraits of the wealthy, scenes from mythology or religion, and the royal exploits such as hunting and whatnot. There were similar influences of subject matter prior to photography, but making realism almost effortless accelerated the direction of creativity in these areas. Rather than destroying the visual arts, photography prompted a Cambrian explosion of creativity.

Three new paintings that I’ve purchased from an English artist

I became interested in the genre of New Complexity in modern music, then became familiar with the Major Names of that genre in both composition and performance along with those I appreciated the most, then–this being the world that it is–found that some of those Major Names are online, then I “kept informed” on social media of those that are active on social media. (Side note: I often contemplate with the gravity of history the fact that as a boy of five or nine I could have met Stravinsky or Shostakovich, respectively, despite my oblivious and underserving status at the time and their importance to me today.)

Ian Pace is a pianist and composer (see A week of “The History of Photography in Sound”) who is one of the above artists who are active online and who has at several times referenced the artist and composer Jim Aitchison. Mr. Pace had commissioned several works from Aitchison and posted photos and, though I can’t find those posts right now, they resonated strongly.

Jim Aitchison, *Architecture of Landscape (psychiatric hospital and gallery)*, oil pastel, ink, and acrylic on heavy paper, ca. 2021

Suite for Orchestra, “Figures in a Landscape”–Finishing the first two movements, intent

Working on the 2nd movement, *Village I*

I can’t process this anger

In no order:

Moderate Republicans who said we were being alarmist.
Liberals/DSA who protest-voted against Hillary.
Conservative Democrats (Manchin and Sinema) whose selfish and likely corrupt inaction kneecapped the Senate.
All of the Republicans who are now Never-Trumpers who got us into this sexist, racist, classist hell but don’t admit their disastrous culpability.
Middle class white women who were too politically lazy to realize what they were voting for and what they were sentencing their daughters to.
Moderate (?) Republicans who trusted the word of a judge who sexually assaulted women (fuck “allegedly”)–including anyone who attacked Christine Blasey Ford–and another judge who is part of a far-right X-tian sect.
Many on the Supreme Court who were picked with the influence of a millenarianist group [ed. too angry to look for the references I’ve seen, come back later] Updated 5 Jul 2022, it’s Opus Dei:

Teens. Teen women esp. Vote, you stupid motherfuckers. Me and my generation need to fade out and to do so you need to god. damn. take. charge.
Me, for being comfortable. This will never affect me in my lifetime so maybe I didn’t do enough?
All women (ok, so I mean many) who voted in a manner to let this happen because others said they were being alarmist or because they wanted a Republican over a Democrat no matter the cost or because of gender self-hatred (see also: “shrill Hillary”).

I am so very tired.

January 6th Committee Hearings–Mon 9 Jun 2022

Sat down 45 minutes beforehand. The standard Tweetdeck columns opened. First column, all of those political wonks I grouped together under the custom list titled “Impeachment” and created during the first impeachment hearings. How long ago was that? Then, two columns with search results for the hashtag #January6thCommitteeHearings, one filtered for tweets with a minimum of 20 likes (trending) and one filtered for tweets with a minimum of 100 likes (more sticky). Pre-hearing commentary on MSNBC; streaming hearing on C-SPAN. Let’s go.