eMusings
Your eyes and ears on the worlds of art, culture, technology, philosophy - whatever stimulates the mind and excites the imagination. We remind you that 20 years of
back issues of eMusings can be found on our archives page.
In just one month the uproar over AI has spread worldwide. Once again we highlight a few of the more cogent conversations about it:
The influence of ChatGPT on architecture is examined with a series of questions, designed to evaluate AI's undersatnding of the basic issues in the industry..
A field called steganography enables pefect hiding of a machine-generated message. Where cryptography hides the content of a message,
steganography offers apparently perfect security for entire messages, whether they are text, image, video, or other media.
The creators of OpenAI had no idea how phenomenal an impact ChatGPT would make. ChatGPT is now one of the most widely used
internet apps. This article brings you a conversation with 4 of the people who helped create ChatGPT, asking how they
feel about their product.
One of the artists using OpenAI challenged it to "design me a chair made from petals". The chair was not
only designed but fabricated from thousands of laser-cut pink fabric petals, now on view at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.
An AI has been trained to mimic voices with a feature called "Forever Voices". It can send you personalized voice messages from
well-known celebrities, an example of what is called deepfake technology. The AI is found on the messaging app Telegram, which you can try for free before signing up.
Researchers are trying to connect multiple AI models to enable more "autonomous" AI. These new autonomous agents could
conceivably develop a website or newsletter, write its own code, act without human intervention, and correct its own errors.
Now on to other Spring treats:
Quilt artist Bisa Butler has transformed the medium into a dynamic presence. One of her large quilts was displayed on the cover of Time Magazine. Her debut solo show
titled "The Storm, The Whirlwind, and the Earthquake" was enthusiastically received. She has turned what was ususally categorized as a women's craft into fine art. Each of her pieces takes more than 1,000 hours to create, as she addes
appliqued cotton, silk, wool, chiffon and velvet to her constructions. She is known to celebrate historical black figures in her work, making them seem vibrant and alive.
Some years ago Frank Gehry turned architecture on its head with his free-form nonrectilinear constructions. Later Zaha Hadid added her startling organic forms to the new wave of buildings. Let's look now at the Marc Fornes
studio for some exuberant explorations of forms in space. Both Hadid and Fornes work with parametric architecture, awakening us to the beauty of curves in apace.
Watch as a Tesla humanoid bot walks and picks up objects unassisted. AI trained, the bot also identifies objects that it handles and walks
forward, albeit slowly.
A proposal has already been submittted for the next World Expo to be held in Osaka, Japan, in 2025. Apropos Architects will build a spiraling glass
structure that celebrates the glass-making history of the Czech Republic. The exterior of the building will feature fritted (sintered) glass. In addition, cut strips of glass will be placed in layers over each other, alomg with cross-laminated timber and
steel. Called "Sculpting Vitality", the building is expected to be finished in early 2025 and then remain in place as a museum or exhibition arena.
An art collective called ENESS IS experimenting with giant inflatable sculptures using AI and other high technology
tools. Some pieces change color based on motion and touch. Titles like "Modern Guru and the Path to Artificial Happiness" add to the sense of fun.
The Guardian newspaper alerts us to an unknown Black French maestro by asking, "Why has this person been erased?". Joseph Bologne will be featured
in a film called "Chevalier". The Maestro was botn in 1745 on the island of Guadeloupe, and was accomplished not only in music but in shooting, riding, dancing and fencing. He wrote innovative string quartets, was commissioned to write operas, and
was made an officer of the King's Guard. Sadly he was not given equal rights, due to his Black ancestry. Indeed he was about to become the first person of color to head the Paris Opera when he was rejected by a trio of singers who said they would
never "submit to orders of a mulatto".
Google Arts and Culture treats us to a Balinese artist named Anak Agung Gde Sobrat. Sobrat painted marketplace scenes and dancers in a naturalistic style. He was born to an
aristocratic family in 1912. Indeed the western painter Bonnet felt that Sobrat was the best Balinese painter of the period because of his skills in composition, color and drawing.
Sarah Sze is being called the perfect artist to represent an era of information overload. Some of her pieces have been compared
to an "exploded iPhone". Her works seem to have no beginning and no end. They are sometimes held together precariously by sticks, as if to emphasize the fragility of life. Seeing them from afar is different from seeing them up close. Her current
exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York is called Timelapse - it emphasizes the imposition of flux onto our daily lives, the pounding rhythm of fast moving.
Most art lovers are familiar with the large oil paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe but few have seen her early drawings and
watercolors. She pushed herself to do oils because she recognized that you had to do those to be considered important, yielding to the dictates of a macho avant-garde. To correct this oversight, the Museum of Modern Art in New York
is presenting "Georgia O'Keefe: To See Takes Time".
Many worthy art histories are vanishing as basically male-directed programmers are removing them from online sites. One of these is called "Women Artists of the American
West", a ground-breaking project conceived 20 years ago by photographer Susan Ressler. The project was shown online until recently and also published as a book and used as the basis for an art history course at Purdue University. (Note that there is
a chapter in the book called "Unfolding: A Memoir" about my early life and digital imaging).
Sagarika Sundaram creates felted tapestries which she says she treats like human bodies. In her words, "rupturing the flat surface, revealing what lies beneath layers – the sexual, painful, ugly, beautiful – interrogating what it means to be both of and alien to this world."
The artist tells us that this way of creating art began in Mesopotamia 15,000 years ago. Her work is both abstract and evocative, animated and expressive.
Kathleen Goncharov is currently the senior curator at the Boca Raton Museum of Art as well as US Commissioner to the Venice Biennale. Her pieces are seductive, sensual, and
earth-toned as they seem to slither across the surface.
c. Corinne Whitaker 2023
