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Using Generative AI as an Artistic Material: A Hacker's Guide
Get PDFHacking is an approach to working with technology aimed at pushing it beyond it's intended design, use it in unconventional ways in order to get it to do things it is not supposed to do. This paper documents a number of artistic experiments that take a hacker's approach to subverting and intervening in the normal functioning of generative AI systems, treating generative AI as an artistic material. This paper argues this hacking ethos offers a critical approach to explainable AI in the arts
Reducing Barriers to the Use of Marginalised Music Genres in AI
Get PDFAI systems for high quality music generation typically rely on extremely large musical datasets to train the AI models. This creates barriers to generating music beyond the genres represented in dominant datasets such as Western Classical music or pop music. We undertook a 4 month international research project summarised in this paper to explore the eXplainable AI (XAI) challenges and opportunities associated with reducing barriers to using marginalised genres of music with AI models. XAI opportunities identified included topics of improving transparency and control of AI models, explaining the ethics and bias of AI models, fine tuning large models with small datasets to reduce bias, and explaining style-transfer opportunities with AI models. Participants in the research emphasised that whilst it is hard to work with small datasets such as marginalised music and AI, such approaches strengthen cultural representation of underrepresented cultures and contribute to addressing issues of bias of deep learning models. We are now building on this project to bring together a global International Responsible AI Music community and invite people to join our network
Echoes of Elsewhere? From Archaeoacoustics to Sonic Cyberfeminisms
No full textIn this talk Annie Goh traces the figure of echo as a material-semiotic figuration from archaeoacoustics and sonic knowledge production and explore it within the ongoing Sonic Cyberfeminisms project (with Dr Marie Thompson, since 2015). Using examples from acoustic archaeology, Goh re-conceptualises echo as a feminist and decolonial sonic figuration and theorises an aural gnosis to address alternative modalities of knowing through sound and listening. What examples of such a re-conceived echo can one locate in the interrelations of sound, gender, technology of sonic cyberfeminisms
Mixed Forms in Visual Culture, Mary Anne Francis (2021)
Get PDFThis is a complex textbook addressing key examples of mixed form over the last 500 years in Western European and Anglo-American cultures. With 80 colour illustrations, it is extremely well referenced in historical and contemporary sources, yet of distinctly different parts, including two wholly visual chapters. This is a standard Bloomsbury hardback, with the paperback version published in June 2023 at considerably reduced cost. The economies of aesthetic forms, early publishing circulation, is one facet of the book’s narrative, and the contrast between mixed forms exclusively for the wealthy and popular mixed forms, is central to the book’s dramatic, and hence performative, structure. We are taken to some of the earliest European curatorial and authorial contexts in which mixed forms, whether opulent object collections or folded paper publications, constituted both a material type and a conceptual category for aristocrat and manual worker respectively. The narrative style features a broad vocabulary, inter-related arguments with cross-chapter questioning that is difficult to precis or gloss. Is there some operational logic to this type of a book? If my interpretation is valid that this project’s distinctiveness aligns visual practices with forms of material production and with modes of reading and writing employing multidisciplinary operational concepts, then this might best be understood if represented in a table. The ‘table’ therefore also stands in as a publishing convention, for a detachable, general overview of what any narrative cannot achieve in sufficient detail: a comprehensive summary. The table below (see Table 1) is a formal feature and type of paratext, which here represents a visual and conceptual overview of the book from which the review is drawn
Towards a taxonomy for assessing and classifying the needs of curly hair: A mixed method, ethnographic and quantitative data study
Get PDFHair defined as curly has an elliptical cross sectional area and unique 3D form. While the chemical, morphological and mechanical characteristics of such hair are being explored using a range of analytical techniques, hair assembly (head of hair) characteristics and individual behaviour are difficult to determine via tress-based instrumental and sensory testing. Since the demand for more efficacious and personalized products is expected to gain pace, this project sets the groundwork for developing a taxonomy for exploring and classifying curly hair needs from an individual's perspective. A mixed-method exploratory sequential design was used to gather information from people with curly hair starting with a novel in the field of cosmetics qualitative research method, Subjective Evidence-Based Ethnography (SEBE) (n = 14) and followed by an online survey (n = 212). The SEBE data analysis identified four common hair goals (aesthetic, haptic, practical and emotive) and a group of perceptions related to hair management routines. The survey explored the relationship of these hair goals with hair perceptions, hair esteem, hair characteristics and demographic variables. The findings suggest that hair goals and perceptions are stronger predictors of hair esteem than other characteristics such as hair length or curl type. Hence, a taxonomy for classifying curly hair should facilitate the development of more appropriate products, and product testing methods should incorporate such personal information in addition to objective fibre and hair assembly data. The focus of this study is on curly hair due to the lack of established methods for its objective evaluation and the personal challenges faced by people with curly and textured hair; however, the approach could be adopted to include straighter hair types
Gullible Consumers: The Contradictions of Sustainability
Get PDFContradictions of sustainability are all around us. They are referred to as contradictions because the companies that preach about their sustainable practices drive the problems. The author dives deeper into the issue and explores why we, as consumers, find these initiatives attractive. In this chapter, the author focuses on brands they have documented as contradictions; for example, fast fashion brands, attempts to reduce the amount of clothing produced by offering (both online and in-store) a donation box for shoppers to bring in unwanted clothing. The problem with many sustainability initiatives is that they are no more than buyback initiatives; such short-term decision-making is that it only diverts the problem elsewhere: far away from our eyes, to second-hand markets and landfills in countries like Ghana and Chile, where we do not know what happens. The problem with the solutions we create stems from ignoring the complexity of our world. The author further argues that we must remove the shackles of the past that determine our future by relying on the same systematic patterns that produced the previous problem and leaving them to repeat those patterns; to let go of the familiar and lay with the discomfort, the discomfort that can help imagine the world anew
The Abortive Superman: Übermensch as monster in the work of Panos Cosmatos
Get PDFThe paper examines Cosmatos's work to date: the two feature films 'Beyond the Black Rainbow'(2010), and 'Mandy' (2018), and the episode ‘The Viewing’ (2022) from the Netflix series 'Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities'. I argue that Cosmatos's films act as a vernacular critique of popular culture iterations of Nietzsche's Übermensch, and as such addresses the political and psychological anxieties of a mass North American audience. I further argue that Cosmatos is a profoundly psychoanalytical film maker, staging as horror, the subject who has weakened their ego in the name of transcendence, only to find the forces of super-ego and Id causing violent psychotic breakdown. The article takes an interdisciplinary approach to Cosmatos's contextualization (alongside more obvious peers) looking at the work of British artist Dexter Dalwood to help understand the political and philosophical aspects of Cosmatos's output
#end_of_empire: artist talk and discussion
No full textA discussion on expanded photography and the (hauntological) potential of AI, centering around the project #end_of_empire by artist Eva Sajovic in collaboration with musician Nicola Privato, commissioned for the British Textile Biennial 2023.
The evening commenced by exploring questions posed by the artists in this work, including the concept of knitting as ethical photography, the role of the body in mediating with the more-than-human, the potential and the risks of AI and the role of technology in facing the challenges of the Anthropocene. This was be followed by a response by Dr Lucy Soutter before it was opened to Q&A from the participants.
#end_of_empire was a large scale, site-specific installation featuring knitted photographs embedded with touch sensors and AI generated sound. It was a co-commissioned by In-Situ and the British Textile Biennial with This Is Nelson Town Deal funding
The British Academy ECR Research Presentation
No full textIn this presentation, Michiko will talk about their latest research project, which aims to explore the manifestation of the polytheistic and animistic imagination in various forms of popular cultures, religions, rituals, folklore, festivals and carnivals, and its innate characteristics of hedonism as a form of resistance and critique to the normalisation of life in the contemporary socio-political landscape. In particular, the project investigates three countries - Japan, Spain and the UK - in which the polytheistic imagination survives alongside/behind the dominant monotheistic belief system. The project is interdisciplinary and transcultural, involving UK-based artists and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and multicultural backgrounds. This presentation focuses on the first phase of the project, which involves our participation in the annual performance festival, the Shinano Primitive Sense Art Festival, which takes place in August in the forests of central Japan.
The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network brings together ECRs across the humanities and social sciences disciplines, regardless of their funding source or background.
The aim of the session is to bring London based ECRs together to share their work and experiences, fostering collaboration, networking, creativity, and the exchange of ideas. There will be short presentations from ECRs, followed by an open discussion and Q&A session chaired by Professor Lynda Mead FBA
Costuming fictional working-class lives: Jimmy McGovern’s The Street (2006-2009, Granada Productions)
No full textThis thesis explores common contemporary understandings and representations of workingclass lived experience, using British television industry practices involved in costuming fictional working-class lives as evidence. It specifically examines the costuming within Jimmy McGovern’s hybrid drama series The Street (2006-2009, Granada).
Critical analysis of television costume has gained momentum since the mid-1990s (Baert, 1994; Church Gibson & Bruzzi, 2004; Lugli, 2007; Warner, 2014; Brownie, 2014; Boumaroun, 2018; Wolthuis, 2020; Mullholland, 2020) however, the focus thus far has not been on the connection between costuming and representations of social class. Emphasis broadly remains on specific production/s, the work of costume practitioners, or the relationship of ‘fashion’ to screen clothing. Additionally, work on television drama's effects on audiences does not pinpoint screen clothing as a driver of wider social, cultural, or political implications.
This research therefore adds to this emerging area of study to consider how the sartorial representation of the working class may affect mainstream societal understandings and responses to class experience. It suggests that the language of costume influences relationships to class position, despite or in- spite of, the political intent of the production. The mixed methodology triangulates primary material from practitioner interviews, viewer focus groups and textual analysis of the extended case study that draws upon the industry experience and subject position of the researcher.
The aims are to explore the perceptions of working-class experience represented and to consider how the language of costume works to inhibit or successfully articulate the perceptions and/or the narrative intent of the production. By integrating theory and practice across disciplines, this research identifies that sartorial representations are limited since they are encumbered by genre-specific production practices compelled to employ a reductive visual language. As a result, the implicit meanings woven into the language of costume symbolize a presumed rejection and absence of class consciousness, which is subsequently perpetuated as the norm. What is reflected are techniques of adaptation and/or resignation demanded by the class structure, for the benefit of the class structure