cultural snow: Dada

Showing posts with label Dada. Show all posts

Monday, January 23, 2023

About ChatGPT

Music critic Simon Reynolds is sanguine regarding the threat that an AI program such as ChatGPT might present to his trade:

...A.I. has no need to write, either — no deep-seated motivation to put words on paper or on screen. The kind of texts it generates resemble what I think of as “motiveless” writing, like school homework, or advertorial. Proper music criticism, even if done to earn a living, is closer to the sort of willed writing that fills diaries, journals and poems — where the compulsion to write is internal rather than externally imposed.

Except that what he (and, if you were to put a gun to my head, I) would define as “proper music criticism” has been in retreat for years, squeezed out by the twin monsters of economics and technology in favour of, well, advertorial. Mr Reynolds may well survive the onslaught, but any number of lesser names may not be so lucky.

In other news, I had a go with the program, and this happened:

PS: Also this, from The Times. “Artistic types” indeed.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

About reading

Wondering whether the world will die first of a virus or claustrophobia, I suddenly have time to read and plot the end of society. Where should I start?

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Harlem Shake, makankosappo and the death of the dream

Well, it was fun while it lasted. That brief, glorious window when web culture was all about happy, random accidents and people having fun for the hell of it is officially over; although people will need to be conned into thinking they’re still free agents or the whole edifice will fall over, probably taking what remains of consumer capitalism with it. This article identifying the people who really benefited from the Harlem Shake phenomenon is a sobering read, not because I ever gave much of a damn about the meme itself but because of the whole end-of-innocence vibe it represents; the Altamont of Web 2.0, maybe. Of course, people will still do daft, innovative things and bung them up on YouTube; but by the time most of us see them, the pimps will have got to work. “The world is divided into two categories,” said the Dadaist Francis Picabia, “failures and unknowns.” Yup.

So there’s just time to say that I rather like this most recent daft meme, makankosappo, which basically involves Japanese schoolgirls pretending to have superhuman powers. But since its arrival mysteriously coincides with the imminent release of a new movie, maybe I’m already going off it.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

My heart belongs to Dada

I seem to be stuck in a loop of post-literacy, my only creative impulse being to leach moderately amusing photos from other people’s Facebook posts (so thanks to the rum cove who goes by the handle Hegemony or Bust for these two). Is this what being on Tumblr is like?

PS: And, slightly perversely, a rather literate response to the above at Include Me Out.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Paper Rroses

You know how Tom Lehrer supposedly claimed to have stopped writing songs when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, because reality had finally triumphed over satire? And how he subsequently denied he’d said that, probably because subsequent events (George W Bush as President, Ann Widdecombe on Strictly Come Dancing) made the Kissinger thing seem almost sensible?

Well, anyway, here’s Marie Osmond reciting Dada poetry. Hat-tip to my beardy college chum Nick Abrahams.

PS: And on the subject of transgressive art, how about the phantom coat thief?