8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Category: [10] People & Places

How culture, opinion and truth shape the stories we tell and the art we make.

Chapter List

  • Joy Busters

    Why are we in such a rush to automate the things that give people the most joy?

    I have seen no shortage of posts, cartoons, reels, and tweets on the topic and usually it goes something like this: a person is begrudgingly doing the hard labour while the computer is joyously making art and composing music.

    The irony is thick.

    We built complicated algorithms and robotic mechanizations to churn through calculations and work in factories and clean our homes, and instead we’re having this crazy conversation about how we can distinguish generative music from human compositions in our playlists or avoid buying slop produced novels published in droves via online booksellers.

    Over at another blog I write about the blind pursuit of technological advancement and the cost to our humanity.  You might find it interesting, too. 

    AI.

    Generative content replacing our creative efforts. Our intellectual property slurped into algorithms that spit it back out through chatbots and neural engines meant to automate creative effort and pull humanity out of the business of using our imaginations.

    We work hard all our lives so we have time to pursue hobbies, and for many hobbies are painting in the park or playing in a band or cozying up with a keyboard and trying to write the next great novel.

    Are we so eager to hand these things over to algorithms?

    Of course not, you scream into your screen, that’s why we’re all so angry about this so called revolution of generative artificial intelligence. You’re just stating the obvious!

    But someone is eager, no? Someone wants to suck the joy out of humanity, and why is that?

  • People Places

    I am writing this from within the abyss of the political dark ages of the mid twenty-twenties. 

    Nationalism is in a kind of haphazard resurgence. The media is faltering. Artificial intelligence is clouding the internet with a seemingly unlimited supply of slop and misinformation.

    It is dire.

    And artists have this important role to play: continuing to make stuff despite the inanity. 

    Despite wars. Despite clashing cultures. Despite self-dealing politicians. Despite generative algorithms pumping out dead-on-arrival content.

    And to top it all of, half of the people that could read this will discount it as the words of a man sitting across on the other side of a funhouse mirror making up a reality they disagree with. We can’t even see eye to eye on that anymore.

    Culture is opinion. Opinion is truth. And truth (whatever that might be) has always shaped the stories we tell through our words, sounds, music, and art.

    I write this very blog in competition with countless algorithms that will fight to ensure it only get seen if it generates money for a shareholder somewhere, profit for a corporate bottom line, or revenue for someone who is probably not me.

    We are humans caught up in a system and we are treading water in a creative torrent that we can barely understand. The abyss is below. The sky is above—so long as we can keep our heads above the flow of society.

    Under the category of People & Places, I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Uncritical Content

    At first I was casually avoid it, but lately I’ve been actively blocking and aggressively veering my personal algorithm away from it: complaint baiting. 

    Sloppy critique often starts off as sincere criticism. I imagine so, anyhow. I would like to think that many of the types of armchair film critics and technology buffs and gaming reviewers started off with a genuine interest in doing artistic criticism.

    Rightly defined criticism and critique are invaluable aspects of the feedback loop for artists and creators. One of those difficult but important skills any artist must learn is how to take critique and learn from it without crumbling under the perception of negativity.  Good critique, after all, is not anger or dismissal or ridicule: it is important information to help someone redirect their effort and improve it on the next iteration or attempt. 

    Yet, social media has become rife with what seems to be more of something I would call complaint-driven content. It disguises itself as critique, but rather than offering insight or nudging the artist in a slightly different, presumably better direction creatively… it rails. It gripes. It complains. It mocks. It leeches off the work to make something ugly of its own that was never intended to lift or improve or offer even critical support of the original.

    I have to assume there is an audience for that, and an audience means clicks and revenue.  The capital-driven feedback loop never fails in this regard.

    I also have to assume the only recourse towards weakening its grasp on society is to each do our parts in ignoring it, blocking it, and discouraging it through our lack of attention.

  • Never Enough 

    I recently came across a social media thread that got my head churning. 

    A person whom I follow, a prolific nature photographer, had received a comment from another of his followers demanding—demanding!—that he reveal the location of the photograph. He posted screenshots of their conversation and it went pretty much exactly how one might expect a dialog between a proud creator and an entitled audience member might escalate into digital fisticuffs. 

    Such is the nature of making anything for a large audience these days, and the the online market in which we all abide merely seems to amplify it as it sends our work to the furthest reaches of culture and opinion. This, and a long list of similar reactions I’ve had personally with people online lately, illustrates a point that has been gnawing at me: you can never know what your audience expects from your art.

    In this case, the photograph was beautiful and interesting and since it was shared for free with tens of thousands of people one would have thought there should be little to complain about. In fact, one would have thought the creator had been more than generous giving away their work. But the person who complained was aggrieved and argued that the photographer was required to go one step further and provide geographic coordinates for the location of the photo.

    Why?

    Unclear.

    But I’ve seen this effect emerge with increasing frequency.

    What you believe to be generosity and quality, giving one hundred percent for very little in return is viewed as insufficient by an invisible audience.

    And you can choose to agree and shrivel at the criticism, adapt to the feedback—or just keep doing what you are doing.

  • Opinionated Facts

    My opinion is not fact.

    Elsewhere, I do a lot of writing about critical thinking and evidence-based inquiry. That is to say, I am curious about curiosity and the mechanisms by which we learn, know, and believe things to be true.

    If they are actually true is an entirely different matter, of course.

    I was watching a video the other day, a review for an audio product of some sort, and after a lot of “shoulds” and other such recommendations by the host he looked right into the camera, his voice changed tone, and he solemnly added the caveat to his entire product rant saying “…but my opinion is not fact, it’s just my opinion. Do your own research.”

    What a great thought.

    This concept of opinion versus fact too often, in my opinion, goes unsaid.

    A lot of us making and creating and sharing find it easier to do so without the burden of evidence or absolutes. We write something and then hang it out there for evaluation, all the while never adding that asterisk of self-checking: adding, perhaps that this is just an opinion, my opinion, and I stand by it, but you should make your own judgements after all. 

    This is my opinion, everything I write here, all the advice and so-called insight. My ideas. My thoughts. My scribbles. My notions, and all of it based in my singular experience. It’s not fact, unsaid as I often leave it to be.

    Take it for what it is worth. Nothing more, nothing less.