Hi Crowd!
Here’s an old school meme frontloaded Crowd for you today, let’s get the self back patting out of the way first: If you’ve been following along the multipart essay series I’ve been writing about the conversation around AI & Art is now 4 parts long, I think it’ll be about 9 when it’s done and at that point I guess it needs to become a book since combined it’s already over 10k words. I’m bad at hyping my own shit, but I’m really really really really spending a lot of time on this to try and be thoughtful and do it right and I would love for the readership stats to cross into the illusive double digits. Here’s where it’s at if you want to catch up:
1: The Pre-Ramble
2: We’ve Been Here Before
3: Is It Theft?
4: The Harms Are Real
5: (forthcoming)
Speaking of writing I was honored to have the opportunity to write the forward for the Triple Trouble exhibition catalog with Shepard Fairey, Damien Hirst, and Invader – it is now available for art book fans. My new app/service Quicky is really enjoyable, or at least I’m enjoying it. There’s an opt-in option to share your digests public, and here’s what that looks like. I’m keeping the coffee diary updated and posting random links throughout the day to The Crowd Telegram group.
OK, enough about me. Well, unless you want to replace me with AI which is not entirely possible yet but getting closer every day. Honestly I might spin that up just so I can ask myself questions and then compliment myself on my own genius level hot takes. Speaking of genius level, Dillinger Four released a surprise song yesterday which I’m sure dozens of you will be excited about. I was. People are losing their minds that Taylor Lorenz racks up 17 hours of screen time a day and no matter what you do or don’t think about her I think she’s right in noting that “screen time” is a silly thing and we collectively won’t be stressing about it as much in the future as we do now. Speaking of Taylors, we watched Sheridan’s new “The Madison” show and it’s fine but it’s no Landman. I think the rule is stick to things he’s created, written and directed. They lose something when he hands some of that off. If you need a current Kurt Russel fix, as we all do, stick with Monarch. Speaking of being replaced by AI, here’s a good interview with BottoDAO about governance of an autonomous AI artist, a theme Seth talks about in this piece as well though in reference to other autonomous AIs making art. As this topic keeps being discussed we’re going to eventually start thinking more about what the whole “AI consciousness” thing means and at what point these AIs start having rights.
The White House released an app this week that apparently some people actually downloaded and installed for some insane reason, and as you might have guessed it’s spyware that logs your precise location every 4 minutes and sends that back to The Man. Turns out most of the US govt released apps are all recording way more than you probably realized. Speaking of insane in the online, Banner Highway is showing off some of the new stuff you can do with just html and holy crap this is so fun. Speaking of fun, the Afroman lawsuit is one of my favorite things of this entire year which is admittedly a low bar but none the less enjoyable. (header image by Beeple of course) I’ll assume you were following it as closely as I was. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good Downfall edit, but this one is pretty fantastic.
And speaking of global geopolitics and social media, apparently Japan almost, almost got roped into this Strait of Hormuz thing. I know most people (in the US) have stopped using X (though they were mostly replaced by bots so that’s hard to notice) but it’s still widely used in other places around the world, which honestly is a whole other problem but not one to dive into now. For those who don’t know X, or rather XAI just rolled out an automatic translation feature for Japanese. X is huge in Japan still, for a lot of reasons which I’m not going to dive into now, but all the sudden people posting in Japanese are having their posts read by English speakers and that’s creating a whole bunch of new international incidents which I’m not going to dive into now. But what I will note is that, amusingly, the English these posts are being translated into isn’t the same for everyone. US readers are seeing different translations than UK readers for example.
It’s also causing people in Japan who have until now been able to post things inside of a somewhat contained bubble to start considering larger how their comments might be taken by an international audience. Ever polite and considerate, Japanese speakers are being proactive.
OK, I really have too much time on my hands. Someone hire me for something to save me from myself.
That’s all for now. xoxo
-s