Wizards vs Ai

Interesting/infuriating (delete as applicable) interview with Indie Game Studios’ publisher Travis Worthington about the use of generative AI art. Respect to Polygon’s Charlie Hall for not accepting easy answers and questioning the multiple layers of legal/moral/economic complexity.

One detail that raises question marks for me: Wizards of the Coast have stated that artists are no longer allowed to use AI in the creation of work for Dungeons and Dragons products. I’ve heard this from publishers I work for too, and although it’s a commendable stance to take, where is the line? What computational processes are considered to be Bad AI? All creative software (or, if you’re using any imagery taken with a modern camera, firmware) uses it to some degree, even if it’s just a for a bit of colour-correction or cloud-tweaking. I just don’t see how any such policy could possibly be enforced.

The whole subject seems straightforward, but then the more you scrutinise it the more you realise there are no clear definitions, no hard edges, it’s all a big mess and oh god the machines have been making self-portraits this whole time.

Grace

Still finding my footing, rhythm, what-have-you on Threads. You know what they say, when in doubt, start a thread of Grace Jones photos! One of those artistes whose modelling career is almost as significant as their musical one (see also: Björk, Kylie) – I particularly love this 1979 portrait by Richard Bernstein. I’ve tried instigating a Follow Friday thing too, much like our ancestors did back in the day.

Kylie x Farrow

In lieu of a monograph that absolutely needs to exist, I regularly crawl Farrow Design’s instagram account. Struggling to think of a designer/studio that has played a more prominent part in my musical or professional life. Great to see the original polaroid that featured on the cover of her fabulous 1999 photo book: “Her fan club members were asked to send in memorabilia which we then photographed. One day she walked in and put on a wristband from a fan and we decided on the spot that we had our cover, Kylie’s arm life size.”

Willey x Slidetober Fest

Loving this Matt Willey poster design for Slidetober Fest, in Canggu, Bali, using a photograph by Harrison Mark. Lots more great stuff on Willey’s instagram of late, including a rather splendid Mini Cooper racing livery.

Antaccent

Scientists are witnessing the birth of a new accent in Antarctica. With an international population that fluctuates seasonally between one and five thousand, it’s fascinating how all those coming-and-going voices are gradually creating something new. It’s expected something similar will happen once we settle Mars – as Jason points out, it’d be great to see the germ of this in the new season of For All Mankind.

Design Reviewed

You could easily (and happily) get lost among the pages of Matt Lamont’s Design Reviewed, a project dedicated to digitally preserving graphic design history and documenting the vast visual culture from the last century. So many good things to see, not least the collection of Graphis covers.

Kathryn Harrison

One thing I’m enjoying about Threads is the opportunity to start with a fresh slate, a new avenue for exploring what’s interesting me right now – namely photography. For the last couple of days, this has mostly involved poring over booooooom’s archive and discovering fantastic work like this selection from Floridian Kathryn Harrison.

Richard Wells

Love these calligraphy-ink portraits of Twin Peaks portraits by Richard Wells, especially this one of Lil the Dancer, aka actor Kimberly Ann Cole. I have no recollection of this character (I watched the the whole thing once, years ago, nothing really stuck), but she looks like the next of our conveyor-belt Prime Ministers. For someone who is pretty ambivalent about the work of David Lynch, I do seem to post about him a lot … may be in need of a reappraisal.

Yufan Lu

I mentioned Yufan Lu’s WePresent essay on the rising trend of cosmetic surgery in China in a previous post, but some of the images popped up on one of my various feeds this week (no idea which one … so hard to keep track these days), and there’s just something utterly captivating about them.

Pokerface

Interesting interview with The Made Shop’s Marke Johnson about the design of the Poker Face opening titles, including one particularly lovely detail: that tiny copyright line – “[There was ] a back and forth with lawyers and legal, and even Natasha Lyonne got involved and went to bat for it. Everyone fought for this copyright block. It seemed like such a small thing, but in my mind, it makes it.”

Shel Silverstein

For the Book Cover Review, Miho Aishima on her love for Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends. Aside from looking like Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina, the thing I love about Silverstein is his very particular attention to the design of his work. From wikipedia:

Silverstein believed that written works needed to be read on paper, with specific paper for the particular work. He usually would not allow his poems and stories to be published unless he could choose the type, size, shape, color, and quality of the paper. Being a book collector, he took seriously the feel of the paper, the look of the book, the fonts, and the binding. Most of his books did not have paperback editions because he did not want his work to be diminished in any way.

Myspace 20

Myspace launched TWENTY YEARS AGO. You kids won’t remember this, but it was huge. And yet its existence is almost entirely anecdotal. All we have are mentions in old blog posts, articles, jokes, a weirdly dated mention in the first Iron Man. An entire social network – at the time, the social network – can now only be inferred from the impression left by its impact. Actually, there is a way to peer back into the really-not-that-distant past: if you can remember your old username, visit Internet Archive and try myspace dot com / username – chances are, your younger self will still be on there, frozen in a CSS hellscape of your own coding.

Slight immediate correction: the website myspace.com is still a thing, but it’s now a broken down entertainment news aggregator in a state of undeath. Why has nobody bought it for pennies and turned it into something? Anything?

Photomat

There are less than fifty working analog photo booths remaining in the world now – FotoAutomat are busy restoring them and oh boy are they pretty. The behind the scenes shots of their workshop is well worth a gander.

Hammersmith

Bit obsessed with the unconventional composition of The Thames at Hammersmith by David Murray Smith, 1930; the geometric forms of the industrial buildings, framing this massive empty space in the centre of the image. And the light! Just wonderful. Curious to know if this is an identifiable stretch of the river – probably converted into luxury apartments – or if it’s all been flattened.

Juno Calypso

Juno Calypso is a wonderfully named British photographer who takes self-portraits of her alter ego ‘Joyce’. Found this one on FEUTEU, but there’s loads more on her website. Great signature by the way.

Underpass

Can’t stop looking at this photograph Moose Allain shot while out and about. So many little details, such fantastic composition. The graffiti dwarfed by its concrete canvas reminds of Lee Madwick’s art.

Rectangles

Rectangles. It occurred to me the other day how much we kind of take for granted that culture is predominantly rectangular, be it on screen or paper or canvas, mostly because it fits our means of production and consumption. But it wasn’t always this way, was it? And as we make our first tentative steps into the softer-edged era of virtual/augmented reality (or whatever that leads to), perhaps it won’t be for much longer1. One day our descendants will look back on this big chunk of human civilisation (bookended by … what? Gutenberg and Ive?) and find it quaint that we hemmed art into this neat boxes.

Priscilla

Sofia Coppola’s instagram is full of behind-the-scenes joy from throughout her career; a great taster for her forthcoming book, Archive. How lovely is this pic of Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny on the set of the forthcoming Priscilla?

If You’re Happy

Bit in love with this poster by Matt Willey for Phoebe Arnstein’s short film If You’re Happy, starring The Crown’s Erin Doherty. Incidentally, her scene marching through Buckingham Palace by torchlight while singing Starman is one of my absolute favourite moments in recent telly.

Paris skyline

While London’s skyline continues to look like a tribute to Albert Steptoe’s teeth, Paris’ longstanding ban on buildings above 37 metres proves that cities don’t need skyscrapers to thrive. This could describe countless recent blandvelopments in cities across the UK:

Nor are the zones created at the feet of towers convincing evidence that they enrich cities socially, spatially or culturally. If you go to the new multistorey districts in London, you’ll tend to find arid, lifeless places, lacking in specific character, their residents removed from street life by lifts and lobbies, their mood set by could-be-anywhere landscape design and by those chains that can pay the rents for their retail outlets. As for their supposed modernity, skyscrapers are like air travel: they used to be as glamorous as the jet set, but now they’re in a Ryanair phase – generic, dull and predictable, a default option for unimaginative property companies.