Search

Placeholder Content Image

The art of ‘getting lost’: how re-discovering your city can be an antidote to capitalism

<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephen-dobson-1093706">Stephen Dobson</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/cquniversity-australia-2140">CQUniversity Australia</a></em></p> <p>Do you remember what it was like to discover the magic of a city for the first time? Do you remember the noises, smells, flashing lights and pulsating crowds? Or do you mostly remember cities through the screen of your phone?</p> <p>In 1967, French philosopher and filmmaker Guy Debord <a href="https://files.libcom.org/files/The%20Society%20of%20the%20Spectacle%20Annotated%20Edition.pdf">publicised the need</a> to move away from living our lives as bystanders continually tempted by the power of images. Today, we might see this in a young person flicking from one TikTok to the next – echoing the hold images have on us. But adults aren’t adverse to this window-shopping experience, either.</p> <p>Debord notes we have a tendency to observe rather than engage. And this is to our detriment. Continually topping-up our image consumption leaves no space for the unplanned – the reveries to break the pattern of an ordered life.</p> <p>Debord was a member of a group called the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Situationist-International">Situationist International</a>, dedicated to new ways we could reflect upon and experience our cities. Active for about 15 years, they believed we should experience our cities as an act of resistance, in direct opposition to the (profit-motivated) capitalistic structures that demand our attention and productivity every waking hour.</p> <p>More than 50 years since the group dissolved, the Situationists’ philosophy points us to a continued need to attune ourselves – through our thoughts and senses – to the world we live in. We might consider them as early eco-warriors. And through better understanding their philosophy, we can develop a new relationship with our cities today.</p> <h2>Understanding the ‘situation’</h2> <p>The Situationist International movement was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183p61x">formed</a> in 1957 in Cosio di Arroscia, Italy, and became active in several European countries. It brought together radical artists inspired by spontaneity, experimentalism, intellectualism, protest and hedonism. Central figures included Danish artist <a href="https://museumjorn.dk/en/">Asger Jorn</a>, French novelist <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/michele-bernstein-10219/">Michèle Bernstein</a> and Italian musician and composer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Olmo">Walter Olmo</a>.</p> <p>The Situationists were driven by a <a href="https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/34141">libertarian form of Marxism</a> that resisted mass consumerism. One of the group’s early terms was “unitary urbanism”, which sought to join avant-garde art with the critique of mass production and technology. They rejected “urbanism’s” conventional emphasis on function, and instead thought about art and the environment as inexorably interrelated.</p> <p>By rebelling against the invasiveness of consumption, the Situationists proposed a turn towards artistically-inspired individuality and creativity.</p> <h2>Think on your own two feet</h2> <p>According to the 1960 <a href="https://hts3.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/situationist-international-manifesto.pdf">Situationist Manifesto</a> we are all to be artists of our own “situations”, crafting independent identities as we stand on our own two feet. They believed this could be achieved, in part, through “<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/psychogeography#:%7E:text=Psychogeography%20describes%20the%20effect%20of,emotions%20and%20behaviour%20of%20individuals">psychogeography</a>”: the idea that geographical locations exert a unique psychological effect on us.</p> <p>For instance, when you walk down a street, the architecture around you may be deliberately designed to encourage a certain kind of experience. Crossing a vibrant city square on a sunny morning evokes joy and a feeling of connection with others. There’s also usually a public event taking place.</p> <p>The Situationists valued drift, or <em>dérive</em> in French. This alludes to unplanned movement through a landscape during journeys on foot. By drifting aimlessly, we unintentionally redefine the traditional rules imposed by private or public land owners and property developers. We make ourselves open to the new unexpected and, in doing so, are liberated from the shackles of everyday routine.</p> <p>In <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-10-8100-2">our research</a>, my colleagues and I consider cities as places in which “getting lost” means exposing yourself to discovering the new and taken-for-granted.</p> <h2>Forge your own path</h2> <p>By understanding the Situationists – by looking away from our phones and allowing ourselves to get lost – we can rediscover our cities. We can see them for what they are beneath the blankets of posters, billboards and advertisements. How might we take back the image and make it work for us?</p> <p>The practise of geo-tagging images on social media, and sharing our location with others, could be considered close to the spirit of the Situationists. Although it’s often met with claims of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/when-why-not-to-use-geotagging-overtourism-security">over-fuelling tourism</a> (especially regarding idyllic or otherwise protected sites), geo-tagging could <a href="https://www.melaninbasecamp.com/trip-reports/2019/5/1/five-reasons-why-you-should-keep-geotagging">inspire us</a> to actively seek out new places through visiting the source of an image.</p> <p>This could lead to culturally respectful engagement, and new-found respect for the rights of traditional custodians as we experience their lands in real life, rather than just through images on our phones.</p> <p>Then there are uniquely personal and anarchistic forms of resistance, wherein we can learn about the world around us by interweaving ourselves with our histories. In doing so we offer a new meaning to a historical message, and a new purpose. The Situationists called this process <em><a href="https://www.theartstory.org/movement/situationist-international/">détournement</a></em>, or hijacking.</p> <p>For instance, from my grandfather I inherited a biscuit tin of black and white photographs I believe were taken in the 1960s. They showed images of parks and wildlife, perhaps even of the same park, and cityscapes of London with people, streets and buildings.</p> <p>I have spent many hours wandering the London streets tracking down the exact places these images were snapped. I was juxtaposing past with present, and experiencing both continuity and change in the dialogues I had with my grandfather. In this way, I used images to augment (rather than replace) my lived experience of the material world.</p> <p>Urban art installations can also be examples of detournment as they make us re-think everyday conceptions. <a href="https://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/forgotten-songs/">Forgotten Songs</a> by Michael Hill is one such example. A canopy of empty birdcages commemorates the songs of 50 different birds once heard in central Sydney, but which are now lost due to habitat removal as a result of urban development.</p> <p>There are also a number of groups, often with a strong environmental or civic rights focus, that partake in detournment. <a href="https://popularresistance.org/dancing-revolution-how-90s-protests-used-rave-culture-to-reclaim-the-streets/">Reclaim the Streets</a> is a movement with a long history in Australia. The group advocates for communities having ownership of and agency within public spaces. They may, for instance, “invade” a highway to throw a “<a href="https://pasttenseblog.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/road-rave.pdf">road rave</a>” as an act of reclamation.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bUL0C_T-Sqk?wmode=transparent&amp;start=999" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <p>As French avant-garde philosopher <a href="https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/07/24/the-poetics-of-reverie-gaston-bachelard/">Gaston Bachelard</a> might have put it, when we’re bombarded by images there is no space left to daydream. We lose the opportunity to explore and question the world capitalism serves us through images.</p> <p>Perhaps now is a good time to set down the phone and follow in the Situationists’ footsteps. <!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221606/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/stephen-dobson-1093706"><em>Stephen Dobson</em></a><em>, Professor and Dean of Education and the Arts, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/cquniversity-australia-2140">CQUniversity Australia</a></em></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images </em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-art-of-getting-lost-how-re-discovering-your-city-can-be-an-antidote-to-capitalism-221606">original article</a>.</em></p>

Travel Tips

Placeholder Content Image

Embracing the art of beauty without compromise

<p dir="ltr">When it comes to trying out the latest makeup products, people with sensitivities are often left behind. </p> <p dir="ltr">Whether it’s sensitive skin or allergies, makeup users can often find products that work for them and their limitations. </p> <p dir="ltr">But when it comes to having sensitive eyes, there are very few options for those who still want to partake in applying makeup. </p> <p dir="ltr">In answer to this gap in the market, an Australian ophthalmologist has developed a game-changing product that can give everyone the long lashes they deserve, even if they suffer from eye sensitivities. </p> <p dir="ltr">Enter: OKKIYO. </p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0xoSFPvHhl/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0xoSFPvHhl/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Beauty + Makeup for Sensitive Eyes - OKKIYO™️ (@okkiyoeyes)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">The OKKIYO Eye-Care collection was crafted with expertise by Dr. Jacqueline Beltz, with each product being the perfect blend of aesthetics and eye health. </p> <p dir="ltr">The range offers meticulously formulated products to beautify sensitive eyes, ensuring you don't just look good but also feel great.</p> <p dir="ltr">From the transformative PRIORITEYES Mascara to the gentle Sensiteyes Cleansing System, every item is a promise of quality, safety, and confidence.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvd68g8tBWE/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvd68g8tBWE/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Beauty + Makeup for Sensitive Eyes - OKKIYO™️ (@okkiyoeyes)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">The <a href="https://www.okkiyo.com/products/protect-and-preserve-mascara">PRIORITEYES Mascara</a> is crafted with natural ingredients that will protect your eyes, while still doing all the things you want a mascara to do. </p> <p dir="ltr">The mascara is tailored for those with sensitive eyes, ensuring a comfortable, irritation-free experience, making it the perfect blend of medical-grade care and cosmetic elegance.</p> <p dir="ltr">Its clean formula boasts over 90% natural ingredients, including nourishing Australian Manuka honey and rejuvenating citrus extracts, while also promising no smudging, lasting through watery eyes and eye drops, all while being a breeze to remove.</p> <p dir="ltr">Another feature of the OKKIYO mascara is its accessible packaging, as the square tube prevents the product from rolling away and out of sight, with the tube also featuring braille, so those with low vision can identify the product. </p> <p dir="ltr">When it comes to removing eye makeup, cleansing the eyelid margins is one of the most important steps in looking after the delicate eye area, especially if you have sensitive eyes. </p> <p dir="ltr">Thankfully, <a href="https://www.okkiyo.com/products/okkiyo-cleansing-cloth">OKKIYO cleansing cloths</a> effectively remove all traces of eye make-up as well as any dried oil, bacteria and skin cells from the lashes and lids, all while being good for the environment. </p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C14D7OrvSYd/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/C14D7OrvSYd/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Beauty + Makeup for Sensitive Eyes - OKKIYO™️ (@okkiyoeyes)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">The reusable muslin cloths cleanse the lid margins allowing the oil glands to function properly, producing tears that naturally desensitise the eyes. </p> <p dir="ltr">OKKIYO is the first Australian beauty brand to cater to the over 2.2 billion people in the world with low vision, and now, after three years in the making, the OKKIYO range is available exclusively at <a href="http://www.okkiyo.com.au/">www.okkiyo.com.au</a>.</p> <p dir="ltr">A proportion of profits from each OKKIYO sale will go to supporting Aboriginal Eye Health, improvements for people with low vision and general eye health research.</p> <p dir="ltr">Given the ophthalmologist-created and tested formula, those with eye sensitivities no longer have to choose between protecting their vision and looking fabulous thanks to the revolutionary OKKIYO system. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-5dc0b4d6-7fff-4672-607b-3530170c75c6"></span></p>

Beauty & Style

Placeholder Content Image

The art of meditation

<p>Meditation is essentially relaxation time and is based on the art of focusing 100 per cent of your attention on one thing. The practice comes with many health benefits including increased concentration, decreased anxiety and improved mental and physical health.</p> <p>While it can be challenge to set aside regular meditation time, the benefits you gain in as little as five minutes will soon have you looking forward to your “me” time.</p> <p>Here are some tips to help you get the most out of it.</p> <p><strong>Choose a convenient time.</strong> You can meditate any time, whether you’re already feeling relaxed or need to de-stress. The best time is when you’re not likely to be disturbed and are free to relax. Sunrise and sunset are ideal, particularly first thing in the morning – it is quieter, your mind isn’t filled with the usual clutter, and there’s less chance you’ll be disturbed.</p> <p><strong>Choose a quiet place.</strong> Quiet, peaceful surroundings can make meditation more enjoyable and relaxing. But the good news is that as you progress, you’ll learn to ignore any interruptions that arise – sirens, phones and the hustle and bustle of the world around you.</p> <p><strong>Meditate with purpose.</strong> If you’re a beginner, keep in mind that meditation is an active process. The art of focusing your attention on a single point is hard work, and you have to be purposefully engaged!</p> <p><strong>Establish a regular practice.</strong> The idea “practice makes perfect” definitely applies to meditation and as per the point above, if you‘re going to get positive benefits, you need to stay committed.</p> <p><strong>Sit comfortably.</strong> Make sure you’re relaxed and comfortable. Sit up straight, keep your shoulders and neck relaxed, and eyes closed. Luckily, there’s no need to sit in the lotus position!</p> <p><strong>Don’t meditate on a full stomach.</strong> It’s best to meditate before a meal so you don’t feel too full or doze off while meditating. However, don’t meditate when you’re hungry. You‘ll find it tricky if you keep thinking about food the whole time! </p> <p><strong>Choose a meditation practice.</strong> There are a range of different meditation techniques to explore. The most popular include:</p> <p>1. Observing your breathing – without altering the rhythm of your breathing, simply notice every inhalation and exhalation. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the breath.</p> <p>2. Repeating a mantra – saying a sound, word or phrase in your mind over and over can lead you into a state of deep relaxation. You can learn transcendental meditation from a trained teacher who will give you a mantra, or you can try the word “om” or other words like “peace”.</p> <p>3. Practicing visualisation – taking your mind to a safe, calm place can be a pleasant way to meditate. Imagine you are on a beach or in a garden and picture every detail of your surroundings.</p> <p>4. Progressively relaxing the body – while sitting or lying down, try moving your awareness slowly through your body from your head to your toes. Relaxing each part of your body is an effective way to achieve a wonderful state of calm.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Mind

Placeholder Content Image

How drag as an art form sashayed from the underground and strutted into the mainstream

<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jonathan-w-marshall-1195978">Jonathan W. Marshall</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/edith-cowan-university-720">Edith Cowan University</a></em></p> <p>Recent protests against <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/aug/11/im-just-trying-to-make-the-world-a-little-brighter-how-the-culture-wars-hijacked-drag-queen-story-hour">drag queen story hours</a> are the latest in a series of actions targeting the increased prominence of displays of LGBTIQ+ culture in the public arena.</p> <p>But drag artists have been strutting their stuff in speakeasies, cabarets and films for a long time now.</p> <h2>The long history of cross-dressing</h2> <p>There is a long global history of cross-gendered performance. In the West, this included <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803105532521;jsessionid=B8A5B8C5FE0EBAEDAB763E0AC1405EEA">“travesty” roles</a>, “<a href="https://www.planethugill.com/2013/08/en-travestie-curious-tradition-of.html">breeches parts</a>”, pantomime dames and their cousins in <a href="https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1429&amp;context=gradreports">blackface – “wench” – parts</a>, variety halls and Shakespearean performances.</p> <p>There’s also <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnjxz">Japanese kabuki (onnagata)</a>, Beijing opera, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1124189">Samoan fale aitu and fa’afafine performances</a> and more. All share something with drag – cross-dressing and various forms of gender play and/or reversal – but none is quite the same as what we know today.</p> <p>Legal restrictions on gendered clothing have existed in places like Europe, China and Japan through to modern times – though the focus was more on class than gender. The wearing of men’s pants by women was <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/at-last-women-of-paris-can-wear-the-trousers-legally-after-200yearold-law-is-declared-null-and-void-8480666.html">technically illegal in France</a> until 2013. Centuries earlier, it contributed to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-BYbasO034">prosecution of Joan of Arc by church courts</a>.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p-BYbasO034?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <h2>The emergence of drag</h2> <p>Something like contemporary drag <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203411070/changing-room-laurence-senelick">appeared in the West from the late 18th century</a>, blending early burlesque (disrespectful comedy, not necessarily bawdy) with nascent queer culture (clubs, speakeasies and other semi-underground meeting places where same-sex-attracted individuals socialised).</p> <p>By the time the 20th century rolled around, drag artists, particularly in the US, offered beauty tips, attempted to engage in sponsorships or sold stylishly posed <a href="https://wislgbthistory.com/people/peo-l/leon_francis.htm">postcards</a> and <a href="https://ourcommunityroots.com/?p=13079">souvenirs</a>, closely recalling advertisements aimed at female consumers. Since much early drag made fun of women in general, and women of colour in particular, the form has hardly been a consistent force for good.</p> <p>Drawing on blackface minstrelsy, British panto and college revues, drag from the 1950s increasingly featured female impersonators offering hyperbolic, over-the-top and often disrespectful portraits of feminine characteristics.</p> <p>So called “glamour drag” was designed, in the words of artist Jimmy James, “to take people totally away from the ugly realities … and transport them to the realm of the magical” through fabulous dresses, hair and sequins. This became the dominant form of drag in the West, particularly in Australia – although there was also a vibrant counter-culture.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dOrfO2gVs">Danny La Rue</a> camped it up on the stages of Britain and the US, touring Australia in the late 1970s, while <a href="https://dangerousminds.net/comments/ridiculous_a_little-known_drag_tv_role_by_charles_ludlam_1983">Charles Ludlam</a> made the difficult transition from outrageous drag to main stage theatre and back, losing none of his style.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e9dOrfO2gVs?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <h2>From the queer underground to the straight mainstream</h2> <p>Key to the crossover of drag from an underground principally LGBTIQ+ phenomena to the cis mainstream was the increasingly flamboyant manifestation of popular music – such as glam, hair metal, disco and new wave.</p> <p>The exultant 1978 video for disco star Sylvester’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD6cPE2BHic"><em>You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real</em>)</a>, for example, introduced audiences to the concept of “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/does-realness-actually-mean-surprising-heartbreaking-history/">realness</a>” as she inhabited different costumed personas. Sylvester was a former member of the avant-drag troupe the Cockettes and her clip was shot at London’s gay disco The Embassy.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gD6cPE2BHic?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <p>“Rock camp” performance found its perfect expression in <a href="https://youtu.be/4plqh6obZW4">The Rocky Horror Picture Show</a> stage show in 1973, directed by Australian queer theatre legend Jim Sharman. Its comedic celebration of gender fluid performance and sexuality helped make drag and related forms mainstream.</p> <p>Also crucial was Jennie Livingston’s 1990 film <em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/24/burning-down-the-house-debate-paris-is-burning">Paris is Burning</a></em>, documenting the competitive balls (drag races) mounted by working class LGBTIQ+ African-Americans and Latinos in New York, some of whom (but not all) identified as trans. Performers at the balls competed to exhibit “realness” – not only in gender terms, but employment and social position: “executive realness”, “butch queer”, “banjee girl” and “military”.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4plqh6obZW4?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <p>Madonna famously recruited performers from Paris is Burning (Jose Gutierez and Luis Camacho from House Xtravaganza) to assist in the choreography for her video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJQSAiODqI">Vogue</a> and then her Blond Ambition tour, skyrocketing the international renown of these practices.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9SqvD1-0odY?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <h2>Drag landmarks</h2> <p>Prior to The Rocky Horror Picture Show gracing the stages of London and Sydney, Kings Cross had seen the foundation of legendary drag revue <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G6aDpxhWlg">Les Girls</a>, running from 1963-93. This show was led by Carlotta, who took her girls on tour, and became the inspiration for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgFDIinCeYI">Priscilla Queen of the Desert</a>.</p> <p>“Alternative cabaret” also thrived. Notables included Australia’s truly outrageous Reg Livermore, the bizarre fantasies of Lindsay Kemp or the incredible Moira Finucane. Finucane’s brilliant early “gender fuck” performance as <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-765293824/view?sectionId=nla.obj-769278625&amp;partId=nla.obj-765310182#page/n6/mode/1up">Romeo</a> involved an arrogant, moustachioed and convincingly male performer who undressed to reveal Finucane, who then pleasured herself with a feather boa.</p> <p>Australians might also remember the wonderful Pauline Pantsdown’s drag satire <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4tZRZSGxcE">I Don’t Like It</a> in 1998.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0G6aDpxhWlg?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <p>Topping it off was the huge success of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1353056/"><em>RuPaul’s Drag Race</em> reality TV show</a> in 2009. Producers were onto a winner: fabulous clothes, the highs and lows of competition and a scintillating array of would-be stars, presided over RuPaul, looking never less than fabulous.</p> <figure><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PDe8zJvyF54?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" width="440" height="260" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></figure> <h2>Lessons from the history of drag</h2> <p>The glamorous, hyper-feminine artist remains the most popular model of drag. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was these paragons of camp femininity who were chosen to read to children in libraries, first in <a href="https://www.dragstoryhour.org/about">San Francisco in 2015</a> and then internationally. These glitter, glam and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340774905_Balirano_G_2020_Of_Rainbow_Unicorns_The_Role_of_Bonding_Queer_Icons_in_Contemporary_LGBTIQ_Re-Positionings">rainbow unicorns</a> seemingly conquered the globe.</p> <p>But more outré drag queens, drag kings and “genderfuck” performers never ceased toiling away in the underground. <a href="https://canadianart.ca/features/the-showstoppers/">Drag is changing</a>.</p> <p>If we are to look to history for lessons, I’d like to see story time presented by the successors to Divine (one of John Waters’ collaborators, whose <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfirqQJC3I0">1984 appearance on <em>Countdown</em></a> marks one of the strangest moments in Australian television) or transgender superstar <a href="https://revolverwarholgallery.com/superstars/warhol-superstar-candy-darling/">Candy Darling</a>. Now that would be a story time education to remember.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205650/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jonathan-w-marshall-1195978">Jonathan W. Marshall</a>, Associate Professor &amp; Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/edith-cowan-university-720">Edith Cowan University</a></em></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-drag-as-an-art-form-sashayed-from-the-underground-and-strutted-into-the-mainstream-205650">original article</a>.</em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

Woman finds piece of art history on sale for $8

<p dir="ltr">It’s every thrifter’s dream to find something in an op shop that is being sold for far less than it’s worth. </p> <p dir="ltr">Many frequent their local thrift shops to find hidden treasures from designer brands with a much more reasonable price tag, finally giving them the chance to own a piece of luxury. </p> <p dir="ltr">One experienced thrift shopper has taken this dream to the next level, after she found a series of ceramic dishes in her local Salvation Army store that are a piece of art history.</p> <p dir="ltr">Nancy Cavaliere, a native New Yorker, has shared the story of her ultimate thrifting experience, which began on her way home from work in the summer of 2017.</p> <p dir="ltr">Nancy recalled stopping by the store and browsing for a while before resigning herself to defeat after not snagging a bargain. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I see nothing. I almost leave,” she said in her now-viral TikTok.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqTY-WXJ4DM/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqTY-WXJ4DM/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Nancy Cavaliere (@casacavaliere)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p dir="ltr">However, one more peruse past the china aisle was all Nancy needed for something to catch her eye, as she spied four unusual black plates with geometric faces hand-painted on them, with each plate marked with a $1.99 sticker. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I was going to buy them to make a tablescape,” Cavaliere said in the video. </p> <p dir="ltr">She bought the plates and left the store happy, and began to research her purchase once she got home. </p> <p dir="ltr">The plates, it turned out, belonged to Picasso’s “<em>Visage Noir</em>” series of hand-painted ceramics, produced in a pottery studio in the southern French town of Madoura in the 1940s. </p> <p dir="ltr">“When I tell you I googled this set… and saw how much they were worth and almost cried, passed out—I’m not lying,” Cavaliere said. </p> <p dir="ltr">Nancy then contacted several auction houses in New York, such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, to have the plates appraised and authenticated. </p> <p dir="ltr">She was told they were each worth $3,000 to $5,000, and the following year, she sold three of her four plates at Sotheby’s for roughly $12,000, $13,000, and $16,000, respectively.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I was in my office at my lunch break watching this live auction go down, crying my eyes out,” she said. </p> <p dir="ltr">The fourth piece, which bears Picasso’s signature, Nancy decided to keep and store in a safe deposit box. </p> <p dir="ltr">Cavaliere plans to sell it in 20 years and give the money to her daughter, perhaps for a trip around Europe. </p> <p dir="ltr">“It’s crazy,” she said, “that I actually own something that Picasso signed for himself.” </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Instagram </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

A guide to affordable art

<p>The art world can seem intimidating from the outside, but buying striking pieces of art is one of life’s great pleasures and can transform a room instantly.</p> <p><strong>What’s your style?</strong></p> <p>Go and see as much art as you can to help determine the style you’re most drawn to. Look for student sales at art schools, auctions, antiques fairs and local galleries.</p> <p>Flick through art history books, go to museums and do some online research about any artists you like.</p> <p>Keep an open mind. When we think of art we tend to think of paintings, but look at photography and sculptures too. You might discover that’s where your art heart lies. </p> <p><strong>Prints vs originals</strong></p> <p>Many people write off prints as nothing more than posters, but a print is still an original work of art. The artist creates each print by hand, creating an original image on a surface such as wood, rubber, stone or metal, applies colour and then creates a print on paper. They make great entry-level art.</p> <p>Reproductions are more like inexpensive posters, and there’s nothing wrong with starting off with some posters you love, beautifully framed and well positioned.</p> <p>Original works are naturally the most expensive way to buy art as they are one of a kind. Imagine a best-selling author only allowing one person to own their book, or a director only letting one person see their movie. You are buying the art in its entirety: the idea, the craftmanship, the artists’ time, talent and the materials and any future gain in value. </p> <p><strong>How do I make a good investment?</strong></p> <p>Unless you’re planning to become a serious art collector, the most important two questions you should ask yourself when buying art are: do I love it? Can I afford it? Buying something in the hope its value might go up is risky. </p> <p>If there’s an emerging artist you like whose career trajectory seems to be on the up, then go for it and you might get lucky. But still don’t buy it unless you love it. </p> <p><strong>Should I buy online?</strong></p> <p>You’ll find an enormous choice online. Research the artist, try to see some of their work in the flesh before you take the plunge, and make sure you measure up so you know exactly the size of the artwork and whether it will look good in your space.</p> <p><strong>How do I display it?</strong></p> <p>If you buy from a gallery, ask them for framing advice or to frame it for you, or take it to a framer to make sure you’re making the most of it. Talk to them about whether UV glass would be suitable, to protect the art from sun damage. </p> <p>Always hang art at eye level and in a place where you will get the most enjoyment from it, and never in the bathroom where there’s too much moisture.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

Live art exists only while it is being performed, and then it disappears. How do we create an archive of the ephemeral?

<p>Live performance exists only in the moment it is being performed. Its ephemeral nature means it is transient and impermanent, and cannot be experienced again in precisely the same way. </p> <p>How do artists hold on to the works that they make? What of the invisible labour that is rarely acknowledged or named? </p> <p>Over the last ten years, performance artist Leisa Shelton has completed a series of participatory artworks which focus on the mutability of the archive: gathering audience testimonies and mapping artistic lineages. </p> <p>Now her new show, Archiving the Ephemeral, brings five works together in a beautifully curated installation. </p> <p>Archiving the Ephemeral is a celebration of the artist, the artistic process and the audience experience. </p> <p>Shelton’s expansive career, built on collaboration, care and conversation, grounds the exhibition. The show reflects her focus on curating and re-framing interdisciplinary work to address the limited opportunities for recognition of contemporary independent Australian performance.</p> <h2>Meticulous design</h2> <p>Marked by a spare, distinctive design, Archiving the Ephemeral is located in the Magdalen Laundry at the Abbotsford Convent. </p> <p>Rich with a bright green wooden industrial interior and aged painted walls, the laundry is a perfect background for the specifically placed items, the carefully lit tables and the long lines of patterned artefacts. </p> <p>Fragile ideas are framed and held within a crafted, artisan aesthetic. Objects are carefully made and remnants are meticulously gathered.</p> <p>Along one side of the space, 132 brown paper packets are laid out in a continuous line on the floor. Each package contains a set of archival materials, burned to ash, which corresponds to an artistic project from Shelton’s career.</p> <p>An accompanying video depicts Shelton’s meticulous process of burning, piece by piece, her entire performance archive to ash. </p> <p>In a methodical and meditative process, the ash is sifted and packaged into the hand-crafted paper bags. The bags are then hand-punched and sewn with twine, typed, labelled and categorised: a kind of devotional honouring of the materials even as they are brought to dust. </p> <h2>A living archive</h2> <p>The exhibition includes an opportunity for each of us to become part of the living archive through conversations with two ground-breaking elders of Australia’s performance art scene, <a href="https://abbotsfordconvent.com.au/news/in-conversation-with-stelarc-and-jill-orr/">Jill Orr and Stelarc</a>. </p> <p>On the night I attend, I sit with Stelarc. We discuss Kantian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant">notions of time</a> as he tells me about his <a href="http://stelarc.org/?catID=20353">Re-Wired/Re-Mixed Event for Dismembered Body</a> (2015). It’s a delightful moment of personal connection with an artist I’ve admired for years.</p> <p>Across one wall are four large hanging papers listing the name of every artist on every <a href="https://www.artshouse.com.au/about-us/">Arts House</a> program from 2006-2016, laboriously typed. </p> <p>On the night I attend, these lists elicit lively conversations among the artists present as we study the names and dates (in my case, slightly desperately searching to see if my own name is there), and recall shows, people, events, stories and collaborations.</p> <p>Much of Shelton’s work is gathered from conversations with audience members about art and artists. </p> <p>In Mapping, a set of burnished stainless-steel canisters, beautifully marked with engraved identifications, sit on a bench underneath a suspended video screen on which artist names appear and disappear in an endless, floating loop. </p> <p>The canisters contain details of profoundly memorable artists and performances collected from 1,000 interviews, dated and stamped. They are hand-welded, sumptuous objects which hold the interview cards securely locked under fireproof glass designed to withstand cyclones, fires and floods.</p> <p>The many hand-written files of Scribe contain multiple documents which can be taken out and read. The sheer number of pages is overwhelming, and the breadth of audience commentary – joyful, moved, connected, inspired – is breathtaking.</p> <p>It’s a poignant reminder of the traces borne out beyond the artist’s own experience of performing a work: an often surreal and lonely moment once the audience has left the room.</p> <h2>A practice of care</h2> <p>Archiving the Ephemeral fosters a practice of care and acknowledgement which extends to the practical ways in which our trajectory through the room and engagement with the artworks is enabled. </p> <p>The Convent is an apt site for such a careful collection. Analogue processes and objects are foregrounded. Typewriters, brown paper, string, awls and aprons are part of the painstaking construction process. Attendants and scribes act as custodians in the space, facilitating a gentle holding of the material.</p> <p>We are given the opportunity to continue the archive as it evolves and devolves around us. As I make my way through the space, I notice my own embodied archival actions - taking notes, speaking to others - as I continue the trajectory of documenting the documents. We are not just witnessing one artist’s body of work. Archiving the Ephemeral focuses on the need for greater visibility, recognition and honouring of Australia’s experimental and independent artists, and speaks to the many collaborations, associations, and intricate connections that mark a significant – if unacknowledged – cultural legacy.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/live-art-exists-only-while-it-is-being-performed-and-then-it-disappears-how-do-we-create-an-archive-of-the-ephemeral-201939" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

The benefits of doing arts and crafts with grandkids

<p>Arts and crafts activities have a wide range of relational and health benefits for you and your grandchildren. Whether you<strong> </strong>make a craft activity, do embroidery or do painting and drawing to allow them to express their creativity, you will create special memories with your grandchildren. Here are some key benefits of doing arts and crafts together.</p> <p><strong>1. Flexible bonding</strong></p> <p>Arts and crafts is an activity that can be enjoyed one afternoon or can be continued over various visits to your grandchildren. Working together on a project and seeing it through until completion is a fun and genuine way to bond with someone. Grandchildren will also see the effort you taken to prepare something fun for them. Arts and crafts will allow you to invest in your relationship by doing an activity that will create special memories as you make your art and then at the end of your project you will have physical memorabilia of the time you spent together working on your craft.</p> <p><strong>2. Fun learning</strong></p> <p>Immersing yourself in arts and crafts have a huge range of health benefits for both you and your grandchildren.  Arts and crafts can hone fine mother skills due to the repetition of various small movements and concentration. It can also improve coordination as hand movements have to be direct and precise. Arts and crafts can also improve concentration levels and visual processing abilities. Visual processing is a skill that is key in a child’s early years as they learn names and identification of primary colours and objects.</p> <p><strong>3. Improves self-esteem</strong></p> <p>Once a child has finished creating a craft activity they will have a sense of accomplishment because they created something. While you are doing the arts and crafts with your grandchild, you will have plenty of opportunity to observe their skills and encourage them along the way.</p> <p><strong>4. Teaches them to express themselves</strong></p> <p>Arts and crafts allow children to express what is on their minds as they tend to be very visual with the emotions and thoughts they are experiencing. Activities such as painting and drawing is particularly great for children who are shy as it will give insight to what is on their mind.</p> <p><em>Images: Getty</em></p>

Family & Pets

Placeholder Content Image

Indigenous artist seeking white Australian to donate their “future deceased body” to an art installation

<p dir="ltr">An Indigenous artist has put a call out for Australians of “British descent” to donate their “future deceased body” to an art installation. </p> <p dir="ltr">Nathan Maynard, a well known Palawa artist and playwright, put an advertisement for the unusual request in the weekend edition of The Age newspaper.</p> <p dir="ltr">Maynard signed the bizarre request as a “palawa” artist: one of the terms First Nations people from Tasmania use when referring to themselves.  </p> <p dir="ltr">“Palawa artist wanting to find an Australian of British descent who is willing to donate their future deceased body to an art installation,” the notice read. </p> <p dir="ltr">“The work will speak to sacrifice for past sins perpetrated against the palawa. Potential applicants should see this opportunity as an honour.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“The body and memory of the successful applicant will be treated with the utmost respect at all stages of the project.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The call-out was quick to spark backlash when it was reposted on social media, with one writing, “You can’t just obtain bodies for display in newspapers now. This is very bizarre on multiple levels.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Others questioned the legality of the request, with one person writing, “I dunno that this would be legal, tampering with a corpse is a crime! You can donate your body to medical science, but I don’t think this.” </p> <p dir="ltr">Another wrote, “Borderline psychotic, definitely completely illegal.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Despite the criticism, Mr Maynard told Daily Mail Australia that since the notice went to print, he has received half a dozen applications for their body to be used in the installation in November. </p> <p dir="ltr">The artist said if white Australians are upset by the request, they should ask themselves why they didn't have the same reaction to the mass murder of Aboriginal people. </p> <p dir="ltr">“If you’re not an Aboriginal person and you’re upset by this, I think you should ask yourself why you’re not upset that there is still First Nations remains that have been stolen from their people, stolen from their country in institutions all around the world that are still not repatriated to their own communities,” he said.</p> <p dir="ltr">Nathan said the motivation behind his installation revolves around the fact that thousands of First Nations people were killed by colonists, with their remains being sent overseas to be displayed in institutions and museums without a proper ceremony. </p> <p dir="ltr">“So many Aboriginal people's remains are still overseas. People are trying to bring their ancestors home and they are being denied that right,” Mr Maynard said. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Human bodies are very sacred and they should be treated with respect.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“Whitefellas obviously don't know how to handle remains with respect, so I'm going to show them how,” he said. </p> <p dir="ltr">The artwork has already received support from the state-funded Tasmanian Museum and Gallery and the Hobart City Council, which has donated $15,000 to the unusual installation.</p> <p dir="ltr">The artwork has been commissioned to appear as part of an exhibition for the popular Hobart Current biennial exhibition in November 2023. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Facebook / The Age</em></p>

Music

Placeholder Content Image

Sculpture worth $42,000 shatters at art fair

<p dir="ltr">Pieces of an iconic sculpture are now in high demand, after the renowned work smashed to pieces. </p> <p dir="ltr">At a Miami art fair, Jeff Koons’ well-known piece Balloon Dog (Blue), worth $42,000, was being showcased at the fair’s VIP preview night. </p> <p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, the 16-inch-tall sculpture would never make it to public viewing, after an art collector accidentally bumped into its transparent pedestal, sending the artwork falling to the floor where it shattered beyond repair. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Before I knew it, they were picking up the Jeff Koons pieces in a dustpan with a broom,” Stephen Gamson, an art collector and artist who was in attendance, told the <em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/arts/jeff-koons-sculpture-broken-miami.html">New York Times</a></em>.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog sculpture was accidentally broken into a thousand pieces by a visitor. </p> <p>The art piece was worth $42,000. <a href="https://t.co/fqHTIKpT5I">pic.twitter.com/fqHTIKpT5I</a></p> <p>— Pop Tingz (@ThePopTingz) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThePopTingz/status/1628070672600645635?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2023</a></p></blockquote> <p dir="ltr">“It was an event!” Bénédicte Caluch, an art advisor with Bel-Air Fine Art, tells the<em> <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/article272539097.html">Miami Herald</a></em>. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Everybody came to see what happened. It was like when Banksy’s artwork was shredded.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Nervous attendees crowded around the shattered artwork, curious if the destruction was part of a larger stunt. </p> <p dir="ltr">However, as staff members stepped in to help clean the sculpture away, the onlookers quickly realised that was not the case. </p> <p dir="ltr">“Of course it is heartbreaking to see such an iconic piece destroyed,” Cédric Boero, Bel-Air Fine Art’s district manager, told <em>CNN</em>. </p> <p dir="ltr">The art collector didn’t intend to break the piece, but “this kind of thing unfortunately happens,” he adds. “That is why the artwork was covered by insurance.”</p> <p dir="ltr">An insurance expert will evaluate the pieces of the sculpture, which have been placed in a box for safekeeping.</p> <p dir="ltr">Art collector Stephen Gamson is among many who have offered to buy the now-destroyed artwork, with the gallery continuing to receive offers. </p> <p dir="ltr">“I find value in it even when it’s broken,” Gamson says to the <em>Miami Herald</em>. “To me, it’s the story. It makes the art even more interesting.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

Rising martial arts star dies aged 18

<p>Victoria "The Prodigy" Lee, one of the world's most gifted young mixed martial arts athletes, has tragically died at the age of 18. </p> <p>Victoria's sister Angela confirmed the news on Instagram, saying the teenager died on December 26th 2022. </p> <p>Sharing a heart-felt tribute to her sister, Angela wrote, "On December 26, 2022 our family experienced something no family should ever have to go through. It is incredibly difficult to say this... Our Victoria passed away."</p> <p>"She has gone too soon and our family has been completely devastated since then. We miss her. More than anything in this world. Our family will never be the same. Life will never be the same."</p> <p>"Each and every little thing makes me think of you. From the sun rays, to the sunset. You taught us to see the beauty in the simple things. You were our bright light. Our sunshine. And that will never change. You were perfect in every way. The best person I knew. The most beautiful girl, inside and out."</p> <p>Lee was born and raised in Hawaii, where she was part of a family with a strong MMA pedigree. </p> <p>Both of Victoria's siblings hold championship MMA titles from around the world, with Victoria following in their footsteps and donning the stage name The Prodigy. </p> <p>ONE, the largest MMA promoter in Asia, paid tribute to Victoria and her family's devastating loss, as chairman Chatri Sityodtong recalled the first time he met the aspiring athlete. </p> <p>“I first met Victoria when she was 11 years old,” <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5969693956426049" data-link-name="in body link">he wrote in a Facebook post</a>. “I watched her blossom over the years as a martial artist and a human being. I always remember thinking how wise, thoughtful, and selfless she was beyond her years."</p> <p>"Of course, she was an extraordinary martial arts prodigy even back then, but I could see that she was so much more than that. Victoria had the purest heart of gold and a brilliant mind. She looked after others before herself. She wanted to use her life to help the world. I will always remember Victoria for the beautiful and precious soul that she was.”</p> <p><em>Image credits: Instagram </em></p>

Caring

Placeholder Content Image

"An arts engagement that’s changed their life": the magic of arts and health

<p>In 2007, a life-changing encounter at South Australia’s Flinders Medical Centre became the catalyst and symbol for a national arts and health movement. </p> <p>A young woman, Becky Corlett, was being transported through the hospital where an artist-in-residence, Rebecca Cambrell, was painting a mural. Becky had suffered a stroke and cardiac failure. She had stopped eating and was non-responsive even to family. When Becky passed the mural, however, she made a noise of interest. </p> <p>Cambrell instinctively drew Becky closer and gave her a paint brush. To everyone’s surprise, Becky started adding dabs of paint to the canvas, and then she smiled. The wonder of this moment only dawned on Cambrell when she turned around. </p> <p>“Her parents were convinced that the moment she touched that paintbrush, something was triggered inside Becky that made her want to live”, remembers Cambrell.</p> <p>Becky’s story is just one of many collected in our new report <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/321047">Telling the Story of Arts in Health in South Australia</a>.</p> <h2>What is ‘arts and health’?</h2> <p>Arts and health is broadly defined as using arts practice to deliver health outcomes, be they specifically targeted interventions or general wellbeing benefits. </p> <p>Arts and health work comes in many forms. It can be <a href="https://statetheatrecompany.com.au/shows/euphoria/">play</a> about mental health issues in rural areas. It can be a <a href="https://www.visualisingmentalhealth.com/">university competition</a> to design solutions to community wellbeing challenges. It can be the <a href="https://celsus.net.au/a-hospital-within-a-park/">integration</a> of art throughout an entire hospital to create a calming environment.</p> <p>In an interview with us, design researcher Jane Andrew said the breadth of arts and health work means participant involvement can range “from passively viewing to making to being in the environment”. </p> <p>The benefits are diverse. A <a href="https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/9789289054553">2019 World Health Organisation study</a> looking at over 900 peer-reviewed publications found arts and health can do everything from encouraging health-promoting behaviours to supporting end-of-life care.</p> <p>The diversity of the arts and health field is represented by the perspectives of our report’s 47 interviewees. We spoke to arts therapists, managers of hospital-based arts and health programs, government arts agency staff, CEOs of local health networks and former ministers. We asked them about their past experiences with arts and health, the present challenges and opportunities for the field, and how best to advance this work in the future.</p> <h2>Art and health in Australia</h2> <p>Although benefits of the arts to health have been recognised <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/9415/chapter/156246455">for millennia</a>, the formal field of arts and health work <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17533010903421484">first emerged</a> across South Australia and the rest of the nation through the community arts movement of the 1970s and the rise of health promotion in the 1980s. </p> <p>The establishment of the Flinders Medical Centre’s Arts in Health program in the late 1990s provided a major step for the field into health settings, and the program remains an <a href="https://anmj.org.au/the-art-of-healing-inside-flinders-medical-centres-pioneering-arts-in-health-program/">innovative leader today</a>. </p> <p>The former director of the program, Sally Francis, recalled how, “on a regular basis” the program would have “three, four, five stories of someone who has been critically ill and had an arts engagement that’s changed their life.”</p> <p>But Becky Corlett’s story had, as Francis describes it, a “huge and far-reaching effect” on arts and health in Australia. Days after Becky’s first painting experience, former South Australian Minister of Health and Assistant Arts Minister, John Hill, visited the hospital "I was just walking along, and I saw the painting going on and there was this little girl busily doing art. […] Her parents came up to me and had tears in their eyes. […] She was reconnected with life."</p> <p>Inspired by this encounter, Hill and Francis led a push to have arts and health formally recognised by the state and then federal government. The <a href="https://www.arts.qld.gov.au/images/documents/artsqld/Research/National-Arts-and-Health-Framework-May-2014.pdf">National Arts and Health Framework</a> was officially endorsed in 2014. </p> <p>This historic statement declared the Australian federal, state and territory governments’ recognition of and support for the field. The framework aimed to raise awareness of arts and health, and to encourage government departments and agencies across the country to integrate arts and health work into their services. </p> <p>However, it did not make any funding or legislative requests, meaning no permanent arts and health policy followed its endorsement.</p> <h2>What next for arts and health?</h2> <p>Next year marks ten years since the framework’s endorsement. </p> <p>While there is continuing good work in this space across the country, our interviewees believe arts and health remains underutilised. Community artist Lisa Philip-Harbutt told us there is a lack of “connection between all the various things that people are doing” – different arts and health projects often aren’t speaking to each other.</p> <p>To regain momentum for the field, interviewees recommend developing educational pathways for prospective arts and health workers, conducting a review and update of the National Arts and Health Framework to embed it in policy, and establishing research partnerships between universities and arts and health programs. </p> <p>The hope is that the next generation of leaders will be inspired by witnessing arts and health’s life-changing power. </p> <p>According to Deborah Mills, a key driver of the National Arts and Health Framework, "If you want passionate advocates, they have to have a visceral understanding of what creative activity does."</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-arts-engagement-thats-changed-their-life-the-magic-of-arts-and-health-196212" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

What makes some art so bad that it’s good?

<p>“<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521126/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Disaster Artist</a>” – which earned James Franco a Golden Globe for his portrayal of director Tommy Wiseau – tells the story of the making of “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Room</a>,” a film that’s been <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/books/review/the-disaster-artist-by-greg-sestero-and-tom-bissell.html">dubbed</a>“the Citizen Kane” of bad movies. </p> <p>Not everyone likes “The Room.” (Critics certainly don’t – it has a <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_room_1998/">26 percent rating</a> on Rotten Tomatoes.) But lots of folks love it. It plays at midnight showings at theaters across North America, and it’s a testament to a movie’s awfulness (and popularity) that, years later, it became the subject of a different movie. </p> <p>We usually hate art when it seems like it’s been poorly executed, and we appreciate great art, which is supposed to represent the pinnacle of human ingenuity. So, this raises a deeper question: What’s the appeal of art that’s so bad it’s good? (We could call this kind of art “good-bad art.”) Why do so many people grow to love good-bad art like “The Room” in the first place?</p> <p><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10790-016-9569-2">In a new paper</a> for an academic journal of philosophy, my colleague Matt Johnson and I explored these questions.</p> <h2>The artist’s intention is key</h2> <p>A Hollywood outsider named Tommy Wiseau produced, directed and starred in “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368226/">The Room</a>,” which was released in 2003. </p> <p>The film is full of failures. It jumps between different genres; there are absurd non-sequiturs; storylines are introduced, only to never be developed; and there are three sex scenes in the first 20 minutes. Wiseau poured substantial cash into the film – <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/the-room-10th-anniversary-history.html">it cost</a>around US$6 million to make – so there’s some degree of professional veneer. But this only accentuates its failure. </p> <p>Good-bad art doesn’t just happen at the movies. On TV, there was “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Shadows">Dark Shadows</a>,” a low-budget vampire soap opera from the 1970s. In Somerville, Massachusetts, you can visit MOBA – <a href="http://www.museumofbadart.org/">the Museum of Bad Art</a> – dedicated to paintings that are so bad they’re good. The poet <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/12/01/the-poetaster/">Julia Moore</a> (1847-1920) was ironically known as “The Sweet Singer of Michigan” for her <a href="http://homepages.wmich.edu/%7Ecooneys/txt/Moore/Chicago.Fire.html">deliciously terrible poetry</a>. And the recent film “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4136084/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Florence Foster Jenkins</a>” tells the true story of an opera singer with a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcs9yJjVecs">tone-deaf voice</a> so beloved that she sold out Carnegie Hall.</p> <p>In good-bad art, it seems that the very features that make something bad – a horrible voice, cheesy verses or an absurd storyline – are what end up drawing people in. </p> <p>So we need to look at what’s “bad” about good-bad art in the first place. We equated artistic “badness” with artistic failure, which comes from failed intentions. It occurs when the creator didn’t realize their vision, or their vision wasn’t good in the first place. (MoBA, for instance, requires that its art comes from genuine attempts.) </p> <p>You might think a movie’s bad when it’s very silly, whether it’s “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417148/">Snakes on a Plane</a>” or “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2724064/">Sharknado</a>.” You might think that “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show">The Rocky Horror Picture Show</a>” is bad because it looks schlocky. </p> <p>But these films aren’t failures. “Snakes on a Plane” is supposed to be silly; “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” is supposed to look schlocky. So we can’t categorize these works as so bad they’re good. They’re successful in the sense that the writers and directors executed their visions. </p> <p>Our love for good-bad art, on the other hand, is based upon failure.</p> <h2>How not to appreciate bad art</h2> <p>So how could artistic failure ever be the basis for goodness?</p> <p>A pretty natural answer here is that we like good-bad art because we take a general pleasure in the failure of others. Our pleasure, say, at MoBA, is a particular kind of schadenfreude – the German word for taking joy in another’s misfortune. This view doesn’t have an official name, but we could call this “the massive failure view.” (The great Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Humor-humanity-introduction-study-humor/dp/B00085RDMU">held this view</a>, arguing that singer Julia Moore’s earnest ineptitude made her work funnier.) If this view were right, our enjoyment of “The Room” would be morally suspect; it’s not healthy to get our kicks from the misfortune of others.</p> <p>Fortunately for lovers of good-bad art, we believe this “massive failure theory” of good-bad art is false, for two reasons.</p> <p>First, it doesn’t feel like we are enjoying pure failure in works like “The Room.” Our enjoyment seems to go much deeper. We laugh, but our enjoyment also comes from a kind of bewilderment: How could anyone think that this was a good idea?</p> <p>On his podcast, comedian Marc Maron recently <a href="http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-870-james-franco">interviewed Franco</a> about “The Disaster Artist.” Maron was a little uneasy about the film; to him, it seemed as if Franco were taking a gleeful delight in Wiseau’s failure. </p> <p>But Franco resisted this: “The Room” isn’t just great because it fails, he explained; it’s great because it fails in such a confounding way. Somehow, through its many failures, the film totally captivates its viewers. You find yourself unable to look away; its failure is gorgeously, majestically, bewildering.</p> <p>Second, if we were just enjoying massive failure, then any really bad movie would be good-bad art; movies would simply have to fail. But that’s not how good-bad art works. In good-bad art, movies have to fail in the right ways – in interesting or especially absurd ways. </p> <p>Some bad art is too bad – it’s just boring, or self-indulgent or overwrought. Even big failures aren’t enough to make something so bad it’s good. </p> <h2>The right way to appreciate bad art</h2> <p>We argue that good-bad artworks offer a brand of bizarreness that leads to a distinct form of appreciation.</p> <p>Many works – not just good-bad artworks – are good because they are bizarre. Take David Lynch’s films: Their storylines can possess a strange, dreamy logic. But good-bad art offers a unique kind of bizarreness. As with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch_filmography">films of David Lynch</a>, we’re bewildered when we watch “The Room.” But in Lynch’s movies, you know that the director at least intentionally included the bizarre elements, so there’s some sense of an underlying order to the story. </p> <p>In good-bad art like “The Room,” that underlying order falls out from beneath you, since the bizarreness is not intended.</p> <p>This is why fans of good-bad art strongly insist that their love for it is genuine, not ironic. They love it as a gorgeous freak accident of nature, something that turned out beautifully – not despite, but because of the failure of its creators. </p> <p>Maybe, then, when we delight in good-bad art, we are taking some comfort: Our projects might fail, too. But even beauty can blossom out of failure.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-some-art-so-bad-that-its-good-89737" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

Junior staff are finding better contracts, senior staff are burning out: the arts are losing the war for talent

<p>In 1997, consulting firm McKinsey &amp; Company coined the term “<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/34512/war-talent">the war for talent</a>” to define increasing labour shortages that had significant potential to impact organisational performance. </p> <p>The war for talent significantly impacted corporations at the time, creating a scarcity mindset and encouraging a wave of employee-focussed initiatives designed to attract and retain staff. </p> <p>For the most part, the arts and cultural sector have been sheltered from the war for talent over past decades. Global growth in creative oriented higher education coupled with the “<a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/04/26/book-review-be-creative-making-a-living-in-the-new-culture-industries-by-angela-mcrobbie/">romance of being creative</a>” has led to a steady stream of workers willing to enter the sector on low pay. </p> <p>However, in 2022 things have changed.</p> <p>Faced with labour shortages, arts and cultural organisations increasingly find it challenging to operate. In 2021, it was reported screen productions in Australia were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-24/high-demand-creates-film-skill-shortage/100479392">being jeopardised</a> due to lack of technical skills. </p> <p>Now, summer festivals are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/07/will-australias-festivals-survive-a-wet-chaotic-expensive-summer">struggling to find</a> frontline workers, including security, stage crew, ticketing and transport. </p> <p>It’s not just entry-level positions that remain empty. </p> <p>After <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/may/11/australias-culture-of-ideas-suffers-when-we-starve-our-creative-institutions-of-funding">a decade</a> of funding cuts and policy neglect, followed by the stresses induced by COVID-19, I am observing arts leaders leaving to find secure, better paid and sustainable work elsewhere. </p> <p>In Australia’s increasingly tight labour market, the arts are finally facing a war for talent. </p> <h2>A culture of burnout</h2> <p>If we consider the role of the “arts manager”, it becomes easy to recognise why arts leaders are abandoning the industry.</p> <p>Arts leaders do not just support the creation of art. They are marketers, customer service specialists, supply chain and logistics experts, grant writers, human resources managers and – increasingly – risk managers. </p> <p>They are trying to bring back audiences post-COVID while juggling a contentious funding landscape that balances the need for revenue with audience, staff and artist <a href="https://overland.org.au/2021/09/the-arts-in-australia-need-to-break-up-with-fossil-fuels/">expectations</a> arts organisations do not partner with corporations that fail to align with organisational values.</p> <p>I am increasingly seeing young people leaving arts jobs for opportunities that recognise their skills and provide secure, better paid work. Art workers are highly valuable in today’s economy where creativity and innovation are seen as <a href="https://australiacouncil.gov.au/news/speeches-and-opinions/creative-skills-in-times-of-crisis-how-the-arts-can-help/">keys to success</a>.</p> <p>This lack of younger workers increases the workloads of senior staff, causing them to be burnt out and leave the sector, too.</p> <p>Staff shortages jeopardise the sector’s ability to get back on its feet after the brutal impact of COVID-19. Those that remain in our arts companies are exhausted, left trying to rebuild programs and audiences with fewer resources. </p> <p>While “<a href="https://theconversation.com/quiet-quitting-why-doing-less-at-work-could-be-good-for-you-and-your-employer-188617">quiet quitting</a>” gets media airtime, others in the sector are asking arts workers to embrace the mantra of “<a href="https://larsenkeys.com.au/2022/09/26/post-covid-or-post-burnout-less-is-necessary/">less is necessary</a>”.</p> <p>Individuals need to take action to address their wellbeing. Still, it is also necessary to consider the systems and structures that underpin our arts organisations and how they impact workers.</p> <h2>Structural issues</h2> <p>One way to address the war for talent is to increase the labour supply. </p> <p>Higher education providers who develop creative talent are lobbying for more resources to expand programs and are pushing for changes to the Job Ready graduate scheme that <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-inequity-of-job-ready-graduates-for-students-must-be-brought-to-a-quick-end-heres-how-183808">imposes higher costs</a> on arts and humanities graduates. </p> <p>The latest <a href="https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=14754">Graduate Outcome Survey</a> shows that the employment outcomes of creative arts and arts and humanities graduates have increased over 20% since 2019. The high rates of graduate employability aligns with Australia’s historically low unemployment rate, but also demonstrates the value creative skills now hold in the broader economy.</p> <p>What these positive statistics do not tell us, however, is the working conditions of those employed. </p> <p>The arts are the original gig economy. Of the over 80% of arts and humanities graduates employed six months after graduation, how many earn a living wage? How many work in the arts? How many recent creative arts graduates are juggling multiple short-term contracts simultaneously to build skills, grow networks and cope with cost of living increases? </p> <p>As Australia’s labour market tightens, arts workers are realising they can take their skills to better paid jobs with secure contracts, in fields such as health, technology and management consulting.</p> <p>Unless arts organisations respond by providing similar security and career paths, the departure of talented workers will only continue. </p> <p>This loss of staff will not only impact the ability of organisations to operate today, but will also influence the make-up of arts organisations in the future. </p> <p>When only those who can afford to work under precarious conditions remain, the ability of the sector to attract and retain leaders from diverse communities <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news/features/how-do-we-stop-losing-artists-from-the-sector-2578669/">decreases</a>. </p> <h2>Decent work</h2> <p>Arts leaders eagerly await the launch of a new <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-new-national-cultural-policy-is-an-opportunity-for-a-radical-rethinking-of-the-importance-of-culture-in-australia-188720">National Cultural Policy</a>, hoping for significant change in how the arts are valued. </p> <p>Yet arts organisations need to also get their own house in order. </p> <p>Sustainable arts careers mean <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-crisis-of-a-career-in-culture-why-sustaining-a-livelihood-in-the-arts-is-so-hard-171732">decent work</a>. This means structural changes in how arts workers are employed, a shift away from the reliance on volunteers and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/why-is-a-major-sydney-arts-festival-working-with-google-to-offer-an-unpaid-internship-20220516-p5als1.html">incorrect appointment of unpaid interns</a>, low-wage casual or fixed-term roles to more secure and fairly paid employment. </p> <p>Many in the sector are championing change. The National Association for the Visual Arts is campaigning to <a href="https://visualarts.net.au/news-opinion/2022/recognise-artists-workers/">recognise artists as workers</a>, highlighting the need for an award to support this group that often falls under the industrial relations radar. The music sector has made similar calls for minimum wages for artists, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/paying-musicians-a-minimum-wage-would-kill-live-music-tote-owner-20220923-p5bkgw.html">yet face critics</a>. </p> <p>The pandemic showed us how important the arts are to our lives. For the arts to continue to play a vital role in our national identity and represent our diverse communities, the sector must be funded appropriately. </p> <p>It is also essential organisations create safe, secure and viable jobs for arts workers. </p> <p>If the industry can only exist by systematically exploiting workers, then the war for talent will be lost.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/junior-staff-are-finding-better-contracts-senior-staff-are-burning-out-the-arts-are-losing-the-war-for-talent-194174" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

"I’m the problem, it’s me": Why do musicians revisit their pain and doubt in their art?

<p>Taylor Swift’s latest album <em>Midnights</em> launched with the single <em><a href="https://youtu.be/b1kbLwvqugk">Anti-Hero</a>.</em> Anti-heroes in fiction are dark, complex characters who may question their moral compass but are ultimately trying to be led by their good intentions. Perhaps most humans feel like we are all anti-heroes lacking the right amount of courage, idealism, and morality – wanting to be heroic but struggling through familiar dark places. </p> <p>In <em>Anti-Hero</em>, Taylor shares emotional rawness and sings “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me … everybody agrees.”</p> <p>“I don’t think I’ve delved this far into my insecurities in this detail before,” Swift said about the song in a video <a href="https://ew.com/music/taylor-swift-midnights-anti-hero-meaning/">on Instagram</a>. “I struggle a lot with the idea that my life has become unmanageably sized and, not to sound too dark, I struggle with the idea of not feeling like a person.”</p> <p>Taylor’s album reveals her struggle with her own insecurities and maybe common universal human emotions that everyone struggles to face. In <em>Labyrinth</em>, for example, she sings about heartbreak, and more specifically, the fear of falling in love again: "It only feels this raw right now Lost in the labyrinth of my mind Break up, break free, break through, break down."</p> <p>Much of the new album, and Swift’s discography in general, often revisits past heartbreaks, disappointments, and insecurities. Swift has talked about how <em>Midnights</em> is an album devoted to the kinds of soul-searching thoughts we have in the middle of the night.</p> <p>“This is a collection of music written in the middle of the night, a journey through terrors and sweet dreams,” Swift wrote. “The floors we pace and the demons we face. For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching — hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve… we’ll meet ourselves.”</p> <h2>Music and pain</h2> <p>Music has the potential to change our experience of intrusive thoughts and how we deal with pain. At an extreme level, when we revisit past traumatic experiences, we are often in danger of triggering a <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/the-four-fear-responses-fight-flight-freeze-and-fawn-5205083">feared response</a>, that manifests as either fight/flight/freeeze or fawn, that can often re-traumatise individuals. </p> <p>When we identify with a song that expresses similar struggles to what we are experiencing we feel understood and not judged. Clinical psychologist <a href="https://janinafisher.com/pdfs/trauma.pdf">Dr Janina Fisher</a> has proposed that distancing ourselves from pain helps humans survive, yet an ongoing “self-alientation” of parts of ourselves that carries fear or shame lead to a disowning of self – the bad parts that Taylor relates to as being the things she hates about herself which causes a further suppression of feelings that can create further psychological distress.</p> <p>Expression is central to releasing emotion and connecting to music may be the key that allows the disowned parts of self to be re-integrated by expressing them in a new way. Music provides a creative outlet to re-script a new story of survival of the fear of the past with a renewed ability to see to the good things again in life. </p> <p>Musicians often imbue grief and trauma in their lyrics and melodies as autobiographical reflections into their art as a way of working through complex emotions and feelings - and by doing so, enlighten the listener to work through their own pain.</p> <h2>Music and connection</h2> <p>Music seems to be a way for music lovers to connect with artists stories of tragedy, which allows their own traumatic or painful memories to become more comfortably <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4899-1280-0_2">integrated</a> and accepted. </p> <p>Durham University studied 2,436 people within the United Kingdom and Finland to explore the reasons why we listen to sad music. Research suggested that music is a way that people regulate their mood, pleasure and pain. Professor Tuomas Eerola, Professor of Music Cognition in the Department of Music said “<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160614155914.htm">previous research</a> in music psychology and film studies has emphasised the puzzling pleasure that people experience when engaging with tragic art.” </p> <p>The depth of loathing that Taylor taps into in <em>Anti-Hero</em> also affirms our own experience.</p> <p>It’s self confirming. Engaging with trauma in art allows us to rewrite the outcome from being victims of our circumstances to victors. We are either consumers or creators. </p> <h2>Mental health and music</h2> <p>As the <a href="https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/major-themes/health-and-well-being">World Health Organisation</a> states “there is no health without mental health”. </p> <p>A musician’s writing about trauma is a way of increasing mental health - of searching for understanding of themselves through self-reflection, it changes old thinking patterns and provides a new perspective and ways of thinking about themselves and others that can often <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2804629/">heal emotional wounds</a>.</p> <p>Like telling your story through a <a href="https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/narrative-exposure-therapy">trauma narrative</a>, music can help reduce its emotional impact. Music is a universal language that gives you the chance to be a protagonist in your life story, to see yourself as living through it heroically. </p> <p>Psychologists understand that the quickest way to understanding someone is through their wounds, and musicians too understand this power of music to comfort, console, encourage and exhort themselves and other broken hearts. </p> <p>Humans need to feel safe and in connection with others for survival, and music is the language that activates <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.191355898">pleasure centres in the brain</a> and communicates <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-99991-007">powerful emotions</a>. </p> <p>If trauma causes distress to the brain and body and <a href="https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/narrative-exposure-therapy">music enhances</a> psychological wellbeing, improves mood, emotions, reduces pain, anxiety, depression, and chronic stress, music has the potential to alleviate chronic disease and pain. </p> <p>Music is a vehicle that gathers strength from distress, and helps you grow brave by reflections and maybe the anti-hero’s and insecurities recreated through music may be the treasures found in darkness that we may not have seen in the light.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/im-the-problem-its-me-why-do-musicians-revisit-their-pain-and-doubt-in-their-art-193528" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Music

Placeholder Content Image

Steve Martin discusses his love for Indigenous Australian art

<p dir="ltr">Comedian and actor Steve Martin has long been an avid art lover and collector. </p> <p dir="ltr">After making onto ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list several times in the 1990s, he has recently turned his attention to Indigenous Australian art and its deep cultural history. </p> <p dir="ltr">With his wife Anne Stringfield, he’s bought works by Indigenous artists such as Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, Timo Hogan, Carlene West, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, and Doreen Reid Nakamarra, among many others.</p> <p dir="ltr">His love for these works began almost 10 years ago, as he shared with <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/actor-steve-martin-on-the-joys-and-the-difficulties-of-collecting-contemporary-indigenous-australian-art-1234644806/">ARTnews</a>.</p> <p dir="ltr">He said, “It all started with one picture by this artist, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri. I just really liked it, bought it, and hung it in our house for several years. I really didn’t know that there was a whole big funnel going back this way of its history.” </p> <p dir="ltr">“I hadn’t really seen anything like this before. And they were available, which is an aspect of the art world now that is the opposite—most things are unavailable. And I loved them. I thought they were great.”</p> <p dir="ltr">He said his collection, which includes over a hundred works, is “hard to improve” when dealing with art pieces that are increasingly rare. </p> <p dir="ltr">Some of the works he owns have been displayed in non-selling shows at Gagosian locations in New York and Beverly Hills, California, with Steve saying he “loves just getting these pictures seen” by like-minded art fans. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

Art expert fired over gross underestimation of artefact

<p dir="ltr">A French art expert has been fired after grossly undervaluing a Chinese vase at 4,000 times less than its sale price.</p> <p dir="ltr">The vase in question, which was originally estimated at €2,000 ($3,119 AUD), sold for €9 million ($14,000,000 AUD) at French Osenat auction in Fontainebleau house in early October.</p> <p dir="ltr">The original estimate reflected the expert’s view that it was a 20th-century decorative piece, however buyers suspected that it might date back further to the 18th-century.</p> <p dir="ltr">Despite the date discrepancy, it is still unclear as to what drove the price so much higher. </p> <p dir="ltr">“The expert made a mistake. One person alone against 300 interested Chinese buyers cannot be right,” auction house president Jean-Pierre Osenat told T<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/07/why-chinese-vase-valued-at-euros-2000-sold-for-euros-8m-france">he Guardian</a> last week. </p> <p dir="ltr">“He was working for us. He no longer works for us. It was, after all, a serious mistake.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The anonymous seller found the Chinese ‘Tianqiuping’ style vase while clearing out her mother’s estate. </p> <p dir="ltr">While the dragon and cloud motif is greatly sought after among Asian collectors, some believe to have spotted a stamp belonging to 18th-century Chinese emperor Qianlong on the vase.</p> <p dir="ltr">“We don’t know whether [the vase] is old or not or why it sold for such a price,” explained Cédric Laborde, the director of the auction house’s Asian arts department. </p> <p dir="ltr">“The valuation corresponded to what the expert thought. In China, copying something, like an 18th-century vase, is also an art.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The unnamed and now-fired expert is reportedly standing by his original valuation of the Chinese vase.</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images / Osenat</em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

How AI is hijacking art history

<p>People tend to rejoice in the disclosure of a secret. </p> <p>Or, at the very least, media outlets have come to realize that news of “mysteries solved” and “hidden treasures revealed” generate traffic and clicks. </p> <p>So I’m never surprised when I see AI-assisted revelations about famous masters’ works of art go viral. </p> <p>Over the past year alone, I’ve come across articles highlighting how artificial intelligence <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/06/modigliani-lost-lover-beatrice-hastings">recovered a “secret” painting</a> of a “lost lover” of Italian painter Modigliani, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/hidden-picasso-nude-scli-intl-gbr/index.html">“brought to life” a “hidden Picasso nude”</a>, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/klimt-painting-restore-artificial-intelligence-color-faculty-paintings-180978843/">“resurrected” Austrian painter Gustav Klimt’s destroyed works</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57588270">“restored” portions of Rembrandt’s 1642 painting “The Night Watch.”</a> <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190830150738.htm">The list goes on</a>.</p> <p><a href="https://www.umass.edu/arthistory/member/sonja-drimmer">As an art historian</a>, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the coverage and circulation of these projects.</p> <p>They have not, in actuality, revealed one secret or solved a single mystery. </p> <p>What they have done is generate feel-good stories about AI.</p> <h2>Are we actually learning anything new?</h2> <p>Take the reports about the Modigliani and Picasso paintings. </p> <p>These were projects executed by the same company, <a href="https://www.oxia-palus.com/">Oxia Palus</a>, which was founded not by art historians but by doctoral students in machine learning.</p> <p>In both cases, Oxia Palus relied upon traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence and infrared imaging that had already been <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Picasso_in_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art">carried out and published</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/28/modigliani-portrait-comes-to-light-beneath-artists-later-picture">years prior</a> – work that had revealed preliminary paintings beneath the visible layer on the artists’ canvases. </p> <p>The company edited these X-rays and <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.05677">reconstituted them as new works of art</a> by applying a technique called “<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06576.pdf">neural style transfer</a>.” This is a sophisticated-sounding term for a program that breaks works of art down into extremely small units, extrapolates a style from them and then promises to recreate images of other content in that same style.</p> <p>Essentially, Oxia Palus stitches new works out of what the machine can learn from the existing X-ray images and other paintings by the same artist. </p> <p>But outside of flexing the prowess of AI, is there any value – artistically, historically – to what the company is doing?</p> <p>These recreations don’t teach us anything we didn’t know about the artists and their methods. </p> <p>Artists paint over their works all the time. It’s so common that art historians and conservators have a word for it: <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/glossary/pentimento">pentimento</a>. None of these earlier compositions was an Easter egg deposited in the painting for later researchers to discover. The original X-ray images were certainly valuable in that they <a href="https://www.academia.edu/40255609/The_Getty_Conservation_Institute_From_Connoisseurship_to_Technical_Art_History_The_Evolution_of_the_Interdisciplinary_Study_of_Art">offered insights into artists’ working methods</a>.</p> <p>But to me, what these programs are doing isn’t exactly newsworthy from the perspective of art history.</p> <h2>The humanities on life support</h2> <p>So when I do see these reproductions attracting media attention, it strikes me as soft diplomacy for AI, showcasing a “cultured” application of the technology at a time when skepticism of its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/13/what-are-deepfakes-and-how-can-you-spot-them">deceptions</a>, <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479837243/algorithms-of-oppression/">biases</a> and <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Race+After+Technology:+Abolitionist+Tools+for+the+New+Jim+Code-p-9781509526437">abuses</a> is on the rise.</p> <p>When AI gets attention for recovering lost works of art, it makes the technology sound a lot less scary than when it garners headlines <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/deepfake-artificial-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-10-10/">for creating deep fakes that falsify politicians’ speech</a>or <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/the-rise-of-ai-surveillance-coronavirus-data-collection-tracking-facial-recognition-monitoring/">for using facial recognition for authoritarian surveillance</a>. </p> <p>These studies and projects also seem to promote the idea that computer scientists are more adept at historical research than art historians. </p> <p>For years, university humanities departments <a href="https://carrollnews.org/3680/campus/art-history-department-to-be-eliminated-tenured-faculty-receive-termination-notices/">have been gradually squeezed of funding</a>, with more money funneled into the sciences. With their claims to objectivity and empirically provable results, the sciences tend to command greater respect from funding bodies and the public, which offers an incentive to scholars in the humanities to adopt computational methods. </p> <p>Art historian Claire Bishop <a href="https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dah/article/view/49915">criticized this development</a>, noting that when computer science becomes integrated in the humanities, “[t]heoretical problems are steamrollered flat by the weight of data,” which generates deeply simplistic results. </p> <p>At their core, art historians study the ways in which art can offer insights into how people once saw the world. They explore how works of art shaped the worlds in which they were made and would go on to influence future generations. </p> <p>A computer algorithm cannot perform these functions.</p> <p>However, some scholars and institutions have allowed themselves to be subsumed by the sciences, adopting their methods and partnering with them in sponsored projects. </p> <p>Literary critic Barbara Herrnstein Smith <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r2bq2.9?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">has warned about ceding too much ground to the sciences</a>. In her view, the sciences and the humanities are not the polar opposites they are often publicly portrayed to be. But this portrayal has been to the benefit of the sciences, prized for their supposed clarity and utility over the humanities’ alleged obscurity and uselessness. At the same time, she <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-3622212">has suggested</a> that hybrid fields of study that fuse the arts with the sciences may lead to breakthroughs that wouldn’t have been possible had each existed as a siloed discipline. </p> <p>I’m skeptical. Not because I doubt the utility of expanding and diversifying our toolbox; to be sure, some <a href="http://www.mappingsenufo.org/">scholars working in the digital humanities</a> have taken up computational methods with subtlety and historical awareness to add nuance to or overturn entrenched narratives.</p> <p>But my lingering suspicion emerges from an awareness of how public support for the sciences and disparagement of the humanities means that, in the endeavor to gain funding and acceptance, the humanities will lose what makes them vital. The field’s sensitivity to historical particularity and cultural difference makes the application of the same code to widely diverse artifacts utterly illogical. </p> <p>How absurd to think that black-and-white photographs from 100 years ago would produce colors in the same way that digital photographs do now. And yet, this is exactly what <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/639395/the-limits-of-colorization-of-historical-images-by-ai/">AI-assisted colorization</a> does. </p> <p>That particular example might sound like a small qualm, sure. But this effort to “<a href="https://deepai.org/machine-learning-model/colorizer">bring events back to life</a>” routinely mistakes representations for reality. Adding color does not show things as they were but recreates what is already a recreation – a photograph – in our own image, now with computer science’s seal of approval.</p> <h2>Art as a toy in the sandbox of scientists</h2> <p>Near the conclusion of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw7416">a recent paper</a> devoted to the use of AI to disentangle X-ray images of Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s “<a href="https://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/past/panelpaintings/panel_paintings_ghent.html">Ghent Altarpiece</a>,” the mathematicians and engineers who authored it refer to their method as relying upon “choosing ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (borrowing Voltaire’s words) by taking the first output of two separate runs, differing only in the ordering of the inputs.” </p> <p>Perhaps if they had familiarized themselves with the humanities more they would know how satirically those words were meant when Voltaire <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/20877">used them to mock a philosopher</a> who believed that rampant suffering and injustice were all part of God’s plan – that the world as it was represented the best we could hope for.</p> <p>Maybe this “gotcha” is cheap. But it illustrates the problem of art and history becoming toys in the sandboxes of scientists with no training in the humanities.</p> <p>If nothing else, my hope is that journalists and critics who report on these developments will cast a more skeptical eye on them and alter their framing. </p> <p>In my view, rather than lionizing these studies as heroic achievements, those responsible for conveying their results to the public should see them as opportunities to question what the computational sciences are doing when they appropriate the study of art. And they should ask whether any of this is for the good of anyone or anything but AI, its most zealous proponents and those who profit from it.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ai-is-hijacking-art-history-170691" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

AI art is everywhere right now. Even experts don’t know what it will mean

<p>An art prize at the Colorado State Fair was <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/08/ai-wins-state-fair-art-contest-annoys-humans/">awarded</a> last month to a work that – unbeknown to the judges – was generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) system. </p> <p>Social media have also seen an explosion of weird images generated by AI from text descriptions, such as “the face of a shiba inu blended into the side of a loaf of bread on a kitchen bench, digital art”.</p> <p>Or perhaps “A sea otter in the style of ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Johannes Vermeer”.</p> <p>You may be wondering what’s going on here. As somebody who researches creative collaborations between humans and AI, I can tell you that behind the headlines and memes a fundamental revolution is under way – with profound social, artistic, economic and technological implications.</p> <h2>How we got here</h2> <p>You could say this revolution began in June 2020, when a company called OpenAI achieved a big breakthrough in AI with the creation of <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165">GPT-3</a>, a system that can process and generate language in much more complex ways than earlier efforts. You can have conversations with it about any topic, ask it to write a research article or a story, summarise text, write a joke, and do almost any imaginable language task.</p> <p>In 2021, some of GPT-3’s developers turned their hand to images. They trained a model on billions of pairs of images and text descriptions, then used it to generate new images from new descriptions. They called this system DALL-E, and in July 2022 they released a much-improved new version, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.06125">DALL-E 2</a>.</p> <p>Like GPT-3, DALL-E 2 was a major breakthrough. It can generate highly detailed images from free-form text inputs, including information about style and other abstract concepts.</p> <p>For example, here I asked it to illustrate the phrase “Mind in Bloom” combining the styles of Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse and Brett Whiteley.</p> <h2>Competitors enter the scene</h2> <p>Since the launch of DALL-E 2, a few competitors have emerged. One is the free-to-use but lower-quality DALL-E Mini (developed independently and now renamed <a href="https://www.craiyon.com/">Craiyon</a>), which was a popular source of meme content.</p> <p>Around the same time, a smaller company called <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/home/#about">Midjourney</a>released a model that more closely matched DALL-E 2’s capabilities. Though still a little less capable than DALL-E 2, Midjourney has lent itself to interesting artistic explorations. It was with Midjourney that Jason Allen generated the artwork that won the Colorado State Art Fair competition. </p> <p>Google too has a text-to-image model, called <a href="https://imagen.research.google/">Imagen</a>, which supposedly produces much better results than DALL-E and others. However, Imagen has not yet been released for wider use so it is difficult to evaluate Google’s claims.</p> <p>In July 2022, OpenAI began to capitalise on the interest in DALL-E, <a href="https://openai.com/blog/dall-e-now-available-in-beta/">announcing</a> that 1 million users would be given access on a pay-to-use basis.</p> <p>However, in August 2022 a new contender arrived: <a href="https://stability.ai/blog/stable-diffusion-public-release">Stable Diffusion</a>. </p> <p>Stable Diffusion not only rivals DALL-E 2 in its capabilities, but more importantly it is open source. Anyone can use, adapt and tweak the code as they like.</p> <p>Already, in the weeks since Stable Diffusion’s release, people have been pushing the code to the limits of what it can do. </p> <p>To take one example: people quickly realised that, because a video is a sequence of images, they could tweak Stable Diffusion’s code to generate video from text.</p> <p>Another fascinating tool built with Stable Diffusion’s code is <a href="https://huggingface.co/spaces/huggingface/diffuse-the-rest">Diffuse the Rest</a>, which lets you draw a simple sketch, provide a text prompt, and generate an image from it. In the video below, I generated a detailed photo of a flower from a very rough sketch.</p> <p>In a more complicated example below, I am starting to build software that lets you draw with your body, then use Stable Diffusion to turn it into a painting or photo.</p> <h2>The end of creativity?</h2> <p>What does it mean that you can generate any sort of visual content, image or video, with a few lines of text and a click of a button? What about when you can generate a movie script with GPT-3 and a movie animation with DALL-E 2? </p> <p>And looking further forward, what will it mean when social media algorithms not only curate content for your feed, but generate it? What about when this trend meets the metaverse in a few years, and virtual reality worlds are generated in real time, just for you? </p> <p>These are all important questions to consider.</p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/OmniMorpho/status/1564782875072872450">Some speculate</a> that, in the short term, this means human creativity and art are deeply threatened. </p> <p>Perhaps in a world where anyone can generate any images, graphic designers as we know them today will be redundant. However, history shows human creativity finds a way. The electronic synthesiser did not kill music, and photography did not kill painting. Instead, they catalysed new art forms.</p> <p>I believe something similar will happen with AI generation. People are experimenting with including models like Stable Diffusion as a part of their creative process.</p> <p>A new type of artist is even emerging in what some call “promptology”, or “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_engineering">prompt engineering</a>”. The art is not in crafting pixels by hand, but in crafting the words that prompt the computer to generate the image: a kind of AI whispering.</p> <h2>Collaborating with AI</h2> <p>The impacts of AI technologies will be multidimensional: we cannot reduce them to good or bad on a single axis. </p> <p>New artforms will arise, as will new avenues for creative expression. However, I believe there are risks as well.</p> <p>We live in an attention economy that thrives on extracting screen time from users; in an economy where automation drives corporate profit but not necessarily higher wages, and where art is commodified as content; in a social context where it is increasingly hard to distinguish real from fake; in sociotechnical structures that too easily encode biases in the AI models we train. In these circumstances, AI can easily do harm.</p> <p>How can we steer these new AI technologies in a direction that benefits people? I believe one way to do this is to <a href="https://research.rodolfoocampo.com/">design AI</a> that collaborates with, rather than replaces, humans.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-art-is-everywhere-right-now-even-experts-dont-know-what-it-will-mean-189800" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

Artists furious after AI-generated art wins contest

<p dir="ltr">A stunning artwork generated by artificial intelligence has claimed first prize at an art competition, enraging the art world and calling into question what it means to be an artist. </p> <p dir="ltr">The work was “created” by Jason M Allen, a game designer from Colorado, who won first place in the emerging artist division's "digital arts/digitally manipulated photography" category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition.</p> <p dir="ltr">His winning image, titled <em>Théâtre D'opéra Spatial</em> (French for Space Opera Theatre), was made with Midjourney — an artificial intelligence system that can produce detailed images when fed written prompts by the user. </p> <p dir="ltr">"I'm fascinated by this imagery. I love it. And I think everyone should see it," Allen, 39, told CNN Business.</p> <p dir="ltr">Allen's winning image looks like a bright, surreal cross between a Renaissance and steampunk painting.</p> <p dir="ltr">As per the category Allen competed in, he told officials that Midjourney was used to create his image when he entered the contest, as the category dictated entrants use "digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process".</p> <p dir="ltr">Midjourney is one of a growing number of such AI image generators, joining the likes of Imagen and DALL-E to give the artistically-challenged the means to create stunning images. </p> <p dir="ltr">Despite the parameters of the category, many artists were angered by Allen’s win due to his reliance on technology to create the artwork. </p> <p dir="ltr">"This sucks for the exact same reason we don't let robots participate in the Olympics," one Twitter user wrote.</p> <p dir="ltr">"This is the literal definition of 'pressed a few buttons to make a digital art piece'," another Tweeted.</p> <p dir="ltr">"AI artwork is the 'banana taped to the wall' of the digital world now."</p> <p dir="ltr">Yet while Allen didn't use a paintbrush to create his winning piece, he assured people there was plenty of work involved.</p> <p dir="ltr">"It's not like you're just smashing words together and winning competitions," he said.</p> <p dir="ltr">"Rather than hating on the technology or the people behind it, we need to recognise that it's a powerful tool and use it for good so we can all move forward rather than sulking about it," Allen said.</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Jason M Allen - Midjourney</em></p>

Art

Over 60

© Copyright 2024 OverSixty.All Rights Reserved.