Metaculture

I haven’t written in a while. If you were wondering, I’m still here. I started a an interesting but very involved generative art project in June but my, uh, hot girl summer was interrupted by a serious medical diagnosis that required surgery. And so there was a 10 day stay at the hospital and then recovery at home. I’m doing well and back to exploring the idea of creating connections between sound and color in my work.

Those of us who still dwell on Earth 1 have figured out most of this by now. The doors to Donald Trump’s political future were unlocked twenty years ago when he was Vince McMahon’s kayfabe apprentice. With his participation in Wrestlemania’s Battle of the Billionaires Trump won a bet, shaved McMahon’s head and learned it wasn’t knowing how to fight, it was how to stage a fight. He learned how to manufacture an enemy, a feud and a victory with a cheering audience that knew it was just a performance.

What if a momentary glimpse of someone in a crowd stayed with you, conveyed a feeling, created a possibility…sent you a message. It might have been the hat, or the smile, the way the person walked. In that instant it created a thought - fear, amusement, relation or even a sense of possibility. This was the subject of Tracy K.

I’m trying to gauge public sentiment for the technological moment we’re in – somewhere in between the giddy excitement of the early ChatGPT demos of just a few years ago and the full on panic of the Skynet moment envisioned by our filmmakers. Today, artificial intelligence development is the largest infrastructure project humanity has ever undertaken. Bigger than the printing press, the combustion engine, electricity, the transistor. This year big tech is spending $700 billion on AI.

Artificial intelligence technologies have moved well beyond a single prompt or request as the user interface for many applications. The term agentic is now used to describe how AI models can be given a broad set of complex tasks and set about autonomously to achieve them with minimal human oversight. If you give them permission, they will adapt in real-time to the workflow you’ve created without relying on the one prompt at a time you may be familiar with seeing on a lot of websites.

The world is on a yoyo string We’re along for the ride Sturm und drang against all reason Singular power and turmoil No more social constraints No more guardrails So corrupt, so hollow the echoes of a storm power ripples through the media stagehands to the spectacle complicit in the turmoil Play it again every five minutes The spectacle is repeated See this world for what it is the sleeping lion awakes hit by the second arrow the fear of what could be next When the first arrow hits the animal...

I’ve settled in for the holidays and cueing up my favorite Christmas music, and The Vince Guaraldi Trio’sA Charlie Brown Christmas is at the top of the list. There’s something about the sound on that record – the minor seventh chords don’t resolve the way Christmas songs are supposed to. The tempo is often slower, almost hesitant. The composer captures a certain wistfulness. The chord progressions create a sound that is ethereal, floating, mysterious.

What art buyers want changes and transmogrifies through the early part of this century. New audiences and buyers with different tastes account for much of the transformation. While the art market writ large has been declining in recent years, abstract art, which makes up over 30% of contemporary art sales, currently enjoys a 15% annual growth rate (MyArtBroker).

The president is an all powerful unitary executive adorned with untold powers – until he isn’t. In his mind he’s a king wearing a crown flying a jet and pooping on his opponents. His people lust after the spectacle sublimating their own need for a working government.

Note: At times I venture away from conventional writing to explore experimental narrative structures that use art, sound, video and AI as storytelling tools. I hope you’ll join me in this exploration and hope you enjoy it. Earlier this year I was in the hospital for two nights for image scans and observation. As it turned out it was only two nights and the tests were all normal. When I was checked in the concern was I may have had a stroke.