(Un)read in the ledger: Monday 30 September–Sunday 6 October 2024
My weekly reading list
This week there was lots about the challenges facing artists, including censorship and pecarious incomes. Plus there was plenty of commentary on AI — as always.
The ‘starving artist’ trope is just one reason of why things suck for artists. Artistic censorship has come up again this week. And AI companies are pushing out new features in rapid fire.
Read
What I’ve been reading this week:
Nurturing New Wikipedia Editors: A High-Touch Approach
Jake Orlowitz from The Wikipedia Library discusses a different approach to training Wikipedia editors.
Founder of The Wikipedia Library Jake Orlowitz describes his approach to training people to edit Wikipedia. The teaching approach uses “… themes and games rather than focusing solely on skills and rules.” Using exploration, curiosity and immersion across
It is a multi-stage training process, taking in:
- Belonging and community – Creating a presence in the spraw of Wikimedia projects. During this step participants set up user pages, watchlists and contributions to talk pages.
- Curiosity and neutrality – Balancing excitement and enthusiasm for specific subject matter with the need to back up each edit with neutral, verifiable information.
- Representation and bias –With the right sources and narratives edits can help address systemic bias on Wikipedia, both in terms of coverage and perspective.
- Discovery and notability –For Wikipeida, “… notability isn’t about personal interest or even seeming importance — it’s about significant coverage from reliable, independent sources.”
- Expression and structure – “Wikipedia articles aren’t blog posts or essays; they’re encyclopedic entries”; clarity and conciseness are key but that is “more than just summarizing facts.”
Jake Orlowitz – Tuesday 2 October 2024
Medium
‘Eight years in the cult is enough’: Mona marketing director Robbie Brammall calls it quits
Marketing director Robbie Brammall quits MONA.
After eight years Robbie Brammall is leaving David Walsh’s house of brands, saying “Eight years is officially enough nonsense.” Brammall was Director of Marketing and Communications working across the Museum of Old and New Art, Mofo Festival, Moo Brew Brewery and other brands.
There’s no question that MONA and its sister brands are some of the most creative, adventurous and outrageous in the arts (and other industries). Just a quick look through Brammall’s website is a lookbook of MONA marketing madness: using their worst reviews to promote the museum, enticing Sydney WorldPride goers to also head to Hobart for a (mostly) tongue in cheek queer woodchopping competition, using staff to model a job keeper clothing line, ‘hiding’ a plane somewhere in Tasmania, a beer vending machine roulette and the list goes on.
Rosie Drew – Wednesday 2 October 2024
Mumbrella
The history of the ‘starving artist’ trope — and why it’s time to stop romanticising suffering
A deep dive on the ‘starving artist’ trope and why we need to leave it in the past.
Starting with the story of Italian painter Andrea Mantegna from the 15th century, the ABC’s The Art Of takes a look at the starving artist trope through the ages. The emotion and introspection of Romanticism is attributed to the shift of art to ‘fulfiling a compulsion’ rather than a profession. Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and other artists are used to illustrate the point.
There is something to the piece’s claim that “… the enduring trope of the “starving artist” hints at a deep-seated desire to see artists suffer for their work.” Society romanticise artistic hardship.
“The starving artist trope is, at best, a manufactured aesthetic of suffering performed by those wealthy enough to risk the financial precarity of a career as an artist. At worst, it’s a convenient way to excuse the poverty many artists throughout history have endured.”
In the contemporary context things aren’t great for artists either. Creative Australia reported back in May that many artists earn more than a quarter less than the workforce average, less than 10 per cent can afford to work full-time on their creative practice (down from 23 per cent in 2016) and casualisation means many don’t have paid sick leave, paid parental leave and employer superannuation contributions. And they are more likely female, living in a regional area and/or have a disability.
Mary McGillivray — Wednesday 2 October 2024
ABC News, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Pianist sues Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for cancelling his concert allegedly over Gaza stance
The MSO’s free speech dramas continue.
The drama over Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s cancellation of pianist Jayson Gillham 15 August concert in Melbourne continues with Gillham filed legal proceedings against the MSO, alleging adverse action because of a political opinion. “This situation goes beyond just artistic freedom; it strikes at the heart of our right to free speech and the role of art in addressing important social issues,” Gillham is quoted as saying. The MSO says the cancellation was “not and never has been about free speech”. We will wait to see what the courts say.
Kelly Burke – Thursday 3 October 2024
The Guardian
Other coverage
Jayson Gillham launches legal action against Melbourne Symphony Orchestra over Gaza comments controversy →
Thursday 3 October 2024
ABC
Google introduces new way to search by filming video
Now you can point your camera and ask a question using Google Lens.
Google’s ‘all in’ approach on AI-assisted search has yielded some new features. Now Google Lens will allow users to ask questions by voice related to on the fly videos: point your camera, record a short clip and ask a question out loud. The move comes after the successful introduction of the same idea for photos in Lens.
Google has enjoyed near complete market share of search for a long time, but the search market is getting more complicated as trends such as privacy, users preferring visual content and AI search are bring with them new competitors including OpenAI’s SearchGPT.
Tom Gerken – Thursday 3 October 2024
BBC
Other coverage
Google Lens now lets you search with video
Emma Roth – Friday 4 October 2024
The Verge
How to use Google Lens to ask questions out loud about what you see
Zahra Thompson – Thursday 3 October 2024
The Keyword, Google
“AI Overviews and more” in Search Labs
Google Search Help, Google
New ways for marketers to reach customers with AI Overviews and Lens
New ad features roll out alongside new Lens and AI Overviews features.
Ads and Search have long been linked. It’s still the largest revenue generator for Google. So, unsurprisingly the same day Google announced that videos and voice search had been added to Google Lens, they also announced updates to Search ads to go with it. One is called Ads in AI Overviews, which shows ad results related to a user’s query and the AI response provided.
“Imagine this: You’ve just spent the day at the park and now your jeans are covered in grass stains. You turn to Google and ask, “how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?” AI Overviews provides a number of helpful solutions, ranging from using common household products, to commercial products like stain removers. Instead of needing another search to find the right product, relevant Shopping ads appear right within the AI Overview, allowing you to quickly and easily find the perfect stain remover.”
These are rolling out in the USA and are labelled ‘Sponsored’ like other ads in Google’s search tools.
The second ad feature is Shopping ads in Google Lens:
With Google Lens, people are searching what they see more than ever before. Every month, people use Lens for nearly 20 billion visual searches, and 20 percent of all Lens searches are shopping-related. Advertisers can tap into these high-intent consumers, as Shopping ads will appear above and alongside visual search results by the end of the year.
Shashi Thakur — Thursday 3 October 2024
Google Ads & Commerce Blog, Google
OpenAI launches new ‘Canvas’ ChatGPT interface tailored to writing and coding projects
Canvas is a new tools from OpenAI as it scrambles to match competitors tools.
As AI tools evolve and add new features, OpenAI is following suit, bringing out tools to match competitor offerings. They have just released Canvas, a new beta interface for Plus, Teams, Enterprise and Edu users that provides a separate workspace for longer writing and coding projects. In Canvas, users can fix errors without a full rewrite of the original prompt It will eventually be offered to free users too, including highlighting specific sections of text and editing it further using the AI model.
Maxwell Zeff – Thursday 3 October 2024
TechCrunch
Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart wanted ‘so-called’ portraits ‘permanently disposed of’
Rinehart didn’t just want the Namatjira portraits removed, she wanted them disposed of.
Back in mid-May it was reported Gina Rinehart had petitioned the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) to remove from public view two portraits of her from Vincent Namatjira’s Australia in Colour. Emails released under a freedom of information (FOI) request reveal Rinehart requested NGA chair, Ryan Stokes “… permanently dispose of the 2 so called portraits …” Looking at the details of the internal email exchange between Stokes and NGA Director, Dr Nick Mitzevich, it is worth recognising that the NGA resisted pressure from Rinehart. ⟨ Although, it would have been good to see a more robust defence of artistic freedom on the NGA’s part ⟩
Kelly Burke – Friday 4 October 2024
The Guardian
Add it to the pile
New additions to the unread pile:
A New Approach have a new Analysis Paper out looking at engagement with AI in the arts and culture.
I haven’t read it yet, but I am interested to see what A New Approach have uncovered in terms of how people are using AI in Australia to create, find, share and experience arts and culture. The AI space is moving so quickly, even as governments seek to regulate it. And the Australian government is definitely working on regulation. ⟨ I recently read the lengthy Proposals Paper for introducing mandatory guardrails for AI in high-risk settings put out by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. ⟩ I look forward to reading it fully soon.
Alan Hui, Kate Fielding and Sari Rossi — October 2024
A New Approach
Disclosure
AI use
This blog post was drafted using Google Docs. No part of the text of this blog post was generated using AI. The original text was not modified or improved using AI. No text suggested by AI was incorporated. If spelling or grammar corrections were suggested by AI they were accepted or rejected based on my discretion (however, sometimes spelling, grammar and corrections of typos may have occurred automatically in Google Docs).
The banner image (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post) was generated by AI using Text to Vector Graphic (Beta) in Adobe Illustrator.
Credits
Image: A pattern made up of an icon of two books on top of each other. The top book has a pink cover and the bottom book has a light blue cover. The piles of books are on a reddy-pink colour background. The icon is an adaptation of an image generated by Elliott Bledsoe using Text to Vector Graphic (Beta) in Adobe Illustrator. Prompt: ‘A simple hand drawn pile of books’.
Provenance
This blog post was produced by Elliott Bledsoe from Agentry, an arts marketing micro-consultancy. It was first published on 6 Oct 2024. It has not been updated. This is version 1.0. Questions, comments and corrections are welcome — you can get Elliott on elliott@agentry.au.
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Whether AI-generated outputs are protected by copyright remains contested. To the extend that copyright exists, if at all, in the banner image I generated using AI for this blog post (i.e. the first image at the top of the blog post), I also license it for reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0).
