With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the importance of understanding will diminish. Understanding compensates for the limited computational ability and limited data. Why understand what causes individuals to behave in a particular manner if an app can predict behaviour, read off and interpret facial expressions, determine whether someone finds you attractive, and whether someone is lying? There is some intellectual gratification in understanding, as there is in painting, but how often does one reach for a paintbrush instead of an iPhone?
In AI, emotions would be a bug. In humans, emotions are a patch that compensates for the limited computational ability and limited data. Machines will understand humans, but not emphasise. By contrast, humans may learn to emphasise with the machines' (missing) emotions, to better understand the machines. (The anthropomorphisation of machines will be hastened by granting them legal personhood, in order to limit the human liability for the machines' behaviour.)
Because emotions will remain a human prerogative, the only human endeavour that will not be fully outsourced to machines will be art. Some actors, dancers, musicians, script writers, and directors will remain human. Just as humans explore and admire through art the forces of nature, they will stage plays and ballets to explore the “emotional” and aesthetic aspects of the interaction of machines (whether localised or distributed).
Kaplan may be underestimating the importance of art patrons and playboys. Someone must explore the frontier that others would aspire to and ultimately catch up with.
8 November 2015
“Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central” by Diego Reviera (1948) y el Día de Muertos
(1 November 2015)
In a lesser theatre, the audience would occasionally laugh when a protagonist finds himself in a socially awkward situation or subject to violence. The laughter suppresses empathy and dismisses the protagonist's problem as an aberration; laugher is an escapist patch. Laughing off problems might have saved the sanity for some, but has not delivered a blueprint for a better future. By contrast, the contemplation of existential problems has given us Woody Allen and Albert Camus.
Art progresses by uncovering ever purer concepts of beauty.
In a lesser theatre, the audience would occasionally laugh when a protagonist finds himself in a socially awkward situation or subject to violence. The laughter suppresses empathy and dismisses the protagonist's problem as an aberration; laugher is an escapist patch. Laughing off problems might have saved the sanity for some, but has not delivered a blueprint for a better future. By contrast, the contemplation of existential problems has given us Woody Allen and Albert Camus.
Art progresses by uncovering ever purer concepts of beauty.
3 November 2015
27 September 2015
La Dalia Negra
(Foro Cultural Chapultepec, 27 September 2015)
A production dramatically timid, technologically ingenious, spectatorially removed, anthropologically inert.
A production dramatically timid, technologically ingenious, spectatorially removed, anthropologically inert.
10 August 2015
Heels on Fire & The Circuit Gang
(Bajo Circuito, 6 August 2015)
Brutalism in art first petrifies objects---buildings, sculptures, clothes---and then comes to suck out the soul out of the bodies. This latter stage, a suicide by art, responds to the disappointment with the perceived human inability to accommodate each other. As is the case with most pursuits, this act of resignation is compulsive, contagious.
Brutalism has not touched the bodies under the circuit. Indeed, the venue converts the elements of brutalism without into a mat that sets off the humanity within---to the beat of the bass, to the flip of the frames, to the race of the phrase off the signer's fierce face, to the sigh of the thigh to the musical phrase, to the sway of the hip set in a tight silky frame, to the tearing of tires, to the squishing of shoes, in the highlights by headlights, to the hum of the horns, to the ding of the doorknobs of the day done. Then night.
Brutalism in art first petrifies objects---buildings, sculptures, clothes---and then comes to suck out the soul out of the bodies. This latter stage, a suicide by art, responds to the disappointment with the perceived human inability to accommodate each other. As is the case with most pursuits, this act of resignation is compulsive, contagious.
Brutalism has not touched the bodies under the circuit. Indeed, the venue converts the elements of brutalism without into a mat that sets off the humanity within---to the beat of the bass, to the flip of the frames, to the race of the phrase off the signer's fierce face, to the sigh of the thigh to the musical phrase, to the sway of the hip set in a tight silky frame, to the tearing of tires, to the squishing of shoes, in the highlights by headlights, to the hum of the horns, to the ding of the doorknobs of the day done. Then night.
1 August 2015
"The Festival of Insignificance" by Milan Kundera (2013)
The appeal of philosophy is akin to the appeal of dance. Both pursuits dare grown-ups to play, unashamedly. A philosopher will entertain any question that lends itself to a grammatically coherent formulation. He will obsess over questions of little or no practical significance.
Novelists write for the same reason some pray. A novelist wishes to believe that a narrative holds a lesson, and that one's lifetime efforts will eventually pay off. A novelist creates an illusion of his own when the illusions of others he finds wanting.
Literature moulds the past. Science drafts the future. Dance affirms the present.
Novelists write for the same reason some pray. A novelist wishes to believe that a narrative holds a lesson, and that one's lifetime efforts will eventually pay off. A novelist creates an illusion of his own when the illusions of others he finds wanting.
Literature moulds the past. Science drafts the future. Dance affirms the present.
25 July 2015
Matthew Bourne’s "The Car Man"
(Sadler’s Wells, 24 July 2015)
The ballet opens with an idyllic scene of car mechanics, waitresses, and girls of unknown provenance labouring, lounging, conversing, and copulating on a sizzling Arizona afternoon. The ensuing scenes augment this idyll with violence and murder. The production does well by eschewing the 1940s Hollywood Code; there is more to noir than film noir. The narrative is gritty in places, thereby challenging one to detect beauty in or between the episodes of the tragic or the mundane.
Vitality seduces.
The line between the sensual and the pornographic is fine. This demarcation need not be observed for art to retain its integrity. The dances' eroticism derives from their context, the implied relationships, and playfulness, which deals in uncertainty and suspense. Art layers uncertainty and suspense.
One need not come to possess beauty in order to savour it. Even the contemplation of nature may evoke eroticism. It may suffice to merely know that beauty exists and to be touched by this beauty (to ascertain one's own existence).
The ballet opens with an idyllic scene of car mechanics, waitresses, and girls of unknown provenance labouring, lounging, conversing, and copulating on a sizzling Arizona afternoon. The ensuing scenes augment this idyll with violence and murder. The production does well by eschewing the 1940s Hollywood Code; there is more to noir than film noir. The narrative is gritty in places, thereby challenging one to detect beauty in or between the episodes of the tragic or the mundane.
Vitality seduces.
The line between the sensual and the pornographic is fine. This demarcation need not be observed for art to retain its integrity. The dances' eroticism derives from their context, the implied relationships, and playfulness, which deals in uncertainty and suspense. Art layers uncertainty and suspense.
One need not come to possess beauty in order to savour it. Even the contemplation of nature may evoke eroticism. It may suffice to merely know that beauty exists and to be touched by this beauty (to ascertain one's own existence).
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