(Un Teatro, 12 December 2015)
Some artists are content to pose questions without attempting answers. This is indeed the purpose of art: to nudge each viewer to seek his own answer. When attempting an answer himself, however, the artist sharpens his question.
Individuals sing to music, dance to crowds, gasp to breaths, talk over chatter, critique critics, balance on each other's shoulders to momentarily stand taller than others, not to stand momentously alone. Delacroix's La Liberté inspires by improvising on the mood of the fallen, rising, and bent, instead of seducing by a tune of her own.
By design, people fall into each other, lean, sometimes tumble. Dance is both the essence of and a metaphor for this process.
12 December 2015
8 November 2015
"Humans Need Not Apply" by Jerry Kaplan (2015)
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.
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.
“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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
