ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, AI-enhanced smart home device, and numerous systems sometimes completely invisible to us are already altering how we work, play, and interact with the world. But few would conceive the burgeoning transformative technology taking on the form of something as humble as the Narratron, a small projector with a hand crank conceived to capture hand shadow puppetry and transform the poses into fairy tales narrated by artificial intelligence.
Designed by Aria Xiying Bao and Yubo Zhao at the MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, the Narratron seems almost an anachronism at first glance, a camera/projector realized with toy-like simplicity. The Narratron’s minimalist industrial design is intentionally uncomplicated to invite an unobtrusively tactile experience not dissimilar to those earliest days in the company of our toys. Except this toy is capable of turning shadow poses created with your hand into wondrously detailed stories revealed one hand crank at a time.
The spinning of the knob is a nostalgic detail adding an intuitive tactile method to further the story, with each rotation of the knob revealing a new chapter of the narrative.
The Narratron is powered by ChatGPT’s language model, an AI system already known to fabricate fanciful tales on its own, or in machine learning parlance, “hallucinate.” Bao and Zhao’s contraption uses AI’s propensity to fabricate stories as a feature rather than a bug, churning out AI-generated stories complete with detailed plot lines, dialogue, and descriptive elements made up to entertain rather than steer users away from the facts. It does all this using Stable Diffusion for the imagery and the React Speech Kit to conjure a convincing AI narrator to tell the made up tale.
The process of using the Narratron is also a bit of a throwback in itself. First the user snaps poses and snaps a hand shadow pose like an old camera. Each snapshot is then analyzed by an algorithm trained to translate the hand poses into an animal keyword, an animal that then becomes the foundation of an original frame-by-frame immersive yarn embellished with voice acting, sound effects, and music revealed with every turn of the Narratron’s crank dial.
The designers included the vintage movie projector-inspired detail as an aesthetic touch and homage to classic movie film cameras, a clean and uncluttered design intended to connect user with device without distractions, and help plunge viewers into the immersive stories summoned by artificial intelligence.
It’s no Barbie or Oppenheimer, but in some ways what the Narratron does in its elementary form may prove prescient of a future where algorithms operate not merely as recommendation mediums, but become capable of actively synthesizing unique entertainment in realtime and in reaction across various modalities of the visual, auditory, tactile, and using textual I/O, essentially turning you into an active participant in the movie making process. Fascinating or horrifying, we’ve yet to determine.
Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.
Asteroid City tells two stories. One ends more or less happily, the other more or less sadly.
The first one takes place in roadside America, 1955. In a minuscule town made famous by an asteroid crater, five finalists for Junior Stargazer awards assemble with parents and siblings for the ceremony. They mingle with the locals, the scientists at the observatory, a batch of primary-school kids, a military unit, and an itinerant cowpoke band. The big day is interrupted by the arrival of an alien bent on retrieving the asteroid. This exceptionally polite invasion spurs all of the visitors to reconsider their life options. After a second visit from the alien, the travelers leave. Enlightened? A little bit.
This story is shot in anamorphic widescreen and color as glowing as Kodachrome. The second story, interwoven with the first one, is presented in 4:3 black and white. It presents episodes from a television program purporting to document the production of a typical American play. But the host, a generic, all-knowing announcer, tells us that the play “Asteroid City” does not exist, was never performed and has only an “apocryphal” existence, whatever that means.
But instead of the usual behind-the-scenes chronicle of putting on a show, we get only glimpses of preparation and performance, arranged out of chronological order. We hear alternative speeches and learn of scenes that will eventually be cut. The last stretch of the second story is a morose reflection on what the play might mean, with the director’s response to that question a simple: “Just keep telling the story.” As if in reply, the epilogue of the visitors’ Asteroid City adventure is the (rousing) conclusion of the whole movie we’re watching.
Like Marianne Moore’s “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” Asteroid City (the town) is a fantasy world, but it’s not free of danger. There’s death. Atomic tests are conducted next door.
Within this carpentered world, all right-angled motel cottages and perpendicular lanes and train tracks, two forces are at work. There is Science, embodied in the astronomical research of Professor Hickenlooper and her fanciful accounts of cosmic activity. The Junior Stargazers have all come up with wild breakthroughs–a tethered jet pack, a way of projecting pictures on the moon–that prove that these teenagers are both brilliant and eccentric. From one angle the film, like Rushmore and The Life Aquatic, is a defense of visionary nerds.
Counterposed to Science is, not to put a fine point on it, Christianity. The kids brought to the ceremony by June recite prayers on command. Faith enters more poignantly with the Steenbeck family, headed by the photojournalist Augie. His wife has died, but not until they stop in Asteroid City does he break the news to his son Woodrow and three little daughters. It impels the girls to bury her cremated remains in a Tupperware bowl as they try out proper reverence. Is she in Heaven? Augie doesn’t believe in it, and Woodrow is uncertain, but it’s real for the girls, Augie says, because they’re Episcopalian.
Neither Science nor Christianity can account for the alien, or the strange indicia it has inscribed on the asteroid. The creature’s arrival comes at almost exactly the film’s midpoint, and thereafter hazy outlines of happy endings emerge. No spoilers, but here’s a hint: Love is involved.
All of which makes the film sound terribly abstract. It’s not. The clumsy online parodies of Anderson’s style make us forget how crisply economical it is. Forget movies padded out with cars pulling up or pulling away, close-ups of coffee being made, characters hunched over cellphones and workstations, roundy-roundy camera movements, and drone shots floating over a metropolis. Every shot here carries its fair weight.
Anderson’s geometric framing and staging demand a stream of small details. Moment by moment we have to take in gorgeous Populuxe furnishings, rapid dialogue, enigmatic signage, non sequiturs, abbreviated gestures and glances, and flickers of facial expression. For a few seconds a cigarette lighter is casually refilled with a squirt of gasoline (a good example of Brecht’s gestus, the piece of performance that crystallizes a social attitude: we’ll have oil forever). Soon enough a gizmo pulled from Augie’s decrepit engine thrashes on its own: Is this the alien? Just the range of cultural references dazzles. Anderson’s love of theatre emerges in recollections of plays from The Petrified Forest to Bus Stop, by way of Wilder and Williams. And are all the variants on a nonexistent play text his contribution to multiverse storytelling?
The embedded film has opened with a roaring freight train to a male voice singing “Last Train to San Fernando,” a song that celebrates a desperate chance for love. The whole film ends with a version of “Freight Train, Go So Fast” about a man being hanged, yet it’s sung by a mourning woman with sheer exhilaration. Asteroid City (the film) is poised between love and death, in the process celebrating the muted joy and welcome eccentricity of everyday life.
Not to mention hot dogs, chili, and strawberry milk.
Asteroid City has attracted many favorable Cannes reviews, but I’ve been disappointed in the dismissive comments offered by reviewers I respect. Many have taken the obvious line of objection (trademark whimsy, too many stars, too much artifice) without coming to grips with the distinctive qualities of the film. (But Bilge Eberi ,Manohla Dargis, Richard Brody, and Glenn Kenny get it.) This seems to me one of Anderson’s very best works. It has a richness that my sketch here can’t capture, and I hope to write more about it later.
For more blog entries on Anderson’s films, go here.
PS 11 July: The streaming version of Asteroid City just released on Amazon Prime is of very poor photographic quality: low contrast and desaturated color. A version more faithful to the film is available on Apple +. I haven’t checked other sources.
“Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.” – Paul Gauguin
The yearning to capture the world in color has always been with us. Whether it was painting on walls in caves, crafting vegetable dyes for textiles, the development of oil paints, to experimenting with chemistry in photographic processes–the allure of color has motivated artists to represent the world as they experience it.
The autochrome, an ephemeral photographic process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers, released commercially in 1907, and produced until the mid-1930′s, changed the possibilities of photography. Over a hundred years ago, what was once only available in monochrome, became possible for photographers–without great technical skill or a different camera–to capture the world in color as they saw it. During the brief 30-year history of the Lumière manufactured glass plates, photographers produced hundreds of thousands of autochromes. However, because of their inherent fragility and sensitivity to light, autochromes would later be supplanted by other more practical photographic processes, particularly the rise of Kodachrome in 1935. Alas, the autochrome would fade to memory.
Drawing on the resources of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which houses one of the most extensive collections of autochromes, Color Mania: Photographing the World in Autochrome by Catlin Langford is a scholarly and considered reminder of our yearning for color. This new publication from Thames & Hudson reveals work that has never been shown, and helps us to understand the significance of autochromes in our shared photographic history.
To see the early 20th century in color is to see the world anew. The work of long forgotten photographic pioneers like Helen Messinger Murdoch, who was the first woman to travel the world taking autochromes, is included in the book. Her travel pictures from the early 1900′s remind us how modern autochromes can seem. We magically and immediately experience the past in color. The lush, painterly, pointillism look of the autochrome is unique. And like a language we have not heard in a long time, the images in Color Mania remind us how deep and mysterious that language can be. –Lane Nevares
There is insight to be gleaned from Toplyn, McKee and the U.C.B. But at the heart of their entire enterprise is a lie, or at least a simplification. No theory of comedy that I have read captures it all because art can’t be boiled down to a recipe. And jokes, which include everything from puns and pratfalls to shaggy dog stories and satirical barbs, are especially varied and complex. As the cartoonist Saul Steinberg put it: “Trying to define humor is one of the definitions of humor.”
In an introduction to a new book of poems produced by A.I., “I Am Code,”the poet Eileen Myles is shown the work and finds it badly derivative. There’s already a program producing formulaic poetry, Myles says, before quipping: “It’s called the M.F.A.”
There are elements of math to comedy and poetry (iambic pentameter requires an ability to count), but we must not reduce them to that. The subconscious, the source of much creativity, cannot be mapped so neatly. And the closer you look at great art, the more you realize that parts of it cannot be entirely explained or predicted. This is especially true for comedy. The funniest aspects are often those that resist logic. A.I. will figure out sarcasm before silliness.
To use the most popular blockbuster of the summer, Weird Barbie is the funniest one. That said, Stereotypical Barbie gets a different kind of laugh, one that might help explain that rout at the roast battle. Rigid characters trying and failing to escape their mechanistic situation is classically funny. (Think of Charlie Chaplin trapped in the gears or Lucille Ball at the chocolate factory.) Henri Bergson, one of the first great modern philosophers of humor, who was wise enough to reject “imprisoning the comic spirit in a definition,” saw comedy as a corrective to Industrial Age automatism. He believed that we laughed as a response to people acting like machines.
Bergson saw comedy as distinctly human. That may be in part because he understood that it’s deeply, inescapably social. We not only laugh more in groups, but also what we find funny depends on who is telling the joke. A punchline about a car crash will be hilarious to one person and offensive to another. Artificial intelligence can come up with jokes, but it can require emotional intelligence to make them work. What makes people crack up is not just the joke but also the connection with a human consciousness telling it.
Maybe audiences could make a similar connection with a sophisticated computer of the future, but the Catch-22 for A.I. humor is the further it gets from seeming human, the more unfunny it seems, but the closer the imitation, the creepier it becomes as it falls deeper into the uncanny valley. After the robot revolution, what may save human comedy from irrelevance is our own deep-seated tribal biases. We like to laugh at our own.
It’s been well over 30 years since I first reached into a school crate and pulled out a plastic descant recorder, and yet I can still remember the visceral thrill I got from coaxing birdlike sounds with my fingers and mouth. I was a shy five-year-old – I hadn’t started speaking until I was two – and although it might seem corny to suggest that this eight-holed baton acted as some kind of magical wand for my confidence, I don’t think that my trills and toots are wholly unrelated. They gave me a voice.
Like most of us, I was introduced to the recorder during rowdy group classes at my state-funded primary school. But unlike most of us, I chose to keep playing it well into my 20s, swapping my plastic descant for a larger wooden treble in order to tackle the baroque melodies of Telemann (with a hit-or-miss approach). There was something about its sensitivity to touch and breath that hooked me: a tender and earthy warble (if played well) v a squealing and screeching racket (if played badly).
Perhaps that’s why I fell for it so fervently. It’s arguably why the 600-year-old instrument is so regularly mocked as the Marmite of the woodwind world – a description I bristled at only last month when news of its impending extinction in UK schools gave rise to yet more jibes. It may well be a shrieking tool of torture for some. But for me, and so many others, it’s provided a gateway to some of the greatest, and most beautiful, music I’ve ever heard.
“In another world I would have loved to be a singer,” Evelyn Nallen muses as we discuss our shared love of this much-maligned instrument. Nallen made her debut on BBC radio as a recorder player at the age of nine, and, up until her recent retirement, taught the instrument at the Royal Academy of Music’s junior department. Nallen was also drawn to the recorder for its anthropomorphic qualities as a young child. “The recorder is the nearest thing to the voice that there is,” she tells me. Practising when she was younger, in the 1950s and 60s, Nallen would listen to popular singers in order to develop her skills. “I mean, if you want to learn how to phrase something, listen to Frank Sinatra.” A fast vibrato? “Listen to Nat King Cole.”
At the heart of the recent headline flurries lies a much deeper story about the future of music in schools in the face of successive funding cuts. Added to this, a Covid crisis that has dissuaded many children from picking up shared classroom instruments. It’s not just a crisis affecting the recorder: the numbers have dropped for woodwinds in general. “There was a time when you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a flute and clarinet,” says Nallen. Now they’re being taught privately. Perhaps what has fuelled the crisis for recorders more specifically is its ubiquity – which has fostered a kind of devaluation as a result. “Being cheap is a double-edge sword,” Nallen says. Yes, it makes the recorder accessible, but it can also be taken for granted, “because you can just throw it into a cupboard drawer.”
Sarah Jeffery, a classically trained recorder player and educator. Photograph: Claudia Hansen Photography
And yet “it’s a vastly complex instrument,” says Sarah Jeffery. “It’s even a little bit dangerous”, she adds with a smile, “because every little move you make can be heard.” My first encounter with Jeffery, a classically-trained recorder player and educator, was via her YouTube channel Team Recorder, a platform where she publishes weekly tutorials on all aspects of playing and music-making. Started in 2016, and triggered by a frustration that “there was no information about the recorder online at all,” Jeffery filmed her first video sitting on her bed, and it immediately took off.
“I try and keep it real,” she says. “One week I’ll be talking about French baroque ornamentation, and then I’ll do a tutorial on Taylor Swift because that’s what I’m listening to,” she laughs. The channel now boasts 191,000 subscribers, and has brought her into contact with passionate communities from all over the world.
“Music should be fun,” she emphasises. But her YouTube channel is also there to inform. Where there is indifference, there is also ignorance. Quipping aside, how many of us could name a recorder outside of the four types – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – that we tried at school? “The smallest is the garklein which is an octave higher than the descant at 15cm,” Jeffery says, taking me through the upward size shifts. “Then there’s the sopranino, followed by the descant, treble, tenor, bass.” She pauses. “Great bass, contrabass, sub great bass, sub contrabass, sub sub great bass, sub sub contrabass.” She gasps for breath. “As it stands, the longest recorder is 4.8 metres.” How do you play that? “They’ve actually coiled it like a bassoon,” she says. It still stands at around seven feet tall.
“The recorder, as we know it, has existed for centuries in many forms,” Jeffery reminds me. The earliest known document that refers to “a pipe called recordour” was written in 1388. What this means for players in 2023 is that there is a huge variety of music to explore. The golden age may have been in the baroque period of the 1700s (that’s your Handel, Vivaldi and Bach) but one of my favourite composers in my mid-teens was a late Renaissance Venetian called Giovanni Bassano. Even Henry VIII was a devoted player. Upon his death, in 1547, a collection of 76 recorders were found in his personal collection.
Interior with a young Man holding a Recorder, c1610- 1621. Artist: Cecco del Caravaggio. Photograph: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy
But to consider this woodwind instrument as solely a historical artefact would be wide of the mark. I wish I had kept the letter I wrote to the NME, when I was 18, begging for work experience. In it, I listed all the pop records I loved that featured my beloved recorder: Van Morrison’s Streets of Arklow, Jefferson Airplane’s Comin’ Back to Me, the Rolling Stones’ Ruby Tuesday, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. Were they persuaded by my playlist? It’s hard to tell – but either way, I got the gig.
Since its baroque-pop revival 50 years ago, many musicians have embraced its lithe and woody sound. From Sufjan Stevens to Jonny Greenwood – who in 2019 paid tribute to his childhood recorder classes when accepting his Ivor Novello award. “Since the 1960s, there have been more pieces composed for the recorder than in all the centuries before,” Jeffery says. Even in my own sheet music collection, the 17th-century preludes of Jacob van Eyck are sandwiched between the 20th-century English pastoralism of Robin Milford. Its reach goes far beyond the confines of the Greensleeves folk ballad we’re all familiar with.
In fact, it’s riding a bit of a wave with soundtrack composers right now, Jeffery tells me. In 2020, for instance, Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian aired its first episode to the eerie soundtrack of a trio of bass recorders composed by Academy Award-winning composer Ludwig Göransson.
“I’m always surprised when I hear of regular bands playing recorders now,” Charlotte Barbour-Condini says with a smile. “When I was younger, there was a hesitance on my part to tell people that I played it, and that I took it as seriously as the violin.” Known for being the first recorder player in the BBC Young Musician prize’s history to win the woodwind category in 2012, much has changed since Barbour-Condini first began playing at primary school. It didn’t take long for her to discover the many benefits of its freewheeling individuality.
“It’s not an orchestral instrument so there’s not many expectations around it – you can kind of do what you want,” she says. For instance: “Nobody’s going to ask you to join the symphony orchestra to play some Mahler.” Bearing this in mind, recorder players are encouraged to do their own thing as they advance in skill. “You’re actively looking for repertoire far more than if you were a violinist,” she explains. “At the [Royal Academy of Music] we collaborated a lot more with the composing department than others.”
Tali Rubinstein, contemporary jazz and classical recorder player. Photograph: Sandra Emmeline
For many recorder players, it is this sense of freedom that enables them to keep pushing the boundaries of what the instrument can do. Only recently, Tali Rubinstein, an Israeli American contemporary jazz and classical recorder player, bought two amplified recorders so that she can play around with effects. With few recorder reference points in the jazz world, her development as a player has been pretty self-determined: Rubinstein is looking to explore and the recorder’s versatility helps her with that. It makes such a beautiful sound, she muses, but it’s also incredibly reactive: “The tiniest movement changes everything.”
People tend to disparage the recorder because it’s a training instrument, says Barbour-Condini. But its recent decline is also connected to a wider issue, she underlines, and that’s the increasing marginalisation of music in our schools. “If anything can survive, the recorder can,” Nallen predicts, optimistically. What it needs, Jeffery urges, is to be valued.
In 2020, I picked up my treble recorder after nearly a decade of neglect. It would take a global pandemic and a lonely lockdown for me to search for it beneath a pile of dusty magazines. Was I simply looking for a distraction? I like to think that my excavation ran deeper than that, bringing me closer to the day I fished one out from the school crate. My playing may be rusty these days, but the feeling it gives me is strangely the same. A trill and a toot. Those birdlike sounds, giving me a voice.
Dancers (from left): Yao Zhenyuan, Ashleigh Bennett, Yang Ruiqi | Photography: SWKit | Courtesy of Hong Kong Ballet
Hong Kong Ballet ‘s Season Features The Great Gatsby, The Nutcracker,Swan Lake & International Gala of Stars and The Rule Breakers
Hong Kong Ballet (HKB) proudly announces its ‘Larger Than Life’ 2023/24 Season showcasing eight beloved ballets. With delightful classic ballets, ground-breaking contemporary works and an exciting Beijing tour, HKB is taking over the city like never before! Audiences will be thrilled by an encore of HKB Artistic Director Septime Webre’s The Great Gatsby and The Nutcracker as well as a captivating new Swan Lake world premiere.
Webre shares, ‘Our artists are larger than life both on stage and in our community, leaving an impactful footprint in all corners of our vibrant city. This season we’ve got interactive free family activities, a bold series of mainstage productions and a lot to look forward to.’
In July, HKB had its world premiere of Sam and her Amazing Book of Dinosaurs with co-producer 59 Productions (UK), kicking off International Arts Carnival 2023 and HKB’s thrilling 2023/24 season. Fusing ballet with cutting-edge arts technology, the innovative production received critical acclaim, with RTHK Radio 4 Arts News enthusing, ‘The audience, especially the children, were immersed and inspired by the performance even without 3D glasses. The production allows young dancers to showcase their talents, fully demonstrating the vitality of ballet.’
2023/24 Season highlights include:
Encores of Webre’s enthralling Roaring Twenties melodrama The Great Gatsby and festive family favourite The Nutcracker
Principal dancers from great dance companies Marianela Nuñez, Victor Caixeta, Daniil Simkin, Fang Mengying and Chen Zhuming
A dazzling world premiere of Yuri Possokhov’s mesmerising Swan Lake starring Matthew Ball from The Royal Ballet
Carmina Burana in Beijing with over 300 artists from across China (Hong Kong, Beijing and Macau)
Up to 15% discount on early bird tickets
In September, Ballet Carnival for Kids, a thrilling gala performance for younger audiences, features excerpts from beloved classics Swan Lake, Don Quixote and exciting contemporary works. Designed for families, this is the perfect introduction to the magical world of ballet, offering entertaining, age-appropriate insights on choreography, music and creativity.
The much-anticipated The Great Gatsby returns for eight performances in October after its sold-out 2019 debut, which was called, ‘another triumph for Asia’s premier ballet company’ and ‘a feast for the eyes’. Academy Award-winning designer Tim Yip’s original Art Deco sets and costumes delightfully capture the sound and exuberant energy of the Jazz Age, as Gatsby dreams of being reunited with his long-lost love.
Spotlighting HKB’s stellar artists alongside some of the world’s most talked-about international superstars like Marianela Nuñez (The Royal Ballet), Victor Caixeta (Dutch National Ballet), Daniil Simkin (Berlin State Ballet), Fang Mengying and Chen Zhuming (National Ballet of China), the grandInternational Gala of Stars 2023 promises to be an enthralling must-see event with a glittering programme of thrilling masterpieces and stylish contemporary works in November.
During the holiday season, Webre’s heartwarming The Nutcracker returns to bring festive cheer in a wonderous celebration of early 20th century Hong Kong’s history and characters. Full of magic and lots of local cultural elements like a bun tower climbing competition, lion dance and blossoming bauhinias, the exuberant production has been described by critics as ‘full of vitality and freshness’ and ’sure to be loved by locals and visitors alike for many years to come’.
In January 2024, join HKB’s Beijing Tour with Carmina Burana, an extravagant feast for the senses, dancing through a journey which begins in medieval times and works its way to the present. More than 300 artists from across China will join forces, including the Macao Orchestra and over 150 singers from Beijing’s China National Symphony Orchestra Chorus on dizzying eight-metre scaffolding that evokes a medieval cloister.
Get ready for an electrifying evening of contemporary works celebrating some of ballet’s most influential choreographers in The Rule Breakers in March 2024. This dynamic programme features William Forsythe’s ground-breaking work, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, Andonis Foniadakis’ thrilling world premiere ballet and HKB’s Choreographer-in-Residence Hu Song Wei Ricky’s ravishing The Last Song.
One of 2024’s most anticipated events in international ballet is the world premiere of a dazzling new Swan Lake from San Francisco Ballet Resident Choreographer Yuri Possokhov. An enchanting tale of love overcoming evil, this beloved classical ballet has delighted generations of ballet fans and is reimagined with Possokhov’s trademark energy and sophisticated choreography. We’re also thrilled to have The Royal Ballet’s charismatic principal dancer Matthew Ball joining HKB on this fabulous stage.
Get fabulous early bird discounts of 15% off for Friends of Hong Kong Ballet members and 10% off for non-members for the best available seats at The Great Gatsby, International Gala of Stars 2023, The Nutcracker, The Rule Breakers and Swan Lake. Friends of Hong Kong Ballet can also enjoy special discounts at the Sugar Plum Shoppe, which offers exclusive HKB merchandise like stylish t-shirts, tutus, gym bags, and brand new 2023/24 Season items.
Ticketing and Information
Tickets of The Great Gatsby andInternational Gala of Stars 2023are now available at Popticket.com during the early bird period from now on until 16 Aug 2023. After that period, tickets will be available at URBTIX from 28 Aug 2023.
For ticketing information of other programmes, please visit hkballet.com for details.
As fresh air becomes crucial to fighting the spread of the coronavirus, modern office buildings that depend on air conditioning may need to rethink their design — and draw inspiration from the past to do it.
This summer I headed west, and as always, I visited as many art galleries as possible. Here then, is a list of spots visited, along with a link and brief description.
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ABOVE: Bill Reid, The Raven and the First Men, 1980, wood sculpture. As seen at the Museum of Anthropology UBC.
Located by the harbor in Victoria, this small gallery showcases the work of Robert Bateman as well as his contemporaries. It’s a must see, especially if you’re a fan of his work.
Bill Reid is a huge presence in Vancouver with marquee pieces in the airport and the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. Unsurprisingly, he has his very own gallery. Unsurprisingly, it’s a must see.
Another small space, this time located at the University of British Columbia (a 20 minute bus ride from Vancouver), the work on display is very contemporary and non-traditional – at least it was when I was there.
Although technically not an art gallery, this made the list as it was by far, the most spectacular museum/gallery in the Vancouver/Victoria area. It’s holdings of First Nations art, and the way it’s displayed is incredible. It doesn’t matter where in the world you’re coming from, this is a bucket list museum.
The top public gallery in Vancouver, the Giacometti exhibition (which ended 9/22) was a well-curated look at the artists work. Although it’s over, it gives you an idea of the type of show this gallery is capable of.
User-generated content (UGC) has become a popular buzzword in recent years, and for good reason. Not only does it allow companies to create more cost-effective content, but it also adds a layer of authenticity and credibility to their marketing campaigns. In this article, we’ll explore the role of user-generated content in visual marketing, the benefits of incorporating it into your marketing strategy, successful campaign examples, and tips for doing it right.
Benefits of using UGC in visual marketing
UGC can provide many benefits when used in visual marketing. First and foremost, UGC allows for increased authenticity and credibility in your content. Traditional marketing content can come across as self-promotional, which can turn off potential customers. UGC, on the other hand, is created by your customers or followers, which makes it more genuine and trustworthy.
In addition to the authenticity factor, UGC can also drive higher engagement and user involvement. When your customers see that their content is being featured on your social media channels or website, they’re more likely to engage with your brand and create more content. This, in turn, can lead to an increase in followers, comments, and shares.
Finally, UGC can be a cost-effective way to create content. Traditional marketing content can be time-consuming and expensive to produce. UGC, on the other hand, is created by your customers or followers for free. By leveraging UGC, you can save time and money on content creation while still providing valuable content for your followers.
Examples of successful UGC campaigns in visual marketing
Some of the most successful campaigns in visual marketing have leveraged UGC. One example is the “Share a Coke” campaign by Coca-Cola. The company printed popular names on their soda cans and encouraged customers to take photos of themselves with their personalized cans and share them on social media. The campaign went viral, with millions of people sharing photos of their personalized cans, and it led to a significant increase in sales for the company.
Another example is the #ShotOniPhone campaign by Apple. The campaign featured photos and videos shot on iPhones by regular people, and it showcased the quality of the iPhone camera. The campaign was a huge success, and it helped to establish the iPhone as a leading smartphone for photography.
How to incorporate UGC in your visual marketing strategy
If you’re interested in incorporating UGC into your visual marketing strategy, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you need to encourage your customers and followers to create and share content. This can be done by creating branded hashtags or hosting contests that encourage user submissions.
It’s also important to make it easy for your customers to create and share content. For example, you can feature a gallery of UGC on your website or social media channels, which can encourage others to submit their content as well.
Finally, it’s important to ensure that your UGC fits in with your overall brand image and values. You should have guidelines in place for the type of content you’re looking for, and you should monitor submissions to ensure that they align with your brand.
Potential challenges and risks of using UGC in visual marketing
While UGC can provide many benefits for your marketing campaigns, there are also potential challenges and risks that you should be aware of. One risk is that UGC can sometimes be negative or off-brand. For example, a customer might submit a photo that is inappropriate or offensive.
To mitigate this risk, you should have clear guidelines in place for the type of content you’re looking for, and you should monitor submissions to ensure that they align with your brand. You can also consider using a platform that allows you to moderate submissions before they’re posted.
Another potential risk is copyright infringement. When customers submit photos or videos, they own the rights to that content.
To avoid any potential legal issues, you should make it clear in your guidelines that users must have the rights to any content they submit. You should also consider using a platform that allows you to verify ownership or obtain permission from the creator before using their content.
Finally, it’s important to ensure that you’re giving proper credit to the creators of any UGC that you use. This can help to build goodwill with your customers and followers and can also help to establish your brand as one that values authenticity and community.
Conclusion
Incorporating user-generated content into your visual marketing strategy can provide many benefits for your brand. By leveraging UGC, you can create more authentic and engaging content, while also saving time and money on content creation.
When done right, UGC can help to establish your brand as one that values community and authenticity, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and sales. To get started with UGC, consider hosting a contest or creating a branded hashtag that encourages your customers to create and share content. With a little creativity and planning, you can use UGC to take your visual marketing to the next level.
The art of the American West stands as a unique and captivating genre within the art world, with its distinct combination of historical significance, cultural diversity, and distinctive landscapes. Here are 5 top-rated books that explore the expansive world Western art. This list includes perspectives on trailblazing female painters, iconic Western painters, contemporary ceramics, and more.
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Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America, by Matika Wilbur
In 2012, Matika Wilbur embarked on a Kickstarter-funded mission to photograph individuals from 562 Native American Tribal Nations, traveling extensively across the U.S. over a decade. Project 562, a remarkable collection of portraits and narratives, challenges stereotypes, honors cultural diversity, and addresses vital issues in Indigenous communities, reshaping perceptions of Native America.
Journey through the Anschutz Collection, a premier private trove of American West art. Spanning art history since the 1820s, it showcases lesser-known talents and iconic artists like Moran, Bierstadt, Remington, and O’Keeffe. Presented with the Denver Art Museum.
Spoken Through Clay: Native Pottery of the Southwest―The Eric Dobkin Collection, by Charles S. King and Eric S. Dobkin
“Spoken Through Clay” is a comprehensive book showcasing nearly three hundred contemporary pottery vessels, encompassing both historic and modern pieces. Focusing on Pueblo artists, it features captivating portraits and narratives that delve into their artistry, traditions, and cultural significance. Dynamic photography highlights the pieces, while artists, scholars, and others provide insights, shedding light on the lives and impact of notable potters like Maria Martinez, Popovi Da, and Virgil Ortiz, emphasizing vessel design, form, and scale.
George Carlson, a distinguished artist, stands as the sole recipient of the esteemed Prix de West grand prize twice, the most esteemed accolade in the rich heritage of American Western art. Drawing inspiration from illustrious figures such as Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and the Taos School, Carlson continues to craft pieces that honor this time-honored tradition.
Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945 by Patricia Trenton
“Independent Spirits” portrays female painters in the American West (1890-1945) as innovative influencers and advocates for women’s rights. With 100+ color plates, the book highlights diverse art styles and subjects by women of different backgrounds. These artists challenged norms, shaping the West’s cultural landscape and paving the way for gender equality in art communities.
There are so many other great books about the art of the American West. What’s on your list? Share them in the comments below!
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