The Smile - “Bending Hectic”
I wrote last year about The Smile’s “The Smoke,” a song I spent a lot of time with off an album I absolutely loved. The Smile is a Radiohead … what? Side project? Spinoff? Is it Radiohead now? It is a band that contains Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood, both of Radiohead, but also a jazz drummer, Tom Skinner of Sons of Kemet. So maybe a bit of all those things. Regardless, it is not unfair, I think, to say that A Light for Attracting Attention, The Smile’s debut record, felt like a continuation of Radiohead’s most recent album, 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool. That record struck a balance between the electronics of 2011’s The King of Limbs and the (relatively) straightforward rock of 2007’s In Rainbows. A Light for Attracting Attention does the same thing, making space for electronics while also allowing Yorke, Greenwood, and Skinner to find their version of a groove. That’s the version of the Radiohead universe that works best for me, the version that tries to experiment without losing touch with the real organic strengths the musicians bring.
American Smiles
On Friday, I attended the Lake Superior Libraries Symposium, a very fun little library conference. My favorite presentation was given by Nancy Sims, copyright librarian at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, who gave a fantastic summary of so many of the ethical and legal issues surrounding generative AI at the moment. Nancy pointed to “AI and the American Smile,” an article by Jenka Gurfinkel that points to generative AI as a tool that has the potential to be a force for the homogenization of culture:
In the same way that English language emotion concepts have colonized psychology, AI dominated by American-influenced image sources is producing a new visual monoculture of facial expressions. As we increasingly seek our own likenesses in AI reflections, what does it mean for the distinct cultural histories and meanings of facial expressions to become mischaracterized, homogenized, subsumed under the dominant dataset? In the AI-generated visual future, will we know that Native Americans didn’t smile for photos like WW2 U.S. Navy Officers?
The article makes a few missteps (the American Indian men in the photos from the 19th century are likely not smiling because exposure times were longer then, something the author acknowledges in the comments), but I agree with the broader point. We know that the United States already has an outsized presence on the web. What happens when AI trained on American-centric training data is thrown into the mix?
I'm sure not everything about AI will be bad. I'm sure there are real benefits to be had! I won't, though, pretend to be excited about it. So much of what I love about our world comes from difference, from opportunities to learn and experience new things. I don't want to lose any of that.
What I Read in May 2023
I made it a good way through the Joy Harjo collection I mentioned last month, but it isn’t quite done yet. The onset of spring (Summer? Does summer in Duluth really start until July?) and a wonderful trip to Montreal meant that I wound up focusing on other books. I’ll have it done soon, though. Montreal meant a slower pace overall, with a few big sci-fi novels taking over much of my reading time. I’m not sure if Adrian Tchaikovsky’s work is my all-time favorite, but it makes for good summer reading. Children of Time’s spiders are delicious fun.
What I Read in April 2023
It’s early May in Duluth, which means that though our days are cold, they are very long, they light is beautiful, and the lake looks inviting. I have tried to get outside a little more, but the books keep coming anyway. I’m not sure what’s up next — I need to finish a collection of poetry by Joy Harjo before I can pick something else out — but I’m looking forward to whatever it is. In the meantime, I wish everyone pleasant weather, fresh air, and happy reading.
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Learning About Classical Music
What I’ve Tried In The Past
Going into this, I’ll own that I haven’t made a great go of learning about classical music in the past. I’ve tried, but in large part that process has consisted of searching for articles with titles like “How To Get Into Classical Music” or “9 Pieces To Make You Fall In Love With Classical Music.” Maybe those articles work for someone? They’re romantic, right? The idea that a single piece of music could somehow instantaneously hook someone into music that is, in many ways, divorced from the music at the center of our popular culture is cool. It’s also wild! I think classical music needs a little more unpacking than those articles provide, not because the music is completely inaccessible, but because a little bit of context goes a long way in the learning process.