Art

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – October 19th, 2024

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

     

    Trading Links:

  • The Evolution of Michael Jackson

    This lighthearted post has something to do with artificial …  but nothing to do with artificial intelligence.

    While doing my weekly reading and web browsing (which is how I pick those links you probably think an algorithm selects), I happened upon a post about Michael Jackson on Twitter (now called X), and I enjoyed it (or at least was drawn to click and watch it). 

    I grew up a huge Michael Jackson fan. As a kid, I watched the Jackson 5 Saturday morning cartoon show. His albums were the soundtrack to my college years. Later, my first wife and I saw him in concert several times. We shared that love with our youngest son, Zach. 

    It's funny to look back on, but Zach used to dance to Michael Jackson's songs on stage at his Elementary School talent shows or at random restaurants. There was no choreography … but lots of movement. I still smile when I think about it. 

    You might smile (or shake your head) while watching this short video chronicling the evolution of  Michael Jackson's face changes from birth to death. 

     

    via MikeBeast

    It's a staggering difference. I won't pretend to know what led him to make the changes, but they're substantial. 

    That being said, his music is both timely and timeless – which is very rare. He managed to make music in each era that fit in with the times but still felt very Michael Jackson. 

     

    via MikeBeast

     

    Gone too soon!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – February 18th, 2024

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    Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

    Lighter Links:

    Trading Links:

  • Some New AI Tools I’ve Been Hearing Good Things About

    At the core of Capitalogix's existence is a commitment to systemization and automation. 

    Consequently, I play with a lot of tools.  I think of this as research, discovery, and skill-building.  There is a place for that in my day or week.  However, few of those tools make it into my real work routine.

    Here is a list of some of the tools that I recommend.  I'm not saying I use them regularly … but in some cases, I should (it reminds me of some exercise equipment I have). 

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    Since the late 90's, I've been collecting tools to make my business more efficient and my life easier. 

    It's a little embarrassing, but my most popular YouTube video is an explainer video on Dragon NaturallySpeaking from 13 years ago.  It was (and still is) dictation software, but from a time before your phone gave you that capability. 

    Today, I have more tools than I know what to do with, but here are a few that keep coming up in conversations. 

    Daily.AI – AI Newsletters

    We've launched a new newsletter that is AI-curated by Daily.ai.  It matches the tone and style of my newsletters, gets good engagement, and (honestly) looks much better than what we put out.

    Our handwritten newsletters still do better on some metrics – but it's a nice addition and a promising technology. 

    For transparency, our handwritten newsletters get around 45% opens, and 10% click-throughs and our new AI newsletter is averaging around 38% opens but around 30% click-throughs.  Our normal newsletter isn't focused on links – which is why the click-through isn't as good. 

    That said, Daily.AI is a great tool that creates compelling two-way communication with your audience way easier and cheaper (time, money, and effort) than something similar done manually.

    This is an example of how people won't get replaced by AI … people will get replaced by people who use AI better. 

    Opus.pro – AI Video Repurposing 

    Opus.pro takes your long-form video content and cuts it into short-form content that you can post as teasers to other channels like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, or Instagram Reels. 

    For me, I tend to do more long-form content naturally.  I go on a podcast, speak at a conference, or to a mastermind group.  I end up with a 30-minute+ video that I don't have the time or interest in using.  This tool allows me to find the best parts quickly – and still allows editing to make it perfect. 

    For someone interested in really pursuing video, it's not worth it.  If you're interested in being present online, and not worried about making it your career, this is a great tool to streamline and systematize your process. 

    Type.AI 

    Type.AI is an interesting AI-first document editing tool.  At its core, Type is a faster, better, and easier way to write.

    A lot of people are using chat GPT for some editing.  Type is a good example of a next-generation tool that incorporates ChatGPT and other LLMs under the surface.  It is aware of what you are doing and lets you know what it can do. 

    Type jumpstarts the creative process and banishes the blank page.  Underneath its gorgeous UI are powerful features for generating ideas, querying your document, experimenting with different models, and easily formatting your work.

    The point is that with a tool like this, you don't have to be good at prompt engineering.  The tool does that for you – so you can focus on the writing.

    GetVoila.AI 

    Voilà is an all-in-one AI assistant in a browser extension.  That means it goes with you everywhere you go on the web and supercharges your browser by making it use ChatGPT to do what it does best without you having to do more than check what is available.
     
    Voilà simplifies the process of working with the content of websites and URLs, making it easy to convert them into various types of content, summarize them, or extract key information.  For example, if I am watching a YouTube video, I can right-click and choose "Summarize" – it creates a short video summary from the transcript.  Or, while writing this sentence, a simple right-click lets me choose: Improve, Fix grammar, Make longer, Make shorter, Summarize, Simplify, Rephrase, or Translate.
     
    This is more useful than I thought.  I use it well … then forget about it.  When I use it again, I often find that it got better.  I think you will find that with a lot of the tools these days.

     Don't worry about how well you use tools like this.  It is enough that you get better at using tools like these to accomplish what you really want.

    Explore a little.  Then, let me know what you found worth sharing.

  • The Beatles New Song … And Where AI Art Fails

    Have you listened to the new Beatles song?  It took almost 50 years and new technology to create.

    How did this happen?  An AI system, made by Peter Jackson, uncoupled the vocals from the piano on a poor-quality tape demo from the 70s.  The result – a song that would have never seen the light of day was able to bring John Lennon back from the dead to release new music for a new generation. 

    You can listen to it here.

     

    via The Beatles

    Was it a touching tribute and closure to an extraordinary legacy?  Does it qualify as AI "art"? 

    We are seeing a surge in creativity due to the rise of generative AI. 

    People are doing amazing things with AI …  and it's making entrepreneurship accessible to a new group of people.

    AI is exciting, but it is also scary.  I would argue that it is a net positive.  However, there are also clear drawbacks (and potential risks).  For example, there are the obvious ones like deepfakes, art being stolen and fed into models without consent, etc.  But, there's one that many aren't talking about…

    It's a lack of nuance or understanding of art. 

    Here is an example of using generative AI to improve a famous art piece.

     

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    @Soncharm

    In my opinion, the creator completely missed the point when they tried to improve Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. 

    The truth is that I don't know their intent or thought process.

    However, Nighthawks is famous for a reason.  It shows a patron, presumably at a late-night diner, with a desolate urban streetscape outside.  To the right audience, it embodies the isolation of a 24-hour modern society and big cities, and the hidden changes of the 20th century.  It is a poignant composition and one of the most famous American art pieces. 

    Lost in the power of Generative AI, this X (Twitter) user transformed the piece by running it through an art processor multiple times. 

    First, he had AI parse the image and write a description of it.  Then, he had it regenerate the image from the description.  The setting became light.  He thought he could make it better, so he moved people outside.  He parses a description again and creates a new image again.  He did this several times. 

    The result is what you see — a beautifully created composition lacking any depth. 

    The AI did its job; the human did not. 

    A better prompt or a more artful process would have had a better result. 

    But is it art?

    Once created, art is in the eye or mind of the perceiver.  So, should we care who or what creates it?

    Here are some other questions worth pondering.  Is AI at its best when it's amplifying human intelligence – rather than replacing it?  Or … is the goal simply to amplify intelligence?

    The Universe often gives you increasingly painful chances to learn a lesson. 

    What do you think we're supposed to take from this?

  • Swedish Inspired Algorithms

    Some Professors put together IKEA-inspired instructional booklets for their algorithms and data-structures lectures. The idea was to make easy-to-understand explanations by removing words, and only using images. Ideally, this would allow them to be understood regardless of their native language or culture. 

    They've put together a plethora of assembly instructions, including for Quick Sort, BOGO Sort, Public Key Crypto, Binary Search, Merge Sort, Balance Tree, Graph Scan, and One Stroke Draw algorithms. 

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    via ideainstruction

    This is a pretty cool idea, or at least I thought so. My youngest son said, "I don't particularly understand IKEA directions or algorithms …. so this is basically the worst of both worlds for me."  Finally, we agree about something!

    Hopefully, you find it helpful. If not, there's always Wikipedia. 

  • Another AI Art Gimmick

    There's a new trend of AI-generated profile pictures – using tools like avatar.ai.

    Below are some sample results my son, Zach, got after downloading an iPhone app called Lensa.  The company that makes it also offers a product called Prisma that is worth looking at as well.  He paid $4 within Lensa to generate these AI photos (for context, avatar.ai charges more than 5x as much).  He uploaded 17 photos from different angles (and with different expressions), and the app promised 50 pieces from 4 styles.

    What do you think of the results?  I thought some of them were surprisingly good. 

     

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    Some were not so good … (or at least outside my zone of artistic preferences).

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    After seeing his, I'll admit I got curious and made my own. 

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    To be honest, these apps are still volatile … meaning, sometimes they are good enough to seriously impress – but they also can underwhelm from time to time.  Check out DALL-E for more examples of the dynamic range of possibilities and results.

    Regardless, I am impressed with AI art's progress and momentum.  Recently, generative AI has gotten a lot of hate (along with the hype), nonetheless, people are talking about it (meanwhile AI art is still not as polarizing as Kanye). 

    The reality is, most of these tools still are an elegant use of brute force.  Nonetheless, I am bullish.  Hardware and software are getting better … and when fed more data, generative art depictions get better as well. 

    The uses continue to get more elegant and complex as time passes … but we're still coding the elegance. 

    For more on this topic: 

  • The Swish Machine

    Rube Goldberg machines impress me more often than not. Here's a 70-step outdoor machine that covers a lot of ground … all to put a basketball in a hoop. It took a month to create, and another month to get working. 

     

    via Creezy

    I love stuff like this because it reminds me of life. Looking backward, you see how all the pieces go together. As you're going through it, it feels random and sometimes like you're moving backward or that your effort isn't directly contributing to your goal.

    Nonetheless, it all comes together in the end.

    Onwards!  

  • “Earl, Honey”

     

    51TPgTXbtzLMy first wife (and mother of my children) Denise is a smart and talented author.  I still remember the first time she asked me to read an early copy of her work.  She never let me do it again. 

    That being said, she recently released a new book, Earl, Honey.  The book is loosely based on the real story of her family history.  I enjoyed it.  It's a southern coming-of-age story set in the 1920s – which is not my typical genre.  Nevertheless, it's a poignant story with insight into the human condition, and its dramatic realities remind us how good we have it. 

    It's a story she learned, first via her grandmother, long after the events of the book take place.  Those events shaped the lives of generations of her family. 

    It's a tough and heart-wrenching Southern Gothic read that covers incest, domestic abuse, and more.  Check it out. 

    Here's the book's blurb from Amazon:

    "Ever since Pa hit him in the head with the two-by-four, Earl had lived with blinders on. Not real blinders, of course, because that would be foolish. It was his own brain that blinkered him."

    Earl Hahn is slow, the last one to catch on to things. Since the day his father hit him in the head with a 2×4 of loblolly pine, he's struggled with a "thickness in his brain." It takes him longer to make the connections others arrive at easily. When his father is prosecuted for the crime of incest, it feels like deliverance for Earl, his mother Lizzie Belle, and the entire Hahn family. Unfortunately, his father's abhorrent actions are not done exacting a price.

    Everyone in the household will pay for their patriarch's crimes – no one more than Earl.

    So begins a powerful coming-of-age tale about a shy, damaged boy who must overcome unimaginable personal tragedy – both as its victim and its perpetrator. Raw, honest, and filled with heart, Earl, Honey recounts an extraordinary search for redemption amid the perilous world of the 1920s American South.

     

  • A Wordcloud For Each of the Major Religions

    The six largest religions in the world are Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. 

    We often think about the differences between religions.  However, the many similarities are obvious if you look (and may be indications of a more integral "truth". 

    Below is a wordcloud for each of those religions based on their major religious text. 

    Q04t0id427v61teddyterminal via Reddit

    If you find the name "Keith" it's because it was the translator's name, and the word "car" in the Hinduism wordcloud is an old-fashioned word for "chariot".

    It's also worth acknowledging that this wordcloud is from the English translations so some words that may mean slightly different things in other languages can be all translated to one word in English. For example, it's very common in Biblical Hebrew to see different words translated into the same English word. A good example is Khata, Avon, and Pesha–three different ways of committing a wrong, that may all be translated the same.