Posts Tagged With "Technology"

Brain Fuzz: The Podcast

September 15, 2016 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

I’m lucky to call Joe Camoosa a friend. He’s also a great painter. I would say artist, but he doesn’t like being called an artist. (You’ll have to ask him.) So, I’m almost always at a loss as to how I can best describe him.

If you love Tokens From The Well, you’ll at least really like Brain Fuzz. Maybe you’ll love it. And vice versa.

Going back almost a year, and at the urging of more than one other person, he and I started thinking about a podcast. We started recording conversations with no agenda or outline. They were surprisingly cogent. They were also surprisingly coherent and relevant (at least to us).

Then, we started to structure our conversations a bit more. We still allowed for the randomness and variety that makes like interesting, and it all works somehow.

Topics include the creative life, studios, exhibitions, galleries, art travel, music, books, bands, various audiophiliac concerns, and related (or unrelated) minutiae. We typically avoid politics, religion, and sports.

Listen to Brain Fuzz sometime. And better yet, subscribe.

If you like Tokens From The Well, you’ll love Brain Fuzz – the new art, music, and culture podcast. I take that back. Regardless of whether you love Tokens From The Well or not, you’ll probably like Brain Fuzz.

Either way, give it a listen.

Searching for a More Narrow Worldview

July 17, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

I was reminded today that the Atlanta Braves are playing the Chicago Cubs. Google Now on my Android phone notified me of this fact in what was probably the first time it has volunteered information that was remotely helpful or interesting.

Previously, I wasn’t convinced that my “intelligent personal assistant” had me pegged right, mainly because I submit a lot of off the wall search queries. Or, so I think. Google Now may or may not know this. Or, maybe it knows me better than I do.

So, there you have it. It took a while, but Google Now finally reached a level of understanding about me that could signal the beginning of its usefulness to me – like a personal assistant that one day surprises you with a resupply of your favorite whiskey.

OK, not quite that great yet.

Building The Perfect Bubble

A recent article at news.com.au entitled “How Google Distorts Your View of the World” has again highlighted a phenomenon referred to as the “filter bubble.” Here’s how it works: Google algorithms determine your search results based not just on your search query but also your search history. While most of the time this yields what we might consider to be more “relevant” or “higher quality” search results, several downsides and their impacts are emerging.

Trust The Algos - #StopInfluenceNow smartphone case on Samsung Galaxy S5.

Algorithms are pervasive. This #StopInfluenceNow smartphone case meme could refer to both the algorithms driving stock market trading and those driving your search results. Go ahead, trust the algos.

It’s one thing to have read only the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, for example, to shape your view of the world. But, in the past when you sought additional information, that process would kick up a lot of stuff that either you didn’t agree with – other viewpoints – as well as some junk information to be disregarded.

Still, exposure to other viewpoints, and even the junk, has its benefits.

Now, a search engine (probably Google) is most likely the vehicle with which additional information is sought. And, guess what? You’re likely to see results – and most importantly for the business model, ads – that its algorithms determine are most in line with your search history and what it has determined are your personal preferences.

Therefore, as our ability to access information has expanded dramatically, we ourselves are also quietly working to limit it.

So What? Just Turn It Off.

You can just turn it off right? Yes and no. You can turn off Google Now or customize it. You can perform searches without signing in to your search engine.

However, this kind of artificial intelligence is becoming so pervasive that it is difficult to know when you’re actually engaged in an act of pure “discovery” or actually “happening along” new information on your own.

Siri. Shopping suggestions. Streaming media suggestions. Newsfeeds in social media. Yep, those are driven by a kind of artifical intelligence as well.

Still interested? You might also like my future blog post on the topic of newsfeeds too. Meanwhile, I have a game to watch soon.

The Right To Be Forgotten

March 29, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

With the proliferation of mobile and social technologies and their resulting integration into our lives, humankind is grappling with new existential questions.

Among them: Do individuals have a right to be forgotten?

Contemporary Mixed Media from Emerging Artist Matthew White

Detail from #RightToBeForgotten by Matthew White, 2015.

Forgotten how?

Forgotten in terms of you as a discoverable digital entity – both in the most minor sense, such as online references to you in your last professional role, all the way to your presence as a social media profile.

Continually, we’re leaving digital breadcrumbs everywhere, and try as you might, you will not be able to cover your digital tracks. After all, you have to cover the “cover up” tracks as well.

Human Memory

But, I don’t have anything to cover up. Anything I do online, I’d do in public.

Fair enough. However, we live our lives – whether physically or virtually – within the realm of human understanding, a central part of which is human memory.

We go about daily life with the expectation that minor social and even legal infractions are mostly forgiven in the minds of others, if they don’t fade away altogether. An off-color remark, a heated response, a single poor choice, or simple misfortune will begin to dissipate as soon as it passes from the present moment. This is the nature of human memory.

Time heals all wounds right?

Digital Memory

In the digital world however, the laws of digital memory apply. Things live on – and not just bad selfies. Technologies and services such as Forget.Me are available to assist in the process of cleaning the digital residue of individual existence. But let’s face it, there are a lot of breadcrumbs: Check-ins, status updates, mentions, tags, reviews, tweets, purchase histories, listening histories . . .

Like something out of a Philip Dick novel, the process of having aspects of our digital lives “forgotten” is increasingly being referred to, particularly in the EU, as de-listing or being de-listed.

#RightToBeForgotten

In #RightToBeForgotten, a piece I began while in residency at Hambidge Center, I explore these and related issues . . . and some unrelated ones too. Part of an ongoing project I call the #Hashtag series, this mixed media work consists of a manufactured panel and two manufactured canvases.

What are your thoughts on the issue? Your thoughts on the artwork?

Please, leave another breadcrumb here.

Streaming Is Killing the MP3 Industry

January 6, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Nope. 2014 was not a great year for the MP3 industry. According to reports in The Wall Street Journal, sales of downloaded songs and albums “plummeted” while the use of streaming grew “sharply.”

And, for the icing on the cake: Vinyl sales are up significantly.

The Who and What By Numbers

Streaming is killing the MP3 industry, and hipsters should note the numbers on vinyl.

Let’s briefly review 2014:

Downloaded album sales dropped 9%.
Downloaded song sales dropped 12%.
Streaming grew by a whopping 54%.

Total album consumption was 257 million units. Downloaded albums represent 106.5 million of that total.

Hipsters should note that while vinyl sales are up, it’s only 9.2 million units in all. That’s about 4% of total (“new”) album sales across formats. Despite the saber rattling across posts and shares – as well as my own wishes for our culture – that’s not enough to spill a PBR (or Genessee) over.

To put a face on some of these numbers, Taylor Swift had the biggest album sales of the year with more than 3.66 million copies of her 1989.

So . . .

On the surface, the significant movement of these numbers in such a short period of time is what is most impressive. And, even more importantly, it’s interesting to put these numbers in perspective among broader trending across decades (RIAA offers a lot of data available via subscription). For example, notice how cycles in format adoption have sped up.

What would Rob and Barry think about streaming? High Fidelity is also a book by Nick Hornby that may or may not be available on Kindle.

The assumption that consumers are purchasing and downloading single songs while abandoning whole albums is wrong. The data backs this up. Among us enlightened music consumers, we may not like who they download or how they download it, but they still value the “album” as a collection of songs. In fact, since 2013, single song downloads declined more than album downloads.

The impact to what remains of an always clueless “music industry” is clear. People are listening to more music while they – and the artists – make less money.

. . . And In The End

These numbers tell us more about how our culture’s consumption habits and brains are evolving than they do about our music tastes.

The free market can be a real bitch. Music makers have greater access to instruments, collaboration, and distribution. Consumers have access to more music, more artists, and more formats. Are the sheeple engaging with albums and album tracks in ways that the enlightened would prefer? Who knows? They probably never will anyway.

These shifts in trends raise an interesting question about how artists integrate the distribution format into their work. For example, in 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hears Club Band, The Beatles mixed several seconds of sound for the record’s run-out groove. This was followed by a 15 kilocycle pitch that was included especially for dogs. Interestingly, use of the run-out groove actually dates back to recordings for 78s.

For most, the uncomfortable fact of the matter is that music now – like sales charts – is mostly data. That fact is not inherently good or bad. The real question is, what next?