Hyrbrid Realities Lab Audio Recording Week 1 Session 2

A group of individuals are discussing their positive reactions to a new digital tool that allows for the organization and annotation of visual material. They discuss its potential applications in various fields, such as art history and content creation. Some ethical concerns are raised regarding energy consumption and the environmental impact of such technologies. The group expresses an interest in further research and discussion on these topics. Hello. How you doing? That was good. Yeah. I was, Chris isn't listening in. I was initially a little sceptical, but I was blown away by that. That's just bang on. That's cutting edge stuff. I hope that becomes something accessible for a lot of people. That's just phenomenal. Yes. Yeah, I was absolutely blown away by that. First it was a bit, like, broey. And it did something quite amazing. I had a look at the website a month ago, and I found it really cool. I didn't know they were going that far with the annotation of it. I thought it was supposed to be just like an image organiser, something like that, but it seems to be much more. It seems very, like, just visual or aesthetic, you know, like, oh, look, we have a map of images. But yeah, this actually has, like, very, I don't know, philosophical and media science-based concept behind it that I find really fascinating. Just in terms of how you consume data and stuff in the digital world, you know. It's like, yeah, good stuff. I was just saying to Matthew that I feel like I'm also just, like, taking part of this course, and I should also be, like, paying and paying tuition. You're paying in other ways, Lynne. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in other ways, it's, like, super cool. It's, like, nothing like that has ever been, like, shown to me in any other seminar. It's, like, really, really cool. Yeah, and we have this guy giving a talk here. It's amazing. That's what I want to keep doing. I wondered if we could maybe ask Jake for some slides from his presentation. I don't know if we need them, but it just crossed my mind. I took a few screenshots as we were going, but it doesn't really do it justice. Yeah, no, it would be good if you could share it. I mean, obviously, confidential, but, I mean, we also probably, if it gets released, we're going to make good advertisement for it, so he doesn't have to pay for that. Yeah. It's amazing to get in there, you know, while it's still a kind of beta testing round. Yeah. You get a few perks, and you get to see stuff. It made me think of this, which is one of the main inspirations for our collective, actually, Nemezine. Oh, yeah. Good thinking, Matthew. It's a Nemezine atlas by a guy called – I'm just going to write it down so people see the chat later on. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. You should have brought it up to him. Yeah, I was about to, but, I mean, he's busy, and I wanted to let the cohort ask their questions, you know. But it's like, basically, a project by an art historian in the early 20th century where he tried to trace, like, visual material drawings and different compositions, etc., that kind of came back incessantly in art history, and he, like, tried to map it out. And so he had this – when he was talking about the fact that it's like manual labor, like the fact of, like, organizing visual stuff, that's exactly, I think, you know, what he meant. I'm going to share another picture here, which shows the guy working there. Do you have this on your Nemezine website? I'm sure I've read it somewhere. The reference to him is in there somewhere, I think. But you can see him here in the picture, like, kind of standing amidst all the villagers. And I think there's a great potential of, like, finding connections between things by having it laid out in such a way. So even for that, it's like, for me, it's like a spiritual successor of that work, trying to work out the logic behind images and then visual material, these types of traces that keep coming back in art history. So I think there's some really good applications for it there as well. Matthew's images in the chat, which relate to Nemezine, the inspiration behind Nemezine, which has some similarities with some of the ideas that were being discussed by Jake. Yeah. Can you put a link up to Nemezine? Because it's worth people having a glance and seeing what you're up to. Instagram channel thing. Yeah, I found this quite fascinating. Not sure if anyone else finds it as great. I feel like it could be interesting also, as Berto has said, to kind of just, if you have reference material, just kind of find ways to reorganize the stuff you have and make sense of things you accumulate. I mean, for me, I'm typically looking at FBI files, CIA files, NSA files and stuff like that, and digging through these old files and I just lose track of them. I just put them in a folder and I don't see them again, but I use a lot of those pieces in collage works. So a way that I can actually use those, have my collage works over here, and the continuation of how that story goes, and then having the resource material somewhere else would be super beneficial for me. Are you going to pick up the offer then, Berto? Are you going to have a go at it? Yeah, yeah, I hit them up. Already? You said already? Yeah, I already sent a fired-out email. Yeah, that's so good. For me as well, I also struggle a lot with organizing all my reference material, because I do also work in a sort of way that I make mind maps whenever I start a new project. For example, I have the title of the work and then I just have that in the middle and I just branch out, make a mind map, even stick it to the wall. My parents always think I've lost it and I'm crazy, but I need to sort of visualize the stuff that I'm working on and kind of just put it down and also have this spatial memory of what kind of references are. And I think this could be really good and groundbreaking too for people like me who need to visualize their ideas like this to kind of also have them portable and bring them with you instead of having just like one room in your house to look at. Yeah, it sounds really interesting. I'm very excited to use it. Yeah. Is everyone here going to ask if they can access it? Is anybody not going to? We were just saying before you came back on how blown away we were by it. We weren't really sure. They're a little bit elusive to begin with. Chris knows them because he's had more of an association with them and brought them in, but we weren't quite sure what to expect other than having a look at the website as it stands at the moment. But we were blown away by it. It looks amazing. Anybody want to reflect on it at all or have any comments or should we move to New York City? The only thing that I thought of is just, again, just like I always have like these slight ethical concerns with the energy used by these databases in Virginia that he's referring to, and I've already done a little bit of my own research. But I just wondered if anybody else had any thoughts or had done any research on those Amazon databases. I don't know the actual impact or the actual energy consumption involved with using AI through them, but I also just wonder if it's something like in this digital landscape, if it's something that's even avoidable at all. But I just wondered if anyone else had any thoughts about that. I mean, they are interesting questions. I've actually done a video about this. It's called Head in the Clouds. I can share it with you, and it was quite a few years ago, and I was kind of reflecting on that as well. What do you do? You kind of have this cloud, and it's sort of this non-tangible thing that's just floating around. But it actually is something, you know, it's in Virginia. It takes up power and cooling, and with the whole global warming, you need more cooling, you need more water and all of that. But I also have not done specific research on how much it actually consumes, but I can imagine that you could technically create endless emails. You could create endless content that needs to be stored somewhere. So if everybody was going to do that, I think the world would just end. If we're all going to create 1,000 email addresses, it all needs to be stored. I think that's definitely something to reflect on. It's an ethical thing, also, what I was thinking in terms of ethics. When you were saying you keep discovering new things, and I think a lot of you guys are interested in content creation, in like TikTok and all that. It's just a thing to reflect on how you want people to consume your content. Do you want it to go into an endless loophole, an endless rabbit hole, where you consume your stuff? Or do you want it to be more slow? I think that was the only thing that I was kind of, you know, like, okay, why do you make it this way so you keep finding more and more and more, and you don't stop consuming the dopamine levels peak? I guess that's something that we all have in mind, how we consume this new content. Definitely just something I'll probably just try and do a little bit more research on on my own, and unpack the feelings a little bit more. It is what's happening, right, but at least I can be aware. Yeah, I think we should all be a little bit aware. I mean, this is a major issue with crypto, isn't it, and NFTs, and a major reason why you're paying fees to mint an NFT, because these are so much energy, and it's a weird setup. I mean, I imagine that AI functioning the way it does doesn't use that kind of energy for this kind of application, but things like Sora that are coming down the line, they use masses of computer power to generate a minute's worth of video, and it's going to be, you know, I think it's going to incur some expense, not just financially, but some, you know, in terms of energy consumption, and where's that energy coming from? I think there's going to be some big questions about data, you know, and this idea that we should all be able to just produce any old crap we want, which is quite often what happens. A lot of the world is filled with NFTs that lack a certain rigor and quality. This is an interesting question, yeah, I think. I don't have the answer. I'll find out soon enough, you know. Let us know what you do find out, because I'm always interested in it. So when I was originally doing set up the residency, the international residency as part of Six Minutes, I had a little bit of funding to look into this kind of third space, this burgeoning curatorial space that exists within this kind of digitized realm, and looking at ways to disseminate work, and obviously at that point there was this real burst of energy around NFTs, but something felt wrong about it. So I did do some research into how they function and the different types of NFTs and how they're mined and how they're actually authorized in terms of, you know, their authenticity, and there are ways of reducing energy, which, you know, I think would, things like OpenSea had delayed shifting over to those new and more energy-efficient ways of doing it. But, yeah, I don't know what's happening with NFTs now. Anyway, they seem to be, does anybody here deal in NFTs? Does anybody have anything to do with them, producing them? Has anybody ever dabbled in them? No? I've had some friends who have dabbled in NFTs, and I haven't spoken to them in months, really, those friends specifically. Just two people come to mind. But I know that they were talking about how it's become pretty, like, even the way that they can license NFTs now has become pretty unreliable. Like, it doesn't always work the same way that it used to. People aren't making money from it, you know. But I don't know what's happening with it now. More research, probably. I've bought a couple, but they're about $5 each. It wasn't a major investment. And I tried selling. I just wanted to see what happens. I tried selling it on, and there's just zero interest. I think that's the problem. There isn't really a market for it. So, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see what happens. There needs to be a second iteration. What's the next phase? I think it needs to mature and develop. I think people got really excited because artists like Kaws were, like, able to, like, sell for, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and everyone was getting really excited there's going to be some digital renaissance. But it's, like, hugely, like, connection-based still. Like, it's pretty much the fine art world just made digital again. Yeah. I know that I sold some artworks a few years ago, two or three years ago. It was in Tessos, and it was... And I stopped because there was a lot of drama. About actually... Was that through Hick Heck Monk? Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. Because it was the guy who ran it. He... I don't know whether he had some sort of meltdown, but he decided to close it down, didn't he? And then it... Yeah. Well, it forked into what's now called TEA. So they took it on, and they've developed it a bit further. I mean, in some principle form, I think there's some good things about it. In its ideal form, in terms of it being potentially a decentralised way of creating some sort of value that you can, you know, sell or, you know, invest in. But, I mean, beyond that, it's a very difficult subject. Should we shift on to any questions about Newark City? Does anybody want to... Well, before we do that, has anybody had a look at the link to Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley's space that I put online? I just wondered if anybody has. You know, you don't have to, but it's really quite a good example of using... So I've seen, I've spoken to Danielle, and they've done a few interviews and spoken about the process, and it's really fascinating. I could share that with you as well, but the space itself really has so many different elements in it, which it's not created to be too sophisticated. It's not using really sophisticated 3D models. It's using lots of visual references that are important to Danielle in terms of what they're trying to put across. And I imagine they would actually really do well putting their information into SUT. But there's the use of kind of moving out from Newark City through links, through web links, to go and then interact on a website, and then you just close the website and you're back in the space. And it just shows you a good example of easy ways to actually add a lot of texture into your kind of user experience in the space. So I do recommend you have a look at it. It is probably still my favourite one. A lot have come since then, and some really sophisticated ones. I'm going to post some more up, but that one in particular, I think, will just, you know, rather than making you think, oh, my God, I'm never going to achieve that. You could look at it and think, yeah, I could do some of these elements and these things are achievable. So, yeah, please do take a minute if you can. Does anybody want to kick off with a question or an observation about Newark City? Skander, did you have something you wanted to say, show? I mean, I can show if you want, but nothing special. Oh, no. Well, this is, you know, our second meeting. Yeah, yeah. Where is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to launch it. You can show examples. That's the one. Right? Yep. They're going to get the sound. I hope. I mean, if you don't get the sound, the only thing I did on it is putting a recording I had from a sketch, and I also just changed the colors, the fog thickness. I just, I mean, turned some knobs, let's say, on the parameters and put an audio file. I also tried to try out some 3D scans, but I have a very, very bad internet connection at the moment, so it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't doable. It took so much time. But I'm definitely eager to try some 3D scans and put stuff on it. I mean, definitely it's a very fun playground. But yeah, here is the file. I don't know if you hear something. No. Should I publish it so you can? You could, yeah. You go back to there, you click on, that's right, and then if you share the link, if you pop the link into the chat, we could all look separately. I know. I know. It will still look the same when you go in, but it means we can access it now, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things that really bugged me a little bit about Newark City was the fact when you drop a sound file into the space, you have this icon, right? And as far as I'm aware, you cannot remove it. Yeah, we can move it from, in the space, but I think we can't remove it. However, we can hack the thing if we can hide it behind other objects. We can hide the audio file. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. Your options are… Yeah, that's exactly what I want to hear in this course, like kind of, yeah, just like seeing a problem and then trying to just kind of hack it and find your way around it in a very creative way. So that was good to hear. The other thing, Skanda, might be if you've done a 3D scan, it might be quite large for the space, and you might want to reduce the mesh points. So you kind of, it's a destructive process, but you might need to reduce the quality of the 3D image just to give you enough headroom. So if you're putting a few objects in that are quite high definition, it will eat into that data to the point where it doesn't give you a very good user experience. So you might need to just play around with it. I think I did it in Blender when I reduced the mesh, the number of mesh, you know, the polygon mesh. There are probably people here who know much more than I do. I certainly don't know an awful lot about the whole process, so I kind of just hacked my way through it. Yeah, that's good. I'm going to have a quick look at it. Did you, you dropped it in the chat? Yep. Cool, thank you. Anybody else? Or was there anything else you wanted to say about the space? I know that I tried to import some videos and put them in a cylinder, and just seeing them displayed from inside the cylinder is incredible. It really is my, it's the immersive space of my dreams. I feel the same way. I had uploaded a video into the space and watched it in a couple of different shapes, and it was really impressive. Yeah, it's funny how... Yeah, it's really nice. Sorry? Sorry, I was just going to say, it's really nice that you can kind of imagine, I don't know if you guys do exhibitions and stuff, just to imagine some possible, just like completely crazy ways of showing your work, you know? You can technically just imagine anything. It's all possible in that thing. And you're just like, okay, show it in a cylinder, show it in a pyramid, you know, whatever. You can kind of test it and see what it feels like. Unfortunately, there's no virtual reality view of this. They don't have that yet, but I mean, it kind of gives you an idea of what it feels like to look at your work and how you can make it more immersive. Sorry, Dan, you wanted to say something as well? Oh, I've gone out of my head now. I was looking at scans as well. Oh, sorry. Has anyone else got anything they want to share at this point? Anybody else try putting stuff into the space? Adonia, have you managed to have a go yet? No, I have only changed the ground so far. I was really busy working this week, so I'm going to try to take some time over the weekend to try to put some maybe some video and maybe some of my 3D. I need to reduce my meshes, I think, because they're high only at the moment. But yeah, I'm quite looking forward to play around with also this relationship of, because some of my videos, they include 3D animation, but then I think it's quite interesting to put the video of the 3D animation and then maybe put some 3D models as well. So it's like kind of playing with that space. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, but I haven't yet. I'll do that over the weekend. That sounds like a good plan, though. I mean, I like your ideas of that kind of almost meta thing of having the 3D thing and then the film of the 3D object. Alexa, how are you getting on? Have you had a look? Yeah, I bought a 3D model earlier today and have been kind of messing around with the size because it imported super giant. But it's pretty easy to resize, and I have it up on my PC right now. And I actually hadn't thought to add a video, so you guys gave me a whole new set of ideas to work with and to populate the gallery with a mix of sort of static models and video and arrange them in some sort of meaningful gallery experience way. It's something that I'm really, really excited to do. And all those ideas just came to me in the last 30 seconds since you guys said that you uploaded video, which is like, duh, of course. I was thinking, I'd only been thinking about uploading my models. They're like static statues almost, like a sculpture gallery, like a virtual sculpture gallery. But it's going to be really fun and really cool to also upload, yeah, video, like pre-rendered animations that I already have and made, and maybe even pose my models. Like, I don't, my brain is just going in a thousand different directions right now, but it's going to be really cool to build out the space with a mix of video and sculpted models and maybe even just some new sculpts that are just for decorative purposes and not even showcasing work purposes. Yeah, exactly. Just put it all in there. Also, just like you were mentioning that you know how to reduce the mesh. If you guys, some of you don't know how to do that, maybe you could also interact and share some of your skills and knowledge how to kind of make it smaller so someone has more knowledge about it and has the skill to do it. Please, feel free to share your knowledge and skills about that. Chris, sorry, Dan. Hazel, how are you getting on? Have you put some stuff in? Who? Me. Oh, sorry. Hazel, how did it work? Yeah, I had just put in one photograph from my phone. I put in one video of some lights and some people's feet at a karaoke night, and I put in an image that I just grabbed from the web of a kind of optical illusion, like one of those. I wonder if I can publish and show you all. It's such a mess. Everything's just kind of jumbled. If I were to publish, would I be able to share it so you could see, to have a look? Let me see how to share my screen. Safari, I suppose. Oh, man. Okay, there's so many things you can do. While you're doing that, after the residency, we invited in a number of academics to come and use the space, and I will share those with you, and one of them was by Eddie LeMayer, who's an academic in, I don't remember where he was teaching, Florida, I think he's left now. But he put so much into the space. It's just, you keep going into it, and then more and more appears, to the point where sometimes it doesn't really function brilliantly, but it's such a, he wanted to stack everything he had done in the space, and it just, I'll share it with you later on and you can have a look. Yeah. You don't have to be really constructive or contrived. You can just make a mess. You can throw it in, or you can design it as much as you like. It gives you all that breadth. You shared your link. You're on mute. I'm trying to. I'm trying to. I'm kind of learning Discord as I go as well. I haven't used it much before. It's telling me there's something about some permissions that might mess with my, let's see. That's probably what I'll have to do. That's cool. Tammy, how are you getting on? Hmm? Tammy. So I'm wondering how Tammy's getting on. I can't hear you. Are you muted? It's gone funny. It does that sometimes. We can't hear you. I can't hear you, Tommy. Yeah. I can. You're on mute. I'm trying to reconnect to my headset. It'll put me on mute. Yeah. Ah, okay. The headset. No. Nothing. Maybe it's like the system settings and the output, the audio output. It happened to Chris on Tuesday. It didn't even drop out. It just come back in. If you go out of the room and come back in. Try that again. Turn yourself on and off again. That might work. That's the solution. That might work. That's the solution to everything, isn't it? Turn it off and on again. Yeah. For Tammy, we just put it on the spot and then had to take her out. Yeah, I know what it is. I think, do you have a Mac? Mac? Computer? It's working now. It's working now. It's the support settings. Yeah, it's like either Discord settings. So, that would be... The input is correct. I'm not sure if it's... Oh, it's got on mute again. That could be... Hello. Oh, yeah. Sorry, because I don't use Discord that much, so I don't know how to use it. Big challenge. So, how are you getting on, Tammy, with New York City? Have you had a go yet? Yeah, I've uploaded some of my videos and images that I've made. And it was pretty fun. And I was actually thinking about using New York City. Maybe it could be like a preview. Video game kind of stuff. Like, I'm trying to make a game right now. And I have like a month left for my uni project. But I was thinking maybe it could also be used as a game. I don't know if this makes sense. So, like... Yes, go on. No, I was going to say, like... Because it's like a game thing. I don't know how to describe it. I was thinking about putting my environments that I've made for my game and kind of make people to interact with it. Because I don't think I can finish just saying things. Like, in a month, I'm doing a uni project. But I was just thinking about using it as a website or as a game or whatever. Not only just showing my work. If this made sense. Well, I'd be interested to see how you get on. And just let us know if you need any help or anything. And we'll see what we can do. Are you telling any of your fellow students or your lecturers or your tutor about it? About what? This program or New Art City? Are you sharing any... No. It's a secret? No. Oh, yeah. No, it's really cool. And I said it's a video game. It kind of offers... Yeah. The thing kind of offers to work with it as a sort of engaging environment. So I'm really glad to see what you come up with. I like the option. Remember, we're talking about how sometimes you can jump or you can kind of float around space. I think that's so interesting to consider that because that would never happen to a normal gallery viewer. You could never just float through the museum to the MoMA or whatever. So I think that would be really interesting to explore. So good route you're taking. Very excited. So I think everyone's... Berto, I don't think we've heard from you, have we, about the space? I can't remember if you mentioned it. No, I haven't gone into it. But I chased the ground. I've been knee-deep in research. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Well, hopefully you get a bit of time over the next few days. Yeah, I'm planning this weekend. I dare you to put in your research as well. Yeah, yeah, anything. I can't wait to see work from all of you. I mean, whatever you're working on, feel free to share it, images. Just dump it all in, like, whatever you have. Or put it in the chat. You can share images, videos, YouTube stuff. I've got a load of resources to give you. I didn't want to just fling them at you initially. I'm going to sort of drip-feed them in. And there's stuff from 3D. We've got reading material if you want to read. This isn't really a reading program, but there's all sorts of support stuff. I know a couple of you mentioned philosophy. So there's some stuff coming, and I will start putting more of that in. I just didn't want to, in the first few days, just throw it at you. But, yeah, maybe that's a good time to wrap up. What we had in mind maybe over the weekend, if you could kind of highlight an artist with some sort of digital presence that you kind of, you know, you like or you appreciate or you think has some sort of meaning to you or might have something of interest or it might be an influence to you. Just one, and maybe we can share some of that next week. So we're going to meet again on Tuesday at the same time, and I'll post up some more about the session details then. Yeah, so if there's no other sort of questions, we'll wrap up. But if you have anything, put it in the channels. I'm going to be looking at it all the time. So we're here. We're around. We talk about nothing else. Yeah, that's all we think about. That's all we think about when we go to sleep. We just want to say we left the last session buzzing and we'll leave this one buzzing as well. We think it's brilliant. We're really pleased. It's brilliant. Great to have you. So thank you for coming again. Thank you. We will be probably staying in the chat for another five minutes, so if you have anything, we'll be around for five minutes. Yeah, otherwise, good night or good morning or a good day. Thank you. See you next week. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. See you soon. Thank you. I'm just going to let you know that maybe I put in the group chat. We were talking about NFTs. One of my friends, David Rudnick, did a really cool project. His background's in philosophy, but he's a typographer, graphic designer based in Ghent. I'll put it here and then I'm going to put it in the main chat. Yeah, please do. Brilliant. Yeah, I will read that. I'll look at that. Thank you. Perfect. Nice. You can put it in resources or wherever you want. There's no hard rules about where things go, but if it feels like a resource, put it in resources or put it in the chat. That's cool. Either way. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm going to get off. See you. Bye. See you. Bye-bye. Daniel, I just want to say that I haven't mentioned about New Art City to anyone, just to make it short. You don't have to talk about it at all. No, just in case. It's confidential, so I'm going to gig him. Yes, yes. Not many people know that. Do you feel like your professors are going to be jealous that you're doing another... No, no, no, no. I don't think so, but... You're like cheating on them. I just really want to get the information, you know? I was looking at some of the tutorials yesterday on YouTube because I was kind of struggling with how to move it and stuff like that. And New Art City, it's kind of like a 3-cent website, right? 3-cent paid website. So, yeah, I'm just going to be... You can be serious as well. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. And because I used to teach in SDP, I'm really interested to see what you're going to come up with. No pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Thank you. Thanks for coming again. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. See you next week. Bye. Now he's just left with fucking Craig. Oh, Craig. Fucking Craig. Get him out of here. How do I... Just creeping around. Stop recording that. Just look at his face.