Latest / The Imperfect Impulse w/Bree O'Connor / S 3 Ep 8: It Was Never About the Tools

Transcript

S 3 Ep 8: It Was Never About the Tools · The Imperfect Impulse w/Bree O'Connor

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Imperfect Impulse with your host, Bree O'Connor.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a subject that I have dabbled in,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: but I feel like everybody's made their opinions pretty clear about AI
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: and generative AI.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would think at this point, You could assume my position.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been sure if I could add anything to the conversation.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: However, in the last couple of days, I've had a bone to pick.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not hearing anybody else talk about this because one of the big proponents of AI
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: and social media is is that it gives more people access and platforms,
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: yada, yada, yada, yada.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's supposed to level the playing field so that more people can contribute
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: the global conversation, to creative conversation, etc, etc, etc.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: However,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: none of these things have exactly panned out because the algorithm works
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: as its own particular gatekeeper.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And a gatekeeper that encourages our worst human impulses,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: which is that our attention on social media is measured by three seconds.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm not an AI yet.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Hang tight because these things are all related and I make these connections
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: in my mind and it takes a minute to try and explain them all.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So our attention,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: if we can keep someone's attention for the first three seconds,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: the odds of them engaging for the fourth,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: fifth, and sixth seconds increase exponentially.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: That also maxes out at about two minutes.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Two minutes is actually quite long.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know you'll see other creators who've already gained our trust are able
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: to promote much longer content,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: but they still have to abide by the same three-second attention rules
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: that now govern everything.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So a slow burn narrative is not something that you're going to find on social media.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: When we're on social media,
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: we are attuned to that which moves fast and is not particularly nuanced.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's why memes are so popular.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, I enjoy a good meme as much as anybody else.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the number of times I've run across some super pithy statement
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: that I think is largely true,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: but has left the back of my mind being like,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it leaves out room for a nuanced discussion.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's just hit the like button for another rat treat at the end of the labyrinth.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: you're about to meet the more palatable version of my angry old lady and I'm about
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: to yell at you to get off of my lawn.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Stick with me here because I hope there's something of value that I can offer,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps generationally.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because another thing that social media and those who are able to master
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: the three-second attention span and our dopamine-seeking behavior,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things that it offers us is a lot of access,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: not just to audience, but really to notoriety.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: A simple spit take is all that is required to reach social media notoriety.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's making somebody spit out their coffee.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love a good spit take,
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: but if that's the sum total of our creative output is
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: that we make someone spit out their coffee or go,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, I'm not sure that's like a larger world that I want to be part of.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the tide is shifting in that regard.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people are getting tired of the sameness,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: the oppressive sameness that is being perpetuated through these tools.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So now is where I'm going to step into AI.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's all kinds of arguments for not using it that are all super valid.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of water it uses,
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: the environmental impact, the fact that it preys upon low-income communities.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: It destroys mostly the lives of people of color and people without financial backing
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: and representation.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's yet another...
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not in my backyard sort of argument.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know who wins the NIMBY argument?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be the multi-million dollar property owners that are gonna win that argument.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna be, you know, basic everyday Americans.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's the noise pollution.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's the fact that it is unscrupulously scraping the internet to train its models
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: on Other living artists who have spent most of the time decades honing their skills
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: and their life experience into artistic expression.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And once again, AI is contributing to this glossy sameness that we are getting everywhere.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: While a lot of, I'll loosely use the word creators here, who use AI...
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We'll claim that it's democratized the process,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: that filmmaking is too expensive and onerous for the average person to partake in,
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: and that AI makes a lot of things possible.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing that nobody is saying that I need to say today.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to make a movie about the bottom of the sea.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to have explosions.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to have everything take place and some glorious AI vista.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I am all for special effects and all of those things.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: But let me just sit you down for a second as a Gen X artist who came up in a time
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: when we were still shooting films on celluloid and doing it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: We adapted the kinds of stories we were able to tell to the resources we had available to us.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a lot of green screen post production technology available to us
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: to make let's say a car scene look like it was actually happening on the road and
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: if you were a backyard filmmaker you're Not strapping a camera to the hood of
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: the car.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're not doing these fancy things.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what we did?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: We waited until nightfall and we had people
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: with work lights brushing those work lights across the car
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: while our actors were inside.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it looked...
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like they were driving past streetlights and everything else was dark.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We had, if they had a bumpy road, guess what?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: We had people behind the car giving the car a shake.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: We did that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, it was enough.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because the filmmaking, the storytelling that we were engaged in was not enough.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not about creating some kind of perfection or super cool action sequences.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we did was analog because that was what was available to us.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: We still made films.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even on stage.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's harder to use AI on stage.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the reason why I enjoy stage work.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that it is incredibly analog for the most part.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have figured out how to do rear projections on a shower curtain.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I have done low-tech effects to make a pregnant woman's water break on stage.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I have had horrible sound effects.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of my friends,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dan Rankin,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: who's a marvelous fight choreographer,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: he had one of those plastic You know,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: like strawberry containers that you get at the grocery store?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: He had an empty one of those rigged up on a post so when an actor got slammed
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: with his head into the post,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: or at least that's what it looked like from the audience,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: there was this tremendous crunch that echoed across the audience
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: and it made everyone go, ugh!
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very visceral reaction.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: These things are all possible.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need AI to make any of this happen.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm finding it that the more and more tools we have,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: the kind of whinier and more complaining certain people are about how hard it is
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: to be creative without AI.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry if that's the case.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't want to make art.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: You wanted to have art.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a distinct difference.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: There is a distinct difference between wanting to make and wanting to have.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sorry,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: but if you are making generative AI works,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you can claim that as your art.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because it has basically put all of human experience into a blender
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: and spit things out based on prompts that you put in.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's not yours.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's not yours.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can't claim it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think you should be able to profit from it.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's me personally.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we couldn't profit from it,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that would decrease a lot of the incentive for making it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: To be honest,
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think other people should be profiting off of other artists' actual labor.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: This brings me to a beef I have with art in general these days is
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: that I think we've lost a lot of our originality.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've been homogenized.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's good for us as human beings.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think about driving across this country,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: which I at least drive halfway across the country between New York and Minnesota,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: probably twice a year.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing how every single off-ramp is the same.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: You get to a certain stretch of the country,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: where I'm from,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And every off-ramp has the same grocery store,
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: the same McDonald's,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: the same either a Chili's or a TGAI Friday's or one of those and sometimes many
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: of those, a Walmart or a Target.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they are all built the same because branding.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they all sell the same products.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those products are...
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Made in the same factories.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: They just slap different labels on them.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're not really getting or appreciating the wide scope of human expression
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: and human experience.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what the three-second algorithm does is ensure that nothing gets through
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: but more of the same.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Even when we think, oh, that's different.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really need to be that far off from center in order to shake our brains
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: and think it's different.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not different the way different was when I was coming up.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know that makes me sound like an old codger.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Every person over the age of 45 or 50 starts looking at the world going, well, when I was a kid.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I came up in a land where imperfection,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And a cockeyed view of beauty was something that I thrived on.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I look at the films that excited me in my teens and twenties, and they weren't perfect films.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't seamless.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: But they all offered me something in their imperfections.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: I fell in love with Roberto Benigni in Down by Law.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Which I watched because I love Jim Jarmusch and Tom Waits.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know me at all, you know I love Tom Waits.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Tom Waits is a god of different.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's mastered the strange and made it beautiful.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lens that an artist has that lends We can look at the smallest thing
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: that we take for granted every day,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: look at it from a new angle and see its importance and its beauty.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Even things that are uncomfortable or grotesque,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: if we look at it closely enough, we can learn to appreciate its existence.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something that we are not getting.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: In this airbrushed, image obsessed, fame obsessed world.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And really another thing that I think these artists who constantly want
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: the shortcut, they're not looking for artistry.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're not looking for mastery of skill.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for Perfection of output.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just like a facade.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's plaster and bits of styrofoam slathered on a surface and painted to look like rock.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not rock.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as strong as rock.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's not as soulful as rock.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just fake.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: I feel the same way about the current emphasis on being seen.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And notoriety, on fame, and people will sacrifice.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say suffering because that's an old trope,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the suffering, starving artist.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I mean,
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't mean you have to suffer
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: for your art like someone should pull your eyelashes out one by one
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: and therefore you'll be an artist afterwards.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, what I mean is that
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It starts with 10,000 hours to master a skill.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're going to be a collaborator,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: if you're going to be a filmmaker or a theater artist or a musician in a band or
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: an orchestra or what have you, your expertise starts at 10,000 hours.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's not like mastery is a lifetime of work.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we seem to be trying to leapfrog over all of that to get some kind
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: of personal validation and recognition that isn't really earned as someone
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: who has spent a lot of time honing my skill set.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sorry, that's just a slap in the face.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: But another thing that I want to get out there is that fame
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: or recognition should not be the only thing that you're working towards.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: It shouldn't be the end goal.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes, some people really are ambitious and want to climb the ladder.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I definitely work with a lot of really fine artists who want to make a name for themselves.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I do.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't begrudge them that,
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: but if all you want is the name and don't have the urge to really
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: do the work,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: that's just lazy.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just lazy.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I am afraid that that
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: ubiquitousness of the glossiness of the perfection of the
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: The, oh,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: things are smoothed over here or idealized there or these ridiculous vistas just
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: because we think they're beautiful.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that you're trying to create or have created
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: for you via prompt discourages artists who are strange,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: who have something different to offer.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: It discourages them from developing their own skills.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely a cohort out there that's like, well, Claude helps me brainstorm.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: How about you call up another artist?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: That should feed us.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because Claude is just feeding you back to you.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can't quite wrap my head around why.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: We want to skip steps like this because the steps are the work, the steps are the art.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: For those who have a different sensibility,
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: who may have a different view of the world,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think what a tragedy it is to teach them that they need to fit into this narrow,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: narrow vision of what art is.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that concerns me deeply.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're out there and you want to be a filmmaker or a musician or whatever,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: whatever it is that you want to do,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: that you can create for
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: the resources you have readily available.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: 90% of the fun in this process is solving problems.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is to figure out,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: oh my god,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: how am I going to represent someone falling from a great height
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: without hurting anybody?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to represent this deep emotional relationship between two people in
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: a way that no one's ever seen before?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get the camera...
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get the camera to become them?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have...
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: but filmmaking's a lot easier today than it was
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: when we were still cutting
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: on celluloid.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not many people had a full editing suite for actual film in their homes.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: My husband and I did.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: We did.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was a very different kind of process.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now things can be done on your laptop.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have a camera in your pocket at all times.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can, loads of different free editing software.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: you can get fancier and fancier and fancier as you build skills,
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: but You can do this and you can do it without asking ChatGPT or Claude or whatever
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: to do it for you.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be crass here.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be a lazy shit.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, today was my soapbox day and partially because You know,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've been watching a lot of indie films from like the 80s and 90s.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, the grand moment in cinema, the 1970s, which was a banner time for filmmaking.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they didn't have all the things that we have today.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we complain about the lack of resources and all of that sort of thing,
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of that is because we want to make things at a certain level and get
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: a certain kind of reward, which, sure, like, go ahead.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm for it.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Make a career.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not mad at you.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when that is more important than the story you're telling,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: then maybe your story doesn't have shit behind it.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Pair it down.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, artists have been doing that since the beginning of time.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we've all found ways to make stories and to make music and share it with others.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it is so okay if it is messy and maybe a little cockeyed, maybe a little imperfect,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: works of art that I love precisely because of their imperfection.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Those are my thoughts this week.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if the soapbox is going to be here next week,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Here's wishing you a good and creative week.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk to you next time.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: In the Imperfected Pulse.