Select, Copy, Paste - Execution - Sunday Feature - BBC Radio 3

In the second programme in this series exploring the impact of technology on creativity the focus is on the execution of ideas. As technology has improved how has it enabled artists to create new kinds of work?

Musician Holly Herndon reveals how technology is not only central to her creative process but it's also key in terms of subject matter. She responds to the impact of technology on society and is raising an AI baby that she's teaching to sing.

Doug Eck from Google's Magenta is also looking to create new forms. His goal is to create a new form of art, generated by computers. If fifty years of music was driven by the electric guitar, perhaps it's time for a new type of sound generated with the help of machine learning and AI?

Visual artists Trevor Paglan and James Bridle reveal the hidden infrastructures of the internet.

Writer Ed Finn asks what impact these technological advances are having on our cultural output? Instagram's filters may make us feel creative but does increasingly average perfection lie ahead?

Computers can help us paint, write stories, design objects and compose music, but as technology is heralded as an enabler to a better life, do we risk losing sight of that spark of imagination that makes us human? If human beings are no longer needed to make art, then what are we for?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09lypqq

Select, Copy, Paste - Conception - Sunday Feature - BBC Radio 3

"Clemency Burton-Hill presents a series exploring the impact of technology on creativity. Across three episodes she traces how technology has shaped the creative process, from conception and execution, to sharing and experiencing. Technology may help us to be more productive, but does it make our ideas better?

Artists are both preoccupied with technology and empowered by it. Technology underpins the way we live, but how does the technology artists, writers and musicians use change the way they create?

In the first programme she focuses on conception - how technology has shaped the way we have come up with ideas over the last 50 years. We examine the impact of a seminal event in New York that formed a brave new alliance between art and technology. Electronic music composer Suzanne Ciani explains how she trained as a classical composer, but was frustrated by the limitations of the instruments and sought answers in a new instrument built by a former NASA scientist. Pulitzer prize-winning composer John Luther Adams finds his music in wild exposures; a cabin in Alaska that was his home for close to forty years. For him the tool he keeps returning to is a rare discontinued pencil.

Computers can help us paint, write stories, design objects and compose music, but as technology is heralded as an enabler to a better life do we risk losing sight of that spark of imagination that makes us human? If human beings are no longer needed to make art, then what are we for?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kptx0

We have lift off and are venturing to the world of technology!

All began to come together this morning when Burnie, Steve and I installed the projector screen. It hangs, intentionally hovering just above the floor, moving slightly back and forth when people walk past. 

The next major milestone will be the installation of the projectors onto the walls at either side of the projection screen. The projectors will be mounted high up on the wall so that no one will walk in front of them and block out the light. The brackets have been made and the projectors attached. I've booked to use the cherry picker and organised some people to assist with what could well be a fiddly job.

I seem to be amassing a rather large collection of technical equipment and endless amounts of cables and extension cables. Let's just hope that there are no power cuts during the exhibition!     

 

This is the master...

and this is my own slave!

                                                                                                                                                         

The dreaded error message

Technology has not been playing game of late. A few weeks ago my external harddrive broke. Kaputt! No way of retrieving the data unless I had a spare £400 kicking around to give to a company who could not guarantee they could retrieve anything. Needless to say, I don't have a spare £400!

The name of my external hard drive was MFA2 Brain. The name says it all. It was full of all the work I have done in the past year. Photos, audio, video files, documents, you get the gist.

I have spent the past 2 weeks re-filming and re-editing all the videos, audio and animations. In preparation for my crit on Tuesday, I was finishing synching the photos with the sound in the last of the animations when I was repeatedly bombarded with the following message:

After many attempts, and frequent error messages, I managed to finish the editing and quickly exported the file ready to show at the crit. What a relief!