This is a special episode of the conscient podcast featuring a panel at The Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Spring 2024 presented by Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement of Ontario (CPAMO) in collaboration with the Nia Centre for the Arts on on June 6, 2024 in Tkaronto,
This episode will begin with a talk by Alica Hall, Executive Director of the Nia Centre for the Arts, who spoke about the history of the building where the Nia Centre is situated in Tkaronto and of the history of the black arts community in Tkaronto and in Canada.
After this, you'll hear presentations by artificial intelligence arts expert Sean Caesar (aka Tungz Twisted) and technology consultant Alex Hocevar, however because of the poor quality of the recording in a reverberant space, you’ll also find a summary of their presentations in the Transcript section of this episode.
For example, Sean observed that:
And Alex noted at the end of this presentation that :
Note: After Alica’s presentation and words of welcome by CPAMO curator of programming Kevin Ormsby I have re-recorded my introduction in order to have better audio quality.
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Welcome to the 'Impact of Technology on the Practice of the Arts’ panel as part of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement of Ontario (CPAMO) The Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Spring 2024.
A warm welcome to our audience here at the Nia Centre for the Arts in Tkaronto and also to those joining us online from across Canada and those listening offline on conscient podcast, episode 184.
My name is Claude Schryer. I’m a composer by training and I worked for 21 years at the Canada Council for the Arts where I ran the Inter-Arts Office and was an advisor. I recall, around 2008, when the NIA Centre For The Arts was created, how it was a challenge for the Council to find a home for this kind of multipurpose multidisciplinary arts organization, which I think has since been resolved, however I’m aware that many artists and arts organizations continue to struggle with finding the right category in our arts funding systems.
For example, is artificial intelligence an art form, is it a method, is a tool? All of the above, none of the above? What criteria do we use to assess artificial art making? And it’s a bit ironic that the word artifice comes from artificium, which is Latin for "artistry, craftmanship, craft, craftiness, and cunning." That root also gave us the English word artificial. Artificium, in turn, developed from ars, the Latin root underlying the word art.
I’m now retired from the public service and have become an art and climate activist. For example, I was co-founder of the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency or SCALE. I also produce the conscient podcast about art and the ecological crisis, ainsi que sa version française, le balado conscient.
I also invite you to consider the implications of art and technology in the context of the climate emergency and the ecological crisis, which a topic we explored at the 2021 fall edition of Gathering Divergence on the theme of ‘IBPOC arts in planetary renewal’ which you can listen to those conversations on conscient podcast episodes 92, 93 and 95.
So the theme of this year’s Gathering is Visioning Canada’s IBPOC Artistic Transformation: Navigating Beyond Precarity Towards Stability and this is the lens through which we will be exploring the impact of technology on the practice of art.
Some of the questions our panelists will consider include
· Does working with Artificial Intelligence in the arts lead to innovation, emergent practices and artistic transformation or does AI jeopardize creativity and lead to further precarity for artists? We might not know, yet…
· In what ways are these new technologies, and in particular AI impacting the creation, dissemination and preservation of art?
· What relationships do artists need to create about and with AI and digital technology?
· Who has access to the infrastructure and how it is being programmed and are all worldviews being included?
· Are there integrative ways in which artists and arts organizations can continue to use digital technologies? What are some of the barriers?
· In what ways are creative rights and revenue generation impacted by AI and generative technologies?
· How is Al being used to make decisions that shape the trajectory of our lives, including creative control of artistic production?
· Finally, what does all of this techno fantasy matter when our planet is on fire and we are facing imminent societal collapse due to ecological overshoot of our planet’s boundaries?
And before we go any further, I want to admit that I’m not that excited about artificial intelligence, even though I have used it in my artwork and in my podcasts. I’m personally more interested in the contributions of traditional knowledge keepers from around the world who have always known how-to live-in harmony with the earth and with all living beings.
This being said, there are reasons for hope. For example, I attended a presentation last week by Leasi Vanessa Lee Raymond of Concordia University about the Abundant Intelligences research program which explores how Indigenous Knowledges and Systems can expand and transform AI.
In a nutshell, this research project has published a position paper, Indigenous Protocol (IP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is a starting place for those who want to design and create AI from an ethical position that centers Indigenous concerns.
Indigenous ways of knowing are rooted in distinct, sovereign territories across the planet. These extremely diverse landscapes and histories have influenced different communities and their discrete cultural protocols over time.
The aim of the Abundant Intelligences project is to articulate a multiplicity of Indigenous knowledge systems and technological practices that can and should be brought to bear on the ‘question of AI.’
In other words, as proposed by UNESCO & MILA (Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute) in 2022 our challenge is ‘to develop Al systems that are human-centered, inclusive, ethical, sustainable, as well as upholding human rights and the rule of law’.
That's generally not how capitalism works but it’s something to aspire to.
Another example of policy work on AI is the Disruption on the Horizon report by Policy Horizons Canada, which predicts the following disruption in relation to AI:
Emotional engagement is fertile territory for artists so we have a lot to think about. I think that’s enough background information for now.
So it’s my great pleasure to facilitate this morning’s panel with two experts in art and artificial intelligence, Sean Caesar and Alex Hocevar, who I will introduce in a minute. I will also be inviting you in the audience, in person and online, to share your knowledge and experiences with technology because everyone has a story to tell about living in this mad and wonderful digital world, as citizens and as artists,
I’ll ask Sean Caesar to speak first for about 15 minutes. Sean, aka Tungz Twisted, is producer of the Maybe Might Matter exhibition and owner of Frame Five Media and Second Shooter Sean. Showcasing the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence generated images, Sean’s work guides viewers through the progression of AI’s capabilities, sparking conversation about the creative explorations, possibilities and implications for the future of art along the way. Sean, the floor is yours.
(Sean Ceaser presentation)
I’d now like to invite Alex Hocevar to enjoy his 15 minutes of fame here at Gathering Divergence 2024. Alex who runs the Hocevar Group, a consulting agency focusing on digital business transformation here in Toronto.
(Alex Hocevar presentation)
Rough transcript of Sean Caesar and Alex Hocevar presentations at 'Impact of Technology on the Practice of the Arts’ panel of The Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Spring 2024 presented by Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement of Ontario (CPAMO) in collaboration with the Nia Centre for the Arts, June 6, 2024, Tkaronto.
Sean Caesar
Thank you very much. Thank you Claude and thank you Nia Arts Centre. This is a beautiful, beautiful space that you guys have established here, and I had no idea that it had been around for so long and in such a central location. Incredible. I'm here today to discuss my exploration through AI. So I'm gonna actually bring this straight through right now and get you started. You're gonna see me doing a bit of audibles from slides because that's what we're doing. So without further ado. So I did an exhibit actually called, uh, name xx was just the exploration of the merging of artistry and tech and technology. Yeah. Artistry and technology. And it was actually encouraged after many of my artists started to do cry AI and bending this corner where it was they said, stealing from their art.
And I, I jumped into this, uh, exploration or this project actually to show that like a bit of the damage has been done already. And if we don't get us all on board at all to the table to discuss about the implications of the diversity of representation and equitable just inclusion in general, that, uh, we're at a crossroads where it could be very detrimental to us future forward. So what you're gonna see through my presentation is a lot of pretty stuff and all the key stuff that you can show you, the power of how you can augment your artistic ability with AI. And then, uh, we start to speak about some of the benefits and the detriments of it and kind of the path forward from here together. So now, Okay. So, hello everyone. Uh, so allow me to reintroduce myself.
My name is Sean, or Sir Sean as my mother Amy. Um, and my dream with AI started with from curiosity about how technology can extend to the boundaries of artistic expression. Um, I was fascinated by the possibility of emerging traditional art forms of, uh, traditional artistry and
But that's where I'm now, uh, being creative has been a blast. It's, I afforded me the opportunity to learn, travel, explore, and experience from a wide range of lifestyles and add up to my knowledge basically the world around me, which has also fueled my creative ambitions for, I'm an award-winning photographer, videographer, graphic designer, uh, web designer, editor, and lately a bit of an AI guy. Speaking of ai, I had no idea at the time that it might matter, and I mean, like the acronym didn't even exist yet. So today I'm gonna give you a brief overview as to what AI is in our, as of late, my personal journey and creative exploration in ai, the importance of diversity and representation in presently forward thinking, accessibility, benefits and detriments and future forward, how you can be involved. Are we ready to jump into it?
Let's do it. Alright, let's do it. So we're gonna talk about, um, like the actual, what I actually do right now with my day to day actually is, uh, I work a lot with large language models and with touch to image models with some of the stuff that my clients need to have done. And that can be, uh, creating images with, um, you know, black people in it. Let's just keep it there. First. Informal 'cause as an artist and I tried to find images on stock repositories of people that look like me, I wasn't finding at all. And then when I was finding 'em, I promise you, it was one brother, they flew down to LA and they had him shoot every single campaign. He was a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, everybody. And then that was it.
So AI had that, that, that was what actually had me dig my heels in and be like, this can be of huge benefit. So I'm trying to show here in this, uh, slide that, um, this is how images are actually created through ai. Because when a lot of artists say that, oh, well, it's just stealing. It's just stealing. I feel like they just put their head in the sand and they're closing their mind to like what the possibilities are. So these text to image models are straight from large language models, like everything that has been controlled from the internet over the past 30, 40, 50 years.
And it has learned, and it's able to distill this information down into what it is that you're asking for. So you'll put in a prompt. There's large language model vectors here. You can follow my chart here. That brings you to DA diffusion, which is like a pixel cloud, which like a bunch of like little dots. It looks like the, um, like between screens on like a, you know, when you're, uh, on bad TV or whatever, the noise on tv. And then it will take your prompt and it will start to subtract from that noise until it actually repeats that and gets your final result, which we have down there in the bottom corner. Now, not gonna break death of follow the process of it right now, I'll bring you through to, uh, my actual story.
So now that we've got an explanation out of the way, I hope I haven't lost any of you guys yet. Um, my story starts as a young creative black entrepreneur. And I mean, I didn't know it just yet. The start of it was all not that easy. While I celebrated significant milestones, like successful exhibitions and partnerships, I've also faced challenges related to access to capital and to opportunities. So fast forward to, uh, 2019, I found myself going through significant life changes and I found myself at a job. You can see me there doing technical support, just disconnected from my creativity as I think you were calling it. Too critical. My name Sean, how can I help today? And that's all. I did. Tech support all day long.
I felt like just checking and checking out my head into creating and creating and creating. And so I created the maybes. So these are the maybes through this battle with like just apathy and processing life. I created a series of maybes as a way to offload the roles of the day. I would fill literally a page of these faces every day, just representing a branch of moods and faces, and sometimes the customers on the other end of the line that I was hearing figured out that maybe might matter one day. Oh, and then like, uh, that right there is the actual sketchbook from my job sitting at work. So right around the end of that year is my first exploration to creating with ai where you have to say like, feeding my images into ai, as in this instance, you can see here in the journey and seeing what it provided me with, um, from the days of like onions getting paper, you know what I mean? Like for instance, if you wanted to draw a local planet and have stars around this one, but like maybe chocolate chip cookies around the other, you could draw one. And then on the onions getting paper, you would create the, uh, carbon copies and make the amends and so on and so forth.
Now, AI's afford me the opportunity to make many copies of like plans or, you know, instance spaces in the blink of an eye, as opposed to the pages of maybe that I like sprawled down and got burned on my tunnel syndrome before. So I thought like, might this be a way of exploring more ideas faster? My, and so the following was an exercise until the next chapter of my AI adventures, and it brings me to my second AI art, like use case. So it's poetry. So I, like I go by name twisted back in the day I was gonna be getting into doing the ing thing. Um, so poetry as an outlet, a lifelong hobby has followed me. And I enjoy the challenge of catching cadence and work that I twisting linguistic. Most often. My writers are in response to what I'm experiencing before mastering the world of prompt writing. The cross that I writing that I shown you before, I was curious to see how the technology would just interpret my words.
So like my part that I put it. So this image that you're seeing here was created off of the bars, the road there that said, despite the winds and wolves of all the world's calamities, we found space and time to bridge a gap within our galaxy. Genuine, no fallacy, yin yang mentality, challenging to balance flow. And then it gave me that. And so people are using ai, generative art to work through things in their lives. It can be way from like, um, a very like, um, cathartic form of expression, just getting some ideas off. It can be a way to organize thoughts. Art allows people to communicate with images instead of words. Um, this was also a series that I created off of ai. And uh, this was with what I saw as a mistrust in technology and the unknown coupled with a rising societal degree. I made this series called Opulence, and it depicts a series of contemporary, a mythological figures created by ai, the sapphires, the pearls, and everything else that I want to see on these figures. I described it to AI and it created them for me.
And then I wrote VARs to go at, said, I'm barely a technologist who, UC the draw gets, now I'm free to buy the things I never could just shop to get vanity and opulence that translates across continents captured by technology or caught up by my consciousness. I kind of see it opposite, not saying to stop drop chip, but we already used the technical try to block us not to give. And then I fed these into AI and I gave it the, um, description of what I created these people, and it made names for them. It gave them backs stories. I'm not gonna give you all of that, but there's gild, so anos, um, n Aurelius and Arm.
And like it gave me whole backstory for Loren stories, but like, once again, I was like, this is like really, really intriguing, right? I'm barely a technologist, but you see all the drop gets. Now I'm afraid to buy the things I never could have just shopped again. So that kind of caught you out guard. That was one of the AI voices that I had actually created off of the work that you just heard there. She, she goes through it and just it's way, way too slow and like speak, you know, broadly. But, um, that's been one of my explorations into it is that using, um, AI for instance, for narration and then like, which actually brings me to my next point, narration. And like we talked about the fact that I cannot see myself in some of the stock images that I'm looking for out there. So then what brings us to the next, um, priority, which is representation.
So armed with this new knowledge and ready to start writing prompts, I like dove into AI with text image creation and was like, you know, why am I not still seeing representation of arts and creative instead of showing you the cases that you've all probably heard about by now, is I the Jamaican that must have dreadlocks? And believe me, like if I ask AI for a Jamaican banana, that banana has dreadlocks and it's just like safari. Um, so the Indian always happens to be swallowed, surrounded by squa, stuff like that. There are certain stereotypes that are already baked into ai. So in this um, instance here, AI was tasked with creating images that represented the following psychological diagnoses. And like, if you notice here, are there a common theme among these images?
This part of the discussion right here is about bias. You know, like what are you, uh, noticing life? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Lemme go ahead to the next one. We can clearly see that like, uh, depression is for teenagers, right? And, uh, schizophrenia only impacts white men. And certainly, uh, general effect anxiety disorder is only in the ailment of young white women, right? Like they're all categorically wrong. I don't see myself represented in any of these images that I generated. I generated these images just saying that I wanted to see a person and this is who the person is. Nine times out of 10, this, this is not even in my slice here, but this goes even further into when I created an image. Uh, I wanted to have people coming out for, um, sunflower photo shoots and for, um, cherry blossom photo shoots, they only lasted week each in either season spray more foam and getting people out those carts. So I created a whole series of, um, models in sunflowers or cherry blossoms.
And in the types of outfits that I kicked out, people would come out in. And if I just said that like it was a fit person or regular person, or I didn't specify that it was nine times out of 10 it was white woman. But if I said that the person was curvy, if I said that the person was thick, like nine times out of 10 it was a black woman. And I just thought that that was, I've even shared that part of my experience just telling you guys. And I thought that that was intriguing. That further drove me into this to figure out that why aren't we represented accurately, right? And these, I don't see myself represented in these images. I would be my kids. Let's be clear, I don't wish mental illness on anyone. But what this implies is that their gender and race biases in medicine. And if we're not represented then we're not considered. Our unique needs aren't factored in or worse. Our struggles will completely unno beyond keeping kids role models and normalize in the culture that's not, uh, not sorry, normalizing any culture that's not Eurocentric. What is clear to see is that representation is important.
But before we go into ai, underrepresentation is not new. Uh, technologies. Companies have struggled against charges of bias and portrayals of dark skin from the early days of color photography in the 1950s when companies like Kodak used white bottles and of color development. Canadian artist and researcher, Dr. Joy Bini, uh, founder of the algorithm majestically, came face to face with discrimination from a machine. Her MIT peers with lighter skin didn't have the same issues. So joy tried drawing a face on the palm of her hand. The machine recognized it immediately, still hold up with her real face. So she had to finish her project quoting with her white mask over her face in order to be detected. Many questions surface do joy, the motivation and insect to start the algorithm justice. You can find them online. I also noticed this, by the way, when I went to, um, just because I'm gonna talk about Gary's, um, actual project here.
But, um, when I actually went to go work on film set in Vancouver, I got typecast immediately. Like, 'cause I work on this side of the camera and I'm always going, people go do this, go do this, go do that. So I was like, I want to go and get some experience. So I went to the film uni in Vancouver and they were like, okay, you have a role as a digital artist. I waited and waited. It didn't get call. So I was like, lemme get acting work. The very first two gigs I got cast on the, the Good Doctor and uh, I was a crack head and a good doctor. And then on scene seven of the Arrow and I'm, I'm a prisoner and I thought that that was like, this was immediately off cuff. That was before AI even got into it. Anyways. So one of the biggest long story, one of the biggest convictions came through, um, like to to like jump into this exploration of what I with AI came to this project created for Gary s Melody within where we created 15 covers for his singles as well as his album layout. Featured in like there on the Morning show and on Global News. I worked collaboratively with Gary to listen to the direction, wanted to take this project in artistic group. I took into consideration the sonic catalog that he provided and then we worked with certain colors that he wanted to in order to make it pop, generating images of people in color and avoiding stereotypes to focus and conscious effort. In creating this project, we chose to stick with them a certain color pal to keep the general artistic direction consistent between colors.
This allowed us to blend a mixture of surrealism illustration and bright colors and ambiance to create complete body work that was seen from anything you created. From until this point, I was able to use AI to bring performers into the actual artwork and to actually be able to show all of the different images they provided references of Gary and Kale and Jordan, for instance. And then I built the eye like that color and, and that scene around, uh, yeah, I can see that in that scene there. The track that, uh, it would've been playing here is Gary Bes Good people, good vibes. If you have a chance, take Gary Biles. Good people, good vibes, any of this music. It's incredible. Um, okay, next slide. I'll put it in the episode. Okay, yeah, that would be fantastic. Thank you. Okay, so that's, and so this, what you're seeing here is after introspection, this was a series created to draw focus to the fact that there's an underrepresentation of color.
And even when oftentimes represented inaccurately, stereotypically or inappropriately, I used to sharp contrast our de style limited color, color for these pieces to draw emphasis of this statement. While still short, abstract, the emphasis on the representation of unrepresented groups, including women, people of color and marginalized communities, is the evident. And this series was to challenge the stereotypes and broaden the narratives surrounding participation in art and technology. Here I'm using them in a, as a creative engine, um, with mid journey to create out of box thinking for this dental aligner campaign for, or dental aligners. I would not be able to get giraffe or deer to sit for me long enough or change in order to get what I need to get done here. But creating this for dental aligners allowed us to get something out of the box and promotional characters that anthropomorphic animals that were just way too happy with their smile.
As you can see here, we have the giraffe and we have the deer and then like that
Two of them that are obviously noted here, like in a dystopian far flow society, like artists don't create anymore. I have a heart of heart, I'm an artist. So like if you just leave me with charcoal in a cave somewhere, I probably will still be getting busy on those walls like that. It's just in me. Like even when I was working drive through at McDonald's, I was printing up receipts and I was like doodling on 'em and I'd come home with all my receipts I just told you about when I was working at QuickBooks and I was filling out pages like the artist name. So does a AI threaten that will that uh, light go out with artists? Then there's like safety issues and privacy concerns and where is all of this information being scraped from?
Where is all the data being collected and why is it being collected without our information? And has, I try to tell people, unfortunately, a lot of the damage has already been done and it's being done right now. And uh, I don't wanna get on a soapbox about it, but like my Android tried to update itself the other day that I got particularly upset about this. This is not even on here, but like, because uh, my previous update to 6.0 brick to my phone for a week and if I can't contact my kids and I can't go home, but then like that's problematic to me. But this 6.1 update that it wants to update, the newest update and why it wants to do it is because it wants to put AI on my phone.
I didn't ask for ai, I like AI in the sandbox, but I can use it in and I can close that sandbox with whole sandbox on the beach if I want to. But the idea that it could be there, um, listening to your conversations in the background, which we already know what it does to keep this advertising and What the detriments that in the future look like. I dunno, what does it mean like to art in the future? I dunno. So I ask in the future. Yeah. So we, I asked in the future, um, are artistic creations, um, protected, like, uh, even artistic creations that are made with ai, are they protected because they, they're still going to be authorship that should be bestowed upon the person that came around a genuine idea. 'cause otherwise the idea that would've been manifested to be begin with, right? Uh, we have copyright challenges over what has already been presented.
Sorry, but ideas do not have, copyright cannot, cannot have intellectual property on idea.Okay. So that, that's, that's a, that you brought that up. So you cannot have intellectual property on an idea or a concept. Yes, you Cannot, you can have it on a, on a work, work On a credit, an idea, not an idea, but on a completed piece Yes. Or in process, but not from the concept. Right? Okay. But then that's, that would still bestow bestow offer shift to the person that, that the concept. Right? I just, I'm not okay, we're to have this discussion. We can come back with absolutely what you're saying. Yes. Okay. Okay. And then, um, so the last points that I drive before my closing slide is that, um, safeguard cultural heritage. And I think that this is one of the things that's important too as well, um, is, uh, it, that's actually incorrect text to the finishing slide, but, uh, AI allows us to preserve cultural heritage and to bring about stories from the past that we never would've been able to imagine or hear of other ways otherwise.
I just recently heard of a, um, a, a black man who was the very first, I believe university graduate in Canada that was actually instrumental in propping up and saving Queens University. And I had no idea about this story. And it's not told to me in school, it's not told to me in black history, we don't have any illustration. I can create illustrations now. I've used AI to help me create, um, stuff for CBC, um, documentaries as well. You want me to bring about history anyways for win lose or draw. I don't know where you stand tune at all. I'm not gonna be the one to wrap it as you see in this image here, but that's my, um, lens in on the AI and.
Alex Hocevar
Just like Sean, I too am a veteran of a Toronto area McDonalds so I'm very interested.Somewhere in the city, there's two teenagers that are working away on the fry station and the drink station, and they'll be on a panel like this in the 50, so it'll probably be 10 times as amazing as what we're talking about today. How's that? Better? Um, yeah. I have probably about 25 years experience working in, uh, technology and business. Much of my career has been spent at the intersection of technology and the user experience. I was with Ontario Lottery Gaming for 15 years. I ended there as the head strategy. I then made a leap to the opposite end of the altruistic spectrum in joined Toronto Public Library, um, and was their CIO for a number of years.
and now I, I was on my own, which is really exciting and allows me the opportunity to, uh, be in rooms like this with amazing people talking about amazing technology. And as Claude mentioned, um, my journey as a consultant has been primarily in the arts and culture space so I work with organizations large and small across Canada helping them understand how technology, uh, can be used and, uh, working with them to implement pragmatic, practical solutions. Uh, one of the things that happens with technologists is that they jump to the, the be all and end all solution, that at the end of the day, uh, the person that's implementing the technology looks at business.
And what am I gonna do with this? I'm paying a lot of money. It costs, or it took forever to install and it doesn't actually help us move forward. So I, I've lived that. And so when I work with my clients, um, we look for practical, realistic solutions that help move, uh, a business organization forward towards their goals. Um, so within the arts and culture space, as I mentioned, I work with organizations large and small across Canada. Um, one of the larger organizations, uh, that I've worked with here in Toronto, the Canadian Opera Company, um, they brought me on five years ago, uh, to explore how are they using technology. And this was pre Covid. Um, I joke with the, the Canadian Opera Company that, um, one of their unwritten, uh, mantras is we've been doing the same thing the same way for 500 years. And that's just the reality of o opera.
That's, that's how opera is. It's pure and it's delivery. There is no amplification. There's very little technology on stage. Uh, what you're hearing is, is pretty much art in its purest form. Um, and so for an organization that doing the same thing the same way for 500 years, the question really becomes how can they be using technology to better their operations? And so, um, I started working with them to explore how we use it today. What are some of the opportunities, what are the challenges? And to build, um, to build a plan to help move the organization forward. Partway through that process, something called Covid came along.
And it was fascinating to see that some of the potential solutions that we talked about that might have been very low priority prior to covid suddenly became absolute urgent business critical within days or weeks after that, uh, uh, March, 2020 date, when we all stayed at home for many months and years. Um, so it, it is incredible to see how how quickly technology, um, can begin to impact, uh, an organization. So whereas something like an opera company or some of the other arts organizations may have not been very big into streaming before, well, when you can't assemble thousands of people in your auditorium or even hundreds or tens, um, suddenly the ability to maintain that relationship, um, through something like streaming in the internet, it becomes absolutely critical. Even more simple.
Something like laptops. Many organizations didn't invest in laptops. Um, suddenly when everybody had to work from home, everybody wanted a laptop. And we can all probably remember it was almost impossible to find a laptop anywhere in Ontario for the first few weeks and months, uh, after Covid. Um, so working with organizations like Canadian Opera Company, national Valley of Canada, et cetera, there's the element of how is the business run? Are we using the right pieces of the technology? Are we finding the right partners, et cetera. But then there's an element of, within our ecosystem, are we working towards making sure that the artists they work with, um, have the knowledge, have the understanding, have the access to new pieces of technology, like Sean was talking about here.
And, and the reality is, it's incredibly challenging for many artists to get their hands on a lot, a lot of this technology, it's not something you can go to Best Buy. It's not even something you may be able to go onto the internet to get for free. Um, if you're talking about hardware, forget it. 'cause artists often don't have a thousand dollars to drop on a VR headset, set even experiment with something like that, let alone more advanced levels of technology. And we start talking about things like motion capture, photogrammetry projection mapping, even 3D printing. You go your library, but it takes a lot of time to get to a level of proficiency where you can start to actually use that technology to its fullest. And so as we were going along this journey, we started identifying some of these challenges.
And one of the, um, opportunities with large organizations like COC or National Valley et cetera, is that they are centerpieces in the artistic community. They've been around for a long time, they have a lot of connections. Um, and so what one of the things we did was that we established programs that began to reach out to the artistic community to help elevate the discussion, engage artists, and to hopefully, at the very least, given some level of understanding as to how this technology works, hopefully even further, in some cases, was very successful, um, to enable them with this technology to begin to express themselves through the technology. And with that, we created something called the Performing Arts Digital Lab, or tablet, PADL as we were trying to find a good Canadian acronym.
So we thought about Paddle completely spelled wrong, but it sounds related good. Um, and within Paddle we did two things. Um, we created something called the Paddle Academy, which is, uh, a partnership that we established with Shared College, um, to create. It was originally called a microcredential. And then the province came out with rules around what a microcredential actually is. We didn't call it credential. It's a learning opportunity, um, where we invited artists from across the GTA, uh, to participate in a four, uh, session education session at the Sheridan campus down on the waterfront, um, to get not only lecture style learning about technology, but also actual hands-on experience.
Um, so those four initial, uh, sessions, including things like vr, how do I use a VR headset, how do I create in vr? Um, it included things like projection mapping. So if you wanted to turn this room into, maybe you might have seen the, the Fango exhibits, um, that were around the city, and similar things like that. That's all projection mapping or projection mapping. How would you do That kind of thing in a working like this? Um, and we also explored things like game engine. So any, anytime you're looking at any kind of experiential art, you're in something like, um, uh, unity. So we're all probably familiar with Fortnite, um, whether we play it or kids play it, et cetera, uh, I'm terrible at it.
But that game was actually created in unreal memory, unreal of the largest traffic, uh, processing companies in the us. And that technology is also used not only on games, but that game engines used to create virtual environments. Um, which when you start talking about, uh, digital experiences, digital presentations in vr, in a room like this, even on tv, you need the engine. Um, and so those were the kinds of things that we started to educate artists on. Um, we had about 30 artists go through this process, and feedback was, this is incredible. How can I do more? And so from that, we created a, a secondary session called Expanding the Camps, which, Uh, was an opportunity for artists that went through the program to propose how would they use that technology that they learned about, and then they would be funded to create a five to 10 minute piece using that technology. Um, and so that was a really exciting, uh, project that allowed some of these artists that at the beginning of the day had no access to the technology.
They suddenly not only worked with the technology, but now we're given them an opportunity to create using them. Um, and so as I mentioned before, artists went through that first phase of expanding the hints, um, to varying degrees or different levels of sophistication, uh, with technology. And that obviously led to the, the sophistication of the outcome. Um, the most successful person that went through that took their five to 10 minute piece and got permission by the Finish Opera, um, to create what they did in our lab. It was presented in
If you, you think back to college and university, that it was first few courses that were relatively simple. And again, second, we've since created a series of 200 level courses, which build upon 100 level courses, but we begin to explore more sophisticated kinds of technology. So, uh, more advanced, unreal generative ai. We talk about that in just a second. Um, digital humans photogrammetry a lot of the technology that Sean talked about earlier. We're starting to educate the next Seans, um, to how can they use that technology, um, to inform their artistic expression. And we've actually just completed a second grant of expanding campus where we selected two people that had gone through the 200 level courses and gave 'em funding, um, to, uh, to create, uh, attendance.
Uh, and so that's kind of in its final stages. Hopefully in the next few weeks or months we be to, to share with the sector. Um, just that, so that program is something I've been working with, uh, within, uh, the artistic community and specifically the Canadian Opera Company for, uh, the last few years. Uh, as I mentioned a lot on Monday, unfortunately, or first of all, it was funded primarily by the American. Unfortunately, some of the strategic changes is, uh, for Canada Council, that funding is evaporated. Um, so although that program is incredibly successful, we have no funding to do with the third grant, the fourth grant, et cetera. So right now we're strategizing to how do we keep this flow? It went so well, we can't just let it die. Um, and so right now we're looking for additional opportunities to gain funding. And considering the relatively low costs and the number of people we can send through and the successes we've had, we think there's a compelling story to continue. Um, that's kind of on the creative side, uh, specifically to today's conversation. Um, I've had a lot of experience with working with organizations, implementing and exploring artificial intelligence solutions. Uh, and the way that I see artificial intelligence is really on a spectrum. Um, on
These include things like basic, basic, um, use of something like chat, GBT. If I type something into chat, GBTI get feedback, it's probably not gonna tell me to go metaphorically jump. It's gonna give you some information I need to disseminate it. This is worth while it's valuable, et cetera. As we start to move along that spectrum, on the other end of the spectrum, I'll start to all start to put things like artistic creation, um, copyright questions, uh, ethical considerations, legal considerations. We, we may have all been familiar with the, the recent, um, spread against, uh, issue with her voice suddenly became the voice of one of the AI tools. And she was actually asked, can we use your voice? She said, no.
And suddenly it's her voice. Um, as you start to move across that spectrum from basic office productivity to the other end where you are actually mimicing humans, you may be taking human ideas and representing them, you may be creating art, et cetera, the risks associated to legal, ethical, moral, et cetera, increase explanation. Um, and, and so as we start to increase our use of ai, we really need to start considering that that was actually the, the genesis of the writer strike in in Hollywood, uh, last year. Um, when the writers were saying, okay, studios, you need to promise that you're not gonna use AI for the place fast.
Personally, I don't think that's anywhere near the, in the near future. You still need artists like Sean, like others out there to disseminate, understand, to instruct, et cetera. But at some point in the near future, the capability may get to the point where I may be able to say rightly, uh, listen to it. I say, tweak a few things here and there. And suddenly it's really good symphony that I would not be able to create on my own. I would not be able to conduct on my own. I have some, some instrumental knowledge, but I would not be able to actually play it. But suddenly, have I created it or has the tool gone out and based on everything is learned and gathered up, represented other people's works, that's a question none of us have the answer to today. And the AI companies don't really have attribution on their phone. So the fact that this tool has created something, but where did it learn it from? Where did it get that 10 10 note, uh, compilation? That sounds amazing.
Could that be some artists in Southern US somewhere that made that, put it on the internet? Nobody listen to it on YouTube, but the engine took it and represented it as my, the legal, the ethical, the moral questions that come from that still exists, and they're gonna exist in the near future. And, and as we heard earlier, capitalism is gonna plow right through that without being consider what that means for society. Mm-Hmm,
The reality is that technology has been changing how people work for te. Um, 30, 40 years ago, the number one job in United States and every state was type seven. So if they needed a document written, it wasn't a Microsoft Word, it wasn't PowerPoint, we would have to go to the Python tool, give them a handwritten thing, and somebody there would type away and create you the very nice document. That job obviously doesn't exist anymore. Um, jobs like, uh, a switchboard offer, when you used to phone a company, you talk to somebody in front, they would connect you to Jane Smith being
The VCR to that job doesn't exist anymore. And so as we start to think about the efficiencies that AI brings, what are those jobs that aren't gonna exist anymore? Not 20 years, not 30 years, five Now, research assistant interns, musicians, I don't know. I mean, these are the kinds of things, tech, technology and society move along. But the questions begin to emerge as to where are we
H five one is the same that if they're should be a little bit worried about, et cetera. Then H five and two suddenly came up and I thought, oh, okay, that's different. So I did two things. I went to the internet and typed them to Google what's the difference between H five and one and H five and two? And I was presented with them litany of articles from all Johns Hopkins, WebMD, reputable sources all over. And it was up to me to disseminate and to identify sources that I would find critical. Once I did that, I went to chat GPT and typed in what's the difference between H five and one and H five and two. And within two seconds, it gave me about four paragraphs, seemed reasonable. I have no idea where it's sourced by information.
And so whereas as challenging as the internet is with fake news, et cetera, um, at least I see the source with ai, it is not presenting any source. It's just telling me something. And so I use my brain to say, well, wait a minute. Do I take this with a grain of salt or does this actually make sense? And so we may be headed to a point in society where in the absence of knowing what the actual source is, is AI telling me something actually. And so I'll, I'll leave you with that, that although tools like chat, GBT, et cetera are amazing, cool, they seem really good, we should all be taking with a grain of salt until the technology in society gets to the point to say, what is real? What is realistic? How am I using this and am I getting the answers that, um, will help me make a good positive decision?