New Media Nuance
Featured The Aesthetics of a Social Media Scam: Using Amalia Ulman's "Excellences and Perfections" to Interrogate Lies on Social Media View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Joshua Westerman
Amalia Ulman's "Excellences and Perfections" has been called the first great social media artwork by curators at the Tate Modern. The work consists of a 6-month hoax based on Instagram in which the already successful Ulman tricks her friends and followers into believing a fully-scripted life catastrophe. Ulman's work has a great deal to tell us about the nature of aesthetics on contemporary social media and how machine learning-based tools have now automated her Cindy Sherman-like consolidation of popular aesthetics. Taking us through the "whore", the "it girl" and the "reformed whore" (in her own words) Ulman shows us that simply "looking" true is often enough.
The Anxiety of Artificial Music: Artificial Intelligence and Music Composition View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Howard S. Meltzer
As with any emergent technology, the role of computers in the production of music has not been regarded as value neutral. However, the perceived threat of artificial intelligence (AI) has seemingly raised the stakes. The score produced by notation software might be regarded as nothing more than replacing one tool, pen and ink, with another. As the programs incorporate what are regarded as higher-level functions – creating a sound file using synthesized timbres, adding modules that orchestrate, arrange a reduction, or monitor compositional practices of counterpoint and harmonic progression, the technology no longer seems to be taking over a tedious mechanical process, but intruding on human practice. Claims have been made regarding the ability of AI-based programs to generate new compositions, either in the style of an established composer, or wholly invented. We might distinguish two different kinds of imposture, one pragmatic, one existential. The first imposture relates to performance. While it may suggest a coarsening of listeners’ sensibilities, an inability to distinguish between live and synthesized performance, there are social and economic consequences of displacement and isolation for as performers. The second imposture relates to composition. Composition is a creative activity; we presume that a composition is more original than a performance. A performer whose interpretation seems wrong-headed is an eccentric; a composer whose compositions are not original is a hack. If an AI program generates a composition, can we evaluate it? Is it a forgery? Should we respond as if it were a human production?
Life Imitating Art: Exploring the Parallels of Horror Films and News Media View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kameron Lunon
Both horror films and news media play a significant role in storytelling and though for different purposes, use similar cinematic techniques to evoke fear. This paper examines the similarities between horror films and fear-driven news coverage, exploring common cinematic processes—visual composition, character stereotype, fear tactics—that film and news utilize to elicit fear and anxiety amongst their audience. While horror films are designed to entertain by invoking fear, news media frequently employs these same tactics to capture attention and heighten the emotional impact of real-world tragedies. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of select horror films and news media segments, this research highlights the subgenre: fear-based media. By recognizing how news coverage mirrors horror cinema, it showcases the possibility of fear-based news media and how the desensitization to real-world tragedy might impact how we process news and respond to crises, influencing public perceptions of risk and emotional responses to actual events. By spotlighting the shared features of these two media forms, this paper aims to lend a thought to how fear-based media operates and a possible desensitized reaction to real-world information.
