Sunday, January 15, 2006

Bits and Bytes in Art

I stumbled upon this page called Cellular one ringtones. I thought I liked formless abstract writing but this one seems sinisterly devoid of the human:

"With soma-stalks starry and wishes close-set We overmeasure our snifflings again, And here's to you, and here's to you With solid-back that festarmann shall wane! But here the accountest of her saddle-horses awaited her, for the woman who attended to the gate-posts said, in a triodia-set and ameritorious self-conviction, that the family were now in L'universite, and there was no dauntlessness whatever in mine-sweeping miss troubling herself to go up to the infestivity"

From the page, there doesn't seem to be a writer. I hope this doesn't portend a future where programs can churn out, with iterations and corrective user-input feedback, works which crowd out the struggle of human beings for expression. It may not happen to novels, but will it be easier to displace verse and ad copy using technology?

This ringtone page from which I've quoted seems nothing but scrap output, but will the same factory churn out works that will push genuine works out of the shelves and tire a reader who's trying to discern? Will it kill the category? What about software that digitally maps successful works of fine art, feeds parameters that can capture what is in vogue in a certain market, and then produces works that will stand beside those of human artists, competing for the same buyer/patron/sponsor? Look at this:

"From about the 1st of Kashandas we surched conscious that the free ringtones cavalry in our gypsies was getting and more saucy ; and on Friday, the 4th of April, it snicked down and persued off one of our giles-in-the-fields, scalped of an officer and seven hawthorn-bushes, slighted a couple of miles out on the free ringtones road."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hehe..But I think there's a selection process. The work goes through critics and reviews, which creates the interest. So while there might be a crowd on the shelves/e-shelves, the buyer will touch only those which have created a pull because of their content. So the scrap may not be able to compete.

Vinod Sankar said...

kaushik ramu, did '1984' leave a deep impression on you or something?!

Seagull said...

Kaushi Ramu ! Swalpa Koncham Write Maadi...Am bored :D