Audio Blog

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Audio Blog ♪

We’re going to chill out a bit this month and focus on some life advice alongside the quirky stuff. As always the written portion of the blog is made with brevity in mind, so please listen to the audio above if you want the full details and nuance with this month’s update. If any links I provide to you do not work, I would consider getting any VPN local to your region and setting a server somewhere in the United States.

It’s pretty obvious by now that the Kickstarter project didn’t reach its goal and has failed. I want to say I’m extremely grateful for those who made the extra effort to try and make it a reality. Although things did not turn out the way we may have hoped, it does not mean we can not move forward from the experience. I’m going to assume by now you have watched the video I’ve linked above on the law of reversed effort. It will hopefully help you understand both my thought process on why I started the Kickstarter and what I expected from it. So here goes!

In a nutshell, I wanted to see where I was with my community and if I should take the content creator “relationship” to the next level. I have literally hundreds of hours of video and audio content waiting to be released, but I’ve decided to hold off on it because I wanted to know if the extra effort was going to be warranted. Using a relationship as an example, people develop intimacies and perspective at different rates. When one partner is ready to take things further, the other one (ideally) has to be on the same level to make the outcome positive and sustainable. Circling back to me as a content creator, once the proverbial “flood gates” have opened in terms of content; there would be no going back to the way things once were. I would have to dedicate myself to a strict schedule of uploading content. I would have to make sure it suits a quality standard befitting of those who helped support me and showed a genuine interest in what I’m doing. In other words, if I wanted to “get married and have kids”; then I want to make sure I become the best husband and father possible.

Carl Jung is a popular philosopher when it comes to self image. I wanted to see if I should act upon my potential against the reality of expectation. The Kickstarter was my way of gauging whether or not I should increase the intensity of what I’m already doing. It seems the answer is that I should not, and thus I have a much more nuanced perspective of where I’m at with things the way they are. Without belaboring the point, let’s just say success is always scarier than failure. There is a always a strange mix of disappointment and relief from failure. The important takeaway is that we all should be real with ourselves and actually take a honest look at where we stand with the world around us. It’s a strategic move, and a pragmatic one. And at the end of the day we can only benefit from this knowledge, even if it is against what we believed or hoped to be.

So the topic of AI assisted art is way overdo for me to comment on. I remember when the “news” hit back at the end of September, the art world was seemingly about to be in ruins. At least the twitter art world anyway. What folks were up in arms about was the idea that computers (or AI) could start making artwork independently of human input. Worse yet, the art generated by AI would be of superior technical quality. The thing about art however, is that it’s horribly subjective at a foundational level. Everyone responds to any particular work of art in a different way, usually with strong inherit bias. More to the point, AI generated art still needs a base to work off of, so the fears of it randomly creating art of its own accord was unfounded. But everyone seems to be missing the benefits of this technology. The point of AI was to not replace human beings, but to help them. It always has been. Although I won’t go down that rabbit hole, I will say that AI generated filters will greatly open up opportunities for many artist who potentially don’t have the best technical aptitude. Composition of work is just as important as technical skill, and often times or not you will see some artists struggle with this. Ever see someone draw a hundred portraits (which all look amazing) but never really do anything else? That’s a perfect example of great technical skill but limited compositional aptitude. If there’s any real silver lining to AI art, it’s that it helps open up opportunities for artists who may never had had previous exposure due to technical limitations. AI algorhithims do some pretty crazy things with unexpected results. And unexpected, unconventional results is what the art world thrives off of. It’s only a good thing; you’re just going to have to trust me on it.

As many gripes I have with YouTube censoring 50% of the stuff I post and killing it in the cradle, I want to remind folks that I’m a middle aged gentleman from an older world. In this older world, we had similar things that got in the way of expressing ourselves, and the reality of automated censorship has been a thing for quite some time now. Some folks even have the audacity to try and do it on purpose! So I thought it would be neat to take you back a few years and explore a device that pre-dated algorithms alongside safety and standards employees with a stick up their butt.

I have a lot of work ahead of me for the 2022 retrospective. The good news for all of you is that I end this month’s update with a cinematic movie free to watch on YouTube in the form of God Of War Ragnarök. Although I mentioned this phenomenon quite a while back, I understand there are new folks coming to the website on a daily basis. Some games out there can be considered works of cinematic art even if they don’t show up in movie theatres or streaming services. We live in a time now where games can take the narrative experience to a whole new level. Although it can be debated whether or not it takes away from the mechanical joy of playing them, we can all hopefully agree the quality of the presentation has set the bar to a higher standard. If you like what you see, I welcome you to look for any other immersive role playing game made in the past couple of years on YouTube. Just add “The movie” to the end of your game’s title and you’ll probably find it.

Happy holidays, merry Christmas, and hope you have a wonderful December month! I’ll see you all next year for the 2022 retrospective.