The soundscape of Yorkshire, AIs having fun with cucumbers, and a beat combo messing with your mind... Playful A/V for you
Another in our regular collections of startling audio-visual, our cup dipped into the creative surplus of the web. Our theme today is deep and profound playfulness…
First the above, from Aeon:
A lush, whirlwind tribute to the diversity of life in a northern English county
With its lively animations and immersive audio, That Yorkshire Soundthrusts viewers into the sights and sounds of Yorkshire in northern England. Presenting a flurry of animations that flow from one scene to the next, the UK director Marcus Armitage captures the diversity of daily experience in the county.
The images move from rural areas, where farm animals squeal and bicycles spin through the suburbs, to the heart of its urban centres, abuzz with drinking, dancing, gambling and a bit of post-football match mayhem.
Simultaneously, the clock seems to move from day to night over the course of the short, giving the impression of time flying through a full day over the course of two minutes. The resulting work is a fleeting yet overflowing tribute to life in this vibrant and historic slice of England.
PL’AI, an installation discovered at the Meta.Morf Biennale for Art and Technology in Trondheim, explores the possibility of play between cucumber plants and an AI robot. With this work, Špela Petrič investigates the notion of a play as an ontological condition of all living bodies, including plants. The act of playing —unlike games, which are limited by clear rules or goals- reflects the curiosity of existence and suggests the existence of inner life.
The project meant that the relationship between plants and machines had to be entirely remodelled. So far that relationship has been driven by extractivist interests. In the agricultural industry, for example, AI technologies are used for crop monitoring, maximising yields, reducing water and pesticide usage. Therefore, the artist had to design technologies that would see plants as partners, not as mere resources.
From SubPop:
Corridor is releasing “Jump Cut,” an ecstatic new single that is accompanied by an absolutely bonkers, GIF-tastic official video from award-winning filmmaker and designer Winston Hacking (Flying Lotus, Run The Jewels, Andy Shauf).
“Jump Cut” is a highlight from Mimi, the group’s forthcoming album, out April 26th worldwide from Sub Pop and in Canada from Bonsound.
Winston Hacking offers this of the video, “Our video reflects the song’s theme of grappling with the overwhelming influence of technology and feeling adrift in its wake. Using AI to enhance archival footage resulted in a deliberate distortion, symbolizing the potential consequences of our intertwined relationship with it. It invites reflection on how technology blurs the lines of our identities and infiltrates every aspect of our lives.”