My team of research software engineers at the University of Oxford has three new vacancies, if anyone's interested...

https://my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecruit/erq_jobspec_details_form.jobspec

It risks a downward cycle, a spiral into the quite literally average - into the statistical reduction of what we have already created into what we believe we want to see and hear because we have heard and or seen something like it before, and of course we have: it is the unfocussed average of something else. 4/4 (I think?)

Which is not to say that none of the creative uses of AI are valid - I would argue, quite strongly, that there are highly creative users of digital and AI tools who are adapting them and doing truly fascinating things with them. The concern arises at imitative nonsense, pale shadows of deep artistry being peddled as an acceptable replacement. It reduces not only artistic integrity, but the quality of appreciation. 3/4]

What is sad about some - not all, by any means - of the current growing uses of 'AI' (I think of it as II (intelligence imitation) is the extent to which these are breaking the promise of technology: rather than removing the tasks that are grindingly damaging, freeing people to less constraining labour, to greater personal creativity and growth, one of the uses is to replace that creativity with something economically cheaper and artistically less human. 2/3

Mulling over some of my ongoing conversations about AI and its place, and, more broadly, 'digital' and other technologies and their places, I think it boils down to a fairly simple thing: in general, these should be tools for helping people rather than replacing people. 1/2

It’s the time of year (passed time, possibly!) when choral directors are looking for music for Advent and Christmas. I have a few things in that area, so, if anyone’s reading and interested, let’s start with something written nearly 15 years ago: There is no rose.

https://youtu.be/CkxGJxi37G0

Like many classically trained musicians, I feel ambivalence towards the introduction of AI into the creation of music. It was partly for this reason that I enjoyed Maya Ackerman's nuanced keynote at the AI & Music Creativity conference at Wolfson College, Oxford, this morning. #aimusic #digital-scholarship

Work with a collections institution? How well is digitisation is supported? What gets in the way? Oxford colleagues are surveying training provision for collections digitisation in the UK: Could you help by filling in their survey?

https://t.co/YZJf9rCryI

#digitalarchives
#collections
#research

Oxford Digital Festival, today: it’s strange how we their so much of this extraordinary socio-technological evolutionary leap for granted.

In RSA House for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. I'd missed it.

#cosophotography #analogue #photography

Another photograph from a couple of years ago.

#cosophoto
#cosophotography
#photography

This one was featured on flickr today (it was, and this is very obvious from the 'explore' page, a very slow day, apparently). I thought I'd share it with you, too.

#cosophotography

Well, yesterday I picked up a Marantz M-CR603 that I had bought on eBay for not very much money. I've spent the last couple of hours trying to get the network player to work with my mac, and learning a little more than I did about DLNA servers. It might be an old system (and sadly, the original owner didn't update it to include some of the aftermarket features (and it's no longer supported)), but it still sounds very good.

There are (many) times and days when I forget that I'm a composer, that that was my chosen direction. And then something crops up in my listening that I have written and I ... wonder why I do not do more of that. Today something I wrote as an interlude to a musical I was musical director of in 2017:

https://on.soundcloud.com/4x3LY

#music
#composition
#cosomusic
#cosocomposition
#newmusic
#cosonewmusic
#trackoftheday

#photography

Spent yesterday at #ArriStageLondon seeing a demonstration of Arri’s Volume virtual production environment. It’s all very impressive, and allows some extraordinary in-camera and responsive cinematographic work, and points to a means of filming that updates and extends some really respectably old techniques. I wonder how long until the next leap forward in it.

#virtual #cinematography #photography

I'm at a workshop at ARRI today, which is, for someone with a slightly-more-than-minor fascination with cameras (mainly of the 'vintage' variety) and photography, a really terribly dangerous thing - they really are very lovely and desirable objects. #cameraenvy #photography #filmphotography

How did four days of summer school pass quite so quickly.