Dear Diorama

Fake caves, Arthur Miller plays, AI spaghetti & spreadsheets

Greetings!

Tune in next time for a note on who I am, what I do and why museums pay me to do it.

In the meantime, it appears I have unwittingly completed a crash course in American capitalism via cultural ephemera: three plays riffing on the overriding theme of our time.

In Death of a Salesman, a man, and his family, gradually fall apart as he clings onto the decaying fabric of his American dream. Arthur Miller is superb at pairing ominous undercurrents with mundane scenes of family life and gently ratcheting up the pressure. (I caught a short West-End run with Wendall Pierce from “The Wire”).

In A View From the Bridge, a man, and his family, gradually fall apart as an undercurrent of racism collides with an unhealthy obsession. Miller again, his ingredients simmering towards their inevitable conclusion. By chance, this National Theatre production also had an alumni from “The Wire” - Dominic West!

In The Grapes of Wrath, a man, and his family, gradually fall apart under the grinding wheels of economic growth driven by faceless corporations. Bleak to the end, there is nonetheless a remote flicker of hope as Tom Joad slips into the night. He may be in flight but his fate is inexorably bound with the rising rebellion of worker unions. 

Aside: who are the modern writers offering this sort of gently obfuscated commentary? I guess Jon Ronson is one of them. He has been sharing the art of finding good stories.

Films, animations, comics

Voicemail film (12 mins) - the 1 800 Happy Birthday project is a beautiful way for families to pay tribute to lost loved ones. This documentary is perhaps an example of the adage about successful stories. Big stories about small things or small stories about big things and nothing in between. Via StoryThings.

Spreadbeats - a frightening volume of cash will have been thrown at this incredible stretching of spreadsheet capabilities for Spotify. Animation is one of those mediums that seem to thrive under heavy constraints. File near Party in a Spreadsheet and other imaginative uses of mundane software. 

Nicky Case is back! An expert in playful deconstructions of difficult topics, from the Coming Out Simulator and Parable of the Polygons to boosting your memory with spaced repetition. This new project is a fun, thorough, illustrated introduction to AI that will be a fantastic resource for educators - aisafety.dance

Chatbot LOLs and reproductions

Various online discussions are kicking off around cultural organisations using AI-driven chatbots to give voice to objects. Danny Burchall’s LinkedIn post has a range (50+!) of frank perspectives: the dodgy ethics, the missing user need, the value of experimenting and the “ick” factor, particularly around glib responses to difficult topics. Symplistic.ai was in promo mode on the MCN group recently. AskMona was also referenced, a French service with the same “bring [thing/historical figure] to life” schtick.

All I can usefully add at the moment was how much I love-love-LOVED the real human guides that took me and five others around El Castillo and Las Monedas caves in Northern Spain. 40,000 year-old cave art? Yes please! Curmudgeonly paleo-dork with minimal English? Sign me up! This trip deserves its own post.

The obvious point is that humans bring a magic and warmth to interpretation that rapid tech innovation cannot. Which leads to the rather more sad concept of “analog privilege” that I stumbled on via Rachel Coldicutt on Bluesky. Basically: people at the apex of the social order secure manual overrides from mass-produced, brain-rot tech stuff.

As far as I can tell, AI is like sugar. You can’t pour it into everything but people will try.

This pic is from the reproduction of Altamira. What a mighty-fine buffalo! Side note: the ‘fake’ cave (because breath-moisture was ruining the real one) was no less captivating for being fake. I enjoyed it far more than expected.

I’m not long back from speaking at ASTC in Chicago (another one for another time) where one highlight included a rapid run around the Field Museum (instead of networking). Their dioramas and taxidermy exhibits are stunning. Technology from another time. Add a bit of AI, I hear you cry. Well Bristol Museum’s taxidermy was “brought to life” by Lux Aeterna’s creative technologist in September. Scroll down to the surprisingly compelling “Gen-3: Experimenting with Reanimation” section to see what happened.

I’ll bring YOU to life if you don’t pipe down.

Bye for now,

B.

PS - Really? You want more? Weird AI is the best. Watch “Gordon Ramsey” fight his kitchen.