In this issue:
Speakeasy with Melanie Manos, our new Detroit editor
We interview one of Bernard Leach’s finest apprentices, John Bedding
Why artists’ fail by Darren Jones in New York
The Autonomies of Art by Clement Greenberg, a lecture given in Virginia.
Clement Greenberg reconsidered by Jane Allen
To the 75,000 Readers of MOMUS magazine by Miklos Legrady, our Toronto editor
Remembering the Futurists by Liviana Martin, our Milan editor
The Editors Discuss David Wojnarowicz
Reviews from Eva in Ireland, Detroit, Velos in Greece, New York, Cornwall, the Seychells and Cologne
Film Review: Frances Oliver on The Square by Robert Östlund
As a reader of your print magazine and also online, I have noticed how different the feeling is in reading online vs. in print. Online I read all your articles from start to finish, whereas I’m more likely to skim and turn the pages of the New Art Examiner. I am sure this is due to how our reading world has transformed over the last two decades, where online in general we are given only chunks to read at a time, not whole works. I wonder if other readers have noticed this difference.
In any case, I would like to thank you for the beautiful art magazine that you produce.
Hi Tamsen,
I completely agree with you; I find it easier to read just about anything online than in print format. I think it’s due to our shortened attention spans and shrunken brains, though not a problem for the oldies who didn’t have internet or who don’t use it very much.
I only wish there were more images in the New Art Examiner; after all it is an art magazine on the visual arts – visual, meaning, to be seen.
We are limited as we have no funds. Unfortunately at this moment in time we, the print media, are eclipsed by social media. I agree with the observation of declining attention span, to flourish the Visual Arts more mature audience will have to develop who can exist outside social media. Certainly, we will add more pages and images when the minimal cash flow increases and people subscribe. Derek Guthrie Co-founder and Publisher
Hi Derek,
Perhaps the New Art Examiner is limited due to its lack of funds, a monetary issue, easily resolved once funding is found through donations and investments, though investments could change the beautiful look and feel that this magazine has. It is truly unique in its presentation.
While the New Art Examiner is limited by lack of funds, we readers are limited by our ability to focus on one website at a time, while we are simultaneously checking our social media accounts. This has made so many of us become very superficial individuals in all that we do. We do many things, but many things badly.
Hi Derek,
After reading the article “You Already Email Like a Robot — Why Not Automate It?” from the NY Times on how, thanks to Smart Compose, parts of our emails now can be suggested and just clicked in as a more advanced form of automated communication, I was left feeling that our brains are getting more and more useless. It also made me think that further down the road art critics could just type in a few key words about a review of an exhibit and a more sophisticated Smart Compose could suggest the entire article. It could be based on a catalog of phrases extracted from an archive of articles from a magazine like the New Art Examiner. From no longer being able to read anything longer than a paragraph, soon we will no longer even be able to write complete sentences, just a word here and there.
However, I also believe that people who will be able to think without being digitally assisted may be the only ones who will be able to remain independent thinkers, as the rest of us become automatons, imitating robots with our pedetermined set of instructions. I also read somewhere in the comments of your magazine that 50% of the world doesn’t use internet. Are we or are they the lucky ones? What price are we paying to have all the information of the planet available to us?
Hi Steve,
I’m sorry to say, but automated article writing software already exists, and it is exactly as you say. The user writes in a few words, and in 30 seconds a well written and unique article will be displayed. Watch the video; it is more than shocking.
http://www.articleforge.com/
It means that our brains could become ever more useless if there is artificial intelligence software that can do all the thinking for us. This art magazine could use it and no longer need writers. The implications on its use are immense, though perhaps this technology is already widely being used; we just don’t know.
It is a sad, sad world that comes to this, believing that it is an improvement to our lives, or even necessary (to control us). If you think otherwise, go and get your digital implant and be happily controlled by your local government.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/11/alarm-over-talks-to-implant-uk-employees-with-microchips
Whatever will happen to artists; will they too be fully automated? Are the visual arts a conception of humans or will this conception be changed to the perspective of artificial intelligence? Does artificial intelligence have a perspective?
I watched the video, I tried the software, and oh dear, oh dear, it works. I’m not saying it wrote what I had in mind, that is if I still do indeed have a mind, but it did come up with a decent article on Mondrian that could be published. Even more disturbing is the fact that it can produce 1,000 different articles on the same topic in just a few seconds, something I didn’t try, but they suggest using these 1,000 articles to fill up a website or blog. If already our web is inundated with the most useless collections of words, what is the potential for flooding the web with a software like this one?
Going one step further, if we can now have a microchip implanted in our brains to give us super brains, then connecting this software via web to the microchip we could all become instant writers.
My last thought, if nobody reads anymore because we can only watch videos today, who would read the millions of articles this software has the potential to write anyway?